Hi Dan and Sheila, 
 
-=> Quoting Dan Triplett to Sheila King <=-
 DT> SHEILA KING spoke of Fonix to DAN TRIPLETT on 11-02-96
 SK>DT>  Isn't y a vowel sometimes and even w in at leas one case acts as
 SK>DT>  a vowel.
 SK>Wow. I'm surprised at this question. You need to take a course or
 SK>a read book on Historical Linguistics. 
 y and w are classified linguistically as semi-vowels mainly because the 
 speaker actually says eeyu (Wish I had phonetic type) and w is actually 
 oowu. I have used the u for schwa e.
 The great vowel shift was a theory from Grimm of the fairytales in the 
 15 th century. Even that long ago the language was more oral than written.
 The shift in American, Canadian and even Australian English is directly 
 related to immigration patterns, American being that mush earlier than here 
 for example. In Australia, there is a definite South Australian accent. 
 Many settlers came there from Cornwall and Germany.
 Before that, Anglo-Saxon "English" had 27 graphemes for 40 phonemes. 
 Then the Normans (French) introduced conventions such as gh in night, qu for 
 queen and soft c (s) for ci and ce words. The royalty were heavily French/
 Romance/Latin but the English language is a Germanic one. More closely 
 related to the Dutch, Flemish, Yiddish and German. We have borrowed 
 extensively from the French because they were close. Similarly, there seem 
 to be many Italian and Greek words in the language today and in America, 
 Yiddish.
 
 After the printing process was invented many changes were made and attempt 
 to clean up the spelling were made.
 It may interest some people to know that the Arab contribution to literacy 
 included the Gothic letter script which heightened the letters and made them 
 easier to read and the placing of spaces between words. You try giving your 
 children a piece of writing without spaces and see how hard it is.
 I'd recommend to you the following books I used in studying linguistics.
 They are about as far as one needs to go for the theory. ie not specific 
 enough teaching/reading but excellent on basic history. Also I did medieval 
 history which showed the flux of Europe and the development of language etc 
 Crystal, David, The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language (Cambridge: Cambridge 
        University Press, 1987).
 Fromkin, V., Rodman, R., Collins, P. and Blair, D., An Introduction to 
        Language - This is second australian Edition but I aslo have the 
        first ed with just the first two authors names.
 DT> Ok....now you've earned my respect.....I feel like a 
 DT> diphthong....interesting stuff and much of it I was not immediately 
 DT> aware of.  I think language is so fascinating and only recently have I
 DT> had my interest 
 
 DT> perked.
 I hope not! I think you mean piqued. In Australia, this is idiom for 
 chucked, spewed, threw up, chundered ...do you get my drift?...barfed?????
 On that tasteful note, 
 Bye. Another tropical, summer is on its way, storm looms.
 Erica.
... Out of bounds - an exhausted kangaroo
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