3 ms·
my biggest TIL takeaway from that article was an "oh wow" moment: The other sound that ‘ȝ’ once spelled is the “harsh” or “guttural” sound made in the back of
by obiefernandez 1y ago
my biggest TIL takeaway from that article was an "oh wow" moment:
The other sound that ‘ȝ’ once spelled is the “harsh” or “guttural” sound made in the back of the mouth, which you hear in Scots loch or German Bach.4 This sound is actually the reason for the most famous bit of English spelling chaos: the sometimes-silent, sometimes-not sequence ‘gh’ that you see in laugh, cough, night, and daughter. Maybe one day I’ll tell you that story too.
- FergusArgyll 1y agoI've heard that Knecht (servant in German) is the same word as Knight in English
- maxhille 1y agoLachen, Nacht and Tochter (don't know a cognate for 'cough') still have this sound in Standard German.
- atq2119 1y ago'cough' could share a root with 'keuchen' (IANAL)
- 1718627440 1y agoThat has a different sound though. But yes, it might be a cognate.
- jacquesm 1y agoIn Dutch there is an even harder 'g' sound.
- sev 1y agoIs it less hard than the ‘k’ sound?
- jacquesm 1y agoYes, more back of the throat. One particularly nasty form is as in 'Scheveningen'. The Scottish version comes close in for instance 'Loch'.
- vanderZwan 1y agoI personally am more fond of provoking an "angstschreeuw" in English speakers by asking them to pronounce "slechtstschrijvend" or "zachtstschrijdend" and watching them recoil in horror at the consonant clusters[0][1]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consonant_cluster https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consonant_cluster [1] https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medeklinkerstapeling https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medeklinkerstapeling (Dutch wiki page for consonant clusters with more examples)
- jacquesm 1y agoThose are funny!
- 1718627440 1y ago> [1] It's funny I just started reading and understanding the first paragraph, before recognizing that this is a foreign language, I don't know at all.