Savirius

joined 1 year ago
 

If anyone's wondering how this "magic e" nonsense happened in the first place:

In the Middle English period, short vowels in open syllables were lengthened, so /ha.tə/ became /haː.tə/. Then, the schwa was lost, thus /haːt/. Now, the only audible distinction between hat and hate was the vowel length, and so the on the end was reanalyzed as a length marker; words that never ended with an /ə/ like whit /hwiːt/ were respelled as white to show the vowel length.

With the Great Vowel Shift, hate shifted from /haːt/ to /heːt/, and in the last couple of centuries to /heɪt/. Now, final shows a mostly-consistent transformation of the preceding vowel, perfect for flummoxing second-language learners!

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

To explain: /eː/ and /oː/ exist in Australian English, but they're the vowels in SQUARE and NORTH respectively, so Australians don't naturally associate them with foreign /e/ and /o/. If you can force an Australian to say "care-sore", it sounds remarkably like Spanish "queso"!