What is that "o" doing in the word "people"?

Is that the right question, or is the right question "Why do we
pronounce that word with an 'e' vowel sound rather than an 'o' in the
first syllable?"

And while we're at it, why do we spell the sound "hoo" as "who"?

These are linguistics questions.  The answers will be found somewhere in
etymology, morphology, and the history of the English language and not
in too-cute examples of how crazy English spelling is, which give me a
rash, especially if they're presented in verse.

Sunday-night brain twitches--
Apteryx

Thank-you, apteryx

A few bits and pieces to add to my comment:

In the sixteenth century there was a fashion for preserving, or even
reviving, etymology in spelling. This seems quite a likely explanation
for the "o" getting fixed in "people".

Although mediaeval texts often used "peple", I now find that "people"
was also possible, and Caxton used both, even on the same page.

It looks as if the "people" spelling was favoured by the later sixteenth century.
http://www.elizabethanauthors.com/
http://etext.virginia.edu/etcbin/ot2www-pubeng?specfile=/texts/english/modeng/publicsearch/modengpub.o2w


There is a suggestion (see below) that it was in the interests of
printers to add extra letters to increase their pay.

I agree with you that it is possible to imagine a vowel shift from
"peuple" to  English "people" - with a long, open e sound, as
described here:
http://www.courses.fas.harvard.edu/~chaucer/pronunciation/

======

I'm afraid I haven't found any more clues about how or when "who" lost
the "w" sound. It's still there in Scots "wha" (who) and, I think, in
Northern English dialect used until the twentieth century. (Also
"wha".)

Hope you find some of the links here interesting, even if they're not
definitive answers to your Sunday night musings.

Best wishes - Leli


======


"In the sixteenth century there was a fashion for showing the
etymology of a word through its spelling, and several of these
spellings became standard, e.g. the b in debt (from  Lat. debitum),
subtle and doubt (dubitare) and the g in reign (from regno) ; these
letters had neither been pronounced nor present in the spelling in
ME."
http://www.litnotes.co.uk/spelling.htm.

" . . . the spelling of the modern languages in the Middle Ages had
attempted with fair success to represent the pronunciation of words
[...]
[later] discrepancy between sound and symbol arose when letters were
inserted in words where they were not pronounced (like the b in debt
or doubt)
[...]
The variability of English spelling was an important part of the
instability that people felt characterized the English language in the
sixteenth century, especially as compared with a language like Latin.
[...]
But in spite of all the variety that Elizabethan spelling presents,
there was by 1550 a nucleus of common practice, and many of the
features of English spelling today were clearly becoming established."
http://angli02.kgw.tu-berlin.de/lexicography/data/c08.html

" . during the sixteenth century . . some wanted a phonetic system, in
which the spelling would indicate the pronunciation. They lost. The
group that won were more interested in preserving etymology: having
the spelling suggest the origins of the word."
http://soe.csusb.edu/preintern/Engprep/Englit/rennais7.html

"Printers often also added letters to the last word of a line to make
the whole text look neater. They were paid by the line and habitually
inserted letters into words to earn more money.  Unfortunately, many
of their whims and tricks eventually became rules of English
spelling." (late 15th century?)
http://www.meritadvisors.com/sound%20spelling%20-%20An%20Upgrade%20for%20Spelling%20english.htm

Caxton had his own problems, and said:

"Lo, what should a man in these days now write . . . ?"

(Bottom of page)
http://www.courses.fas.harvard.edu/~chaucer/language.html

Caxton peple people
://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=caxton+peple+people&btnG=Google+Search&meta=

Search mediaeval texts at:
http://etext.virginia.edu/etcbin/midengpub2www?specfile=/lv2/english/mideng/www/mideng.o2w

Thank you, Leli.  Wow!  I never knew the part about preserving
etymology as a matter of spelling fashion or about printers' adding
letters to words to pad their pay rates.  Fascinating!

Apteryx

Hello Apteryx

Well, it's Monday morning here and you've offered an interesting
question to start the week. The partial answers I can offer really
boil down to English spelling hanging on to the history of words - but
I'm not saying that's crazy.

The "o" in people comes from its Latin ancestry. "Populus" in Latin
became "pople", "poeple", "peuple" in Old French. The Normans brought
the word to England, and the OED gives both "poeple" and "people" as
the Anglo-French spellings.

Early manuscripts of Chaucer's work use the spelling "peple", which
suggests that the pronunciation lost any trace of "o" a long time ago
- perhaps in the process of anglicising the French?
://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=Ellesmere+OR+Hengwrt+peple&btnG=Google+Search&meta=

(A long "e", as in "people", was pronounced differently in the Middle Ages.
Vowel shifts:
http://www.ling.lancs.ac.uk/chimp/101/vowels/shift.htm    )

"Wh" replaced the Anglo-Saxon "hw" in the years after the Norman
conquest. The change in spelling is attributed to "French scribes" who
sometimes left out the "h" altogether. Words like "who", "which" and
"what" had all once started with "hw". (Hwa, hwilc, hwaet in OE.) They
were presumably pronounced the way many Scots pronounce "when",
"whale" etc. today, i.e. with an aspirated "h" before the initial "w".
The question, then, might be: why did the other words keep their "w"
sound, while "who" lost it?

By Chaucer's time, the "who" with an "h" and "which" with a "w"
pronunciations were established:
http://academics.vmi.edu/english/audio/WOBT_Baragona.html

After browsing through a long discussion on "wh" on the "Ask a
linguist" list, I ended up with nothing more certain than this:

"English orthography tends to reflect the original pronunciations of words"
http://www.linguistlist.org/~ask-ling/archive-1998.4/msg00168.html

I didn't find anything definite about *when* the pronunciation of
these words changed.

Hope this is of some use.

Best wishes - Leli

PS  Some websites suggest "who" was spelt with a "wh" in Old English.
The OED does not agree.

Great Question, Apteryx

A Great Re-Spelling Crusade is long overdue.

Why not you and I take the initiative?

The ProApt Re-Spelling Crusade could take the world by storm.

Let's do it!

PB

Well, I for one, am not into the *o's* lol... but I like this question..:)

Hi, Leli--

Thanks, I do understand that the word "populus" is the root; that's
the meaning of my rephrased question--why do we turn what ought to be
an "o" into an "e" sound?  The answer seems to be the way it came
through French.  I can easily imagine the French "eu" being anglicized
as an "ee" sound.  If the "o" had disappeared at that point, though, I
can't help wondering how it got back in.  That seems to strike a false
note with me; we don't usually see the reversal of a simplification.

(This is another of those things that are pretty hard to search for
online.  The number of hits on word + people + spelling promised a
hopeless search.)

You turned my second question around similarly:

   The question, then, might be: why did the other words keep
   their "w" sound, while "who" lost it?

and that makes more sense of it.

So I think you've pretty much supplied the answers I was interested
in, despite the question about sequence of change in "people."  Would
you care to post?

Apteryx

Hey, there, Bryan--busy putting us up to mischief again, I see.  But I
won't take up that particular challenge.  I love English spelling just
the way it is.  A word's orthography is its biography, in a way, very
much as some people have their ancestry written in their faces.  So I
don't think any kind of reform is needed.  Instead I do my small part
to defend the language against such corruptions as "lite" and
"look-a-like" and "do diligence" and "chaise lounge."  Recalling your
small but spirited stand on behalf of "analogue," I suspect you might
agree.

Apteryx

Hiya, Apteryx.

Here's an interesting discussion about the pronunciation of "who":

http://www.linguistlist.org/~ask-ling/archive-1998.4/msg00158.html

~Pink

Thanks, Pink.  I always appreciate what you add.

Apteryx

Thank-you very much, Apteryx!

Glad you were interested by the stuff on sixteenth century spelling fashion.

Leli