Audrey fforbes-Hamilton

credit: BBC

Penelope Keith

If you know 'To the Manor Born' you will most certainly be familiar with the fact that Penelope (Anne Constance) Keith played the character of Audrey fforbes-Hamilton in this British sitcom aired by the Beeb. I've kept wondering (perhaps like some of you) why fforbes is spelled with two lowercase letters <f>. This is something we do not stumble upon in English spelling very often, do we? The pronunciation of <ff> is unambiguously /f/ - so no doubt about this fact.

But the spelling of initial double <f> looks weird to the modern eye:
Ashleigh Maule-ffinch (designer)
Sir Jasper ffinch-ffarrowmere (fictitious name in "A Slice of Life" by P.G. Wodehouse)
Charles John ffoulkes (British historian)
Crispina ffrench (designer of clothes)

The explanation points to the spelling practice in scripts in medieval times during which double f was sometimes used to represent the majuscule F.
Here's an extract of a poem entitled "Lithes and I sall tell yow tyll" by Laurence Minot:

credit: Euan Nelson

Halidon Hill

As you can see the first line starts with the two minuscules <ff> representing the majuscule <F>. The poem was written in 1333 and describes the battle of Halidon Hill which was fought during the Second War of Scottish Independence.

Addendum:

One even finds combinations of majuscule <F> and minuscule <f> at the beginning of surnames. Here's one I spotted by mere chance in the London Gazette no. 48528 of the 18th of February 1981:

some of Ellis's central tenets - repeated and minimally amended

I should like to supply page numbers and other hints for my blog followers who are interested in knowing where I got my information from:
1. Social class divisions (vol. II, p. 629):

credit: National Portrait Gallery

Alexander John Ellis

1. 'Upper ten' (the court and nobles)
2. 'Middle class' (the professional and studious)
3. 'Commercial class' (the retail tradesman)
4. 'Young men and young ladies' (servants, porters, mechanics etc.)
5. 'Dangerous classes'

2. Ellis points to data collection problems:

1. He is aware of the observer paradox (vol. IV, p. 1086: "The only safe method is to listen to the natural speaking of some one who does not know that he is observed").
2. He is also well aware of the volatility of his data (vol. IV, p. 1086: "the sounds of language are very fleeting")

3. Data selection problem and insecurity:

1. Ellis points to the fact that there’s a great deal of variation as far as pronunciation of one and the same word is concerned (vol. II, p.628f.; last paragraph of p. 628 extending to p. 629). So he takes a descriptive stance (this is my personal conclusion; it shows his descriptive unwillingness to succumb to prescriptive absolutes.).
2. He introduces the conception of a mean incorporating variation (vol. I, p. 18: "there will be a kind of mean, the general utterance of the more thoughtful and more respected person of mature age, round which the other sounds seem to hover").

4. He sets up (at least) two categories of pronunciation:

1. received pronunciation (vol. I, p. 23: "recognize a received pronunciation")
2. dialectal pronunciation

5. Regional distribution of received pronunciation:

1. r.p. is regionally unmarked (vol. I, p. 23: "a received pronunciation all over the country, not widely differing in any particular locality").

6. Ellis's two caveats:

1. there's a certain degree of "regional colouring" of r.p (vol.I, p.23: "there will be a varied thread of provincial utterance running through the whole").
2. "received speech is altogether a made language, not a natural growth" (letter of 26 September 1882 by Ellis to Murray).

change your name

This blog entry is off-topic though related to my blog on Alexander John Ellis. In that blog on Ellis I wrote that he had exchanged his last name Sharpe for Ellis, his mother's maiden name.
I quote from the National Archives at www.nationalarchives.gov.uk:

Despite what people generally think, it has always been possible to change your name without having to register the change with any official body. It is still perfectly legal for anyone over the age of 16 to start using a new name at any time, as long as they are not doing so for a fraudulent or illegal reason. 

Some of these changes were made or had to be made more official (e.g. if two parties were involved in it). In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries Royal licences to a change of name were particularly common. Many of these licences were published in The London Gazette.

There I found the licence granted to Alexander John Sharpe to call himself and be called Alexander John Ellis. It's in Gazette number 18197 of the 24th of November, 1825. Here is the extract:

A change of your name may, at times, put you in the position of living unhampered by pecuniary sorrows. Mmh ... I guess I've got the wrong name. Any generous offers out there?

Gordon Frederick Arnold *22 Jan 1920

credit: The Phonetician 81 (2000)

Gordon Frederick Arnold was born on the 22nd of January 1920 in Braintree, UK. After his graduation at UCL in 1947 he was appointed Assistant Lecturer, then promoted Lecturer in 1950 and Reader in 1966. Arnold retired early in 1982. He died on the 30th of December 1999.

Arnold published a few textbooks on English phonetics:

• 1957 - Stress in English Words (North-Holland)
• 1961 - Intonation of Colloquial English (Longman; with J. D. O'Connor)
• 1965 - English Pronunciation Practice (U. of London Pr.; with A. C. Gimson)
• 1971-1973 - Say it with Rhythm (Longman; with O. M. Tooley)

My thanks go to Martin J. Ball for reminding me of the title marked purple in the list.

Dr h.c. Alexander John Ellis

Alexander John Ellis was born on the 14th of June 1814 in Hoxton, a district which today is part of the London Borough of Hackney. Ellis is one of the fathers of modern phonetics. Having been born as Alexander John Sharpe (his father's surname was Sharpe) he exchanged it for Ellis in 1825. He had sought for financial support from one of his mother's relatives. This was granted to him under the condition to adopt his mother's maiden name Ellis. He was educated at public schools in Shrewsbury and Eton and later went to Trinity College, Cambridge. Four months before his death which occurred in Kensington on the 28th of October 1890 he was awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of Cambridge.

He was trained in mathematics and the classics, but became one of the leading phoneticians of his time. His major opus is the five-volume On Early English Pronunciation (= EEP) which was published between 1869 and 1889. He also was the author of smaller works on music, e.g. a booklet on Speech in Song of 1878.

Moreover, he became interested in daguerrotypes. During a travel around Italy in 1840 to 1841 he assembled many daguerrotypes of Italian architecture; they were intended to be published in a book called "Italy Daguerrotyped" - a project that was never realised.




I should like to concentrate, however, on some central tenets of his book  EEP.
1. Social class divisions:

1. 'Upper ten' (the court and nobles)
2. 'Middle class' (the professional and studious)
3. 'Commercial class' (the retail tradesman)
4. 'Young men and young ladies' (servants, porters, mechanics etc.)
5. 'Dangerous classes'

2. Ellis points to data collection problems:

1. He is aware of the observer paradox.
2. He is also well aware of the volatility of his data ("the sounds of language are very fleeting")

3. Data selection problem and insecurity:

1. Ellis points to the fact that there’s a great deal of variation as far as pronunciation of one and the same word is concerned. So he takes a descriptive stance.
2. He introduces the conception of a mean incorporating variation.

4. He sets up (at least) two categories of pronunciation:

1. received pronunciation
2. dialectal pronunciation

5. Regional distribution of received pronunciation:

1. r.p. is regionally unmarked.

6. Ellis's two caveats:

1. there's a certain degree of "regional colouring" of r.p.
2. "received speech is altogether a made language, not a natural growth".

practise what you preach

credit:www.logisticspersonnel.com

In yesterday's phonetics class I asked my German students which errors were likely to be made in this sentence:

The drug dealer crept under the truck to abscond from justice.

Think about it for a minute!

Update:

1. Voiceless initial and final plosives/obstruents and concomitant pre-fortis shortening: drug dealer -> truck dealer
2. Use of the wrong allomorph of {to}: to abscond -> /tə/ abscond (which almost inevitably leads to/is accompanied by an insertion of the glottal plosive) 
3. Glottal stop insertion: ʔunder, ʔabscond 
4. Voiceless initial affricate in <justice>.
5.  Strong form of <from> instead of /fr(ə)m/

excellency of the English tongue

credit: www.cornwallforever.net

Richard Carew

"And thus, when substantiallnes combyneth with delightfullnes, fullnes with fynenes, seemelynes with portlynes, and courrantnes with staydness, how canne the languadge which consisteth of all these sounde other then most full of sweetnes?"

This verdict was published around 1595 in An Epistle on the Excellency of the English Tongue by a gentleman called Richard Carew.
My phonetic question is: How was his last name pronounced in the 16th century? And how is it pronounced today: /kə ˈruː/ or /ˈkeəri/ or  /ˈkeəruː/?

James Murray, NED and phonetic notation #2

This is how my last blog entry ended:
"Murray must have come to the conviction that the basis of phonetics of that time was solid enough to embark on the undertaking of marking the pronunciation of each headword. Of course, there had to be provided a key to the symbols."
And:
"The problem still to be solved and the question to be answered was which accent of English to represent."
Murray's decision to include phonetic notations seems to have been reinforced by a paper with the title "Sound notation" by Henry Sweet presented to the Philological Society in 1880.
As far as the key to the symbol is concerned Murray provided a list of such symbols on page xxv of volume 1.

As far as the question is concerned which accent of English to represent MacMahon writes: "There can be no doubt [...] that he [= Murray] never considered indicating anything other than educated pronunciations of English." (77) MacMahon rightly believes that this had to do with the social class structure of Victorian England and with the scholarly nature and claim of the dictionary. 

But it remains vague which accents were represented by the transcriptions. In a letter of 1882 to Thomas Hallam Murray states that the transcriptions represented "the general outline of recognised pronunciation", a statement which MacMahon qualifies as being ambiguous:

- is 'recognised' a slip for 'received' (in an Ellisonian sense?) or

- does the statement refer to all educated accents of English?

credit: National Portrait Gallery

Thomas Herbert Warren

It seems that - on the one hand - Murray "was unwilling to set up any one idiolect or accent of educated English as his model" (80). On the other hand - what should Murray do to indicate and categorise the wide range of phonetic variation? How could he escape this trap? Murray experienced grave difficulties when it came to notating unaccented vowels. One of the words listed by MacMahon is propose where Murray noted seven different pronunciations of the initial unstressed syllable. Murray seems to have relied heavily on the views of Thomas Herbert Warren, then President of Magdalen College, and on Sweet and Hallam.

Michael MacMahon

Here are the bibliographical details of this - for me fascinating - article:
MacMahon, M. K. C. (1985): "James Murray and the phonetic notation in the New English Dictionary", Transactions of the Philological Society 83: 72-112.
If you're interested in the dawn of modern phonetics and (meta-)lexicography you're invited to read this article.

James Murray, NED and phonetic notation #1

James Murray

I got hold of a fairly interesting academic paper describing how James Murray developed his views on the phonetic notation that was used in the NED. The paper was written by M. K. C. MacMahon in 1985.
It seems that the decision to mark pronunciation in the dictionary was not one of Murray's. According to MacMahon the idea formally first appeared in the "Canones Lexicographici; or Rules to be Observed in Editing the New English Dictionary" in 1860. These rules were defined in December 1859 and January 1860 and revised in April and May of the same year by a committee of the Philological Society consisting of these gentlemen:

1. The Very Rev. The Dean of Westminster
2. Theodore Goldstucker, Esq.
3. Thomas Hewitt Key, Esq.
4. Thomas Watts, Esq.
5. Hensleigh Wedgwood, Esq.
6. Frederick James Furnivall, Esq.
7. Francis Pulszky, Esq.
8. Herbert Coleridge, Esq.

credit: www.twyfordschool.com

R.C. Trench

Number 1 was Richard Chevenix Trench, author of works on history, literature, poetry, divinity, and philology. In 1860 he published an essay of 70 pages entitled On Some Deficiencies in our English Dictionaries in which he criticised some of the deficiencies of dictionaries, a critique which did not contain any hints towards pronunciation yet. The topic of pronunciation first appeared in the above-mentioned Canones Lexicographici on page 5:

III. The Arrangement of each Article shall be as follows :
α. The Word to be explained.
β. The Pronunciation and Accent shall be marked; and any changes which the former may have undergone shall be briefly pointed out.
γ. […]

credit: National Portrait Gallery

Derwent Coleridge

On the 10th of May 1860 Derwent Coleridge read a paper to the Philological Society which was published as "Observations on the Plan of the Society's Proposed New English Dictionary" (TPS 7, 1: 152-168). In a footnote to p. 166 D. Coleridge writes:

Besides Ellis and Coleridge it was Melville Bell whose paper of 1869 "How to Speak all Languages" seemed to have played an important role in the matter. Murray must have come to the conviction that the basis of phonetics of that time was solid enough to embark on the undertaking of marking the pronunciation of each headword. Of course, there had to be provided a key to the symbols. The problem still to be solved and the question to be answered was which accent of English to represent.
More on this in one of my next blog entries.

early c20 /ɑː/ - part 5

credit: Routledge

Here's my list of <-auNC>-words again because I wanted to add what Daniel Jones in the 1^st edition of his English Pronouncing Dictionary of 1917 records as pronunciations of these words.

item	EPD1
aunt	ɑːnt
craunch	--
daunt	dɔːnt
draunt	--
flaunt	flɔːnt
gaunt	ˈgɔːnt
gauntlet	gɔːntlɪt
graunch	--
haunch	hɔːntʃ
haunt	hɔːnt
jaunce	--
jaunder	--
jaundice	ˈʤɔːndɪs [ˈʤɑːndɪs]
jaunt	ʤɔːnt
launce	lɑːns
launch	lɔːntʃ [lɑːntʃ]
laund	--
laundry	ˈlɔːndrɪ [ˈlɑːndrɪ]
maunch	--
maund	--
maunge	--
naunt	--
paunch	pɔːntʃ
raunce	--
raunch	--
staunch	stɔːntʃ [stɑːntʃ]
taunt	tɔːnt
vaunt	vɔːnt

early c20 /ɑː/ - part 4

This is the 2^nd table illustrating the pronunciation of <-auNC>-words. The publication dates of the reference books are:

1. Walker =1791
2. Beniowski =1845
3. Afzelius =1909
4. Michaelis/Jones =1913 (= M-J)
5. Palmer/Martin/Blandford =1926 (= PMB)
6. Wyld =1932

item	Walker	Beniowski	Afzelius1	M-J	PMB	Wyld
aunt	ɑːnt	ɑːnt	ɑːnt	ɑːnt	ɑːnt	ɑːnt
craunch	krɑːntʃ	krɑːntʃ	krɔːnʃ	--	--	--
daunt	dɑːnt	dɑːnt	dɔːnt	dɔːnt	--	dɔːnt
draunt	--	--	--	--	--	--
flaunt	flɑːnt	flɑːnt	flɔːnt	flɔːnt	--	flɔːnt
gaunt	gɑːnt	gɑːnt	gɔːnt, gɑːnt	gɔːnt	--	gɔːnt
gauntlet	ˈgɑːntlet	gɑːntlet	ˈgɔːntlɪt, ˈgɑːntlɪt	ˈgɔːntlit	--	ˈgɔːntlɪt
graunch	--	--	--	--	--	--
haunch	hɑːntʃ	hɑːnʃ	hɔːnʃ, hɑːnʃ	hɔːntʃ	--	hɔːnʃ
haunt	hɑːnt	hɑːnt	hɔːnt, hɑːnt	hɔːnt	hɔːnt	hɔːnt
jaunce	--	--	--	--	--	--
jaunder	--	--	--	--	--	--
jaundice	ˈʤɑːndɪs	ʤɑːndɪs	ˈʤɔːndɪs, ˈʤɑːndɪs	ˈʤɔːndɪs [ˈʤɑːndɪs]	--	ˈʤɑːndɪs, ˈʤɔːndɪs
jaunt	ʤɑːnt	ʤɑːnt	ʤɔːnt, ʤɑːnt	ʤɔːnt [ʤɑːnt]	--	ʤɔːnt, ʤɑːnt
launce	--	--	lɑːns	lɑːns	--	--
launch	lɑːntʃ	lɑːnʃ	lɔːnʃ, lɑːnʃ	lɔːntʃ	lɔːntʃ, lɑːntʃ	lɔːntʃ, lɑːntʃ
laund	lɔːnd	lɔːnd	--	--	--	--
laundry	lɑːndriː	lɑːndriː	ˈlɔːndrɪ, ˈlɑːndrɪ	ˈlɔːndri	ˈlɔːndrɪ, ˈlɑːndrɪ	ˈlɑːndrɪ, ˈlɔːndrɪ
maunch	--	--	--	--	--	--
maund	mɑːnd2	mɑːnd	mɔːnd	--	--	mɔːnd
maunge	--	--	--	--	--	--
naunt	--	--	--	--	--	--
paunch	pɑːnʃ	pɑːnʃ	pɔːnʃ, pɑːnʃ	pɔːntʃ	--	pɔːntʃ
raunce	--	--	--	--	--
raunch	--	--	--	--	--	--
staunch	--	--	?	stɔːntʃ [stɑːntʃ]	--	stɔːn(t)ʃ, stɑːn(t)ʃ
taunt	tɑːnt	tɑːnt, tɔːnt	?	tɔːnt	--	tɔːnt
vaunt	vɔːnt	vɔːnt	?	vɔːnt	--	vɔːnt

All symbols were converted by me to conform to the IPA set.
¹ I could  check only words beginning with the letters <a> to <pa>.
² Mentioned in principle 214 in the introduction only.