Talk:Spelling pronunciation

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Contents 1 Where are these pronounciations heard? 2 Lowering the POV level 3 Historical examples 4 Willys 5 Popular Etymology 6 Trait 7 Ate 8 Pronunciations 9 Recent edits by anon. IP user ??

[edit] Where are these pronounciations heard?

Are the examples of English words intended to be Commonwealth (British) English, American English, or both? I'm probably not the best person to ask about this, but I have never heard "weskit" or the alternate pronunciation of "forehead" (silent h, or some such?) in American speech, and often use/hear "off-ten" and "callm" (like saying "call" and closing your lips at the end of "call") in daily life, especially when the speaker is trying to be "careful" or articulate.

Any ideas whether this is a) a product of modern times (ie, older pronunciations are less common, so are not heard much), b) a difference between England and America, c) a difference in dialects inside America (or perhaps England),

Hi Jacius, Probably, a mixture of all of the above. Weskit is (I believe) British; Americans use the word "vest" instead. Indeed, "weskit" is probably almost extinct even in Britain--the Oxford English Dictionary calls the pronunciation "colloquial or vulgar".

I've heard "cahm", "offen", and "forrid" from Americans.

or am I just odd? --Jacius 19:44, 16 Oct 2004 (UTC)

No, you're just (as I see from your blog) young. Thus, it's likely you've talked with a narrower range of people than a typical older person has. Also, your life experience goes less far back in time, and thus you're less likely to have heard the non-spelling pronunciations, which are in many cases dying out. Cheers, Opus33 21:36, 16 Oct 2004 (UTC)

One place where otherwise non-"forrid" Americans might have heard that pronunciation of the word is from the nursery rhyme/song:

There was a little girl

Who had a little curl

Right in the middle of her forehead

And when she was good

She was very very good

And when she was bad she was horrid

... which I have explicitly heard in our cartoons at least once (I think it might have been Bugs Bunny). (Apparently it's by Longfellow ?!) In other contexts 'forrid' sounds incorrigibly British to me (whether or not it actually be). —Muke Tever 13:57, 1 Jun 2005 (UTC)

"forrid" is used by my grandparents and others with fairly strong Southern accents in North Carolina. Not all that surprising, since Southern dialect is very conservative in a lot of ways; like some other traditional pronunciations, it probably sounds uneducated to many people.

"Forrid" is also favoured by Ogden Nash: in his poem about "Genteel Janet", describing a ludicrously over-refined lower middle class type, he says "Her speech is new-minted, freshly quarried/ She has a fore-head, you have a forehead". Sir Myles na Gopaleen (the da) 09:03, 9 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Lowering the POV level

The definition we had before:

A spelling pronunciation is a pronunciation based on spelling that differs from the accepted pronunciation standard

is not, I believe, the usual definition of this term. I've replaced it with this:

a pronunciation that, instead of reflecting the way the word was pronounced by previous generations of speakers, is a rendering in sound of the word's spelling

The former definition, in addition to being non-standard, has the further defect of getting us into endless debates about what is "the accepted pronunciation standard". NRicardo has weighed in with his opinion about "forrid"--"hick"--which doubtless will offend many speakers of British dialect, where (at least according to the Oxford English Dictionary) "forrid" is actually the preferred alternative. It's not our job to put our own tastes and opinions about pronunciation into the Wikipedia; we should just report the facts.Opus33 16:38, 30 Jan 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Historical examples

One further point: the definition I've inserted permits us to include examples where the spelling pronunciation has actually won out over time, which in my opinion include some of the most interesting examples. Opus33 16:38, 30 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Yes, those are the most interesting. For example, the late Kingsley Amis (in "The King's English") inveighs against spelling pronunciations, but regards traditional pronunciations such as "goff" (for golf) and "gel" (for girl) as insufferable affectations, and I have something of the same feeling about the pronunciation of "nephew" as "nevew". However, "nevew" was undoubtedly the older pronunciation: in the Middle Ages it was even spelled that way, and the spelling "nephew" was introduced by Elizabethan purists who wanted to show off the derivation from Latin nepos. ((I think you mean "pedants" Alsihler 18:44, 17 December 2006 (UTC))) Had Amis lived fifty years earlier he would certainly have attacked "neffyou" as a flagrant spelling pronunciation. As with all linguistic changes, the only safe advice is to stick to the old version for as long as it conveys your meaning and remains socially acceptable, and abandon it when you begin to get funny looks.

I agree with previous contributors that, in the case of "waistcoat"->"weskit", that point has arrived, even in conservative British circles. On the other hand I still have a residual feeling (like Amis and Fowler) that it is schoolmarmy over-enunciation to pronounce the first "t" in "waistcoat" (or "chestnut" or "Christmas"), and therefore hover between "waiscote" and "waiscot". --Sir Myles na Gopaleen (the da) 15:50, 17 May 2006 (UTC)

Thackeray, in "The History of Henry Esmond", records several 17th-18th century pronunciations which are now completely superseded by spelling pronunciations. Examples are "chainey" for "China" (meaning porcelain), "goold" for "gold" and "Candish" for the name "Cavendish". Other examples, such as "Pumfret" for "Pontefract", have become obsolete more recently.--Sir Myles na Gopaleen (the da) 12:54, 19 May 2006 (UTC)

Another example is the word "falcon", in the Middle Ages spelled, and until fairly recently pronounced, "fawcon". Here again I think the spelling pronunciation has won out completely.Sir Myles na Gopaleen (the da) 15:15, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

I've tinkered with the examples a bit, but in general the whole discussion seemed to me to take rather too much for granted. Why should spelling pronunciations even be an issue in English, for example; why are such phenomena more or less unknown in foreign languages? To correct this perceived defect, I added a discussion of how and why English orthography is a bit unusual in the world's lanuages, and why those unusual features result in spelling pronunciations.

Alsihler 22:42, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Willys

The more I read this article, the more it gives me the willys. It is a prescriptivist argument wrapped in a descriptivist cloak. At the moment the article ignores variation in pronunciation in different parts of the English-speaking world. In my opinion, the vast majority of examples should be words where the spelling pronunciation has won out over any earlier pronunciations or when the issue is actually spelling pronunciation and not regional variation. It seems language bias has snuck up on this page. -Acjelen 06:09, 23 Apr 2005 (UTC)

This doesn't make any sense to me. Almost all cases of spelling pronunciation are subject to regional variation. There is an obvious reason for this: it takes a long time--perhaps centuries--for an innovating pronunciation to spread to all of the dialects of a language.

It would be nice if we could add information about which dialects use which variants. But this information is rather hard to come by. Opus33 16:06, 24 Apr 2005 (UTC)

My point is that while much of the article is about spelling pronunciation, some of the examples illustate variation in regional forms of English. I do not pronounce forehead with an H because it is spelled that way, but because intelligent, educated people spoke the word that way in my hearing all of my life. The same is true of often and palm. Saying waistcoat other than "weskit" is a spelling variation. Other examples of words often pronounced as they are spelled include the article ye, forte, and tortilla. -Acjelen 18:10, 26 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I don't understand the above point. Something which starts as a spelling pronounciation easily becomes variation in regional forms of English. Why is, in your opinion, forehead a regional variation but waistcoat not? (If I read you correctly.)

A spelling pronunciation assumes spelling (that is, writing), while most regional variations of English are verbal and not literate. Moreover, spelling pronunciations are almost always incorrect while regional variations never are. If I went to England and attempted to explain to the average Londoner that RP was "incorrect", I would have a very hard time, yet this article once suggested that common American pronunciations were incorrect because they were pronounced as spelled. In American English, waistcoat is archaic. Americans use vest instead. Generally, Americans should pronounce British English words with the British pronunciation (but not with an accent): thus, "weskit", "Lester Square", and so on. Words shared in both varieties should be pronounced in the accepted regional fashion, such as "forehead". -Acjelen 03:48, 6 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Popular Etymology

According to my dictionary, forehead comes from 'fore' and 'head' and waistcoat comes from 'waist' and 'coat' so using them as examples of popular etymology seems to be misleading and incorrect. -Acjelen 06:19, 23 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I agree that we have a problem, in that the Wikipedia article on popular etymology specifically requires that a popular etymology must be historically wrong in order to count as one. I've substituted "analogical pronunciation" to avoid confusion on this count. Opus33 16:06, 24 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Note. The pronunciation of "forte" (noun) as "fortay" is not a spelling pronunciation but a hyperforeignism, arrived at by mistaking a fencing term derived from French (the forte of the blade is the thick part) for a musical term derived from Italian. I have therefore removed this example (but added it to the "Hypercorrection" article). --Sir Myles na Gopaleen (the da) 15:58, 17 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Trait

Could /treIt/ for "trait" be a spelling pronunciation. I always use /treIt/ but this article on Languagehat tells me that others use /treI/. — Hippietrail 10:44, 31 May 2005 (UTC)

No more than any other Anglicization of a foreign word, for example "Paris". Sir Myles na Gopaleen (the da) 12:48, 19 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Ate

We are told that the traditional British pronunciation of "ate" is "ett", and that to pronounce it in the same way as "eight" is either an Americanism or a spelling pronunciation. However, any reader of Jane Austen or Trollope will notice that there was an alternative past tense "he eat", which presumably really was pronounced "ett"; so "ate" was probably pronounced as spelled all along. Today I regard "ett" as a British provincialism, and non-standard.--Sir Myles na Gopaleen (the da) 13:11, 22 May 2006 (UTC)

I think this is something else. Old English had five classes of "strong" verbs in which there were two stems (for the price of one) in the preterite, one for the 1st and 3rd persons singular, and the other for everything else. This was all shaken out, except for was/were, in the course of Middle English. Different verbs generalized different stems, but usually the spelling agrees with the chosen stem (including divided usage like rung preferred in Britain but rang in the US and Canada) but there were some exceptions. Sate as the past tense of sit persisted as the spelling long after /seyt/ (Dryden rimes it with state) had been ousted by /sæt/. To this day, though the verb is edging toward obsolescence, the preterite of bid (in the sense "request") is spelled bade but pronounced /bæd/. I haven't researched the eat/et/ate business specifically but I'm assuming it's the same thing. (And it's an interesting footnote that not uncommonly consevative forms are disparaged as ignorant while innovations, blunders, and whatever become standard and approved: thus catched vs caught, "figger" vs /figyur/.) Alsihler 19:00, 17 December 2006 (UTC)

If anything, ring-rang-rung preferred in Britain but ring-rung-rung in the US and Canada jnestorius^(talk) 21:50, 17 December 2006 (UTC)

Poor example. Sorry. According to my authorities, pret rung seems to be old-fashioned everywhere that it still occurs (certainly not in my own Simon-pure American) but apparently enjoyed a certain currency in 19th cent. British usage, if the handbook are anything to go by. Maybe a better ex. would be the pret. of drink, which was quite commonly drunk from the the 17th - 19th cents. but receding for some reason in the 20th. Alsihler 22:14, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Pronunciations

Should the pronunciations given in the article (ie: pronounced "kondit" or "kundit", is now nearly always "conndewit" or Wednesday, historically "Wensday" or "Wendsday" ) be changed over to use IPA pronunciation guides?

Yes, I suppose in theory we should. However on some browsers (e.g. mine) IPA symbols appear as rectangles, making the article much less accessible. If necessary, use both (IPA first, then the current version in inverted commas or brackets or both). --Sir Myles na Gopaleen (the da) 12:29, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Recent edits by anon. IP user ??

Somebody with expertise in this subject needs to take a look at the recent edits by anon. user 82.57.95.229 which I came across only because I was reverting a series of nonsense edits by another anon. IP user (on this & other articles). User 82.57.95.229 added a sort of mini-essay along with a shorter edit, which I nearly reverted. But I thought it would be better for somebody else who edits this particular article to exercise their judgement on this. Cgingold 20:43, 3 April 2007 (UTC)