| Comment | Again, I explained this above... The French spellings were chosen over other possible spellings because it was a prestige language. Like Greek and Latin, it would only have been familiar to the rich and educated, so was seen as superior to the vernacular spoken by regular people. Hence the spellings chosen to conform to those historical roots rather than actual English pronunciation.
I'm not saying there's no snobbery in the American version -- going with "modern, rational" spellings was specifically rooted in opposition to the British approach, which is a kind of snobbery in itself.
I don't know anything about how Gaelic came to be written, so can't speak to that. |
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