Most of the words that got Latinized did have some distant connection, through French, with the ancient Latin words that dictated their new spellings. However, sometimes a Latin-inspired letter got stuck into a word that hadn't even come through Latin. In addition to re-Latinizing, there was Greekification not a technical term! Asthma first showed up as asma or asmyes. But words associated with science and medicine were particularly susceptible to the urge to connect to the classics, so people started writing asthma instead of asma, diarrhea instead of diaria, phlegm instead of fleme…ok, I'll stop.
From the very beginning, when this word came into English in the s, there were two spelling variants and two pronunciations. Coronel came through French and colonel through Italian. Colonel preserved the look of the related word "column," but coronel brought a nice, regal "crown" to mind though it wasn't actually etymologically related. So it went back and forth until we settled into the 'l' spelling with the 'r' pronunciation. Yay compromise?
Another wave of French words came into English starting around They came from the high life, fashion, courtly manners, cuisine, and the arts. These words have kept their French spellings, and we get as close as we can to their pronunciations. Study now. See Answer. Best Answer. ID answered: It is just the combination of the g and the n that give it that spelling. Study guides. Q: Why is gnat spelled with a g? Write your answer Related questions. Is knatt the correct spelling? What is the silent letter in gnat?
What is a g thing? A insect that can fly and bite people beginning with g? Insects that start with G? Why is there a g in gnat? What letter is the silent in this word gnat? Which flying insects start with g? Our phonotactic rules forbid it. French paradigmatique. In comments, the asker further inquired as to whether the word went through a bunch of different spellings historically the way phlegm did, and why the last syllable has a diphthong:. For paradigm , the first actual English citation rather than Latin is from in Caxton, written paradygmes and translating French.
English spelling was more or less frozen before the GVS, which explains a great deal of confusion compared with the standard Latin values for vowels that everyone else but us uses. The GVS was a chain shift that reassigned new sounds to all the long vowels in English in a bizarre way that all other users of the Latin alphabet forevermore hate us for.
There is actually an alternative pronunciation of "paradigm" with the "short i" sound in the last syllable. It seems to be uncommon nowadays, but I have the impression that it was more common in the past. I'm not sure that we can be confident about tracing the pronunciation with the "long i" sound back to Middle English. The lack of vowel reduction in the second syllable may be an artificial artefact of Walker's transcription habits, but it's nevertheless clear that this indicates a pronunciation with "short i" in the final syllable.
Walker compares the pronunciation to that of other words ending in "-gm" in some other places e. Charles Harrington Elster's Big Book of Beastly Mispronunciations 2nd edition, summarizes the sources he looked at by saying. Sometime before the variant PAR-uh-dym gained currency and was sanctioned as an alternative by Webster's Collegiate , Phyfe , OED 1 , and Vizetelly , and preferred by Fowler Webster 2 preferred -dim and labels -dym "especially British," but subsequent sources listed -dym without comment, and current dictionaries — with the exception of OED 2 — list PAR-uh-dym first.
Second edition update: I'm changing my tune. PAR-uh-dim is dead. The -dym has come; I'm going with the flow. Sign up to join this community. The best answers are voted up and rise to the top. Urban Desert Farmer. Share this: Twitter Facebook. Like this: Like Loading Leave a Reply Cancel reply Enter your comment here Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:. Email required Address never made public.
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