> > English [...] underwent the Great Vowel Shift among others.
>
> Which one was that? My "a" is hardly the same as that of Simon Hibbs,
> or MOB, or Neil Robinson, or <tries to think of Northern English
> digester, and fails>. Vowel-shifting is a popular and on-going
> sport for any number of players.
There's only one. It's a broad change, not just a difference in dialects, and happened in the 15th century. E.g.: "Name" -- the "a" used to be pronounced with the vowel sound of "calm." That's why it's spelled with an "a" (and the "e" was pronounced, otherwise it wouldn't have been there). Check any reasonable text on linguistics or English.
Does this relate to Glorantha? Possibly not, though I'd expect less linguistic change, since you can contact your dead ancestors, and thus hear how they spoke. Presumably most modern languages evolved during the Great Darkness, when populations got very small, very scattered, and might not have been able to contact ancestors. Perhaps the inability to speak to him is one reason Vingkot was supplanted by Heort among the Orlanthi...
David Dunham <mailto:dunham_at_pensee.com> Glorantha/RQ page: <http://www.pensee.com/dunham/glorantha.html> Imagination is more important than knowledge. -- Albert Einstein
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