Phonological History of English Low Back Vowels/father-bother Merger

Famous quotes containing the words history, english and/or vowels:

    America is, therefore the land of the future, where, in the ages that lie before us, the burden of the World’s history shall reveal itself. It is a land of desire for all those who are weary of the historical lumber-room of Old Europe.
    Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831)

    To be born in a new country one has to die in the motherland.
    Irina Mogilevskaya, Russian student. “Immigrating to the U.S.,” student paper in an English as a Second Language class, Hunter College, 1995.

    As no one can tell what was the Roman pronunciation, each nation makes the Latin conform, for the most part, to the rules of its own language; so that with us of the vowels only A has a peculiar sound.
    Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)