Another Word for Again Rhyming With Land
By Anatoly Liberman
This is a story of again; gain will be added equally an afterthought. Throughout the first one-half of the twentieth century, dictionaries informed their users that again is pronounced with a diphthong, that is, with the same vowel equally in the name of the letter A. (I am adding this explanation, considering native speakers of English with no noesis of phonetics seldom realize that the vowel in day, have, main consists of two parts: the nucleus and a glide; the formulation that, for example, a in allurement is the "long counterpart of curt a" in bat makes matters even worse.) Some people still rhyme again with fain, feign, fane. However, virtually rhyme it with Ben, den, ten; all the recent British and American dictionaries agree on this betoken.
The history of the adverb again is surprisingly checkered. In Modern English language, the utilise of the digraphs ai, ay, and ei for short e is, equally undergraduate students similar to put it, non "very unique": compare southwardaid, says, and heifer. But that does not make the puzzle easier, because says and said stand out as abnormal even in English, in which i tin sometimes feel uncertain of how to spell the shortest words. Conspicuously, the spelling, irrational from today's point of view, goes back to the pronunciation of one-time, merely tracing the fortunes of each freak is no like shooting fish in a barrel matter. This holds specially for heifer, merely over again too poses many difficulties.
Merely the origin of again is clear. Among its cognates we find High german entgegen "reverse" and Sometime Icelandic í gegn "against." In the English word, the prefix a- goes back to the preposition on. Old Engl. ongean meant "in the reverse direction" and "back," not "over again." The oldest sense of –proceeds has been preserved in gainsay, literally "speak against." The Germanic root of –gean and –gegn must have been gag-; its meaning demand non occupy our attending, The vowel ea in ongean was long, which ways that it consisted of ii halves, each of which could exist stressed, depending on the word'due south identify in the sentence, intonation, and emphasis. There was a time when in words of such structure stress shifted from e to a, though information technology is not clear whether the attested modern dialectal form agan owes its vowel to eá, from éa.
As far dorsum equally in Former English language, the letter given here as chiliad in ongean designated the sound nosotros now hear in y es, y ou, and y onder. The interplay of g and y is common in the West Germanic languages. Those who have been exposed to the Berlin dialect know that, for case, M e1000terminate "surface area" sounds like y eastyend in that location. In Middle High German, legt "lays" and träone thousandt "carries" were spelled leit and treit. Old Engl. g- likewise inverse to y- earlier i- and east-, and the modern forms y ield and y earn show to that change (their German cognates begin with chiliad-: thou elten and be1000ehren). In that location would take been many more English language words like those ii but for the Viking raids. In the linguistic communication of the Scandinavians, g remained "hard," and that is why Modern Engl. get has not merged in pronunciation with still. Besides, requite is a phonetic borrowing from the north, whether directly from the invading Danes or from the northern English language dialects in which g- withstood "softening" to y-.
In Heart English, the most mutual form of once more was ayen, notwithstanding with a long vowel. To an unschooled observer the phonetic history of every well-documented language looks like an countless exercise in futility, a conspiracy invented for obfuscating beginning students. Long vowels become short and some time later undergo secondary lengthening, merely to lose the hard-gained length a century or two later. Monophthongs turn into diphthongs, while diphthongs become monophthongs and occupy the slots vacated by their one-time neighbors. Wouldn't it take been more natural for them to stay put and avoid playing lobster quadrille? Language is a self-regulating mechanism, and many changes merely look erratic, but others are accounted for past the fact that sounds, like people, succumb to contradictory rules: from one signal of view it may be expedient for a vowel to lengthen, but from another it would be better if information technology remained brusque or became long and then returned to its initial state. Phonetic system is like a mod democracy, which faces chaos and in trying to overcome it produces even greater chaos. In that location is no end to this process. In the history of again we observe how the original diphthong became a long monophthong, shortened, lengthened, and diphthongized. The coexistence of two modern pronunciations of again reflects those changes. Says and said showroom partly the same picture show, but just the short variants take survived.
Somewhat unexpectedly, again is non pronounced ayen. In the fourteenth century, the Kentish English for "pricks (or rather "seize with teeth") of conscience" was ayenbite of inwyt, every bit we know from the title of moralizing prose written in 1340 (compare backbiting). Ayen-bite is a morpheme by morpheme translation of Former French re-mors "remorse," literally "bitter with ever-increasing 'mordancy'." But past the seventeenth century the forms with ag- superseded those with ay-. As usual in such cases, suspicion falls on northern English language or Scandinavian speakers. The reason why in this discussion the southern and central consonant gave way to northern thou– has never been explained.
Against surfaced every bit an adverb: Middle Engl. ageines is agein followed past an adverbial suffix. Its final -t is, to use a scholarly term, excrescent. This "parasitic" sound has also fabricated its mode after s into amidst , whilst , amongst , and a few others. A well-known vulgarism is acrossed. A similar change affected One-time Engl. betweohs ~ betwyx ~ betwux: betwix became betwixt(eastward), and the idiom betwixt and between is still alive.
In distinction from once again, gain (noun and verb) has an easily recoverable past. It is a borrowing of Old French proceeds (masculine; feminine gagne); the verb was gaigner (Modern French gagner). But the ancient give-and-take came to Romance from the Germanic verb for "hunt" and acquired the senses "cultivate land" and "earn." It follows that gain in combat, in which again appears without its old prefix, and gain, as in gainful occupation, are singled-out words, and only take chances turned them into homophones and allowed them to meet in Modernistic English language. Such is the story of proceedsi and gaintwo . It is more complicated than what one could wait from a blog posted in tardily December, but nothing venture, zilch win, as the British say, or nothing ventured, nothing gained, as they say in America.
Anatoly Liberman is the author of Give-and-take Origins…And How We Know Them as well as An Analytic Dictionary of English Etymology: An Introduction. His column on word origins, The Oxford Etymologist, appears here, each Wednesday. Send your etymology question to him intendance of blog@oup.com; he'll do his all-time to avoid responding with "origin unknown."
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Epitome credit: King David does repentance via wikipaintings.org.
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Source: https://blog.oup.com/2012/12/why-dont-gain-and-again-rhyme/
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