17 Jun
2009
17 Jun
'09
9:36 p.m.
From: Doug Jackson
Sent: Tuesday, June 16, 2009 3:05 PM
My wonderful, patient wife is an English teacher, and
an easy way to
rev her up is to remind her that English is a living language, subject
to constant change, and that the only language that has truly static
spelling is Latin! Remember - "I before E, unless after C (and then
only sometimes)"
Not even Latin spelling is entirely static--ecclesiastical Latin
spellings often differ from the classical language.
And it's
i before e except after c,
if the sound of the word is 'long e'
which, as someone with multiple degrees in linguistics, irritates me a
bit (there being no such thing as "long" vowels in modern English--it's
a holdover from Graeco-Latin grammars).
Rich Alderson
Vintage Computing Server Engineer
Vulcan, Inc.
505 5th Avenue S, Suite 900
Seattle, WA 98104
mailto:RichA at vulcan.com
(206) 342-2239
(206) 465-2916 cell
http://www.pdpplanet.org/