Vowel raising before velars

[Ulrike Meinhof]

Some English dialects have E > e / _g IIRC, right? And my dialect of Swedish has E > E_r / _[+velar]. Is this a common phenomenon that I just happened not to notice until now? Are there any examples of similar changes in other languages?

[Soap]

Well, Middle English also raised short "e" to short "i" (I'm not sure what the IPA value was at the time). Hence we have words like sang and wing but nothing with {eng} except for a few things like {length} and {strength} and of course the word {English} itself. I'm not sure why the length & strength words didn't change, and English did change but the spelling has stuck.

[Travis B.]

Well, Middle English also raised short "e" to short "i" (I'm not sure what the IPA value was at the time). Hence we have words like sang and wing but nothing with {eng} except for a few things like {length} and {strength} and of course the word {English} itself. I'm not sure why the length & strength words didn't change, and English did change but the spelling has stuck.

In much of modern North American English, long after the Middle English period of course, the likes of length and strength did indeed change, with most instances of /ɛŋ/ being raised to merge with /eɪ̯ŋ/. (We, of course, have already discussed this on here many times.)

[Alces]

I'm not sure why the length & strength words didn't change, and English did change but the spelling has stuck.

I wonder if they might not have changed because the alternative pronunciations /lEnT strEnT/ were usual then, and the modern forms have more recently got the /g/ back through analogy with 'long', 'strong'.

[linguoboy]

Hence we have words like sang and wing but nothing with {eng} except for a few things like {length} and {strength} and of course the word {English} itself.

Are there really people who say "English" with [E]? The pronunciation is so ingrained with me that I even ported it to German until I was corrected on it.

[Tropylium⁺]

Hence we have words like sang and wing but nothing with {eng} except for a few things like {length} and {strength} and of course the word {English} itself.

Are there really people who say "English" with [E]? The pronunciation is so ingrained with me that I even ported it to German until I was corrected on it.

No, but it has orthographic <e>, suggesting it has /ɪ/ for the same reason words like "electric" do.

"Strength" and "length" come from umlaut of *o (cf. "strong", "long") which could explain the lack of raising.

[Yng]

No, but it has orthographic <e>, suggesting it has /ɪ/ for the same reason words like "electric" do.

Whut

/@lEktrIk/

[Travis B.]

No, but it has orthographic <e>, suggesting it has /ɪ/ for the same reason words like "electric" do.

Whut

/@lEktrIk/

I have the same, basically, too. (Of course, unstressed historical /ɪ/ in my dialect has become [ə] before /l/, when said /l/ has not simply become syllabic, in everyday speech, primarily only being preserved morpheme-initially in careful speech.)

[Soap]

Hence we have words like sang and wing but nothing with {eng} except for a few things like {length} and {strength} and of course the word {English} itself.

Are there really people who say "English" with [E]? The pronunciation is so ingrained with me that I even ported it to German until I was corrected on it.

I was using { } to show orthography, an old habit I picked up from the early days of the board and never lost. Pologies. I'll try to remember to use the < > from now on.

[Boşkoventi]

Well, Middle English also raised short "e" to short "i" (I'm not sure what the IPA value was at the time). Hence we have words like sang and wing but nothing with {eng} except for a few things like {length} and {strength} and of course the word {English} itself. I'm not sure why the length & strength words didn't change, and English did change but the spelling has stuck.

As far as I understand it, that change only occurred before [N] (e.g. "sing" [sIN] but "leg" [lEg])*. Latin apparently also raised /e/ before [N], e.g. signum [siNnum] < *segnom < PIE *sekw-.

* Yes, some dialects have [leg] or [leIg], but that's a separate, later change.

I wonder if they might not have changed because the alternative pronunciations /lEnT strEnT/ were usual then, and the modern forms have more recently got the /g/ back through analogy with 'long', 'strong'.

That may well be the case. The OED lists various written forms from around the 13th and 14th centuries suggesting /lEnT strEnT/ (but also /lEnkT strEnkT/).

[Ulrike Meinhof]

So does this only tend to happen with mid to close front vowels? There are no examples of, say, o > u / _k, g, N?