18

According to Biblehub and Bible Gateway, King James's Numbers 23:22 says:

God brought them out of Egypt; he hath as it were the strength of an unicorn.

I don't have a hard copy to check. Is that simply a copied typo?

Cees Timmerman
  • 713
  • 9
    If it was pronounced /'unikorn/ instead of /'yunikorn/, then an would've been correct. A before consonants (including /y/), and an before vowels (including /u/). – John Lawler Sep 28 '14 at 21:58
  • @Peter: Not to mention which many AmE speakers use the (pure vowel?) "oo" where BrE uses the (diphthong?) "ee-oo", which together with the switch from /t/ to /d/ allows Family Guy to make puns on *duty = doodie* (doodie alluding to doo-doo = poo-poo = scatology rules!). I doubt there ever was a UK/US split on pronunciation of initial /u/ | /ju/; it's a bit strange that change only affects the vowel/diphthong in other positions. Dunno about final position in, say, fondue** (which I say *both* ways!) – FumbleFingers Sep 28 '14 at 22:16
  • @FumbleFingers: we used to pronounce all the same 'u's you pronounce as /ju/, but we started being lazy and leaving out the /j/. But we're not lazy for 'u's that start words, or that follow /k/, /g/, /m/, /b/, /p/. So you can't pun on beauty/booty. – Peter Shor Sep 28 '14 at 22:34
  • @Peter: Bernard Mathews (unquestionably a Brit) trotted out bootiful for years. And you're quite right - it never sounded in the least "American". Not that I'm necessarily convinced it actually was valid Norfolk dialect, but that's the general impression the ad campaign gave. – FumbleFingers Sep 28 '14 at 22:41
  • It's probably worth noting that the King James version recorded on both of those websites underwent several revisions after 1611, with the last major one being in 1769 (any revisions after that go by other names). 1769 is well past the date when "an unicorn" ceased to be correct, but they let it be nonetheless. – Wlerin Sep 29 '14 at 00:19
  • @Wlerin I didn’t realize that Egypt ever had any unicorns at all. – tchrist Sep 29 '14 at 03:16
  • @FumbleFingers You cam put a glide or nonsyllabic vowel like /w/ or /j/ to either side of a vowel to make a diphthong, or on both for a triphthong. This doesn’t change the syllable’s nucleus. IPA transcriptions vary; /aw, oj, ju, wej, kwin/ with glides vs [au̯, oɪ̯, ɪ̯u, u̯eɪ̯, kʰʷiːn] with nonsyllabic vocalic elements, for example. ’Pends what’s phonemic. English phoneticians sometimes discount rising diphthongs, although Spanish phoneticians do not. – tchrist Sep 29 '14 at 03:40
  • @tchrist Neither did I. I also find it fascinating that the translators of the KJV had the wisdom to realize an animal explicitly described as having horns, plural (translated here as "strength"), was nevertheless a unicorn. But that's a topic for a different stack exchange site. – Wlerin Sep 29 '14 at 05:35
  • @Wlerin: Certainly, "an unicorn" stopped being correct by the early 19th century (you can find grammars that say "a" comes before this class of words), but are you sure it wasn't correct in 1769? Do you have any evidence? Even if it started with a consonant in the prestige dialect by then, it might not have in all dialects, and probably it took a while after the pronunciation changed for the an/a distinction to catch up. – Peter Shor Sep 29 '14 at 14:52
  • @PeterShor My sole evidence is the chart you provided for the great vowel shift, wherein the transition to /ju/ was complete by 1700. – Wlerin Sep 29 '14 at 15:10
  • @Wlerin: I wouldn't trust that chart completely. Ngrams shows that the transition from "a universal" to "an universal" happens around 1800. And English dialects differ. It's possible the difference in time between the first speakers to make this change and the last was over a century. – Peter Shor Sep 29 '14 at 15:39
  • @PeterShor Then why does Wikipedia say the Shift took place between 1350 and 1700, and not 1840? – Cees Timmerman Sep 29 '14 at 15:45
  • There were certainly some people writing a unicorn in 1700, but other people wrote an unicorn much later. The 18th century grammars say nothing about a or an before a u, while the early 19th century ones are quite clear that it should be a. Because of tradition, people are going to keep on writing an unicorn for quite a while after the initial sounds changes to a consonant, but I can't account for the discrepancy between Wikipedia and the Ngrams data. It's quite difficult to know how people pronounced things before the first pronouncing dictionaries were written. – Peter Shor Sep 29 '14 at 15:59
  • @Wlerin - The writers/guardians of the KJV specifically chose to use anachronistic language. – Hot Licks Jan 07 '16 at 20:21
  • @HotLicks I doubt that very much, at least as far as the 1611 version is concerned (later revisions suffered from a devotion to old patterns of speech, yes, which is why the RSV, ASV, etc. happened). Moreover, the particular language in question here was certainly not anachronistic in 1611. – Wlerin Jan 26 '16 at 11:45

1 Answers1

29

No, it's not a typo. Words starting with u started with a diphthong until the 18th century. This was part of the Great Vowel Shift. The vowel started changing from /yː/ (its original vowel in French1) in Middle English, migrated through several diphthongs, and ended up at /juː/ sometime around the 18th century.

See Ngram.

1 At least the upper classes, who were descended from French-speaking Normans, used the original French vowel /y/ for French words spelled with 'u' in Early Middle English. I don't know whether there's any evidence for how the lower classes pronounced this.

Peter Shor
  • 88,407
  • 1
    Are you sure? This page seems to indicate "a" came after 1611. – Cees Timmerman Sep 28 '14 at 22:16
  • 1
    @Cees: Shakespeare used a before consonants and an before vowels (even in the original), and most of his plays were written before 1611. And if you want, you can compare the Ngram for an unicorn and an crocodile. Here. – Peter Shor Sep 28 '14 at 22:19
  • 1
    @CeesTimmerman How, exactly, does that page indicate that? – Wlerin Sep 28 '14 at 22:21
  • @Wlerin final -n in many verbal forms (infinitive, plural subjunctive, plural preterite) was lost, e.g. OE cuman > Modern English come (the n remains in some past participles of strong verbs: seen, gone, taken); final -n also lost in possessive adjectives "my" (OE min > ME mi) and "thy" (OE þin > ME þi) and indefinite article "an" before words beginning with consonant (-n remained in the possessive pronouns, e.g. mine) – Cees Timmerman Sep 28 '14 at 22:32
  • @CeesTimmerman Right, but that happened in Middle English, well before Shakespeare and King James. – Wlerin Sep 28 '14 at 22:34
  • @Wlerin 1154–1470 indeed. My bad. – Cees Timmerman Sep 28 '14 at 22:36
  • You mean migrated through several other diphthongs, don’t you? – tchrist Sep 29 '14 at 03:14
  • @tchrist: I don't think I do; /u/ is not a diphthong. I don't know what vowel unicorn started with in late Middle English. Most words that currently have /ju/ were diphthongs in Middle English, but I'm not sure about ones with initial /ju/ like unity and unicorn. – Peter Shor Sep 29 '14 at 20:03
  • @PeterShor Certainly you are right that /u/ is not a diphthong. As for /ju/ being a diphthong, it really is a matter of politics now, not something real. – tchrist Sep 29 '14 at 20:10
  • @tchrist: yes, I realized that was what you meant. But other diphthong referring to /ju/ wouldn't make sense in my answer. – Peter Shor Sep 29 '14 at 20:16