>Date: Thu, 2 Jul 1998 23:24:25 -0400 >To: Cindy Walcott <[email protected]> >From: K E Robblee <[email protected]> >Subject: Rapalje theory and pronunciation >Cindy, > >Since the spelling in the 18th c. had not yet been "standardized", it >would probably be a good indication of pronounciation. Although today >some of us pronounce the family name with a "short o", and others with a >"long o" (and still others with a "long u"!), I think that English >speakers in the 18th century would have pronounced "o" and "u" with lip >rounding. (I need to check this out. I'm much more familiar with the >history of the Slavic languages than with the history of English!) A >"rounded o" would sound somewhat like the "aw" in the word "lawn", and a >rounded "u" would sound somewhat like the "oo" in "boot". > >But I didn't realize that the Rapalje theory would mean that the family >came from the Netherlands. Northern European languages such as Swedish >and Danish have some less common rounded vowels (e.g. a "long i" >pronounced with lip-rounding), in addition to the more common rounded >vowels (i.e. "o" and "u"). I don't know offhand whether this is also the >case in Dutch. If Dutch did have a rounded vowel spelled with the letter >"a", this could account for the "o/u" variation once the name was >Anglicized. This would make the linguistic evidence even more ambiguous. > >I'll see what I can find out about vowels in Dutch and English in the >17th and 18th centuries! > >Karen