Rood boy

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Cooped up in Ruthwell Church, the Ruthwell Cross was the 8th century's Angel of the North (made for the open air)

The Cross is the bearer of an extract from a poem that may be the earliest written poem in an English dialect  (Northumbrian, thought to be a fore-runner of Scots*). [That may is due to doubt about its having been written before the cross was made. It may have been added some time later.]

The poem may, for all I  know (next to nothing in this case) even have been written specifically for this cross. It is, after all, The Dream of the ROOD  (rood meaning "cross"); I imagine the word can still be seen today,  fossilized in the vocabulary of church architecture: rood-screen.

The poem is an amazing piece of anthropomorphism, with the cross itself reflecting on the crucifixion; it feels guilt about being the instrument of the Saviour's torture and death but finds a kind of solace in the thought that the sacrifice is necessary for the redemption of mankind. [I suspect the anthropomorphism breaks down a bit here; is the poet a man – caring about the fate of Mankind – or a cross {an unusually altruistic one}?]

<autobiographical_note> 

In the late  '80s (or maybe early '90s– there are sadly no written records) I sang with the University of Reading's  University Chorus. We sang Howard Ferguson's 1958 setting of The Dream of the Rood. He was at the time an old man; he died in 1999, but he came to the concert; and at the dress rehearsal he pooh-poohed the notion that his music was "modern": "It's about as modern as the design of the Morris Minor". This was fairly accurate if he meant the Minor 1000 , designed in a 1956 update; but the Morris Minor was, says Wikipedia, "conceived in 1941" and first saw the light of ...erm ... Motor  Show in 1948 (fully ten years before Ferguson's piece). 

</autobiographical_note>

The Ruthwell  Cross was covered in Melvyn Bragg's the Matter of the North  (in the second episode, broadcast last week –  though the whole series will be available on iPlayer for about a year). It is an extraordinary example of the strength  of multiculturalism even so early. He speaks to Dr Chris Jones, of the University of St Andrews, who lists some of the many influences that come together in the Cross: an Anglian poem, runic script, elements of Greek and Roman and Celtic design...

The whole series mérite un détour.

b

PS Here are a few clues:

• Interminably hunts for something to eat (7)
• Principal reason for buying after conjunction's onset of astrological borderland (4)
  
• Unrestrained colt or filly for Dr Spooner's cornucopia? (5,4)

And a special 50th anniversary clue:

Spock's not atypical response to hearing "the one about `American soldier goes into a pub... '" (7)

Update 2016.09.07.16:25 – Added footnote

* This is a bit of a throwaway. In particular, "thought to be a forerunner" is a gross over-simplification. The history of Scots is not something I've studied, but I put in a link to Scots so that you can follow this up if you want to know more. Wir Ain Lied ("Our own language") is the most authoritative source of information on Scots that I've found.

Next in the seqUEnce

This is the latest:

1. kafkaesque
   The Macmillan English Dictionary does not note other ''esque' words that refer to an author's idiosyncracies; 'Pinteresque' is another. This does not mean that the student has license to coin new '<author>+ esque' words though: 'Shakespeare => Shakespearian' and 'Shaw' => Shavian' are among the alternative forms. And such words do not always refer to an author. Humour, for example, can be 'Chaplinesque' (like that characteristic of Charlie Chaplin), 'Pythonesque' (like that characteristic of the TV series Monty Python's Flying Circus), 'Dada-esque' ...
   
2. prologue and prorogue 
   Confusingly, prologue has the apparent 'twin' prorogue in which the 'o' is lengthened to /əʊ/. Macmillan English Dictionary does not include this word, which is quite rare, being used chiefly by scholars of constitutional history – in such collocations as 'prorogued parliament' or 'prorogued the senate'. See, for example, the Collins English Dictionary's prorogue.
   
3. /ju:e/ versus /jue/ versus /jʊe/
   Of these eight, the Macmillan English Dictionary transcribes two with the first two of vowel-sounds and four with the last; but the audio samples do not seem to justify these distinctions – least of all in the case of these rhyming pairs Of these eight, the Macmillan English Dictionary transcribes two with the first two of vowel-sounds and four with the last; but the audio samples do not seem to justify these distinctions – least of all in the case of these rhyming pairs:
   
   • diminuendo (/jʊe/) and innuendo ( /jue/)
   • duet /ju:e/ and minuet /jue/
   
   
4. frequent
   The verb has /we/ in the final syllable, which is stressed, whereas the adjective has stress on the first syllable and the sound /wə/ in the second.
   
5. equerry
   The Macmillan English Dictionary gives the transcription as /`ekwəri:/ . But the audio sample has different stress and the vowel sound /we/ in the stressed syllable. Both pronunciations are common (and the /we/ pronunciation is beginning to have the edge. In a hundred years, /`ekwəri:/ will probably be regarded as archaic.
   
6. argue 
   The Macmillan English Dictionary gives the transcription as /ju/ rather than /ju:/. The audio sample seems to have the sound /u:/, as in – for example – statue.
   
7. ingénue
   The Macmillan English Dictionary gives the transcription as /ju:/ rather than /u:/. But the audio sample has the sound /u:/ with no glide. As this inconsistency suggests, both pronunciations are common.
   
8. issue
   The Macmillan English Dictionary gives two alternative transcriptions: /'ɪʃu:/ and /'ɪsju:/, although the two audio samples seem to be identical. Both are common pronunciations.
   
9. bluebottle
   This, and several other words with the prefix 'blue', is included, as blueness is not an essential feature. Words such as bluebird are, however, excluded. A fuller explanation of inclusion criteria is provided here.
   
10. sue
    Some speakers do use the pronunciation /sju:/; at one time it was widely regarded as the 'correct' version. But this pronunciation is now very rare.
    
11. croquet
    Unique, that is, among the words ending '-quet'. One other word in the Macmillan English Dictionary does have the transcription /i/ as a sound represented by the digraph 'ue': the not very common dengue fever.
    
12. habitué and roué
    It was tempting, as previously, to include the last two in one catch-all sub-section, but as the French sounds are distinctive it's possible that a distinction is preserved. (This is not to suggest that native speakers consciously pay attention to etymology. Few Italians, distinguishing the [dz] of mezzo from the [ts] of prezzo, know that the distinction can be traced to the Latin medium and pretium; and those few probably aren't conscious of it at the time when – like all native speakers of Italian – they make the distinction.)
    
13. evacuee
    The only one, that is, listed in the  Macmillan English Dictionary. No list of this kind can be exhaustive. The  Collins English Dictionary, for example, gives evacuee the same vowel sound as toluene (the second T in 'TNT'). But the Macmillan evacuee has a /u/, where Collins gives it a /ʊ/ – matching the /ʊ/ in toluene  Both words are little enough used for any distinction to be insignificant.
    
14. '-quet' and '-quette' words
    The growing commonness of European rail travel has led to the appearance in British English of the word 'banquette'; American English already had it, presumably imported by French-speaking immigrants. The Macmillan English Dictionary does not include this word, but see for example the Concise Oxford Dictionary's banquette. The pronunciation of the last syllable is neither /ɪt/ (as in racquet) nor /wɪt/ (as in banquet) but – like other '-quette' words, such as briquette – /et/ (with the stress, similarly,  on the second syllable).
    
15. coquetry
    The Macmillan English Dictionary gives the transcription as /ɪ/ , but the audio sample has the sound /ə/.

Also, in testing a cross-reference in the text I noticed that the EE section had gone missing. I've reinstated it.

Tales from the word-face

Tuning in late to In Our Time earlier this week, and not knowing what the topic was, I was misled by a speaker who pronounced 'hypocrisy' with a schwa in the 3rd syllable. She was one of the speakers I have noticed before

<hedge>
 I know of no authority who supports me in this –  solid though the observation seems to me
</hedge>

in whose speech an unstressed 'i' is regularly pronounced /ǝ/,  especially in words that already have a stressed /I/. For many speakers, for example, Tony Blair was the /praIm 'mInǝstǝ/ (I think, in his more Estuarine moments, our Tone was one of them) .  Also, even in speakers of RBP,  this may occur: demonstrations may, for example, be accompanied by acts of /'sɪvǝl dɪsǝ'bi:djǝns/, although those speakers, if asked 'How do you pronounce C-I-V-I-L?' would say /'sɪvɪl/.

Anyway, she said /hɪ'pɒkrǝsi/, and for a moment I thought we must be in the land of the Houyhnhnms – a hippocracy. But other speakers soon saved me from my Swiftian delusion.

At the time of my submission for the ELTons 2012, I was thinking about writing a much larger 'Dictionary of Vowels and their Sounds' (larger, that is, than , #WVGTbook), but at the moment I'm just sticking to digraphs. I'm toying, though, with the idea of a sequel,  giving the same treatment to vowels followed by liquids^†( 'h', 'l', 'r', 'w' and 'y') – working title WHiRLYgig (geddit?). Feel free to voice your opinions on this, ranging freely on the continuum between 'Great idea!/What a cool title!' and 'Don't waste your time/Puh-leeze  What do you think we are? 1st graders?'

b

Update 2012.10.15.14:40  – Footer updated
Update 2014.12.18.17:00  – Added note

^† Wrong word. See here.

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A Cunning Plan

 I've brushed up something I wrote on the subject of con a few years ago...

<rant flame="medium">
...before I hit my head on the OU's glass ceiling –  which makes it impossible to study beyond a certain level without wasting your time on angel-count-on-a-pinhead stuff that anyone in their right mind (if they've retained their right mind after the prolonged tedium of studying it) forgets the day after the exam. (And you have to pay them for the pleasure of this self-inflicted mental torture!)
</rant>

Anyway, here it is. I've left in a reference to 'course materials' to add some context. For what it's worth, U211 was the course. (Incidentally, there's a The History of English – in 10 minutes there, added since my time, and well worth the time)

To most native speakers of current English the most obvious (verbal) meaning of ‘con’ is the most recent (the Oxford English Dictionary [OED] traces it to 1896 – US, meaning ‘to persuade, to speak persuasively to; to dupe, to swindle’). This is a verb back-formed from an abbreviation of 'confidence trick[ster]' and has nothing to do with the present discussion.

Of the meaning ‘know’ OED says ‘there remains no consciousness of connexion between can to be able, and con to learn'; no consciousness, presumably, among people who did not learn a little French at school: Je sais nager means ‘I can swim’, and ‘je sais’ means ‘I know’. But this consciousness is of the connexion between the concepts, rather than between the English words.

For non-francophone English speakers we must go further back to find this consciousness. Chaucer, for example, wrote of the Squire, in the General Prologue to The Canterbury Tales:  

Wel koude  he sitte on hors and faire ryde.
He koude songes make and wel endite…. 

Here, koude refers to an ability.

But, in The Parson's Tale the Parson, talking of the Pater Noster, says

it is short, for [BK ‘so that’] it sholde be koud the more lightly

 – where koud refers to knowledge (although the two ideas are conflated: it is an ability to acquire knowledge).

However, Chaucer could be giving an early pre-echo of the point Melvyn Bragg made in The Adventure of English (3/15) – that the King James Bible was ‘deliberately archaic’; perhaps the Parson is intentionally – or by education – archaic-sounding (and consciously resurrecting an old usage). (As Melvyn Bragg points out elsewhere in The Adventure of English (2/13) Chaucer uses linguistic traits to further character development. And as Robinson writes in his ‘Introduction’ to an old edition of Chaucer's Complete Works 

<old_bone_of_contention>
no link, I'm afraid, Amazon has – to use a phrase annoyingly popular in the quaint vocabulary of the translator of The Killing, when referring to failed searches  – 'come up empty' [and heaven knows why I thought of that; it must have been quietly seething away for months] 
</old_bone_of_contention>

the Parson is not prepared to indulge in the Host’s game like all the other pilgrims, but agrees to speak of ‘moralitee and virtuous matere’. Linguistic conservatism might go well with this attitude. But it would take a Chaucer scholar to pursue this line of thought.)

This sense of ‘con’ – to ‘know –  has been largely lost to English, appearing today chiefly in crossword clues*;  but its traces can be seen in a number of ‘fossils’ contained in words made up with other morphemes: ‘uncouth’, for example, which OED dates to the early 10^th century in the sense ‘Of facts or matters of knowledge: Unknown… uncertain’. It is today used in the more specific (and much later, 18^th century) meaning ‘Awkward and uncultured in appearance or manners’. ‘Cunning’ contains another fossil of ‘con’; as does ‘canny’ in the Scots and archaic sense of  'knowing' (not able) – OED provides several 18^th-century examples.  Perhaps also ‘conning tower’ carries this sense – although the OED supports no definite derivation. There is a clear maritime meaning in Stevenson’s (1886 [BK – sic Treasure Island was in fact published as a serial in 1881-2, and first published in book form in 1883]) usage: ‘Long John stood by the steersman and conned the ship.’

But where did the ‘l’ in ‘could’ come from? The OED leaves no room for doubt: ‘The current spelling is erroneous [BK – sic]: the 'l' began to be inserted about 1525, app[arently] in mechanical imitation of should and would, where an etymological l had become silent’. Presumably the apostrophe occurring in many examples represented a missing eth, thorn, or yogh (all also common), and not an '1'.  But it seems to have held the door open for a false analogy to be made with ‘sholde’ and ‘wolde’.**

Caxton used all three of these in a single sentence in his preface to Eneydos (quoted [BK –  by almost every historian of English, but I put a ref.  in here to pick up an extra mark!] in the late 15^th century): 

…he also coude speke no Frenshe, but wolde haue had egges…. Loo, what sholde a man in thyse dayes now write, egges or eyren.’

But Melvyn Bragg, in The Adventure of English (3/8) mis-stresses his script, saying 

An l  was inserted in “could”  because it’d become silent [pause] but it was still present in “should” and “would”**. 

Presumably he meant ‘… because, while still present in “should” and “would”, it’d become silent [in those two words]’. A pause before ‘because’ would help make sense of some rather poor writing. This is a reminder that Melvyn Bragg was performing and writing for the popular market; The Adventure of English  is interesting and informative but not as reliable as the other course materials.

* Speaking of which, here's one. Nothing to do with con. By way of a clue, remember that I thought of it while working through *ie* words.

Bride or groom more confused? (8)

**‘Could’ is grouped with ‘should’ and ‘would’ as an ‘auxiliary modal verb’ in Swan's Practical English Usage, 2005, 353-4.

b
Update 2013.06.25.21:00

PS OK. It's time you had the answer the the crossword clue. When I re-read this, I couldn't work  it out for a while. But I've got it (and it's not bad, though I say it as shouldn't). Knottier.

Update 2013.09.30.11:10
HeadFooter updated

Update 2015.10.0610.05 – Corrected IPA symbols (which were previously an uneasy mixture of IPA and  SAMPA). And updated footer again.

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Mammon When Vowels Get Together V5.2: Collection of Kindle word-lists grouping different pronunciations of vowel-pairs. Now complete (that is, it covers all vowel pairs –  but there's still stuff to be done with it; an index, perhaps...?)

And here it is: Digraphs and Diphthongs . The (partial) index has an entry for each e cvowel pair that can represent each monophthong phoneme. For example AE, EA and EE are by far the most common pairs of vowels used to represent the /i:/ phoneme, but there are eight other possibilities. The index uses colour to give an idea of how common a spelling is, ranging from bright red to represent the most common to pale olive green to represent the least common.

I'm thinking about doing a native iBook version in due course, but for now Mac users can use Kindle's own (free) simulator.

Also available at Amazon: When Vowels Get Together: The paperback.

And if you have no objection to such promiscuity, Like this. 

Freebies (Teaching resources:  Well over 49,300 views  and nearly 9,000 downloads to date**. They're very eclectic - mostly EFL and MFL, but one of the most popular is from KS4 History, dating from my PGCE, with nearly 2,700 views and nearly 1,100 downloads to date. So it's worth having a browse.)

** This figure includes the count of views for a single resource held in an account that I accidentally created many years ago.

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