Edwin_m Posted December 21, 2010 Share Posted December 21, 2010 I seem to recall part of the reason why we have "e" on the end of words is that printers sometimes added them to make up the length of each line. I suppose that's as good a justification as any... Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Charlie Posted December 21, 2010 Share Posted December 21, 2010 Actually we pronounce it souf-am-ton... Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
eastwestdivide Posted December 21, 2010 Share Posted December 21, 2010 I seem to recall part of the reason why we have "e" on the end of words is that printers sometimes added them to make up the length of each line. Not sure if that's the main reason - have a look at the history section at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silent_e#History which explains it in some detail. Older forms of English pronounced the final E well before printing and before the "great vowel shift" happened. How far off-topic are we now? Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
RMweb Gold Oldddudders Posted December 21, 2010 Author RMweb Gold Share Posted December 21, 2010 Not sure if that's the main reason - have a look at the history section at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silent_e#History which explains it in some detail. Older forms of English pronounced the final E well before printing and before the "great vowel shift" happened. How far off-topic are we now? Well, when a topic this trivial to start with veers a little, and we even touch on "haitch" vs "aitch", Caxton and olde worlde spellinge, I feel it's actually been quite a good day at the office! Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Etched Pixels Posted December 27, 2010 Share Posted December 27, 2010 Well phonetically, there is only one H, the 'South' part of the word using 'TH' for the soft dental sound, and the 'hampton' part 'aving a haitch or not depending on 'ow you pronounce it. I blame Caxton for inventing the printing press and thus standardising spelling - before that, you just made it up. I don't think you can blame Caxton - standardised spelling and printing don't go that hand in hand across languages. It's also hardly his fault that Englsh ended up the spelling mess it is - the poor man couldn't have known England would have been so daft as to settle on Midlands pronunciations and London spelling, which wrecked the phonetic nature of the spelling and has been causing pain to small children even since. In a lot of other languages you can actually read aloud properly without knowing what it means ! True printers did some standardisation - but much of the work/damage had already been done by the chancery and the church, both of whom standardised a lot of things (and in parts defined the words English uses today for certain objects). Now I shall go back to filling a slightly intumescent resin casting 8) Alan Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
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