Accents-was:Grammar-was:Lee Valley optical center punch
 

In article ,
Silvan wrote:
Luigi Zanasi wrote:
...
I would suspect that vital was part of English before the great vowel
shift, while vitamin is a recent coinage. ...

Vitamin originated as "vitamine" from "vita" (life) and "amine"
because of a thought that this was the chemical makeup. It got changed
because the chemistry turned out to be a bit different - but the name
"vitamin" stuck. The origin was around 1912.

Oh well - this isn't any more OT than the rest of the thread!
--
--henry schaffer
hes _AT_ ncsu _DOT_ edu

Accents-was:Grammar-was:Lee Valley optical center punch
 

"Andy Dingley" wrote in message
...
On Wed, 31 Dec 2003 00:11:02 -0800, Fly-by-Night CC
wrote:

Could their accent have originated from a
certain class of Brittish society that was more prone to being convicted
of illicit behavior?

Quite possibly - there's a huge skew in the Australian transportees
having come from urban SE England (which basically meant London).
Similar crimes in Bristol often found you pressed onto a navy ship
instead and the rural poor just didn't have the opportunities for the
same urban skullduggeries.

"A lot of our fellows went over there, you know. It wasn't so long ago that
you could get free passage to Australia. All you had to do was steal a
chicken or look funny at another fella's wife, and you got a free trip."

Liam Clancy, introducing a song during a concert in Dublin.

Just to muddy the waters, David Hackett Fisher in "Albion's Seed" claimed to
have identified FOUR separate regions of the south to which four separate
regions of England transferred their customs. It's been a while and I no
longer have the book (at 903 pages it was too heavy to carry with me) but
IIRC he traced about 25 indicators (naming ways, speech patterns, house
styles, etc) which the English regions and American regions had in common.
For example, the people of the Applachian hill country derived many of their
customs from the Scottish Borderlands, and despite the dilution of the years
many have persisted. Fisher faced a good deal of criticism for the breadth
of his conclusions, but no one denied that there was some connection.

I've also learned that many of today's English pronounciations are derived
from Queen Elizabeth's speech impediment. For example Worcester is
pronounced "Wooster."

It has also been said that today's Southern accent is a lazy British accent.
Has anyone heard this?

Bob

Accents-was:Grammar-was:Lee Valley optical center punch
 

"Bob Schmall" wrote in message

I've also learned that many of today's English pronounciations are derived
from Queen Elizabeth's speech impediment. For example Worcester is
pronounced "Wooster."

Cholmondeley ... aka "chumbly". But then there's Refugio, Texas ... which
locals pronounce "refurrio", so the English aren't the only ones.

It has also been said that today's Southern accent is a lazy British
accent.
Has anyone heard this?

Maybe not so farfetched as it sounds. SWMBO has a cousin from rural Ark who
prounounces "tea" as "tay".

--
www.e-woodshop.net
Last update: 1/02/04

Accents-was:Grammar-was:Lee Valley optical center punch
 

Folks all through coastal Virginia and the Carolina's
still have a very distinct "brouge" that is very similar
to "old english". Sadly, most of them are all gone and the
children didn't pick up the same dialect.

The North Carolina outer banks folks still have more of
this "sound" than any other place.

Bob Schmall wrote:


It has also been said that today's Southern accent is a lazy British accent.
Has anyone heard this?

Bob