Timeline for Why is "have" pronounced with a "short a" sound?
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
20 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| May 1, 2020 at 12:00 | history | tweeted | twitter.com/StackEnglish/status/1256191673178226688 | ||
| Sep 17, 2017 at 22:35 | comment | added | Francis Davey | In the case of "have" it is a printer's convention to add the "e" because a v at the end was confusing. That meant confusion with words like "cave" where the "e" at the end arises regularly. So we have words like "have" and "love" (which suffers from another convention, namely not having "uv". So the vowel shift never affected "have" because it was a word like "bad". | |
| Mar 1, 2017 at 20:54 | comment | added | Rob K | Modern English really isn't one language, but an amalgam of stolen words and phrases. | |
| Feb 15, 2017 at 14:34 | history | protected | tchrist♦ | ||
| Feb 15, 2017 at 8:36 | comment | added | Keith | It also bears similarity with the Latin habere, french avoir, haver portuguese/spanish . .. maybe there is some influence from that direction as well . . and since it is used in a similar manner in verb inflections have gone, have eaten etc . . | |
| Jun 22, 2016 at 20:50 | comment | added | herisson | @BrianHooper: That's a separate question: Why does “ow” have two different sounds? | |
| Jun 22, 2016 at 4:43 | comment | added | bof | Chaucer rhymed have with grave in the Knight's Tale, so they were probably pronounced the same in his day. | |
| Jun 22, 2016 at 3:49 | history | edited | herisson | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
added 4 characters in body; edited tags; edited title
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| May 1, 2016 at 21:25 | answer | added | herisson | timeline score: 7 | |
| Oct 22, 2013 at 7:33 | comment | added | Brian Hooper | What about bow and bow? Or sow and sow? | |
| Oct 22, 2013 at 3:45 | comment | added | adj7388 |
Any discussion of weird pronunciations in English can't leave out is one vs. lone vs. gone. I'm amazed that anyone ever learns to speak English as a second language -- at least if they start from the written word.
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| Oct 22, 2013 at 2:19 | answer | added | Lester Nubla | timeline score: 4 | |
| Oct 21, 2013 at 21:53 | comment | added | RegDwigнt | I have a minute to spare to play Devil's advocate just because I can. Of course John Lawler tells it like it is, but here's the thing. If the spelling was a good representation of pronunciation for Middle English, or really at any point in the past, then the vowel in cave, shave, wave, have must have been the same at that point, so the question very much remains: Why on Earth would the vowel shift affect them all but one? | |
| Oct 21, 2013 at 18:49 | review | Close votes | |||
| Oct 22, 2013 at 6:41 | |||||
| Oct 21, 2013 at 18:33 | comment | added | MrHen | possible duplicate of Why is "go" spelled with the same vowel as "do" and "to" since it is pronounced differently? | |
| Oct 21, 2013 at 17:43 | comment | added | bib | @J.R. And in the ave family, gavel vs. navel | |
| Oct 21, 2013 at 17:30 | comment | added | J.R. | Even if have is the only "exception" with a-v-e, it's not the only remarkable exception. Compare: give vs. hive, glove vs. clove, liver vs. diver, seven vs. even, gone vs. bone, etc. | |
| Oct 21, 2013 at 17:07 | comment | added | Hannele | See also: prove vs love | |
| Oct 21, 2013 at 16:58 | comment | added | John Lawler | Alas, someone must have told you at an impressionable age that English spelling has some relation to English pronunciation. Unfortunately, English spelling was designed for Middle English (and it's a good system for Middle English), and was then carried over wholesale and fixed by printing in Modern English. Which is a very different language, with very different vowels (15 of them in my American dialect) from the vowels in Middle English. So, the reason it's spelled that way is because of the history of the word in Middle English; and not because of the way it's pronounced now. Sorry. | |
| Oct 21, 2013 at 16:51 | history | asked | Scott Mitchell | CC BY-SA 3.0 |