Re: How do you get the pronunciation -lee from -leigh?
in reply to a message by *ilyEva*
The same way we got the pronunciation "ate" from "eight." It was a typical English sound shift. In Middle English, the -gh was pronounced; over time, it has become silent and the vowel has also shifted.
It's more usual for the sequence -eigh to be pronounced /ei/ (ay) as in "say" (weigh, neighbor), and Leigh can also be pronounced "lay," but the original word, which meant "meadow, clearing," was so common in place names and personal names that it was frequently reduced to /li:/ (lee). English names ending with -ly, -ley, -lee are generally from the same root.
It's more usual for the sequence -eigh to be pronounced /ei/ (ay) as in "say" (weigh, neighbor), and Leigh can also be pronounced "lay," but the original word, which meant "meadow, clearing," was so common in place names and personal names that it was frequently reduced to /li:/ (lee). English names ending with -ly, -ley, -lee are generally from the same root.
This message was edited 3/30/2021, 6:31 AM
Replies
I don't know of instances where Leigh by itself is pronounced as "lay" offhand, but the name Leighton is usually pronounced "Lay-ton" in both the USA and England, so I can see where the "lee" pronunciation would be especially frustrating for those who don't like the inconsistencies in English language spelling. :)
That's true - good point!
hmm, actually in Middle English the gh was NOT pronounced. It's purely a scribal convention to replace an earlier, archaic letter "yogh" ȝ, which represented the phonemes /j/ and /h/ when they were formerly represented by "g" in Old English (although there has been some assimilation of original "h" to "g" in the process). In early Old English palatised (front-of-mouth) g became indistinguishable from /j/, but rather than being spelled as /j/, both palatal g and earlier j were spelled as g (in Frisian the same assimilation occurred, but spelling usually became "j"). Final g following a vowel became either palatal /j/ or guttural /h/ (spelling of the latter varied between "h" and "g"). When preceded by an i, final g was sometimes lost and the i later changed to y for clarity when final (day v. daily), but when retained would be written in Middle English as ȝ, later "gh". The "i" in leigh is also a scribal convention, indicating the "gh" is either /j/ or silent, while the /e/ is pronounces i: due to "levelling" (not a diphthong as in eight and weight - ȝ need not be final and would still be usually replaced by "gh", although sometimes s or z are used in names, such as Menzies [menyes] or Dalziel [deeyell]).
Thanks, but I skipped all of this because it is too technical to be of any use to the original poster.
People other than the OP do read the responses and often find them interesting and useful. Protecting the OP from complex reality might be OK in a one-to-one discussion, if you think she needs it, but not on a public board.