Orefastness/ respect to you, Goofy...

...takes a bold mind to admit a mistake openly, and shows a quest for accuracy that won't let ego get in the way. We need more of that type of mind-ghost/ spirit online and in discussions in general.

*Usually, spelling follows pronunciation, not the other way around.*

Yeah, but most other languages were penned up by their own native scribes. We all know that Old English into Middle English was, after the conquest, ascribed spelling and lettering variants by non-English speakers who applied their own Romance writing rules to English words. And in the ensuing years Norman French and Latin was often used as the lingua franca for administration, though those writing it possessed Latin, and even NF, as a second learned language. So of course accuracy is dubious, and transcription discrepancies are everywhere, especially seeing as English was barely written for 300yrs and I once heard that before the consolidation of English due to the Black Death there were some 80something dialects of English bouncing around, presumably all vying with each other and because none of them were governmentally recorded then it is impossible to say whether vowels and consonants were static for any degree of time. Hell, we don't even fully know just how many of Shakespeare's words were concocted or dialectal. So don't start beating on the 'absolute evidence' drum, as you know it's folly, for there are still too many 'we think' and 'we estimate' and 'we're pretty sure' in experts' lingo for me to take you seriously.

@Sefardi: Cheers for that Ive bookmarked the link, great reading.

@goofy: Well I think Anwulf's evidence was pretty good as a counter measure to the typical Normanophile dross. Nothing in his analysis seems wildly outlandish.

Granted, there are indeed well-known sound changes... but vowel shifts and sound-warpings aside, no one, not even the most enlightened linguist knows the whole rounded story as to how English rang in the ears a thousand or so years ago. Though, admittedly, we're fairly sure how it didn't sound. But for those gaps in knowledge there are fair and learned guesses, and it's perfectly right and just to assume that something as transient as a soft vowel sound could be as loose and yielding when uttered as an old trick's knickers.

Wooah there, Matey, and plug the feckin' sluices!

Did you just agree with Anwulf to get one over on me?! Sweebejeesh, wonders will never cease.

Anyhows, 'i' mutation or not, the point is the original spelling possibility you alluded to has many exceptions to the generic y>>i exchange.

Anwulf's right... Modern English grew out of Anglian dialects and not West Saxon, and seeing as the West Saxon writers overwrote many Mercian texts and then cast aside the originals then no one can be siker of the right pronunciation, for the Mercians and WSaxons were at loggerheads with each other and the Mercians had broad inflowings from the Vikings affecting their everyday speech patterns.

Oh,BTW, there are examples of where an OE 'y' doesn't become an 'i' spelling or sound for that matter . Cowley lists a few from latter Old English in his How We'd Talk... from 2011:

weorcwryðe = work worthy
...bryce = breach
unhydig = un+heedy
cystig = 'custy' NE England dialect for nice/ great

...basically give me another week and I'd be able to trawl out many more. The Old English scribes were trying to write as phonetically as possible to their own norms, and shire to shire meant variations in pronunciation and spelling would change. Add to that mutations to sounds when the case altered. Like Modern German with umlauts being added to discern the sound changes between adjectives and nouns, singulars and plurals, and verb conjugation.

@Mediator

Many thanks for 'deigning' your amusement. Naturally nowhere near as simple an analogy, but how else do you condense a 1000yrs of subversive language tactics into something that a) isnt a thesis and b) won't send even the most patient of folk to slumberland. TBH, most of the subversion was achieved through the vessel of the Catholic church until Henry VIIIs dissolution - and seeing as the church was imbued with wealth and they opined the power of God through riches, then I suppose they fit the bill.

@Jayles: Which is what makes me so vexed with the situation. English was in no way engendered by Latin, so why on earth should anyone have to learn a language that was the tool of the rich to downtread the poor for the last 900 and so years? I'm an interpreter... and I've learnt more about English since learning German and Dutch than I ever did being brow beaten by French and the snobbery surrounding Latin. In my eyes, English has become a needless cacophony of sayings and idioms (housing the age-old framework of the tongue) due to the ridiculous ousting of its native attributes by scholastic tinkerers.

@Jayles: I'm inclined to agree/ I lean toward yeasaying, however, all things in good time. It took time for English to become the unwieldy mess she is now, and it would take years to undo much of the inkhorn terms and jargon nonsense exacted on her. A besprinkling of oldy-worldy words would at least start the ball rolling, and I'd settle for that presently... but hopefully, bit-by-bit and with growing familiarity then it would become possible/ mightly to up the game and hurl more OE wordhoard back into the mix. To be honest, if anything, it would be a nice start for the bloody OED to recognise words afore the 12th Century.

At a boy, Jayles!

@PP, unfortunately the perfect pedant is spouting perfect paranoia and perfect poppycock to boot.

May I pick up your on your comment ''It;s occasional use by some posters in this forum has moved on from what was an amusing diversion to pretentious bigotry'' as I feel it is wildly wrong and one hell of a cheap shot at a diverse gathering of people who are rethinking the structural boons and banes of their current tongue . If you truly had wandered through the posts with any type of open mind then you'd have seen more than an inflow of concerns and fears that language-purging can inadvertently lead to the ugliness of bigotry and xenophobia... however, I wouldn't still be interacting/ tweenlocking with this site if I felt any of the partakers had a right-wing agenda.

English itself in its present guise is only so due to the legacy of linguistic subjugation/ speakly-downbearing by a 5% minority of tyrannts over a 95% population/ folkhood - fact!

I'm afraid matey, that casting such aspersions are tantamount to trolling. So either back up your claim or keep your pejorative remarks to yourself, they've been made before by countless others and bear no relevance to the thoughts and wishes of, I'm certain, all here.