Talk:Hypercorrection/Archive 1

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Contents 1 Defense/defence 2 "between you and I" 3 Octopodes 4 Example changed 5 Prescription or imitation? 6 Plural of cactus 7 John Humphrys? 8 Word-final r in non-rhotic dialects 9 Hypercorrection in other fields 10 In English as a foreign language 11 Double negative 12 Excuse I 13 "Faux pas" misspelled as "faux par" 14 Churchill's famous quote 15 Hebrew and Yiddish 16 Machismo 17 Lingerie 18 Asterisks 19 Forte 20 Schizophrenia 21 Hyperclassicism 22 German is not regulated! 23 reflexives and plurals 24 Penii 25 Talk amongst yourselves 26 'is is that'; 'better of the >2' 27 Taj Mahal 28 Can't put up with this

Defense/defence

Is British English "defence" a hypercorrection? The Latin roots DEFENDERE -> DEFENSA suggest that "defense" is the correct spelling - did "defence" arise by analogy with other words ending -ence?

I wouldn't think so. There is a whole host of words in British English that are spelled with -ence where American English has -ense. For it to be a hypercorrection rather than a variant, it would probably have to make an audible difference, which it doesn't. -- IHCOYC 13:59, 5 Aug 2003 (UTC)

"between you and I"

"Between you and I" is, at first glance, an excellent example of hypercorrection. Unfortunately, there's some evidence that nominatives after a conjunction have been part of English for a long time -- they predate the prescriptivist plague in English grammar. Shakespeare used exactly this prepositional phrase in The Merchant of Venice; someone says something like "All debts are cleer'd between you and I". And this was written before schoolmasters started bruising the knuckles of pupils who wrote "Will and me went to the fair." So I don't think hypercorrection can completely explain "between you and I". Maybe we should just accept that there is something about conjunctions that optionally licenses the nominative, even in oblique environments.

(The paragraph is a separate posting; it's not part of the preceding paragraph, which isn't mine.) "The same usage appears in Between You and I: A Little Book of Bad English, the title of a 2003 book by James Cochrane." Why is this mentioned? I bet we could make quite a list of usage guides with titles that exhibit, or mock, either form of hypercorrection (e.g., the book Woe Am I)—but does it really add anything? (1) As a plain example of hypercorrection, the sentence has much extraneous stuff (book's subtitle; publication year; author's name); (2) as far as I know, the book's title is not as famous (and thus noteworthy) as Churchill's quote; and (3) the sentence describes neither the hypercorrection's origin nor its impropriety. That the sentence stands as its own paragraph makes me question it further: it seems, at best, an instance of "Oh! I, too, have an example!" (as my Brian Epstein quote is), or, at worst, a plug for a book. Any thoughts? President Lethe 01:20, 21 March 2006 (UTC)

yes I have thoughts. indeed. in response to th first paragraph: I came here looking for a decent treatment of the overuse of "you and I" as an object. your mention of shakespeare's old use is pretty interesting. but he was a poet. I wonder if it was used in any formal context even back then or more among the regular everyday speech. what character said that line? are there other examples from back then?

I think hypercorrection does not sum up what goes on pyschologically when someone says "he made sandwiches for akbar and I". I know that it's a 19th or 20th century "grammar school" invention to mark this use as incorrect. BUT.. I think most of the time when people say it, it's painfully obvious that they're trying to sound like they've been to school as they betray thier ignorance about when "I" is generally preferable and clearer in meaning. I think the speaker wants to convey formality. I heard an 18yo girl refer to her boyfriend and herself with an awkward "and I" construction. (she's smart, educated) I think she did so cuz they togeher are this unit, this entity, this "joe and I". where they appear together in the sentence is a secondary concern. even smart people do it. it's weird. tho, I bet a person of a given quality or depth of education will prob be very unlikely to use it in any variation. I think the way the speaker feels about the social orientation of the referents (the other and the self) can be a factor. okay.

so, I think the world deserves a wikipedia article about what this phenomenon is. for now, I think anything anyone has to say about it can go on hypercorrection, but I hope some day there will be a linguistics'pedia. I tried to sign up to contribute at unilang.org, but I couldn't figure out the whole log-in process. KzzRzzKnocker 18:23, 10 April 2006 (UTC)

Hi, Knocker. Thanks for your interesting input. Your note does give me the impression that maybe mine (the second paragraph of this section) left you with a slight misimpression. I'm not sure whether you got my meaning or not; I'll clarify it just in case: I wasn't objecting to this article's mention of such usage as "between you and I" as hypercorrection (as far as I'm concerned, (1) it is hypercorrection and (2) it deserves inclusion in this article); my objection was to mentioning that the "between you and I" usage appears in the title of a book. Some examples that support an idea presented in an article are of questionable relevance or usefulness. Today, I cut out of an article on Atlanta, Georgia, a mention that a comedian had questioned the efficacy of MARTA; in certain cases, the fact that a celebrity has mentioned an issue isn't really worth including in an article about the issue. In this hypercorrection article, when adding the bit on reflexive pronouns used nonreflexively, I included a Brian Epstein quote that had been sitting in my head for years as an example of such usage; but I later cut it out, along with the mention of the book called Between You and I, because I came to see that both were just instances of "Oh, I can think of another example" (not an example of another kind of hypercorrection, but yet another example of the same kind of hypercorrection). Anyway, I'm babbling on, here. Maybe this paragraph now clarifies my earlier one (the second paragraph in this section).

By the way, I think it's good that you question Shakespeare. English is indeed a growing, living language. But part of the usefulness of language is that it allows us to share logical human thoughts clearly. This is why language has so many details to it, and usages that people like and dislike. We have different tenses for verbs, for example, because it's useful to know the temporal relationships of events. I've never totally bought the "Because a famous author used the usage that I'm using [or because many persons use the usage that I'm using], my usage must be totally awesome in every way" argument. And your point about poetic license, especially in Shakespeare, is exactly the kind of thing we ought to keep in mind. (Plus, in Shakespeare's time, the idea of 'formalizing'/'setting'/'fixing' the language was newer than it is now—and Shakespeare is famous for coming up with new uses that his contemporary literatti might've found rather unorthodox.) When The Beatles sing "You say he loves you more than me, so I will set you free", it's clear that, although the meaning is "You say that he loves you more than I love you", "me" is used (instead of "I") to rhyme with "free".

Lastly, I have to say I don't quite agree with you that the proscription against "between you and I" is just an invention of the last one or two centuries. Languages have had separate subjective and objective pronouns for a lot longer than that, and most users tend to pick up, without conscious thought, that you say "I do", not "Me do", and "Give me that", not "Give I that". This is most definitely a human invention; but it's one of some usefulness that has stood up for many, many centuries and continues to stand. Yes, people are confused about it—and, yes, the famous, too, have 'erred'—and, yes, the usage may be more common when the object includes more than one person (why those who say "This is a picture of Sam and I" don't say "This is a picture of I")—; but we still have good reasons for objecting to this usage.

Thanks for mentioning UniLang, by the way. I'd never heard of it. President Lethe 19:42, 10 April 2006 (UTC)

wow, cool. yeah. I think I talk mostly about off-topic stuff on talk pages, then I try to tie it together real quick with a few thoughts on the wikipage in question. shakespeare was a great indeed a innovator: linguistically, and otherwise. anyone wann start "linguistic proscription" article??

everything you said in your last paragraph is legit. you are def. right. I now realize that when I said "invention of last century or 2" I shoulda said "precriptivist plague that pres. lethe mentioned" cuz that's what I meant to allude to. usually, I'm onna anti-pre5rcip+ivist, sociolingistic angle that I haven't explicitly stated. I tend to think the way regular people talk everyday has value. I'm way down on the most informal end of things. sometimes I'm trying to bridge my argument for the ValueofEveryDaySpeech back all the way over to the approach that says what's the best expression in a more formal context. I'm working on ways to make it clear that's what I'm trying to do, and make it clear how I'm trying to do it at any given moment. curious: why'd you mention "th famous have erred" in the pronoun-switch area?

"used the usage that I'm using" -president lethe

see you around probly. /izl 17:57, 12 April 2006 (UTC)

There's not much point to my post, but I'm making it anyway. I was just listening to the MP3 of Jack Lynch. He says "You'd never say 'He gave it to she and I'; 'to she' just sounds wrong to us immediately." On Thursday 25 May 2006, I had the somewhat amazing experience of hearing a man, trying to be fairly formal while arranging seating at a luncheon, say "We'll sit he here". He was a military officer, probably of decent education in many other respects. President Lethe 15:23, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

Octopodes

Why is *octopodes marked as wrong? Fowler only describes it as pedantic. And what is the singular of antipodes (or do they only come in pairs)? --Henrygb 14:20, 12 Oct 2004 (UTC)

It's not marked as wrong -- it's marked as the (hypothetically) correct form, given its classical origins. There is no plural of antipodes because it is a purely personal term; i.e., there can only be one antipodes for any one given person. It is an example of a plural form used as a singular, of which there are many in the English language. (Is there a Wikipedia article for that type of word? The closest examples would seem to be count noun or mass noun but I'm not sure either of these concepts exactly captures this type of noun.) --Nonstopdrivel 07:54, 9 November 2006 (UTC)

It's marked as hypothetical; I'm not sure that anyone has ever used it in English; perhaps Fowler saw it somewhere. The New Latin name of the order is Octopoda.

There are hundreds of examples on the web, and the OED says it is correct (along with octopuses) while octopi is common but wrong. --Henrygb 23:31, 12 Oct 2004 (UTC)

There is no such thing as an *antipus or *antipous because the antipodes of any given spot is the place diametrically OPPOSITE (Greek anti) your FEET (Greek podes). The word "antipodes" therefore refers to a single point, not to two mutually opposed points. Maybe the race of Monopods (Dufflepuds) from The Voyage of the Dawn Treader would have a different terminology; but come to think of it the Narnia world was flat! --Sir Myles na Gopaleen (the da) 16:54, 3 May 2006 (UTC)

I seem to recall Chambers has octopodes down as a correct plural of octopus. Unfortunately, I don't have it to hand to check. 84.70.83.225 22:11, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

Example changed

"Whom shall I say is calling?", while a grammatical error, need not be the result of a hypercorrection. It could be a misanalysis of who(m) as the the object of say rather than the subject of is (the actual object of say being the entire clause who is calling). I have replaced this with a less ambiguous, though less common, example: "Whom might you be?" Joestynes 09:53, 21 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Hello. I'd argue that saying "Whom, shall I say, is calling?" because of misunderstanding who(m) as being the object of say rather than the subject of is calling is an example of hypercorrection: the speaker thinks "When it's the object of a verb, I have to say whom, not who" and applies the rule, without noticing that this is a case in which the rule is inapplicable because the who(m) is subject, not object.

At the same time, I think "Whom might you be?" has some shortcomings as an example.

• The first is that, in speech, the two ms might be so shoved together that no-one would hear it as whom anyway and indeed the speaker may actually be thinking, subconsciously or consciously, "I'd like to say whom; but the next word starts with an m, and I don't want to draw this out, and so I'll just say who instead."
• The second is that many speakers don't mind using objective pronouns (me, her, us, them, &c.) as complements of forms of to be in their everyday speech, even though complements are complements, not objects, and thus belong in the nominative case. In other words, if a speaker feels fine about saying "It was him" (instead of "It was he"), then that speaker obviously thinks it's fine to use an objective pronoun (in this case, whom) as a complement of be. In such instances, the speaker may not understand that complement pronouns ought to be in the nominative, but (s)he is probably not thinking "I intend to be extra formal by saying whom, which is just a fancier form of who." In German, it's quite standard that both subjects and complements get the nominative-case pronouns: it doesn't sound pedantic in German to say the equivalent of "This is she"; it is the norm. Persons whose first language is German thus may find English "It's me!" uglier than the average native user of English may find it. On the other hand, speakers coming to English from French-language backgrounds are accustomed to having the correct pronoun for a complement be in the objective form, not the subjective/nominative: it is right in the most formal of French to say "C'est moi" ("This is me") and not to say "C'est je" ("This is I").

The point I'm ramblingly trying to make is that examples of whom hypercorrection become more complicated when they involve complements instead of just subjects and objects—especially when they involve forms of to be. It seems reasonable to figure that someone who says "Whom opened the door?" is treating whom as a fancy form of who; but someone who says "The president is whom?" may not at all be thinking in a consciously hypercorrective way, in the sense that (s)he probably just is thinking "If I say 'The president is her ', I should also ask 'The president is whom?'" without any ideas, one way or the other, about the correct or popular choice of pronouns for complements. So, actually, both the deleted example and the new example have this complication of involving a form of be. (Still, the new example has the additional fact that the pronoun is a complement, not a subject—which is the main point of complication, as I see it.) On the other hand, those are probably the most popular instances in which speakers/writers misuse whom—for most of us easily see "Whom opened the door?" as just plain silly. Well, if someone finds this posting too long or silly or whatever, cut it out, I suppose. This is my second time contributing to a Talk page; and I tend to go on about things. President Lethe 20:58, 11 November 2005 (UTC)

Prescription or imitation?

Just came across this article, which I enjoyed. The beginning of it seems a bit POV to me, though; my guess would be that a lot of hypercorrection is due to (partly failed) attempts to use dialects regarded as "classier" than the one natural to the speaker, rather than over-reaction to teachers' prescriptions. The same kind of thing happens the other way around, when we pedantic and overly-educated types try to talk in a dialect (like "teen-age" or "Ebonics") that we don't really know. (We no doubt sound to fluent speakers like idiots.) For instance, if I were to try to speak like a young urban black American, I'd probably hypercorrect and mess up some linguistic rule about when to leave out "to be" in declarative sentences, and when not to. It's just part of trying to use a language or dialect you're not natively-fluent in — accidents happen. Frjwoolley 00:04, 2 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I object to the inference that "ebonics" is a dialect when in fact it could more properly be labeled a barbarism. --Nonstopdrivel 08:38, 9 November 2006 (UTC)

Plural of cactus

The article suggests the plural of "cactus" is "cactuses", but the spelling "cacti" is very widespread and I haven't heard a satisfactory refutation to it yet. So why wouldn't it be cacti? (Yes, "cactus" ultimately comes from Greek, but it does appear in New Latin.) - furrykef (Talk at me) 08:08, 4 Jun 2005 (UTC)

The OED [1] says it's "cacti". — Chameleon 09:38, 4 Jun 2005 (UTC)

• Sure, but it's a great example of hypercorrection. The real rule (if you will) about English plurals of foreign words is something like "The foreign plural may be used if it doesn't sound impossibly strange to English ears"; but a hypercorrected misunderstanding of the rule (based on -i plurals of Latin -us words) is "The plural of a word ending in -us is formed by replacing the -us with -i." Frjwoolley 14:34, 4 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Hm, OK. So what is the plural then? Don't say "cactuses". That's an anglicisation which I could work out by myself ;) What is the original plural? — Chameleon 15:38, 4 Jun 2005 (UTC)

In my profound ignorance, I guess the plural of kaktos is ... kaktodes? But that falls under the general proscription, in English, of words that sound too foreign. So we say "cactuses" and "viruses" (instead of "virides"), and are happy. False pluralization is the basis of lots of little whimsies — "bi" for "buses", "Kleenices" for "Kleenexes", and so on. (I've sometimes amused myself, and probably nobody else, when writing Latin by pretending various words were Latin, when they aren't, and declining them as Latin — e.g., velcro, -nis, fem. velcro.) Then, not all Latin words in -us form a plural with -i. Corpus -> corpora, domus -> domūs, and lots of others. Frjwoolley 17:33, 4 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I have always assumed it is κακτος - κακτοι, which would latinize as cactus - cacti.--Curtis Clark 00:37, 14 August 2005 (UTC)

Actually you probably wouldn't be the only one amused. I've been trying to come up with a good saying interpreting the word "doofus" as Latin, but I need to come up with one where declension is appropriate. :) Hm... "Cave dūfum"? - furrykef (Talk at me) 23:50, 4 Jun 2005 (UTC)

os -> odes doesn't really occur in Greek, AFAIK. Octopus doesn't come from oktopos, but oktopous, and thus is pluralized oktopodes. Cactus, on the other hand, comes from kaktos, pluralized kaktoi in Greek. But seeing as the word cactus did in fact occur in Latin and was, according to my dictionary, second declension, I'm removing it from the list.

Of the remainder, I'm pretty sure that oktopous would have been oktopodes, platupous platupodes (both due to plural of Greek pous being podes), status would be statūs, hiatus would be hiatūs (both fourth-declension Latin nouns), rebus was already plural (being the plural ablative/dative form of res, "thing"), and mandamus was a plural verb ("We order"). I'm uncertain on syllabus (couldn't find it in my Latin dictionary, so I'm not sure what declension it is), and caucus seems to be derived from a proper noun that may itself have been derived from a Latin word whose plural would be cauci, so I think I'll remove that latter too. —Simetrical (talk) 02:33, 18 August 2005 (UTC)

I've removed those two and replaced them with census (fourth declension, plural censūs) and opus (third declension, plural opera). —Simetrical (talk) 02:47, 18 August 2005 (UTC)

The OED [2] says it's "cacti". — Chameleon 09:38, 4 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Be honest--the OED also says it's "cactuses." I personally find that terribly awkward, but it is included in the OED. 70.190.192.77 15:34, 8 March 2006 (UTC)JD

John Humphrys?

"In 2003, the broadcaster and journalist John Humphrys, who has railed against declining standards in spoken and written English in Britain, wrote a foreword to James Cochrane's book Between You and I: A Little Book of Bad English."

...and the reason for mentioning this is?

Word-final r in non-rhotic dialects

Section 1.3 claims that

[...] because standard American English is a rhotic dialect (requiring the pronunciation of syllable-final -r), speakers of regional non-rhotic dialects often overcompensate for the loss of syllable-final -r by pronouncing some words ending in vowels as if there actually were an extra -r at the end (for example, pronouncing idea as "idear").

While the phenomenon described may superficially seem somewhat like a hypercorrection (they're pronouncing a letter that "shouldn't be there"!), I've never heard it described as such before, and I can see no reason to assume it is. This word-final [r] appears only when the following word begins with a vowel, in order to avoid two vowels in a row. This is a kind of epenthesis, and occurs in many other languages than English. It has nothing to do with hypercorrection. I will remove this unless someone presents a source that states something else. EldKatt (Talk) 18:22, 11 November 2005 (UTC)

Hi. I've never contributed to a talk page before and so am not sure that I'm doing it right. If I'm not, someone will correct me, I hope. I've spent all my life around Americans of different regions, actually in the U.S. and in Canada and Europe. I can say with certainty that the pronunciation 'idear' ('eye-dee-er') occurs more than just when the word idea comes before a word that begins with a vowel sound. Persons end sentences—I mean sentences that don't have any words from the same speaker following them, sentences that wait for, say, the other person in the conversation to respond—with things like "What do you think of that idear?" (end of speech from that speaker).

I've also noticed what I see as hypercorrection in some persons' pronunciation of window. The persons I'm thinking of do it thus: they normally don't pronounce the final syllable of window with an o sound, but instead leave it as a sort of schwa, like the last sound of properly pronounced idea: "Close the winda". It seems that, because words ending in -er sounds (runner, baker, smaller, &c.) end up ending with the last sound of properly pronounced idea in non-rhotic accents ('runna', 'bayka', 'smalla', &c.), the speakers then subconsciously reason something like "In my everyday pronunciation, I say 'winda' and 'runna'. Well, if the 'right' pronunciation of 'runna' is 'runner', then the 'right' pronunciation of 'winda' must by 'winder' (with short i, as in bin)." President Lethe 19:35, 11 November 2005 (UTC)

I'll take your word for it, then. I think it should still be pointed out, though, that it's not always a hypercorrection—and I assume the hypercorrection has been fueled by the "valid" between-vowels uses. I'll clarify in the article eventually. EldKatt (Talk) 08:56, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

I agree. I also have never heard the linking [r] described as a hypercorrection (with the caveat that the notion of hypercorrection straddles the thin line between the legitimate descriptive-grammar phenomenon of markedness and questionable prescriptive-grammar pedantry -- I put it to you that "To whom am I speaking" is not marked in Standard American English and is accordingly just correct (if also a recent variation in the langugae) and not a hypercorrection). Nevertheless, the linking [r] as hypercorrection isn't backed up in any of the literature I'm familiar with, and the foregoing justification for it seems to be a little "folk etymological" (a/k/a original research). Accordingly, I will remove it in three days unless a cite is forthcoming. Also, I think this topic treated in this section is more accurately described as "phonological' not "phonemic." 64.198.252.146 12:23, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

Will attempt to find some written sources besides the web discussion boards I've found this morning, which describe "r-adding" (putting an r sound on the end of a word that isn't written with an r there and is followed by no word beginning with a vowel sound).

In the mean time, if you're in the U.S., turn on C-SPAN and watch various legislators who come from non-rhotic areas in the northeast and the south, and see how many times, in their making themselves sound less regional by putting in the rs their original accents silence, they also introduce rs that aren't in the written words and do it even to words that aren't followed anytime soon by a vowel.

When these speakers are using their original, non-rhotic accents, and they say "idea" with no r sound and also say "runner" with no final r sound, and then they switch into their seemingly less regional-sounding accent and they put the r ending on "runner" and they also suddenly start adding an r to idea, what can it be but overcompensation?

President Lethe 14:29, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

Incidentally, check out the linking [r] article -- the phenomenon is known to occur in non-rhotic dialects of English. Does it seem unusual that a dialect that clips r's might also add them where they do not occur? Perhaps. But it doesn't seem suggested that the linking [r] is used in an attempt to produce a higher-register form; it just happens to be a somewhat unexpected feature of the dialect. Thus, it seems incorrect to identify it as hypercorrection. A better candidate might be speakers who use an aspirated /t/ where most speakers use the alveolar flap or glottal stop -- but I don't have a cite attesting to this form, but I might check it out. Anyway, it is agreed the paragraph should be edited then? 74.136.197.216 03:33, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

Hi there.

A few points quickly before I go to bed:

• The paragraph about the final r in this ("Hypercorrection") article right now doesn't actually go into the specifics that I've gone into at this Talk page. So, while you may reject, or be suspicious of, some of what's written here, at Talk, be sure to read the paragraph in the article at face value. (I'm not saying you haven't been doing that; I'm just giving a reminder—which I sometimes have to issue to myself, too, at Wikipedia.)

• Yes, intrusive/linking r occurs in non-rhotic accents.

• The paragraph in this article is not specific about whether this addition of 'nonexistent' rs occurs 'linkingly'/'intrusively' or, as is mentioned on this Talk page, even at the ends of words that aren't follow by any more sounds (e.g., "Let's keep the rain out: shut the winder", follow by silence).

• Linking/intrusive r is not what we (or at least I) mean to identify as hypercorrection. (I, by the way, was not the one who added that paragraph to the article.) What we mean to call hypercorrection is specifically the r that comes ... well, as described in examples on this Talk page, which some have called "r-adding".

• The paragraph should be clarified so that it's known that "r-adding", not "linking/intrusive r", is the matter at hand—in other words, that we're talking about "That's a good idear", not "I like the idear of that".

• This phenomenon is commoner when speakers who have non-rhotic backgrounds use rhotic accents (as I mentioned in the politican bit the other day). (This isn't about "law an' order" becoming "loranorda" (linking r between "law" and "an'", but still a non-rhotic ending for "order").)

• I'd be glad to have the [t]/flap/stop stuff added.

• No, it's not agreed (at least not by me) that the paragraph should be altered to remove the idea of "r-adding" as hypercorrection. I think your three-day limit hasn't quite passed, and I'm still checking various sources.

Hoping to post again soon.

President Lethe 06:56, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

Hypercorrection in other fields

It doesn't just occur in spoken (English) language - it occurs in programming languages too. A classic is using == for assignment in C-derived languages: after having to correct

if (i = 0) to

if (i == 0)

enough times, you find yourself doing silly things like

i == 0;

Which many compilers don't even warn about!--Wizofaus 03:22, 22 December 2005 (UTC)

In English as a foreign language

The v/w swap (Anglophone perspective) phenomenon is, I believe, not hypercorrection, as proven by the correct German or Russian pronunciation of "vodka" (to Anglophones it sounds like "wodka", even though when they say "wine" it sounds like "vine"). I am very interested in this phenomenon, but have only done my own thinking about it - if anybody knows of a name for it or knows anything else about it, please let me know. I'm also considering putting together a map of all the people who "can't say dubya", as it appears to have as much to do with current language families as with being within a certain area - Germany to Turkey to India to Siberia to Iceland. So, if you're interested, hit me up at my talk page, and if you're of the opinion that this is indeed hypercorrection, let me know pretty soon, so I don't delete that information (or insert hedge "arguably"). Adam Mathias 05:50, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

I've deleted it now. Unfortunately since there was no other example in the section, I had to take the whole section. Adam Mathias 23:16, 17 February 2006 (UTC)

Double negative

The question is:

• Hypercorrection is ... usage that many informed users of a language consider incorrect but that the speaker or writer uses through misunderstanding of prescriptive rules, often combined with a desire not to come across as informal or uneducated.

OR (Adammathias's edit):

• Hypercorrection is ... usage that many informed users of a language consider incorrect but that the speaker or writer uses through misunderstanding of prescriptive rules, often combined with a desire to come across as formal or educated.

Sundar (Talk) (rv, removing the double negative here doesn't give the same meaning)

I wasn't necessarily trying to give the same meaning. Given that, what do you think? Adam Mathias 07:27, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

If so, it would be fine. But, which of the above meanings is closer to the definition? In hindsight, the former version seems to suggest that people who "hypercorrect" are "informal and uneducated", which is not correct. Feel free to revert my edit. -- Sundar ^{\talk \contribs} 08:13, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

Excuse I

I'm not sure whether we need another example of personal pronoun hypercorrection, but one of the early catchphrases of Barry Humphries' drag character Edna Everage (while she was still billed as a lowly housewife, not a Dame) was "Excuse I". This was supposed to reflect her desire to appear more sophisticated. --Heron 11:09, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

"Faux pas" misspelled as "faux par"

Hi 60.226.24.68 - rather than getting into a revert war with you, perhaps we can agree to add a {citation needed} tag. You've asked me not to change it without a source - perhaps you could provide a source for your addition? I've never heard of nor seen the correction you mention, especially since the Australian accent is non-rhotic and rarely pronounces the trailing R. Biggus 00:30, 15 February 2006 (UTC)

I agree that it needs a source, but I think the unpronounced final R would make hypercorrection in these cases more plausible, since people, when writing, would hypercorrect for R's they believe exist but are simply not pronounced. Adam Mathias 23:52, 14 February 2006 (UTC)

Yes, good point. I think it can be argued both ways - so I heeded the adage about discretion being the better part of valour. Biggus 00:30, 15 February 2006 (UTC)

I find this a little confusing. It says that Australians say "foe par". However the Australian accent is non-rhotic and the final 'r' is not pronounced, it merely lengthens the preceding vowel. Because of this, an Australian voicing the written word "par" would pronounce it similar to "paa", and isn't that the proper pronunciation? Overall in Aust speech 'bar', 'car', 'spa', 'bra' all rhyme and have the same vowell sound. I have never heard an Australian put a voiced or emphasised 'r' sound at the end of faux pas. Australians can quite easily handle "Mardi Gras" - there's even a major Sydney event that uses that name - and we don't stick 'r' sounds at the end of that either. Moreover we can also handle the fact that "bra" and "spa" are spelled without an 'r' at the end without the compulsion to write one in. Writing "faux par" is simply a spelling error due to unfamiliarity with the French language. Asa01 03:16, 23 February 2006 (UTC)

I think you may actually find that the vowel in bar is pronounced longer than the one in spa, but the point holds anyway. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 20:58, 24 February 2006 (UTC)

Churchill's famous quote

Hi. I'm the one who originally added usually unmentioned detail to the description of Churchill's "up with which I will not put" quote—specifically, the fact that the "preposition" he was moving was actually an adverb. On 24 December 2005, Rspeer removed my "ramble that convey[ed] basically nothing". This is how it looked before Rspeer's removal:

An anecdote often attributed to Winston Churchill, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom during the Second World War, has Churchill replying to a hypercorrective memo with the phrase "this is the type of arrant pedantry up with which I will not put". [3] This is an example of hypercorrection used as parody. But Churchill actually went beyond creating a grammatically correct sentence to exemplify the pedantry of elaborate refusal to end a clause in a preposition (or insistence on placing the preposition before the relative pronoun)—"which I will not put up with"—, in that he treated "up" as a preposition, along with "with", when, in fact, "up" in this sentence is an adverb, modifying "put", so that the truly grammatically correct example of the avoidance would be "this is the type of arrant pedantry with which I will not put up"; but the actual quote is seen by some as even greater parody because the effort to avoid one "error" results in the creation of a construction (the unusual placement of the adverb "up") even more likely to be considered erroneous. Additionally, some grammarians consider "with" yet another adverb, rather than a preposition, in the verb phrase "put up with", meaning to tolerate, because this usage of the verb put is always transitive and loses its meaning if it does not have both "up" and "with".

Besides pointing out that "basically nothing" was actually a good deal of additional information, I have two questions to put to the participants in this Talk:

• What is a good, or the best, place in Wikipedia at which to include this information? For most of my life, I've heard Churchill's quote given as an example of something funny and, more specifically, as an example of the 'silliness' of the rule against ending a clause with a preposition: but I have never seen it pointed out that the word he moved wasn't a preposition—which some might consider at least an interesting, if not also an important, point. I thought Wikipedia would be a good forum in which to highlight this. Since Rspeer's edit, I've considered other options for keeping the information somewhere in Wikipedia: but consideration of making a separate little article for it, for example, led me to the seemingly logical conclusion that, when someone nominated the little article for deletion, someone else would recommend adding the information to this article, the "Hypercorrection" article—from which someone has already removed it once.

• Perhaps we should clarify whether, in "put up with", with is an adverb (whose absence changes the meaning of the verb) or a preposition (whose absence doesn't change the meaning of the verb). What are your opinions on the role of with? Settling this question could make a new version of the above quoted paragraph shorter.

Thanks for anyone's constructive, courteous input. President Lethe 00:49, 21 March 2006 (UTC)

• • With is a preposition - to put up is the verbal clause and uses with for the prepositional phrase. It wouldn't be grammatically correct the other way. Changing it now. Chris Weimer 15:39, 16 July 2006 (UTC)

Hebrew and Yiddish

The point about "Shobbes" and "motza" is only relevant to British speakers. As pronounced by American speakers, these renderings would be correct, as the American short "o", sounded /aː/, is a rather better representation of patach than the American short "a", sounded /æ/.

I wanted to include an example of the opposite error, where speakers of Ashkenazi origin, adopting the Sephardic pronunciation, overcompensate by rendering qamatz qatan as /aː/, thus saying [vayaːˈkaːm] instead of [vaˈyaːkom]. This however is not so much hypercorrection as a simple mistake, as the rules for distinguishing qamatz gadol and qamatz qatan are quite complicated, and qamatz gadol is by far the more common of the two. Sir Myles na Gopaleen (the da)

Machismo

The article says this:

Similarly many, perhaps most, English speakers pronounce "machismo" as "makizmo" on the analogy of other foreign-derived words such as "masochism", though in Spanish "ch" is pronounced in the same way as in English.

I posit that the ch-as-[k] pronunciation is likelier to come from pronunciation of Italian words:

• 1. Italian ch is often sounded [k].
• 2. Don't some/many English words that end in ism have Italian equivalents ending in ismo?
• 3. If we were people careful with our German chs, the word masochism might have an [x] (or a [ç]) sound, rather than a [k] sound.

Thoughts? President Lethe 21:54, 19 April 2006 (UTC)

I think that this pronunciation (and for that matter, the pronunciation of "masochism") is influenced by the fact that "ch" is usually pronounced "k" in learned words derived from Greek, such as "anarchism".

The Italian theory is also possible: there is certainly a great deal of confusion in English between Italian and Spanish spelling conventions. For example, the name Petruchio in the Taming of the Shrew is a misspelling of the Italian "Petruccio", and should therefore be pronounced with the English/Spanish "ch": the attempt to follow Italian conventions by saying "Petrookeeo" is another hypercorrection. Sir Myles na Gopaleen (the da)

Lingerie

Incidentally, can people stop correcting this article to show pronunciations in IPA? It is correct and well-meaning, but most characters come out looking like boxes on most browsers, and the point is lost. (For example, the point about "lingerie" is now quite incomprehensible.) Sir Myles na Gopaleen (the da)

Regarding IPA, check Wikipedia:Pronunciation and direct comments to its talk page. jnestorius^(talk) 14:08, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

I'm not sure that most readers of Wikipedia are stuck with meaningless rectangles where IPA characters should be. (Regardless of the number of different browsers (e.g., AOL, Firefox, Internet Explorer, Mozilla, Netscape, Opera, Safari, &c.), it seems that most users of the Internet are using Internet Explorer on Windows XP—which, at least as I have seen on every computer on which I've tried IE and XP (all in the U.S., mind you), shows Wikipedia's IPA stuff just fine. I've had no such problems in Firefox, either.)

I'm removing the other pronunciation representation shown with the word lingerie in this article. Why? First, it's not stated whether we should try to read this phonetically as if it were French or English. Second, there are readers unfamiliar with how to transform French letters into French sounds, for whom the represenation would mean less, and who, if they also didn't know IPA, would probably be able to pick up the proper sounds of the IPA for this word faster than they'd be able to investigate what the French pronunciation of "lengerée" would be. Third, "lengerée" less accurately represents the typical English-speaker's pronunciation than the IPA does. If English had a univerally agreed upon way of representing the sounds of the usual English-speaker's pronunciation of this word in the usual English characters, I'd be happy to have that representation in the article; but there isn't such a way.

President Lethe 15:17, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

"pronounce the word lingerie as if it were spelled ([lɑnʒɜreɪ])"!?!? If the original copy was poor, that's really not much better: few English words are spelled in IPA. Also, IPA should use Template:IPA. jnestorius^(talk)

"'pronounce the word lingerie as if it were spelled ([lɑnʒɜreɪ])'!?!?" Yes. "Pronunciation in Wikipedia is indicated using the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA)." (Wikipedia:Pronunciation.) Thanks for adding the template bit to the article, by the way; maybe it helps make the characters visible to more readers. President Lethe 16:13, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

• 'pronounce the word [lɑnʒɜreɪ]': Yes
• 'pronounce the word as if it were spelled ([lɑnʒɜreɪ])': No.
• Peace. jnestorius^(talk) 16:21, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

I caught that just after making my post. Thanks for pointing it out, though. (The wording still makes sense, actually, on a certain level: the brackets tell the reader to switch to IPA mode; and pronunciations rendered in IPA are spellings in IPA. :-)) I've tried to standardize the section now. President Lethe 16:36, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

I've undone your lingerie edit. The problem with

Many native speakers of English pronounce the word lingerie as [lɑnʒɜˈreɪ]; the French pronunciation is closer to [lɪ̃ʒəʁi].

is that it does not make clear that the English pronunciation is not the best available approximation to the French, or that French speakers might misinterpret the mangled form as approximating a different word. Plenty of foreign words are pronounced differently in English simply beacuse the phonemes don't map across very neatly; such instances cannot be criticized as hyperforeignisms. Also I think [lɪ̃ʒəʁi] sounds more Quebecois than [lɛ̃ʒəʁi]: the latter matches the representation on French phonology. jnestorius^(talk) 08:37, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

Hi.

1. "The problem [...] is that it does not make clear that the English pronunciation is not the best available approximation to the French". It makes clear that the English pronunciation is dramatically different in the final syllable, which is the point. The point, as I see it, is to show that the pronunciation is 'wrong', and to show what the right pronunciation is, not to show another 'not quite there' approximation.

2. I have been thinking that perhaps the idea that this even is a hyperforeignism would be better presented if we also mentioned that it may come from the idea of lots of French words' ending in the [e] sound (approximated in American English as [eɪ]—though Britons often end such French words (e.g., ballet) in an [i] sound, which would be good for lingerie, except that Britons end lingerie in [eɪ]): you know, café, ballet, Cartier, André, châlet, &c.

3. "French speakers might misinterpret the mangled form as approximating a different word". Is lengerée a French word? When I saw your latest change to the article, I was about to come to this Talk page and say that part of the problem with your edit is that it doesn't make clear that lengerée is not a French word. But, now, I see your note about this, which leads me to think that perhaps it is a French word, or at least that you think it is one. If it is one, can you tell me what it means? I don't find it. Also, Google.fr has very few results for the word, and suggests that one "Essayez avec cette orthographe : lingerie". Once the question of whether lengerée is a French word is answered, perhaps that part of your wording can be clarified.

4. I argue that almost all the phonemes in proper French pronunciation of lingerie often occur in American English. The sound of the -in- may not occur in so many words, but seems to be uttered plenty when speakers make non-word sounds to express thought, distate, disinterest, &c. The one sound not so common is the French r.

5. The final question is whether the sound of -in- should be [ɪ̃] or [ɛ̃]. I want to check on this more; maybe you could, too. The French I learned, possibly involving some form of a Parisian accent, had [ɪ̃] for in—so that, for example, the last sound of moulin would be closer to English an (especially in an American accent) than to English on (especially in an American accent). (And there was plenty of concentration on this sound in my lessons.) I have vague recollections of reading that there is a shift in recent years away from the pronunciation that I learned toward something that leads English speakers to say "moo-lahn roozh" [mulɑn ruʒ]. The last time I tried to find English-language information online about this part of French pronunciation, I had little success. I also remember some printed detailed charts representing French pronunciation in IPA in a very 'refined', 'proper' way for classical choral singing, and that they showed the IPA spelling that I used. Unfortunately, these charts are inaccessible to me—as is much of my other material, because I'm in the middle of a move.

6. Of course, even if we discover that [ɪ̃] is a native pronunciation of the -in- in France, we have the question of whether to show the pronunciation most used or the one most recommended by advocates of careful, formal pronunciation in France.

I hope that you'll reply to this soon and that we can get these questions answered. I prefer to leave less information in Wikipedia articles while things are being discussed than to let something possibly incorrect or misleading stand in the article during discussion.

President Lethe 15:24, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

There is certainly no such word as "lengerée": I have therefore amended the article by inserting an asterisk, to denote a conjectural or non-existent form. The "lonjeray" pronunciation is a hypercorrection because it results from applying the English to French changes twice: "lin" to "lan", then "lan" to "lon". Sir Myles na Gopaleen (the da)

President Lethe: I take the point about lengerée/langerée; it's a distraction not an illumination so I've removed it. I may have focused too much of the -in- [ɪ̃] issue by considering how the caught/cot merger comes into play with the GAm pronunciation: for many speakers "lanjeray" becomes the even worse "lonjeray". I've sidestepped that now, to focus on the final syllable as you suggest.

Your point about using non-word sounds where these correspond to foreign phonemes I can't agree with. While it would be possible, it does not seem to happen much in practice. People who pronounce words use the nearest native phoneme are not castigated for laziness half as much as those who use the exact one are condemned for pretentiousness. By extension, saying a pronunciation is "wrong" is a relative statement; that was my initial problem with the old wording. jnestorius^(talk) 11:35, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

As now edited, it is no longer an instance of hypercorrection. That is, "lanjeray" is not a hypercorrection but just a mistake (based on a false analogy with the -et and -é words). On the other hand, "lonjeree" is a hypercorrection, as it over-applies the French nasalization rule. "Lonjeray" simply combines both errors. I'll wait a bit before trying to re-edit.

I don't think it matters much whether you try to reproduce a foreign sound precisely or to use the nearest English equivalent: either is acceptable, though one may sound pretentious and the other sloppy, according to taste. The point is not to try to reproduce an entirely different foreign sound in a fit of pseudo-learning. Sir Myles na Gopaleen (the da)

"lanjeray" misapplies the rule that French words end in an "ay" sound. Granted, there's no such rule: but then, what's the "nasalization rule" that's being overapplied? A "just a mistake" mispronunciation would be to pronounce lingerie as if it rhymed with finger-y. (And yes, I know there's no such word.) jnestorius^(talk) 14:51, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

It seems there is at least one unsigned post in response to my last one. Anyway, this is Pres. Lethe again. I'm reminding myself to 'pick my battles' at Wikipedia—and this one seems a decent one, partly because we're all remaining civil, which is a nice relief.

1. I think the latest version will work. I might have a few different preferences for it; but I'll let it be. (I mean "Many native speakers of English pronounce the word lingerie [lɑnʒɜreɪ], ending [eɪ], by analogy with the many French loanwords ending in -et or -ée; [lɑnʒəri] would be a better English approximation to the native French ([lɛ̃ʒəʁi]).")

2. I think we're not quite understanding each other about the -in- sound, despite our efforts to be clear by using IPA. Oh, well. This may be up to differences in our understanding of how the French pronunciation sounds, how to represent sounds in IPA, how the word is typically pronounced in English, and how to render these sounds in an English style of phonetics. It seems we may just be picking up on slightly different aspects of certain sounds. Though these differences make this a bit more confusing, I find them mostly just an interesting part of life.

3. jnestorius can't agree that "almost all the phonemes in proper French pronunciation of lingerie often occur in American English. The sound of the -in- may not occur in so many words, but seems to be uttered plenty when speakers make non-word sounds to express thought, distate, disinterest, &c. The one sound not so common is the French r." My wording was off when I made it seem that I was saying that the -in- sound is part of English: I meant to say that this sound occurs in the everyday utterances of native speakers of English. Anyway, this point about the existence of these sounds in the frequent speech and utterances of native speakers of English was meant to be taken somewhat in isolation; I wasn't suggesting that this fact should function as a reason for which native speakers of English, when speaking English, should pronounce lingerie 'as French-ly as possible'. My personal view, actually, is that, when one is speaking English, the only 'acceptable' way to say the word (in terms of people not giving one odd looks) is (again with the attempted English phonetics) 'lahn-zher-AY'; this, of course, is just based on the pronunciation I've heard most often from Americans whose first language is English. (This is some expression of agreement with "People who pronounce words use the nearest native phoneme are not castigated for laziness half as much as those who use the exact one are condemned for pretentiousness.")

4. "By extension, saying a pronunciation is 'wrong' is a relative statement; that was my initial problem with the old wording." In my post, I put "'wrong'" in quotation marks specifically because of this relativity. I don't recall a previous wording in the article that actually said anything was wrong (I just remember it spoke, descriptively, to the effect of 'here's how it's often said in English; here's how it's usually said in French'); but, oh, well.

5. As to the whole question of whether it's a hypercorrection, a hyperforeignism, a 'mistake', or whatever else: this is something I just haven't been sure of in the last days, which has been making me wonder whether the word even should be mentioned in this article. It seems to me that the 'lahn-zher-AY' pronunciation has been in English so long, and is so prevalent, that perhaps one could say it is the (or one of very few) native English pronunciation(s)—just as much as 'il-əh-NOY' is ‘the’ pronunciation of Illinois.

I could ramble on in response to the latest posts, as I tend to do. But the issue here that I'd like to be discussed more is what I just brought up in point 5. Thoughts?

Actually, one more point: what about this sometime usage of slashes/virgules, instead of (square) brackets, around IPA when marking an unusual or 'wrong' pronunciation? I've encountered very few sources that actively make the distinction: most use brackes or slashes, but not both, for both usual and unusual pronunciations. Still, might it be useful in this article? I can see how it might confuse some (and others might not even notice the distinction); but I thought I'd solicit opinions.

Also, I'll make one little change to the lingerie bit of the article. I hope it won't meet with objection.

President Lethe 16:07, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

Just checking back. Regarding "point 5": indeed, yesterday's error is often tomorrow's standard. I don't see a need to remove an example until it is incontrovertibly at the "standard" end of the scale. The problem with any example of a "common error" is that the more common it is, the less of an error it is. Therefore I say, have a few examples at different points on the continuum and don't worry too much about the cutoff points for eligibility.

Regarding "one more point": we should not make up conventions without good cause, and I don't think much of the stated cause. jnestorius^(talk) 16:01, 23 May 2006 (UTC)

This one will run and run! I think the disagreement on the first syllable may be an English/American issue. "Lonj-", as pronounced by an American, is not too bad an approximation to the French sound, but as pronounced by an English person it is unforgiveable.

You ask what is the "French nasalization rule". I mean the fact that, in French, nasalization generally results in a more retracted vowel. Thus the "in" in "lingerie" is something like a nasal version of /æ/. "Lonjeray" presupposes something like a nasal version of /å/, in other words the retraction has gone too far. That is the feature that amounts to hypercorrection. Sir Myles na Gopaleen (the da)

Asterisks

Some text in this article is marked with asterisks. For example:

"For example, one often sees *habañero peppers, which should be habanero, as a consequence of a misapplied analogy with jalapeño. One may also see, in certain cafés, the spelling of the Italian word grande as *grandé."

I removed them, since they looked random, and Preslethe put them back, saying "they mean something". What do they mean? They appear to be marking words that are spelled incorrectly, but I don't think that this is a generally recognized convention. Most readers will have the same reaction I did. I think that the asterisks should be removed and either the reader should figure out from context that the word is incorrect (hard to miss if you read the sentence it's in) or it should be marked with "(incorrect)" or similar.

Strait 18:51, 10 May 2006 (UTC)

Hi, Strait.

You guessed right at the meaning of the asterisks. This is indeed a convention, though some may be unfamiliar with it. See, for example, "Asterisk#Linguistics".

We should standardize this article, either using asterisks before everything 'wrong' or using them not at all.

What do others think?

President Lethe 19:11, 10 May 2006 (UTC)

I believe you are using the convention incorrectly: these are not "historically reconstructed and unattested form"s, they represent actual (incorrect) usage. If I saw an asterisk in front of a proto-Indo-European word, I'd know immediately what it was, but I, too, was puzzled by your usage here.--Curtis Clark 22:50, 10 May 2006 (UTC)

Hi again, Strait.

The usage isn't mine. I've never added an asterisk to this article, except when reverting your edits. :-) I, too, have seen the Proto-Indo-European ones elsewhere. But I've also seen this usage, in front of misspellings and the like, in other books on language.

Wikipedia's "Asterisk" article also says "an asterisk next to a word or phrase indicates that the word or phrase is ungrammatical." This is the same kind of thing I've seen in other sources, also in front of 'wrong' pronunciations and 'wrong' spellings.

I think it would be alright if we got rid of the asterisks in this article. Part of why I undid your edits was that the summaries had me thinking the edits were made for the wrong reason.

President Lethe 03:24, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

I agree with Curtis Clark. The correct use of an asterisk is to denote a conjectural or reconstructed form: it is a warning to say "This form is not attested anywhere and does not really exist". It was right, therefore, when we said that some people pronounce "lingerie" as if it represented a French word *"lengerée", as the main point is that this word is imaginary and is only used as an "as if" illustration. It should not be used for a form that anyone has actually seen or used, such as "habañero", however mistaken it is.-- Sir Myles na Gopaleen (the da) 10:24, 15 May 2006 (UTC)

As we know, 'correct' is a matter of debate, even among linguists trying to come up with the 'right' ways of writing about language, whether descriptively or prescriptively. I have definitely seen books on language use the asterisk not just to mark theoretical versions of words that may have existed, but also to mark words that one may well come across but that are incorrect by some standard. I only wish I had those books with me here.

Still, for some reasons, I'll remove the asterisks: they may confuse some readers; the context makes clear what's 'correct' and 'incorrect' about spellings, pronunciations, &c.; they're not used consistently throughout the article; and, despite how else I've seen them used in books that adopted some kind of style and standardization, I've probably seen them more often in the use of reconstructing earlier forms of language. President Lethe 14:39, 15 May 2006 (UTC)

I studied Latin from seventh through ninth grades (heaven help me, 10 years ago!), and I remember the asterisk being used in two main contexts: 1) with unusual/irregular words whose morphologies suggested declinations or inflections that did not in fact exist; and 2) words whose theoretical etymologies, though credible and logical, could not be verified or attested in the extant literature. Asterisks were not used to denote simple misspellings. By these criteria, asterisks are for the most part used in this article "correctly." Whether there is actually any hard-and-fast linguistic standard I don't know. Perhaps someone could shed light on this issue. --Nonstopdrivel 09:13, 9 November 2006 (UTC)

Forte

This has been added to the Hyperforeignism section:

Forte, meaning a person's strong point, is now usually pronounced with two syllables under the impression that it is an Italian term connected with music. In fact it is a French term connected with fencing (the forte of the blade is the thick part, and the foible is the thin part), and should therefore have only one syllable.

Something that has long bothered me about this article is that a lot of what it presents about the thought process behind specific hypercorrections seems to come from the theories of just us, the editors of this article.

Anyway, my experience is that most native speakers of English (or at least American and Canadian ones) who pronounce the "strength" (noun) form of forte with two syllables do stress the second syllable and render it something like "for-TAY". This goes right along with all those other native-English-speaker pronunciations of French words with stress on the final syllable and an [ɛɪ] sound: ballet, lingerie, &c.

My experience is also that those who use the word, when asked its origin, are more likely to say it's French (not Italian), and that, asked how to write it in French, they may well offer forté.

And my experience is that those who are aware of the musical term forte, an adjective meaning "strong, loud", (1) are almost invariably aware of its Italian origin, and (2) almost invariably stress the first syllable (rendering piano forte "pee-AN-oh FOR-tay", for example).

Thoughts?

(This goes along, by the way, with the "an-im-may" pronunciation of what is now an English term, anime. This word is supposedly adopted from French—but, in that vein, is being either mispronounced or misspelled, for either it's three syllables and spelled animé or it's two syllables ("aneem") and spelled anime.)

President Lethe 14:28, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

This may be another Anglo-American debate. In England I have only ever heard "FOR-tay", and people are quite surprised to be told that it is not a musical metaphor. (I certainly thought it was until I found out about the fencing terminology.) And "anime" certainly comes from the French with the accent, so the pronunciation is correct even though we leave out the accent for some reason. --Sir Myles na Gopaleen (the da) 09:05, 19 May 2006 (UTC)

I had thought there might be some difference between Britons and Americans. French, of course, is supposed to be a language that has no syllable stress—and American pronunciations tend to try to mimic this, or at least to put the stress of many of those words (especially those ending in the é sound) on the final syllable, where one might 'hear' it in real French even though it's supposedly not there. But it's indeed quite true that many of British versions of French-origin words have the stress in a different place from the American versions—and, if French forté becomes American "for-TAY", then it makes sense that it could become British "FOR-tay", which could then easily get people into thinking it was the Italian musical term.

(I'm not sure of the real reasons behind it; but it's long been my impression that, because of the history between the French and the British (wars and all that; even the main rude hand gesture in Britain comes from this history), British English tries to 'de-Frenchify' words from French. Garage (which Americans pronounce more closely to the French way than Britons do) becomes "GAIR-idge"; gâteau becomes "GAT-oh"; ballet becomes "BAlly" (with a as in cat); Gerard and Bernard become "JAIR-erd" and "BERN-erd"; &c. (The Pythons comically carry this even to "RENny DAY-cart" (René Descartes).) (I admit, though, that my theory about the reason for these 'de-foreignized' pronunciations could be wrong.) It also seems to happen with pasta: I know I could be wrong, but it has seemed possible to me that the thought process was "Well, if Italians pronounce the first a in this word like the a in English father, we better 'de-Italianise' it by sounding the a like that in English cat" (which, coupled with linking r, makes British "Put the pasta in the pot" sound like "Put the pastor in the pot" to an American :-)).)

Getting a bit off track there. Anyway, do you think we should modify the forte bit to show the two different possible ideas behind the hypercorrection—the British 'it's Italian' one and the American 'it's French' one?

Also, http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/002598.html is worth reading.

Also, I must say I'd never heard the fencing theory until I read your addition to the article. I'd long known the word as a mispronunciation of the French adjective fort (pronounced something like "for" and meaning "strong"—but whose feminine version is forte)—and http://www.bartleby.com/64/C007/086.html seems to agree.

President Lethe 15:07, 19 May 2006 (UTC)

On "garage", the correct English pronunciation is "GAR-ahzh", though a lot of people say "GARridge" to rhyme with "carriage". I have never heard "GAIR-idge".

Could the American "forte" be a two-stage evolution: first one generation changes "Fort" to "FORtay" thinking it is Italian/musical, and then the next generation changes that to "forTAY" thinking it is French but not knowing what French word it represents? A neutral wording might be something like "Many people pronounce this "fortay", under the influence either of the musical term "forte" in Italian or of the many French loan-words ending with -é". Sir Myles na Gopaleen (the da) 09:08, 22 May 2006 (UTC)

(Page 485 of the eighth edition of The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Current English, aimed at British users, gives "/ˈɡærɑːdʒ, -rɪdʒ/", the latter of which is what I meant by my imperfectly rendered "GAIR-idge". (I didn't put "GAR" for the first syllable, because I thought it would look too close to car, far, &c.) The dictionary's introductory matter says nothing about the order of listed pronunciations (e.g., preferred/recommended, more frequently encountered, &c.), but does say that only R.P. pronunciations are shown—and, of course, most in the U.K. don't speak R.P. I must say that, in several years of living in England and touring Britain, and in more years of listening to Britons on the radio, TV, the Internet, and records, I've never heard the first pronunciation. Americans tend to say [ɡəˈrɑːʒ] and [ɡəˈrɑːdʒ].)

See Mary-marry merger. RP speakers would pronounce "GAIR-idge" as /ˈɡeɪrɪdʒ/ (equivalently /ˈɡeːrɪdʒ/). Beware of respelling! Sir Myles goes too far in saying /ˈɡærɑːdʒ/ is "correct"; perhaps he means that it is longer-established, or that those who use that form are more likely to take issue with /ˈɡærɪdʒ/ than vice versa. jnestorius^(talk) 13:19, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

Interesting points indeed. • I'm curious about what you mean by your "equivalently" parenthesis. • Beware of respelling indeed! • /ˈɡeɪrɪdʒ/ looks as if its first syllable would be a homophone with the word gay—a pronunciation of garage I don't remember ever hearing. The Oxford whose pronunciation I quoted says it gives R.P. pronunciation. Of course, even R.P. is more variable—temporally and from speaker to speaker—than some might wish. • President Lethe 16:43, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

I said "Equivalently" rather than "or" to indicate an alternative transcription of the same pronunciation, rather than an alternative pronunciation. When you say it's "a pronunciation you don't remember hearing":

• if you mean hearing in RP, then yes that's the point: "GAIRidge" is a bad respelling for RP since it represents /ˈɡeɪrɪdʒ/, a pronunciation nobody uses.
• if you mean hearing in GAm, then that's because /ˈɡeɪrɪdʒ/ and /ˈɡeːrɪdʒ/ are not equivalent in GAm: the first is "GAYridge" and the second "GAIRidge". But "linking r" in nonrhotic accents like RP does not distinguish the onset of the following syllable from the coda of the preceding one. Beware of IPA! jnestorius^(talk) 17:00, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

Well, this is certainly an example of the problem with respelling and others' interpretations of it. When I wrote "GAIR-idge", it definitely was not intended to represent /ˈɡeɪrɪdʒ/ (which I'd render "GAY-ridge").

And you would be right and I would be wrong. I apologise for having written rubbish earlier. I had just added Chambers Dictionary's key to Pronunciation respelling for English, I got hopelessly befuddled between the underlying phonemes of what Chambers represents as "ā" (pay, cadence) and "ār" (pair, parent). Clearly I should avoid walking while chewing gum. In RP the ā of parent is that of pair /εə/, not that of cadence /eɪ/, unless by RP I really meant Ross-shire Pronunciation? Regency Pronunciation? In a narrow transcription pay and cadence have different phones from each other, as do pair and parent, but not different phonemes. I'm not going to attempt a transcription as phonetics clearly isn't my forté ;) So my original point should read: "GAIRidge is a bad respelling for RP since it represents /ˈɡεərɪdʒ/, a pronunciation nobody uses". Whew. jnestorius^(talk) 16:38, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

Of course, /ˈɡeɪrɪdʒ/ and /ˈɡeːrɪdʒ/ are not (or at least should not be) equivalent anywhere. This is the point of IPA. [eː] and [eɪ] are two different sounds.

See phone vs phoneme. (Not written by me, should be reliable...) jnestorius^(talk) 16:38, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

Anyway.

Speaking of differences between R.P. and 'GAm': doesn't the article's present description of an English-speaker's pronunciation of mezzo apply more to BrE than to AmE? I already put half the diphthong in parentheses because speakers from several other non-Italian languages may still get the o right. But Americans and Britons tend to differ in their diphthongs for the o in mezzo.

I wish this discussion weren't taking place in the middle of another post. ... President Lethe 00:39, 3 June 2006 (UTC)

Your idea about a two-step process for American forte seems plausible.

Where did you learn about the fencing theory of origin? I'd like to find out more about that.

I like your neutral wording.

President Lethe 14:23, 22 May 2006 (UTC)

PS. I've updated the article so that it reads "Forte, meaning a person's strong point, is now usually pronounced with with two syllables, under the influence either of the Italian musical term forte or of the many French loan words ending in é." But it has just now dawned on me that this doesn't explain how it is a hyperforeignism. We should resolve the matter of how the word got into English, from which language it came, and how the various English-speakers' pronunciation of it has evolved. It has also occurred to me that it may have entered English more than once, in more than one location, and with more than one understanding of what its original language was, what it meant, and how to pronounce it. President Lethe 14:35, 22 May 2006 (UTC)

My authority is the Concise Oxford Dictionary, which gives both pronunciations ("fort" and "forty", but not incidentally "fortay") as alternatives. It gives first the general meaning of strong point and then the fencing meaning, but it is clearly the same word. In the fencing context it is still always pronounced "fort", and I'm sure that it was so pronounced in the general context until some decades ago. In French, "fort" (masculine) is used as a noun, both in the general and the fencing sense: "la chimie est mon fort", or "le fort de l'épée", and this is clearly the origin of our word. I'm not sure where the e in the English spelling came from, but it happens to other French words in English, such as "moral" -> "morale" (in French, "le moral" means morale and "la morale" means morality), and may be there simply to distinguish it from "fort" meaning fortress. I therefore stand by my assertion that the word is derived from fencing and that the historical pronunciation is "fort" though the other one has superseded it in practice. With your permission, we should put the paragraph back again, tweaking the last line to sound less prescriptive. OK?--Sir Myles na Gopaleen (the da) 14:14, 23 May 2006 (UTC)

The latest details you've given on the fencing origin don't seem necessarily incompatible with other things I've read about the origin. In that sense, it's O.K. with me if we unhide the paragraph.

I do have two other concerns; and I suppose it's O.K. with me if we discuss them while the paragraph is shown or hidden.

One of my other concerns is something that would read along the "In fact it is a fencing term" line. Yes, O.K.: it is a fencing term; and, yes, that may be the route by which it got into English. But it's no longer solely a fencing term. I think the explanation of the origin should make it clearer that it's the word's original context, not its sole modern context. (Same as, while we'd be right to say vangard has a military origin, for example, there are now legitimate non-military meanings of the word.)

My other concern is how strong our case for calling this a hyperforeignism is. At what point does a misunderstanding of how to pronounce or spell a word from a foreign language become so ingrained in the adoptive language that it's now the ‘proper’ way of saying/writing the word in the new language? Habañero is still bad Spanish and bad English. But is two-syllable forte as "strong point" still bad English? The prescriptive–descriptive Oxford offers/allows/mentions two-syllable forte. I'm sure many dictionaries give the English word lingerie a pronunciation that rhymes with English ray—so, on some level, this is now the 'correct' English, even if it's bad French; right?

What do you think?

President Lethe 15:48, 23 May 2006 (UTC)

OK, when I said it "is" a fencing term that was sloppy, I meant it was a metaphor drawn from fencing. I think it still counts as hyperforeignism, even if it is now accepted. The interesting point is whether hyperforeignism is the mechanism by which a given pronunciation evolves, rather than whether it is still considered "wrong". So restore the hidden text, and I'll have a fiddle to do justice to your points. --Sir Myles na Gopaleen (the da) 09:30, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the latest version, Sir Myles:

Forte, meaning a person's strong point, is now usually pronounced with two syllables, under the influence either of the Italian musical term forte or of the many French loan words ending in é. Originally it was a metaphor drawn from fencing (the forte of the blade is the thick part, and the foible is the thin part), and in the fencing context it is still pronounced "fort". In French the equivalent word is spelled fort (without an e) in both the general and the fencing meanings.

I like most of it, but am concerned about the last sentence. What is the 'general' meaning in French? My understanding is that the French non-fencing meaning of fort is adjectival ("strong"), not nominal ("strength"), with forte as the feminine: "Il est fort" ("He is strong"); "Elle est forte" ("She is strong"); "Nous avons une force et une forteresse" ("We have a strength and a fortress").

Do you think that we should also note that, in French fort (regardless of meaning), the t is silent?

President Lethe 19:30, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

What I mean is that in French you can use "fort" as a noun to mean one's strong point, as in "la chimie est son fort" (chemistry is his best subject). As in English, this is either parallel to or derived from the fencing meaning. Sir Myles na Gopaleen (the da) 15:10, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

O.K. I think the article, too, should say what you mean. And do you think that we should also note that, in French fort (regardless of meaning), the t is silent? President Lethe 23:56, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

I'd rather not go into detail on the pronunciation in French, as this is a needless complication and was never reflected in English. I'll think about how to clarify the paragraph generally. Sir Myles na Gopaleen (the da) 09:12, 5 June 2006 (UTC)

Terribly sorry, it has occurred to me that there may be yet another possible origin. The COD records a pronunciation "forty". This suggests that, at some stage, someone believed the word to be a Latin neuter (like "rationale") and pronounced it (in Old Pronunciation) accordingly. As this is a purely conjectural complication, I don't think we need edit the article further to reflect it. Sir Myles na Gopaleen (the da) 10:27, 7 June 2006 (UTC)

Schizophrenia

I don't think this is a very good example, as there never was a /z/ pronunciation of this word in English. The pronunciation in Ancient Greek is irrelevant (the two rival theories are "dz" and "zd"): the point is that, in general, derivatives of Greek words including zeta are pronounced with a /z/ in English but schizophrenia is an exception because so many of the early psychologists were German speakers. For the same reason, many people pronounce "trauma" as "trowma", though the usual rule is that a Greek or Latin "au" is rendered "aw" in English derivatives. (Similarly "libido".) None of these is a hyperforeignism, as they do not involve exaggerating the "foreignness" beyond the actual foreign pronunciation; though I do find "trowmatic" awkward. --Sir Myles na Gopaleen (the da) 09:12, 5 June 2006 (UTC)

I agree. I hid it, and now I'll delete it. President Lethe 20:16, 5 June 2006 (UTC)

Hyperclassicism

We need a new word (maybe even a new article) for the "trowma" phenomenon, which is not quite hypercorrection or hyperforeignism. I mean the deliberate ignoring of standard rules about how words derived from Latin or Greek (or other languages) are pronounced in English in favour of how the Latin or Greek etc. itself might have sounded: things like "kwahzee" (for "quasi"), "coom" (for "cum-"), "dayity" and "spontanayity" (for "deity" and "spontaneity"), "Kikkeronian" (for "Ciceronian") and "Enoch" to rhyme with a Scottish "loch". I even knew a teacher who talked about the heresy of the "monoFEWsites" (and "yooksta-position"). What should we call it: "hyper-purism"? "hyper-classicism"? --Sir Myles na Gopaleen (the da) 10:15, 13 June 2006 (UTC)

Interesting idea. A few thoughts:

• I wonder how much we could write without getting into original research.

• I think that the "standard rules about how words derived from Latin or Greek (or other languages) are pronounced in English" might be less standard or less sweeping than, perhaps, you think.

• The various pronunciations, at least in some English-speaking parts of the world, might be more a matter of the regional standard (the two words emphasized separately) than of people going around thinking "Watch me talk Greek! I pronounce it the way a real, live Ancient Greek would, not how you do!"

• Garage is an example. I can conceive that a Briton might say American [gəˈrɑʒ] is some kind of 'hyperpurism'. But, really, this is just the way a very large chunk of the American population says it—and [ˈgærɪdʒ] is just how a very large portion of Britons says it. Maybe the British pronunciation is affected by 'defrenchification' for historical political reasons. Maybe the American pronunciation is not, because of the history of French exploration and settlement in North America and its influence on many other bits of American English; the long-present populations of French-speakers in Quebec, New Brunswick, Maine, and Louisiana; the history of coöperation between the U.S. and France; &c.

• In my experience, [kwɑzi] is the most popular American pronunciation of quasi—as opposed to [kweɪzaɪ], which, I think, is popular in the U.K., and which, I guess, is what you mean about a "standard rule". The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, a good tome, gives four choices, in this order: [kweɪzaɪ], [kweɪsaɪ], [kwɑzi], and [kwɑsi].

• I'm not sure I've ever heard anything but [ˈeɪ ɪ t/d/ɾ i] for the end of spontaneity.

• I think I've heard [di ɪ t/d/ɾ i] and [deɪ ɪ t/d/ɾ i] about equally. The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, gives both, in the same order I've given. Same for spontaneity.

• I probably heard [kʌm] (cum) more in the past than I have recently—and the reverse for [kum]. I think my own pronunciation depends on context: [kʌm] when it's right between two English words, and [kum] when it's in a standard Latin term (e.g., magna cum laud). Some could be influenced by wanting to distinguish the word from come (in any of its meanings), or even from the slang cum/come.

• Another example of regional variation is bona fide. Probably most Americans say [ˈbɑnəfaɪd] (the o matching that in typical American pronunciations of, say, mom); and I think most Britons say [ˈboʊnəˈfaɪdeɪ]. One could argue that Britons are being 'hyperpure' in the last syllable; but I say it's just a regional difference. Yet, neither population is saying [fide] ... ?

• What about classical ae/æ and oe/œ? There seem to be several standards here, even for the same word. In encyclop(a)edia, it's always [i]. In (o)esophagus and related words, it's [i] or [ə]. In (o)economy and related words, it's [i] or [ə] or [ɛ] (I know the initial o is quite rare now). In f(o)eces and f(o)etus, it's always [i]. (One could also argue that the British retention of these as and os is hyperpurism; but, again, I say it's just regional difference.) But then we get to things like formulae and vertebrae. The "rule" for ae in Latin-based words is [i]; but I think the most common American pronunciation of formulae ends in [ei(j)i]. Not sure I've ever heard it ended in just [i]; have heard it ended in [ai]. The "rule" (which I follow) ends vertebrae in [i]—but the only things I remember hearing others say are [ʌ] and [ei(j)i].

it's faeces, not foeces. Except in Quicksilver (novel). jnestorius^(talk) 11:39, 16 June 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the correction. I knew that. I blame too little sleep. Can we, please, reply to one another's posts at the ends of them? I see the logic in replying to a specific point immediately after that point; but I think it's generally easier to follow if one person's post begins and ends before anything in reply comes along. President Lethe 00:17, 17 June 2006 (UTC)

• I've always heard [s] for the cs in Ciceronian—but it's a word I've only rarely heard others say. Am I wrong, or is [k] just plain silly? Wouldn't 'real' Latin have [ts] for the cs? Or is this another of those points about which we're not really sure in the classical languages?

• What would you say about chimerical? I used to think this was [ʃɪˈmɛrəkəɫ]—but I recently saw a documentary in which the "experts" talking about genetic chimerism pronounced it in multiple ways and the narrator said [kaɪˈmɛrəkəɫ].

• What do you say about cervical. Americans say [ˈsərvəkəɫ]? I've heard Britons say [sə(r)ˈvaɪkəɫ]—but I have a vague recollection that this is restricted to the cervical vertebrae, in the neck, and that something like the American pronunciation is used for talk of the cervix at the uterus.

Anyway, I think your idea is worthy. I think some of your examples are maybe too debatable. I think others of your examples are right on.

President Lethe 16:12, 13 June 2006 (UTC)

Sir Myles, I've thought more about this. Yes, as I said, there may be regional variation. But, on your side of the matter, it's true that one region's standard may be another region's 'hyperpurism' (e.g., while "kwahzy" may be quite acceptable in the U.S., it may seem snooty in the U.K. ... of course, over time, "kwahzy" may come to dominate in the U.K., too). President Lethe 18:11, 13 June 2006 (UTC)

I think you're right that we won't get any of this into the main article, as the category is too unformed, and opinions are too various. Once more, I am not committing myself to any view about whether any of these pronunciations are "right" or "wrong". Some are the property of a cranky minority ("Kikkeronian" and "Enokhhhh"), while others may be now almost universal ("spontanayity"), and there may be a 50/50 split on yet others ("quasi"): what interests me is the purely historical question of whether any of them owe their existence to an attempt to imitate Latin or Greek (New Pronunciation) and are therefore exceptions to the prevalent pronunciation patterns (I won't say "rules") found in other words.

I am also not concerned with the question of how far to imitate foreign pronunciation of recent loan-words: that is very interesting, but it is another question. I am concerned with thoroughly naturalized words of Latin and Greek origin that have been in the language for centuries, where no question arises of imitating contemporaneous Latin or Greek speakers. In what follows I use OP for the old pronunciation of Latin ("See-zer") and NP for the new ("Kigh-sarr").

To go through individual examples:

• Quasi: I'd say there was a 50:50 split in England: I'll take your word for it on American usage. When used as a prefix, as in "quasi-contract" or "quasi-judicial", I say [kweɪsaɪ], on the reasoning that the composite word is thoroughly English and does not contain a Latin quotation. (No one says "etketera".) As part of a longer Latin phrase, such as "quasi ex contractu", I use NP (quah-see).

• Cum: I agree with you. I say "come" when it is a prefix to an English word and "coom" when it is part of a longer Latin phrase. (No dirty jokes please!)

• Bona fide(s): I use OP and say boe-na figh-dee(z), (sorry, my browser is too primitive to let me see whether I have got IPA symbols right). I think this is usual in England, though one sometimes hears NP "bonna fidday(z)". I have no objection to this, as it is an integral Latin phrase and not an attempt to re-Latinize an ordinary English word. I have never heard any of the hybrid pronunciations, or silent final e (which is wrong in OP as well as in NP), though in Ireland they used to speak of "bonafieds" or "bonafeeds" to mean bona fide travellers (who could get drinks at any time).

• ae/oe. There is an Anglo-American difference here. First, we tend to keep the diphthong in spelling, whereas you often omit it ("archaeology" vs "archeology"). (In some cases, as in "fetus", your spelling is in fact historically correct and ours is a hypercorrection.) Second, we usually pronounce it as long e (ee) while you, in unstressed syllables, usually use short e (for example, in "aesthetic"). Your usage is the older: ours is an old (OP) hyper-classicism, based on the fact that in Latin scansion ae is always long. The only instance I can think of where there is a NP hyperclassicism is "antennae" (and "vertebrae" etc.): I say "antennee", but increasingly people say "antennigh". ("Antennay" and "formulay" are rare: if they reflect any form of Latin it is Church Latin ("gloria in eks-chell-sees"). "Vertebray" is much more common, but may be unconsciously influenced by "Ye banks and braes": I would call it a spelling pronunciation rather than a hyper-classicism.) Again I have no real objection, as this is a genuine Latin word and not an English derivative.

• Chimerical: I always use hard "ch" as in "character". (Similarly in "chameleon". Amazingly, many people seem to think the word is French and say "shameleon". That is genuine hyperforeignism.) I also use short "i" and "e". In "Chimaera", on the other hand, I say "kigh-MEE-ra". I have no views on "chimerism", as I have not come across the word.

• Cervical. The two rival pronunciations are "SER-vical" and "ser-VIGH-cal". This is a pure issue of stress, and neither has anything to do with NP (no one says "Kervical"). Like you, I associate the second syllable stress with the vertebra.

• Garage (our old favourite). In my experience, most educated people say "GAR-ahzh", but do so because they have heard it that way rather than because of any consciousness of its French derivation. "gar-AHZH", which I have heard in America, would be regarded as a too-French affectation (though not a hyperforeignism, as it is genuinely French). "Garridge" is very widespread, but is a spelling pronunciation rather than a conscious de-Frenchifying process. The question of how far to imitate French is debatable. The general rule is to sound more English for something or somewhere very familiar (like "Paris") and more French for anything more obscure ("Chateauneuf du Pape"): "Marseille" and "Lyon" are now pronounced in the French way and the former "Marsails" and "Lions" are now wholly obsolete (they are obviously very old, as the "s" is the Old French nominative ending). So far as there is an attempt to avoid "too French" pronunciations I don't think the motivation is political or historical: it is more a desire not to sound arty-precious or pseudo-intellectual. (One of Wodehouse's characters complains that people in France speak French "which I always think is so affected of them".)

• Ciceronian. Scholars are about as sure as anyone can be that "c" before e or i (or ae or oe) was "k" in Classical Latin but had become "ts" by the early Dark Ages: this is borne out by the way Latin names are transliterated into Greek in different periods. Conservative dialects like Sard still use "k" for old words ("su chelu", pronounced "su kelu", is the sky) but "ts" for more recent Romance coinages. I incline to think the real change was quite early: Faliscan (another ancient Italian language) certainly used a different symbol for "c" in these contexts and "c" before a, o, u or a consonant, and Latin shorthand used "c" for "ce" and "k" for "ca", probably because of the letter names. In English, "Sisseronian" is standard and "Kikkeronian" was a short-lived affectation in certain circles: see Bernard Shaw's "Geneva".

• Deity, spontaneity, contemporaneity, simultaneity et hoc genus omne. Here I know that I am fighting a losing battle, as the "ayity" pronunciation is now in the majority in England as well. Once more, these pronunciations may soon be "correct": but it will remain the case that hyper-classicism is the mechanism by which they originally got into the language: the only defence of "dayity" I have ever heard is "well, it comes from Latin deus". My point is that it is simply illogical. An open vowel in a stressed syllable is generally long, especially in Latinate words; and a long "e" is pronounced "ee". (Except for the -eity words now in dispute, I cannot think of a single example in English where "e" as a vowel on its own, long or short, is pronounced "ay". Compound vowels, as in "they" and "steak", are a different matter.) For the same reason, we pronounce "laity" as "layity": no one would say "lah-ity" "because it comes from Greek λαος". So for "deity" and "laity" to rhyme is totally inconsistent.

(It occurs to me that perhaps the new pronunciation of these words comes from America and that there it was originally an Irishism: English-speakers in Ireland never accepted the Elizabethan Great Vowel Shift in full, and still say "tay" for "tea". Similarly in the names of Greek letters you say "bayta" and "ayta" even when using OP, as in the names of college fraternities, whereas we say "beeta" and "eeta". That is genuine local variation, and I respect it.)

Phew! I think that's enough from me for one day. -- Sir Myles na Gopaleen (the da) 13:58, 14 June 2006 (UTC)

Here I am, at last. This has been rolling around in my skull for days—and, now, I'm not sure what all I have to say about it. I agree with sentiment of the two opening paragraphs of your most recent post in this thread.

Funny (not really; but that's the idiom, eh?) thing is that, not long after making my post about bona fide as [ˈboʊnəˈfaɪdeɪ], I heard a Briton say [ˈboʊnəˈfaɪdi], which is the pronunciation you mentioned.

I think French must've influenced my "shim-air-ickle" idea of chimerical—back when I didn't know what the word meant and didn't see the connection to chameleon (which I've only ever heard and learned with [k]).

Just a personal comment on archaeology: at school in the U.S., I learned it with the a, though always written as two separate letters and never as a ligature. Indeed, this is the spelling in The World Book Encyclopedia, too, which is a thoroughly American-English, work. But, yes, American English usually drops the a and o in most other such digraphs.

Your words about foetus were news to me. (I learn new things every day.) I'd spent years thinking that BrE retained the original spelling of such words while AmE had changed them. But now I see that this is, in a way, in line with BrE's backformation burgle (as opposed to AmE burglarize). ... Now I feel silly, though, that I've spent the last seven years or so using æ when spelling out et cetera. That's what I get for reading old books, eh?

In school, as a child, I learned [ni] as the last syllable of antennae (and, for the longest time, only hearing this aloud and not making the connection between this sound and the written antennae, I thought this was some kind of cute diminutive of antenna!). First pronunciation I remember picking up for formulae was "form-you-lay-ee". Fowler's then told me that ae and oe in such words should rhyme with English me—so I moved to "form-you-lee". And recent reading about Latin has inclined me to say "form-you-lye"—which, I guess, could be called a hyperpurism for the last syllable.

You remind me that I want to find out about Latin x. I never understood why some people insisted, in "Angels We Have Heard on High", on saying "ek-shel-sis" or even saying "egg shells iss"

Despite learning "form-you-lay-ee" for formulae, I learned only "ver-tə-bray" for vertebrae—which I changed to a "bree" ending when I also changed formulae to "form-you-lee".

This reminds me of the word communiqué, which I've seen more than one person (including me when I was about 14) spell communicae.

I've never heard of "Ye banks and braes"; but I suppose that, for those who have, it could influence their vertebrae pronunciation.

"In my experience, most educated people say 'GAR-ahzh', but do so because they have heard it that way rather than because of any consciousness of its French derivation. [* * *] 'Garridge' is very widespread, but is a spelling pronunciation rather than a conscious de-Frenchifying process. [* * *] So far as there is an attempt to avoid 'too French' pronunciations I don't think the motivation is political or historical: it is more a desire not to sound arty-precious or pseudo-intellectual." The suggestion I've made about "defrenchifying" this word is, of course, based on something at some point in the past. I'm sure most modern pronunciation of it, in any country, is based simply on what the speaker grew up hearing in his mother tongue, rather than on consciousness of its French origin. Still, it seemed possible or plausible to me that, at one time, maybe a century ago, some Britons, quite aware of the French pronunciation, consciously decided to change it for English. Of course, I could be wrong about this. But you're the first Briton ever to give me any kind of response to this theory—so thanks! It's not something I've seen described explicitly in books; it just seemed so plausible, when I considered all the other differences between the U.S. and the U.K. in pronouncing recently derived French words, and considered the differences in the historical relationships with France of the U.K. and the U.S.

Then again, I think most Britons say [shəˈrɑd] for charade, while Americans end it in [eɪd]. Several Americans also give the [eɪd] ending to promenade (though this may be up to context, as in rhyming it with parade in "Skip to My Lou" and always ending it in [ɑd] in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine).

Excellent Wodehouse quote!

"Scholars are about as sure as anyone can be that 'c' before e or i (or ae or oe) was 'k' in Classical Latin but had become 'ts' by the early Dark Ages". Indeed, I learned this from you and then from a book shortly after making my post. I blame Austrian state schools for teaching [ts] to my girlfriend, who passed it on to me.

Your point about deity, spontaneity, laity, &c., is, of course, logical—but, I think, this battle is lost. :-(

"(It occurs to me that perhaps the new pronunciation of these words comes from America and that there it was originally an Irishism: English-speakers in Ireland never accepted the Elizabethan Great Vowel Shift in full, and still say 'tay' for 'tea'. Similarly in the names of Greek letters you say 'bayta' and 'ayta' even when using OP, as in the names of college fraternities, whereas we say 'beeta' and 'eeta'. That is genuine local variation, and I respect it.)"

Indeed. And that reminds me of a point that may well play a large role in several differences, within English and from language to language. In 1999, I was looking in a travel dictionary of modern Greek, published for the British. In telling how to say the names of the Greek letters, it specifically said things like "BEE-ta" and "ZEE-ta" for B and Z. (Maybe it actually said "BEE-ter"; but more on that later.) This left me thinking "Ohhhh. The British are being quite Greek to say [bitə], and Americans are un-Greek to say [beɪtə]."

But, more recently, I've had so many experiences that have led me to believe that how one hears the sound [e] is largely dependent on one's linguistic background. So maybe a person who's grown up around British accents is more likely to hear [e] as [i] (and thus say [i]), and someone who's grown up around American accents is more likely to hear [e] as [eɪ] (and thus say [eɪ]). This might explain at least the vowel difference, though not the stress difference, in the British [ˈbæli] and the American [bæˈleɪ] for ballet, for example. (When I say "hear", I'm talking about putting a Briton and an American in front of, say, a French or German person, and having the French or German person utter a word with the [e] sound, and then asking the two English-speakers what sound they heard.)

Years ago, having read my Austrian girlfriend's mention of her brother, Andreas, I expected that, when we finally spoke aloud, I would hear something like "ahn-DRAY-ahs"—so I was quite surprised when I heard what sounded to me like "ahn-DREE-ahs". With her, though, I wonder whether it's not just my ears but also her speech: I'm sure that, unless you ask her to slow down and repeat (at which point she gets careful), she ends French -er infinitives in [i], not [e].

About "BEE-ter" as a spelling of [ˈbitə] (beta). In Monty Pythons Fliegender Zirkus, Graham Chapman plays an American visiting a Bavarian restaurant and speaking some very American German. At one point, he pronounces bitte as [bɪtər]. This always reminds me of the trouble that Americans can have in reading non-rhotic R.P. phonetic spellings as pronunciation guides. (And, for some reason, this non-rhotic-based phonetic spelling persisted in U.S. publications for a long time, too, well after most American speech was rhotic.) Indeed, a British guide saying to sound German bitte as English bitter would make most Americans put a distinct r at the end. When I was little and would read British books, I never understood why characters, trying to think of what to say, were going "er"—which struck me as an uncareful pronunciation of "or", even though I knew they mustn't mean that. It was, of course, the sound that I would spell "uh" (though my French-Canadian grandmother reads "uh" as [œx]!).

I'll continue this tangent by mentioning that another British/American stress difference on a French-based word is in debris, which Americans stress on the second.

And now it's enough from me for a day!

President Lethe 18:04, 23 June 2006 (UTC)

"Archaeology": maybe I gave a wrong example, but I certainly remember that the university of Berkeley had a department of "paleontology". (Since Fowler, the æ ligature is now very unusual in English, except in IPA or in Anglo-Saxon: OUP editors' guides always tell you to avoid it.)

"Excelsis". Church Latin generally imitates Italian; so this word should be sung "ex-Chelsea-ss". I suppose, though, that "s-ch" is hard to say, and that just as in Italian "sc" (before e or i) is pronounced "sh", the word becomes "ek-shell-sees". I cannot defend "egg-shell-seess", though one hears it very often. (I am driven even pottier by the pseudo-French pronunciation of "(Kyrie) eleison" to rhyme with "liaison". The word is ελεησον, with four syllables and unvoiced s, though yes the third syllable does become "ee" in Church Latin: see Greek η below.)

"Vertebrae". My reference to "ye banks and braes" was slightly facetious. I only meant that "-brae" as "-bray" is a spelling pronunciation, and that the existence of Scots "brae" (for a hill) might subliminally contribute to it.

Greek η. Complicated one. English and Modern Greek have simply had a parallel evolution, with "ay" sounds becoming "ee" sounds independently in both languages. However, I am not sure whether the "eeta" pronunciation in British English is a mere Anglicism (so that the resemblance to Modern Greek is pure coincidence), or whether it actually reflects the view of some Renaissance humanists (e.g. Reuchlin) that ancient Greek ought to be pronounced like modern. (Grammarians used to contrast "etacism", meaning the pronunciation of eta as ay, with "itacism", meaning its pronunciation as ee.) Judging from other specimens of OP, I would say the former.

Deity. I have just thought of another possible defence for the new practice. It may be that the vowel is not intended to be "ay", as in a hyperclassical long e, but a straightforward English short e, and that the apparent "y" sound simply reflects the absence of a glottal stop. If so, there are respectable antecedents for this. It is thought that in medieval Latin, a stressed open vowel was pronounced long if in the penult, but short if in the antepenult, regardless of its actual quantity in classical Latin: hence English pronunciations such as COH-dex but COD-dicil, OH-nus but ON-erous. Arguably, "děity" is simply an application of that rule. (I am still not convinced, however: what about "laity"? True, e in Latin deus is short, while a in Greek λαος is long, but actual classical quantities are not normally decisive in English.)

Andreas: of course German dialects differ, but German long "e" sounds (as in "See") often seem very "closed" to English ears, without quite becoming [i].

There are other examples where Americans Anglicize more than British people (contrary to the "garage" example): especially in proper names such as "Haiti" and "Van Gogh", and I'm sure I shall think of others.

Nice that for once English and American people are arguing for the authenticity of each other's pronunciations/spellings, rather than their own! (Of course the fact that my mother was originally American might have something to do with it.) --Sir Myles na Gopaleen (the da) 10:45, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

Sorry if it seemed that I was criticizing your arch(a)eology mention. I wasn't. It's true about most of these words, yes. For some reason (I wish I knew what), archaeology seems to keep its a better than the others.

I'm glad you mentioned Italian sc: finally, I remembered the hyperforeignism (or is it?) that I had thought of many days ago. I have heard some Americans at Italian restaurants pronounce sc in bruschetta as [ʃ] (instead of [sk])—because they're thinking of German sch?

About Greek eta. Are you saying, then, that the British travel dictionary that I read was right in saying that, to sound like a Greek, one should say [i] for such sounds as the e in beta, eta, zeta? I was thinking (without knowing) that perhaps the real modern Greek sound was [e] but that some English-speaking hearers were receiving this as [i] and others were receiving it as [eɪ]. (To me, [e] could be described as 'between' [i] and [eɪ].)

Your new idea about deity sounds as reasonable as the hyperclassicismical (!) one.

Saying "děity" aloud, I find that an unclear break between e and i sounds like some non-R.P. British pronunciations of dirty. (Just a silly observation—but true.)

Could it be possible that the "lay" pronunciation in laity is independent of the mindset behind "ay" in deity? Mightn't speakers just be aware of its relation to English lay (as in layman)—and so thinking of it as lay-ity with the y removed for some kind of economy (as in removal of an l in skilful, or removal of e in present participle of dye)?

I remember another difference between Americans and Britons in foreign words is in persons' and places' names. I think that, generally, with most very recent acquisitions, Britons (perhaps unaware of the 'right' pronunciation) tend to want to put the stress on syllables in a very anglicized way, and Americans (perhaps unaware of the 'right' pronunciation) tend to want to put the stress on syllables in a 'foreign-sounding' way. (By the bit about awareness, I mean that such speakers, British or American, could be getting it right or could be getting it wrong, but the rightness or wrongness comes without their knowing whether it's right or wrong.) British news calls Kofi Annan [ˈkoʊfi ˈænən]; American news says [ˈkoʊfi əˈnan]. (I know I'm getting the o wrong for one or the other of those accents.)

What difference in Haiti are you thinking of?

In the case of Van Gogh, it may be a difference in thinking of him as a Dutchman or as a man of his adopted France. I grew up learning "van go", with the idea not so much that gh was silent in some English words but that many final French consonants were silent. I remember a (the?) British pronunciation as [væn gɒx]. When his Dutch descendant, Peter (?), was murdered on the street (last year?), I heard a Dutch reporter on the radio—and the native pronunciation sounded very different from both the American and the British, just about monosyllabic, and very fast in comparison to the surrounding (English) words.

I agree with the pleasure of your last paragraph.

This makes me think of one more thing. Sunday before yesterday, I was watching Prime Minister's Questions (or whatever the official name is) on TV (well, listening to it and half watching, while making cookies)—and it reminded me of another word adopted from a foreign language in which Americans say the a as [ɑ] and Britons say it as [æ]. ... Am not feeling very reminded right now, though, unfortunately.

Still, maybe you or someone else here can help me with one thing. For years and years and years (and years), I've been trying to find the exact IPA symbol for the nasal a in American man, plan, hammer, answer, &c. In R.P., the a many such words is [æ]. Seemingly quite incomprehensibly, most transcriptions of American English give it that same sound—even though only a minority of Americans makes the a in span rhyme with the a in cat. Most Americans do not say [æ] in those words. Just last night, it occurred to me that Paul McCartney's pronunciation of "answer" in the lyrics of "Let It Be" might be an easily accessible point of reference for many who might try to answer me. He says "answer" in an American way—definitely not R.P. [ɑn] in that first syllable, but definitely not [æn] either. The American sound is a bit like that of French IPA [ɛ̃], as in lingerie (excuse my [ɪ̃] of earlier) and moulin—but it's not exactly it. Anyway, I really want a symbol for this sound.

Enough for now.

President Lethe 15:12, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

Americans say [i] for the ae in algae (usually with g as [dʒ]).

• "Bruschetta": yes, I've heard this in England too. I think it's pure ignorance of Italian: if the h weren't there it would indeed be "brooshetta" (cf. crescendo), and I think people have simply got the rules muddled. It's possible that German has contributed (compare the Spanish/Italian confusion over "ch", as in "machismo").

• Yes, modern Greek eta is indistinguishable from iota, hence all those proper names ending with -is. (And in an atlas, you will often see Athens as "Athina".) I don't know when this came in: it seems that Greek had acquired most of its modern pronunciation by the Byzantine period.

• Foreign names: I think it's six of one and half a dozen of the other. British people now say "Ha-EE-tee": "Hayti" is very old-fashioned, though I think Americans still say it. Similarly the American "van GO" is inconceivable in French, Dutch or (British) English (I remember in "Manhattan" where Woody Allen regards "Van Gokhhh" as a mark of terrible pseudo-intellectualism, though in England it is normal.) I'm not sure what the current American practice is on French names in America, like Des Moines. There certainly was a time when knowledgeable English people said "HimAHlaya", as in Sanskrit: "Hima-LAY-a" was originally regarded as an Americanism, though now it is universal. One puzzle is "Ca-PREE": certainly the older pronunciation was "CAP-ri", as in Italian, and the change was brought about by a song, but I don't know how they say it in America. (I always say CAPri, but then I've been there! Cap-REE suggests to me the name of a car.) In "Kofi Annan", I've noticed the same difference as you but I simply don't know which is "right" in Arabic. One factor influencing these things is that, in general, Americans are more prone to give a full value rather than a shwa to unstressed vowels, for example the a in "tattoo" and "raccoon".

• æ: that's a difficult one. I think the difference is one of degree, that is too fine to represent in IPA. In both British and American, one could call it "a vowel somewhere between Continental neutral a and short e"; but there are regional variations in both countries. (In the North of England and Scotland it is almost Continental flat a; in the American southern states it is almost two syllables, as in Tom Lehrer "So give me a hay-am hock and grit of hominy".) All I can say is that the standard American short a is slightly nearer to short e than the standard British one, and a little inclined to nasality (and for some reason both features are far stronger in the case of children), but for IPA purposes /æ/ is the nearest we're going to get to either. As for the effect of a following n or m, I can't comment. --Sir Myles na Gopaleen (the da) 17:03, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

About the Greek, you do, I think, get my meaning. But just in case: I'm talking about the names of various Greek letters, rather than the sounds of those letters. I think you get this. The reason I'm not sure is that, because I know too little, I'm not sure (though maybe you are, because you know more) that a Greek, asked to spell the name of the letter B, would write βητα. If, indeed, it would be spelled with an eta as the second letter, then, yes, I understand you about modern Greeks' sounding this the same as if it were spelled, say, βιτα.

About atlases, do you mean ones printed in Greek (Aθινα) or in Roman letters? I suppose Greek publishers of atlases (or isn't that one of those words with an odd plural possible too?) are too careful to think "In English, the goddess is Athena, pronounced [əˈθinə]" and then write the [i] sound as Roman i.

Never knew of that British pronunciation of Haiti. Yes, the American pronunciation is [heɪɾi]. Sometimes, I'm inclined to say it the French way. British way, French but with h, is interesting. How is British Haitian said? Like American [heɪʃ(ə)n]?

This reminds me of the word Asian, which reminds me of BrE pronunciation of version. If I remember right, Britons are less inclined to say [ʒ] than Americans, and use [ʃ] instead. I remember hearing British news from readers and reporters with non-R.P. accents sometimes around London—and, if I came to the story in the middle, there'd be a moment of confusion about whether the story was on Asians or Haitians.

(Reminds me of another story I saw on the news once in England. In Australia, a man trying to sell his house was being derided for his racism: he'd used the telephone to place an ad in the paper, and his "no agents" had been misheard and transcribed as "no Asians".)

I think French-based American place names' pronunciation is more about the specific name than the speaker. (Forgive me if some of these are obvious.) Chicago is [ʃəˈkɑgo] (I won't bother with the o diphthongs right now; people know what I mean); Illinois is [ˌɪləˈnɔɪ]; Detroit is [dəɪˈtrɔɪt] (with glottal stop possible for final t, and [tʃ] possible for medial t); Des Moines is də ˈmɔɪnz; Vermont is [vɜrˈmɑnt] (again, glottal t possible); Baton Rouge is usually [ˌbæʔ(ə)n ˈruːʒ]; &c. Any specific names you're wondering about?

Switching languages: stressed a is [æ] in Nevada, but [ɑ] in Colorado.

Indeed, I once heard an Indian man speak of the [(h)ɪˈmɑliəz].

This reminds me that I've read or heard that Mount Everest's name used to be broken into eve and rest, not ever and est.

My first recollection of the word capri is in the brand of juice drinks in plastic pouches, Capri Sun (sp.?). When I was about 3, in Germany, we Americans stressed the second syllable. This is true of American pronunciation now, too, and not just for the drinks but also for the women's trousers that expose the lower calf. I think Americans, and maybe most native-English-speakers, would be surprised to know that the Italian stress is on the first syllable. It seems that we expect other languages, especially French, Italian, and Spanish, not to stress first syllables. I've an Italian friend who thought it a classic example of English-speakers' mangling of Italian when, in the first ever Monty Python episode, Terry Jones, playing an English teacher of Italian, stressed the medial syllable of Stefano. I think Americans may also be unaware that capri comes from Italian. Either way, it seems to me that stressing the latter syllable goes along with doing the same in ballet, éclaire, &c.

This reminds me of the contention over how to say the name of Aaron Copland's work Rodeo: like the fully Americanized noun rodeo [ˈrodio], or as the 'exotic' (or at least 'foreign') [roˈdeɪo]?

American a in and, &c. I think there must be an I.P.A. sign for this; there are signs for sounds I don't even yet know how to make and assume I haven't yet heard. I'm pretty sure I know what you mean about "Continental neutral a and short e" and "Continental flat a"; but I confess that these adjectives sometimes confuse me—especially because they mean specific different things to some. (I know a Frenchman who calls the a in English father a long a, though, to an American, a long a is the one in play and ate. I think his idea of a short a matches mine: that in cat.) (Which reminds me of how R.P. [æ] used to be closer to [ɛ] than it is now. This shift is noticeable in recordings of the Queen over the decades. When The Beatles mocked R.P. in the '60s, have was [hɛv].) You're right that some American accents turn man, plan, fan, &c., into two syllables. I think [ɛ̃] is closer to the sound I'm talking about than [æ] is, though I'm still not satisfied. To me, this sound is strongly not [æ]: when I was about five, I made myself a mental list of the sounds I knew for the letter a at that time: and the examples were the [eɪ] of name, the [æ] of cat, the [ɑ] of mama, the [ʌ] (or maybe [ə]) of mama—and the ?? of and and man.

Back to work.

President Lethe 19:25, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

Modern Greek. I am saying that the letter η is pronounced "ee" wherever it occurs. Thus the letter names are written βητα etc. and sound like "veeta", "eeta", "theeta" and so on. Athens is spelled Αθηνα and pronounced "Atheena": in English atlases (like the Times Atlas, that usually gives the transliterated local name followed by the English name in brackets) you sometimes see "Athina (Athens)" for this reason.

I don't honestly know how I would say "Haitian". Certainly we say "Asian" and "version" with an unvoiced "sh", where Americans (including my mother) use "zh"; similarly with "Persian". On the other hand I think we do use "zh" where "-asian" is a suffix, as in "Australasian" and "Malaysian". I'm not sure about "Eurasian"; I tend to think of it with "zh" but I may still be influenced by my mother! (Until I went away to school I still said "eether" and "neether".)

My mother (who was born in 1918, and came to England in 1949) certainly told me that there was a time when Capri was stressed on the first syllable, and I think she was referring to America too, and it was she who told me that the second-syllable stress came from a song. I still don't know whether the song referred to was Noel Coward's "Bar on the Piccola Marina", which certainly uses that pronunciation, or was earlier than that. (Similarly, ever since the Flanders and Swann song people pronounce the g in "gnu".) The juice is definitely CAPrisun (in England). --Sir Myles na Gopaleen (the da) 10:25, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

• Nevada/Colorado: In my experience, many people in the US pronounce the stressed "a" the same for these words. I tend to wander in my pronunciation of them (see next item), but I think I am more likely to use [æ] for Colorado and [ɑ] for Nevada.
• Situational pronunciation: I grew up in a college town in Oklahoma. Although when I first moved to California, people accused me of speaking in a "twang", a drunken cowboy in a bar in Oklahoma once told me I sounded like a New Yorker (how he had ever heard one is anybody's guess). Then, and to some extent now, I tended to adopt the accent of the people I was around, and I tended to pronounce place names as the locals did: "Drive a load of cement (suh-MENT) to Cement (SEE-ment) and read Will Durant (dur-RANT) in Durant (DOO-rant)." And of course, I watched the ballet roh-DAY-oh, which was about the ROW-dee-oh.
• More on place names: It is reputed that you can tell where a person grew up by the way they pronounce New Orleans. I'm not sure this is as true as it used to be, but two extreme forms are NOO or-LEENZ (almost never heard in that city except from visitors) and NWAR-lnz, a common local pronunciation.--Curtis Clark 14:05, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

As with other changes, the hyperclassicism of one age becomes normal in another. There was a time when translations of Homer referred to "Jupiter", "Minerva" and "Ulysses", and it would have been the height of pedantry to say Zeus, Athene or Odysseus, but now this is normal and it is the old usage that appears bizarre. (I still say "Ajax" and "Achilles", though Penguin translations now use "Aias" and "Achilleus".) Similarly it seems to me horribly affected to write "Herakleitos" and "Ibn Sina" instead of "Heraclitus" and "Avicenna", but in Germany both these are normal. --Sir Myles na Gopaleen (the da) 11:33, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

Aha. I suppose that that explains why James Joyce chose the title Ulysses. I think it's pretty sneaky that Jupiter comes from Zeus with pater stuck on. This also reminds me that I once had a teacher who surprisingly said that, if we wanted to be consistent and right, we would pronounce Odysseus [ˈodəsus], to rhyme with the [zus] pronunciation of Zeus. I wonder how Spanish-speakers write and say Ajax's name, what with the j and the x being [h] or [x] in that language. — President Lethe 14:56, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

Jupiter doesn't exactly come from Zeus: rather, the "Jupiter" is short for something like "Ioves pater", and "Ioves" and "Zeus" have a common Indo-European origin (cf. Sanskrit Dyauh). I pronounce both "Zeus" and the last syllable of "Odysseus" in the same way as "use" (the noun). The form "Ulysses" is a bit of a mystery: in Latin it is "Ulixes", and in some Greek dialects it was "Olytteus". I don't know about Ajax in Spanish: it might well be something like "Ajante". --Sir Myles na Gopaleen (the da) 09:24, 26 July 2006 (UTC)

Hello again.

When I mentioned Jupiter, I was apprehensive that my extreme shortening of the etymology would come across poorly, but I didn't take the time for more. What I had in mind when writing "I think it's pretty sneaky that Jupiter comes from Zeus with pater stuck on" was this, which I read seven or eight years ago:

Consider the case of religion. To form an idea of the religion of a people, archaeologists proceed by inference, examining temples, sanctuaries, idols, votive objects, funerary offerings, and other material remains. But these may not be forthcoming; archaeology is, for example, of little or no utility in understanding the religion of the ancient Hebrews. Yet for the Indo-European-speaking society we can reconstruct with certainty the word for "god," *deiw-os, and the two-word name of the chief deity of the pantheon, *dyeu-pəter- (Latin Jūpiter, Greek Zeus patēr, Sanskrit Dyaus pitar, and Luvian Tatis Tiwaz). The forms *dyeu- and *deiw-os are both derivatives of a root *deiw-, meaning "to shine", and appearing in the word for day in numerous languages (Latin diēs; but English DAY is not related). The notion of deity was therefore linked to the notion of the bright sky.

The second element of the name of the chief god, *dyeu-pəter-, is the general Indo-European word for FATHER. But this word did not refer here to the physical sense of father as parent, but to the social sense of the adult male who is the head of the household, the sense of Latin pater familiās. For the Indo-Europeans, the society of the gods was conceived, in the image of their own society, as patriarchal. The reconstructed words *dyeu- and *deiw-os alone tell us more about the conceptual world of the Indo-Europeans than a roomful of graven images.

That's from Calvert Watkins's "Indo-European and the Indo-Europeans", at the back of the original, 1969 edition of The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language.

Maybe Ulysses is somehow Italian-influenced, along the lines of Alexander and Alessandro.

President Lethe 14:58, 26 July 2006 (UTC)

Quite possibly; we got quite a lot of our early mythological learning from Boccaccio's De Genealogia Deorum. I think, though, that it is more likely that people writing Renaissance Latin were just trying to move the name a little nearer to the Greek: one possible Greek spelling, though not a common one, would be Ουλυσσευς, which would indeed become "Ulysses" in Latin. So this was writers in Latin being hyperclassical in their turn!

Incidentally, I have returned to my original opinion on "deity" and "spontaneity". Words like "propriety" are pronounced with a long i, and words like "continuity" with a long u, so I don't think my "antepenults have short vowels" rule ever applied to "-ity" words. (I can't think of any words ending with "-oity", except for "hoity-toity"!) --Sir Myles na Gopaleen (the da) 09:42, 6 September 2006 (UTC)

And have you noticed how Biblical names (such as Ahasuerus and Leah) have changed from "Ahasu-EER-us" and "LEE-ah" to "Ahasu-AIR-us" and "LAY-ah"? Again, neither of these is actual Hebrew (in which they are "Akhashve-ROSH" and "Le-AH"). --Sir Myles na Gopaleen (the da) 11:10, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

And in Spamalot, I note they mention the Holy Hand Grenade of "Antiokhh". (The normal rule gives "Antiock".) Similarly many people say "Munich" as if it were a German word (though the real German is "München").--Sir Myles na Gopaleen (the da) 15:33, 9 November 2006 (UTC)

German is not regulated!

The text said:

Unlike some languages, such as French and German,

I changed this to:

Unlike some other languages, such as French,

The reason is that German is not regulated. I am a native speaker of German living in Austria, and I can tell you for certain that a) there is no analogue for the Académie Française, and b) if such an institution were founded, it would be razed to the ground by angry masses amidst a horrid bloodbath within, like, three hours. Standard German is a pluricentric language.

Some people act as if the Duden dictionary were authoritative. But it isn't. It's just a dictionary made by a private corporation, like any other; it just has some tradition – in Germany anyway.

David Marjanović | david.marjanovic_at_gmx.at | 00:03 CEST | 2006/6/8

Hi, David.

I'm an American who has contact with multiple native speakers of German, in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland, and who lived in Germany and may end up living in Austria.

If I remember right, I, many months ago, wrote the sentence that you changed.

The thing is this. Take the Rechtschreibreform, for example. When the governments of different countries come together and make a formal, international, governmental agreement on how to spell words, it may well be looked upon as an authoritative body's prescription. Perhaps the "single supreme authoritative body" wording is imperfect.

It's true that not every German-using speaker, writer, publisher, &c., complies with these dictates. But the mere fact that the dictates even exist says something. The fact that not everyone agrees with, or follows, a rule doesn't mean that a body hasn't made the rule.

I am not absolutely sure that any example languages need to be included in the sentence that you have changed.

But I am curious to know your opinion about how we might make the part about German more accurate if we were to keep the German bit in the sentence. This isn't sarcasm or rhetoric; I really am curious to know what ideas you might have for recasting the sentence. ... Of course, a recasting that more precisely and accurately speaks about German may end up being a poor sentence about English (and English is the point of the section in question). ...

I think the distinction I was trying to draw is this: If you're in Canada, or the U.S., or Australia or the U.K. or New Zealand or South Africa, or many other places where English is the first language of a sizable part of the population, and you and someone else are arguing about English usage, you can consult a dictionary, or any number of usage guides, or the style manuals of various publishers, or perhaps a set of guidelines for a government department; but, outside the confines of "How does this publisher do it?" or "How does this linguist recommend it be handled?" or "What does this dictionary say?" or "What's the usage for this government office?", you can't get a definitive answer that somehow reigns supreme over others in any kind of legal way. (I know the word legal is touchy; I don't at all mean to imply that an 'unorthodox' spelling in Austria would be considered a crime.) But (as I understand it (and I could be wrong)), in three major German-speaking countries, you could settle your argument, at least on the matter of spelling, by saying "Look: the Austrian, German, and Swiss governments have agreed that you must have three, not two, fs in Schifffahrt." I wanted to make the distinction so that persons from other countries, reading this article, might get a better understanding of why the section on English hypercorrection doesn't go around saying "x is absolutely right" and "y is absolutely wrong"—because, in English, it really is up to so very many bodies and you really could never get an absolute, universal answer.

Your point that German doesn't really have an equivalent to l'Académe Française is worthwhile.

Anyway, I'm just curious to know what you and anyone else thinks about the purpose of the sentence, how to achieve it, and what 'other languages' (if any) should be mentioned as examples.

Sorry I got babbly.

President Lethe 01:30, 8 June 2006 (UTC)

So perhaps we can distinguish customary languages, like English, that are not regulated at all; statutory languages, like French, that are wholly regulated by an academy (at least in aspiration); and mixed languages, like German, that are basically customary but where there are rulings (say in international treaties) on particular points. Another example of a mixed language is Malay, where Malaysia and Indonesia agreed a common system of spelling. An analogy would be the difference between legal systems based on precedent and legal systems based on a civil code. --Sir Myles na Gopaleen (the da) 12:10, 13 June 2006 (UTC)

reflexives and plurals

Must say I find it a bit strange that overuse of reflexive pronouns is describes as hypercorrection. I think this is becoming more and more common, and trying to point it out as being "wrong" is the actual case of hypercorrection. Using reflexive nouns instead of pronouns is a device used by certain people to indicate a particular level of formality in their speech. You can see this particularly with "yourselves", which is often used to to emphasise that the speaker is refering to more than one person (e.g. I received this letter from yourselves) instead of using "you", which can refer to singular and plural second person. I don't see how any of this is hypercorrection, any more than any of the many distancing devices we use to create formality.

I also have a little comment on overcorrection of noun plurals. I wonder if anyone knows of any languages other than English where speakers try to cling so tightly to archaic plural forms. Two languages that I do speak, Italian and Greek, either assimilate loan words into their original grammatical systems (equivalent to pluralising everything in English with -s/-es), or make no change whatsoever to plurals. It seems strange that in English, people are so keen to use the plural forms of Ancient Greek and Latin in any nouns that we happen to take from those languages, but never try to persuade people to conjugate verbs that come from these language with the ancient forms (e.g. implore is implore, nobody tries to tell us to use implorare or imploro), or indeed to change adjectives for case, gender or number. If we have to follow the rules of ancient languages for nouns, why not also for verbs and adjectives? Seems a peculiarly English thing to me, but I'd be interested to hear if it happens among speakers of other languages.

Please, sign your comments. You can use three or four tildes (~~~ or ~~~~) to do it.

One point. German also has more than two or three plural forms. And, in English, there are many more than just s and es. Children from child, oxen from ox, teeth from tooth, mice from mouse, criteria from criterion, alumni from alumnus, alumnae from alumna, data from datum, crises from crisis, ladies from lady, celli from cello, knives from knife, men from man, matrices from matrix, indices from index, stigmata from stigma, beaux from beau, cherubim from cherub, phalanges from phalanx, &c. This isn't "trying" to "cling" to "archaic" forms. This is using standard English forms. These words may have come from other languages; but they are English words, too—and, as they made their way into English, they brought plurals with them, even if some of the plurals have been distorted. They didn't come as lonely singular nouns needing someone to pluralize them with simple s or es; they already had plurals.

It may seem strange, in comparison to how things are done in some other languages. But every language has its seeming irregularities, its idiosyncrasies—and, in English, plurals are a part of it. English is spoken by very many persons, spread in many cultures, across huge swaths of the globe, and has been growing and changing for more than a thousand years. Some efforts at standardization and regularization succeed; others fail. But children is the standard for pluralizing child. English's flexible, 'living' nature allows many things to happen: English has opus, opera, opuses, and operas, for example, which include a 'classical' plural (often treated as a singular), a 'regular' English es plural, and an s plural that pluralizes something that was (and, to some, still is) already plural.

President Lethe 16:42, 13 June 2006 (UTC)

I am told that there was a time when German even used Latin case endings in declining borrowed or invented Latin nouns ("der Kommunismus"->"des Kommunismi"), though this is now long obsolete. Can anyone confirm or refute? --Sir Myles na Gopaleen (the da) 16:21, 14 June 2006 (UTC)

I've just asked my Austrian former girlfriend about this. She's not super into linguistics, but, in her history studies, does read plenty of older German-language texts. She says she doesn't know of such a thing and would, for both modern and older forms of German, find it strange. She says truly Latin words in German have Latin plurals, but 'Latin-y' ones get German pluralization. We should solicit more persons' info. President Lethe 20:51, 14 June 2006 (UTC)

(I'll respond to your hyperpurism bit sometime in the next day or so, I hope, when I've finished some paying work.) I see that you've changed your "das Kommunismus" to "der Kommunismus". Two points come to mind (and I don't know why I didn't think of them earlier):

1. In the nominative, the plural definite article is die, not des. I'm not just being correcty here—for des is the genitive definite article for singular masculine and neuter, and many nouns do change their spelling in the genitive in German. So, if your example was something you'd specifically seen, maybe that's part of the reason behind it.

2. German Kommunismus = English communism. I wonder how often plural communisms even come up.

President Lethe 15:51, 15 June 2006 (UTC)

My "des Kommunismi" was intended to be a singular genitive, not a plural. I am no German scholar (as you can see) but my point was anecdotal: "Look, German not only reproduces Latin plurals but even used to reproduce Latin case endings: how about that!" I have certainly heard this from an academic friend who has spent a lot of time in Germany, but am not laying it down as true. --Sir Myles na Gopaleen (the da) 09:17, 16 June 2006 (UTC)

Oh, I'm so silly. Sorry about that. I'd forgotten that you'd written "used Latin case endings"; I was thinking of plurals, obviously. Silly me. I'll ask her about the Latin case endings soon. I'll also ask some other German-speakers I know. President Lethe 00:20, 17 June 2006 (UTC)

On what basis do you make your claim that loan words "didn't come as lonely singular nouns needing someone to pluralize them"? In the main that's exactly what happens with loan words. Your list of nouns are not all the same - they are not all loan words. We have "child" and "children" and "ox" and "oxen" from much older forms of English, where the -en plural was indeed part of the standard grammatical system. Plurals like "mice" have their origins in Proto-Indo-European, where shifts in vowels were a common way of marking case and number. Knife-knives and lady-ladies follow the standard form of plurals in English - you seem to be confused because the spelling of the word reflects the pronunciation (which is itself dependent on the rules of the phonological system). But a word like "stigma" is different - the form "stigmata" is not the standard plural, but has a very specific meaning. "Indices" is not the standard form at all - most people would be far happier using "indixes". The same goes for "celli" from "cello". Remember, dictionaries are an artificial construction - just because the OED lists something as a plural form it doesn't somehow cast a spell on the language and make it a reality. The fact is that loan words have to be absorbed into the grammatical systems of a language - that's how languages work, or speakers would somehow have to internalise the grammatical systems of all the languages that the language in question has borrowed from. Again, I'll turn to the subject of other parts of speech - why do we use the base form of verbs from Latin, without all the conjugations? Surely verbs don't come as lonely base forms needing someone to conjugate them? Yes, of course they do. Just like all other parts of speech.

The point about children, oxen, ladies, knives, and mice, for example, is that they are exceptions to the only rule mentioned in the original, unsigned post, which was the addition of s and es.

On mice, you seem to be making my point exactly: the word developed, both in a previous language and in English, without there being only a singular form, mouse, that someone had to pluralize in English by just turning it into mouses.

Stigmata is definitely a word in Standard English, and it is definitely a plural of stigma, with a specific meaning. Some users of English, depending on context, also pluralize stigma as stigmas. But this doesn't change the fact that stigmata is a word in Standard English.

Pluralizing criterion as criterions is highly unusual in Standard English. Criteria is not only a word in Standard English: it is the standard plural of criterion in English.

Indices is a Standard English plural of index. So is indexes. There certainly can be a popularity shift between the two; but indices is a Standard English word, and its standard function is the plural of index.

I may be more likely to say cellos when I talk about more than one cello. But this doesn't change the fact that musicians, in the middle of using English to discuss music, find it expedient to bring in various words from other languages and even inflect them as they're inflected in other languages. It's part of the standard musical speech of users of Standard English. I argue that the mindset isn't "Let me suddenly switch to Italian for one word, for one second, in the middle of my English spiel"; it's "This is how I pluralize this word in this context in English".

Remember: language is an artificial construction; it's made by human beings, with all their competing ideas about how to handle it logically and efficiently, with all their liberalism and conservatism.

"The fact is that loan words have to be absorbed into the grammatical systems of a language - that's how languages work, or speakers would somehow have to internalise the grammatical systems of all the languages that the language in question has borrowed from." Two ways of looking at this:

• Despite saying that they must be absorbed in a certain way, you seem to be fighting against what, it seems, you're describing as their failure to be absorbed.

• They most definitely have been absorbed—and, in English, the system of absorption includes many kinds of plurals, including ones that follow forms that are much more common in other languages.

A continuation of the first point there is that perhaps your "have to" takes place over time. In this case, you—and all of us—are just going to have to wait.

A continuation of the second point is that this English system—the one that includes plural forms that are more common in other languages—may well end up changing and becoming more s- and es-oriented, but, again, we're all going to have to wait.

The plurals that, perhaps, you're wishing for may not be the most popular Standard English forms until we're dead. An American some generations ago had the idea to simplify colour to color. He's had quite a success in the U.S. Yet, even though no other nationality has more native speakers of English than the U.S., the rest of the native-English-speaking world is still quite happy to stick with colour—even the Canadians, right next door, who have a culture, a lifestyle, and even an accent, quite similar to the American ones.

And the dictionaries, one artificial aspect of the entirely artificial matter of language, definitely do play an important role in making language what it is. They cannot exist without being simultaneously prescriptive and descriptive. Writers, printers, publishers, hundreds of years ago, had the idea that English would be better if, for example, spelling were standardized—so that we all wrote murder, instead of some of us using murther, morder, &c. They also wanted to "fix" the language, in the sense of freezing it. The reason we do all write murder, and say it with a th sound, is indeed this standardization effort by persons who put the language down in writing.

In that sense, they succeeded. But their "fixing" efforts have also quite failed in other ways. The language will continue to grow and change.

But, until most speakers and most writers, and most dictionaries, are saying and writing, and telling us to say and write, "There are three criterions that must be met", the truth will remain that the standard plural in Standard English is criteria. Again, it's not "trying", it's not "clinging", and it's not "archaic" (at least in the sense of "No longer current or applicable"). It is the most popular Standard Modern English form of 2006.

Oh. An example of the basis on which I claim that these words "didn't come as lonely singular nouns needing someone to pluralize them". Take gâteau. In the U.K., this is probably the most popular word for most of the confections that Americans call cake (the spongey kind, often iced/frosted, often with candles stuck in it for birthdays). It's a Standard English word—and, in England, it's the standard word to use for this kind of food. And how is this word commonly pluralized in English? With an x on the end. Why? Because it came into English straight from the French with gâteau as the singular and gâteaux as the plural. I'm not sure whether you want to count this word, in either of its forms, as a loan word; but it's a word in Standard English, and it's the most popular word for the thing it describes among tens of millions of native users of English, and the x pluralization seems to be the most popular among those users, and they took the plural right from the same language from which they got the singular.

President Lethe 16:11, 19 June 2006 (UTC)

Other evidence that the words came from other languages with plural forms already attached: the very plural forms that you seem to be rejecting. The first post in this section says "people are so keen to use the plural forms of Ancient Greek and Latin in any nouns that we happen to take from those languages": it doesn't talk about English plurals of Classical words that are made in neither the s/es way nor the Greek/Latin way. It seems to concede, from the start, that the English plural forms came from the same languages from which English got the singular forms. That's another answer to "On what basis do you make your claim that loan words 'didn't come as lonely singular nouns needing someone to pluralize them'?"

It's true that we don't do this with all nouns that we take from other languages, and that we don't do it with verbs.

But there are plenty of other examples, too. Why do we say Iraqi, instead of Iraqan, Iraqish, Iraqer, Iraqese, &c.? The English version involves a straight Roman-alphabet transliteration of the demonym in the original language, where also the ending is the [i] sound. President Lethe 18:15, 19 June 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for your comments again - I enjoyed reading them. I’m afraid that you’re missing most of my points, unfortunately. Firstly, let’s get one thing clear. Language is most certainly not an “artificial construction” – no serious linguist would ever attempt to claim that, with the exception of (what are deliberately titled) artificial languages such as Esperanto, or computer programming languages. Language is in fact natural and organic.

To understand my point about plurals, you really need to know a little about how languages are naturally acquired. What happens first is that children learn single words and phrases in isolation. Later, they start to naturally form rules in their head about how the grammar of their language works. We are able to internalise a huge number of rules for the language we speak, but at the same time we are also capable of learning a huge number of irregular forms. When a child begins to form sentences using past simple, for example, we might expect him/her to correctly use “went” as the past simple form of “go”. This is the first stage of language acquisition – isolated language items. It would later, however, not be unexpected for him/her to use the incorrect form *goed, once the child had internalised the rule (add /Id/ or /t/ or /d/ to the base form) for forming the past tense. Finally, a child is able to learn which verbs are regular, and form past simple in the normal way (i.e. the past simple form doesn’t actually have to be learned), and which are irregular (i.e. the past simple form must be learnt separately). The pattern is the same with plurals.

So, speakers of any language have an internalised grammatical system (completely independent of any dictionary, prescriptive grammar book and so on), that governs the type of constructions that a speaker will produce. In English, part of this system is that nouns take a form of –s in the plural (it’s more complicated than that, both in spelling and more importantly pronunciation, but let’s keep it simple). At the same time, our brains also allow us to store irregular forms; these include women, sheep, oxen, children, stigmata, celli, indices etc. But the point is that these are irregular forms, and have to be learned individually, even by the native speaker (although this is normally effortless). We can seem this taken to the extreme by your example of “stigmata” – we have “stigmas” with the standard plural meaning, and then an irregular plural, “stigmata”, that has a completely different meaning.

So what happens with loan words? Different things, because words come into languages in different ways. When a word comes naturally into a language, it will naturally be absorbed into the grammatical system (a good example, very recently, is “panini” from Italian, now pluralised everywhere I look as “paninis”, even though it’s already a plural in Italian). However, many loan words, especially those of a technical nature, are often in the “possession” of certain people. So, for example, when “phalanx” was brought into the language, the plural “phalanges” (this was news to me by the way) could be imposed to a certain extent on the speakers that used the word, who, by nature of the vocabulary in question, were not likely to have been great in number. It’s easy for an educated elite to choose a word to import (this happens all the time in science, medicine etc.), and then also specify what the plural form (trying, and not always successfully as the article shows, to use the language the word is taken from as a guide). But if “phalanx” comes into wider usage, people will naturally pluralise it to “phalanxes”, and doubtless there will be some kind of conflict with a minority who want to preserve the non-English plural form (they'd probably consider themselves purists, although they would in fact be making their language even less regular). Such plural forms sometimes stick and become totally standard; they might even become so standard that, in the future, they are naturally internalised by a child who grows up hearing them. So we have bacteria, criteria and so on. But these are still irregular forms, which must be learnt separately. Perhaps the most important thing to understand is that if nobody tries to insist on irregular plural forms of loan words when the words came into the language, then the plural forms will follow the –s pluralisation rule. As my “panini” example shows, we simply can’t understand what a plural or singular form is when a word comes from another languages unless we speak that language, so there’s no way both forms come into the language together - we do not bring in an entirely new grammatical system for pluralisation when we borrow a word from another language – that would be impossible. However, you’re right to question my phraseology “loan words have to be absorbed into the grammatical systems of a language”. That wasn’t the right way to put it – I should have said that loan words are naturally absorbed into the grammatical systems of a language. There is a certain amount of influence that can be brought to bear by an educated elite, the media etc.

Your other mistake is to frequently confuse the written form of language with the language itself. Your example of gateau shows nothing. You say that the plural form was brought in with the singular, but you’re only talking about the spelling, which does not matter in the slightest. The majority of speakers would pronounce gateaux “ga-toes” (not sure what font you all use for IPA). It doesn’t matter how you want to spell it (you could write it in hieroglyphics if you wanted), that would be the natural plural form. Spelling systems are entirely external to the real language. Standard spellings don’t influence how we speak, only how we write.

The whole point about plural forms of loan words in the hypercorrection article is that through a combination of ignorance and pedantry, many “incorrect” (in both the English grammatical system and the language that the words are taken from) forms have been imposed on us. I merely tried to point out that, in my view, the whole business of trying to impose foreign, often archaic forms in plurals is both silly and a waste of time.

Finally, I’m not really sure where you’re going with your “Iraqi” comments. There is no rule for forming adjectives in English – we have a certain number of typical adjectival endings (e.g. –ish, -al, -ic etc.), but we have plenty of words without any such ending (quiet, red, hot). So anything goes for adjectives - it's not the same as plurals. My point about the verbs was just to show how artificial and arbitrary the imposition of foreign plurals is – nobody bothers trying to impose foreign endings on English verbs than come to us from other languages, but the reasons for this aren’t clear to me. It’s just as logical to try and impose “I imploro" on a population as “This school has introduced a number of new syllabi”. But for some reason, the pedants have latched on to plural nouns only.

Regarding signing my comments, I’m sorry but I didn’t know that that was some kind of rule. And without wanting to sound argumentative, I can’t really understand the point when other users go by the name President Lethe, Sir Myles somethingorother etc. Doesn’t really tell you much about them. Anyway, I will sign off as “Graham”.

Thanks for your reply, Graham.

The reason for signatures is that they help us keep track of who's talking. You and I might join Sir Myles on the bus, all three of us strangers to one another, and understand quite well, from faces and voices, who's talking. Here, we rely on signatures to know that the author of one sentence is or isn't the same as the author of another. (Text not far below where you type your posts probably says "On talk pages, please sign your comment by typing four tildes (~~~~).")

From your previous posts, I grasped most of what you've articulated in more words in your most recent one.

When I say that language is artificial, I mean, as I said, that it's made up by human beings. Sure, human beings are part of nature, and much of what they do, including forming languages and passing them on to their offspring, is part of their innate nature—but we tend to separate human nature from the rest of nature, and often to call it 'artificial'. The decision to pluralize with s or anything else, whether as a sound or as a written character, is a creation of human beings, even if it developed, and is perpetuated, in a way remarkably similar to the development and perpetuation of the non-human things in nature.

Your points about how we learn the usual ways of doing things in language, and how we learn the exceptional ways, and how some exceptional ways come along because of who brings in the words, and how some exceptional ways are either quickly abandoned or never brought in in the first place—all these points are worthwhile, and all of them I already grasped.

I wouldn't deem it a mistake to "confuse the written language with the language itself". In this age of literacy, the two are highly dependent. True, we learn to speak and listen before we learn to write and read. The two can indeed be discussed separately. But one thing that I didn't grasp from your earlier posts was that you wanted to restrict the discussion to spoken language.

I disagree with the absoluteness of your "Spelling systems are entirely external to the real language. Standard spellings don’t influence how we speak, only how we write." A simple example is how many native users of English begin life pronouncing the word "and" as [æn] and later get into the habit of pronouncing—sometimes even consciously decide, not through being told to, but simply from reading, to pronounce—the word as [ænd].

The point about Iraqi was that it was another example of deciding what ending to put on a word (whether a noun, a verb, an adjective, whatever) on the basis of another language's ending. It's almost certain that, if the local languages in the Middle East made the adjectival or demonymic form end in an er or an sound, for example, we would be doing that in English, too. But part, if not all, of the reason why we end it in the i sound is that it's how many demonyms are ended in Arabic, too.

"The whole point about plural forms of loan words in the hypercorrection article is that through a combination of ignorance and pedantry, many 'incorrect' (in both the English grammatical system and the language that the words are taken from) forms have been imposed on us." That's the point of those paragraphs, or it's your point? Most of the hypercorrections mentioned in the article are, I think, used not by the majority of the native-English-speaking population, but by a certain affecting subset—which I take as evidence that they have not been "imposed" on most of us, but that a minority (sometimes large), through various thought processes (the basic ones outlined at the beginning of the article) use them because they're misunderstanding something.

Perhaps, though, you would consider this (what I'm about to say) as an example of imposition. You talked about the pedants latching on to nouns only. The first time I ever learned of a plural for index, it was indices. I took this in as naturally as the child takes in went or gone or teeth. Maybe this was imposed on me by a pedant. But, for me, it was the plural. It wasn't a matter of "Now, children, let's all pretend we're Romans for a moment and say indices". It was simply "plural of index = indices"—and I, the victim of this imposition, certainly didn't have any feelings of "Yeah, I'm gonna be a pedant who knows a classical plural! Indices, indices, indices!" (I hope you don't mind my lame humor here. When I say things like "victim of this imposition", I am not mocking your ideas; I'm having some fun in an effort to keep this discussion light ... though I know I may fail.)

The one major point that, from your very first post, I felt quite unsure of was what you hoped to accomplish, why you were bringing this up. That's one part of your words about which I felt quite in the dark. Now, though, I see your "I merely tried to point out that, in my view, the whole business of trying to impose foreign, often archaic forms in plurals is both silly and a waste of time" and I understand. I must say I agree with you on part of this—but, as we also seem to agree, criteria is here to stay for now.

Though I understand the two main origins of it, I think it's silly and wasteful that we have the comma in "Sam said, 'I'm a pedant'" 'imposed' on us—and I refuse to use it. It seems more writers are catching on to this (a whole other story); but it'll probably be plenty more years before most publishers are doing it 'my' way. :-) Also, in at least ten years of using it, I've never got anyone else to copy me in informally using kz as a shorter form of ’cause, cuz, cos, &c. ... Of course, this is all part of the irrelevant, not-the-language-itself matter of written English, and shows nothing. :-)

This has been a stimulating discussion. I better answer Sir Myles's points about hyperpurisms soon.

President Lethe 00:52, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

Penii

Penii is given as an example of a hypercorrection. It's a word I and others my age use, when trying to be funny. We're not hypercorrecting, we're mocking. It's like the Colbert Report. I've never seen it used in a hypercorrected context. moink 00:34, 16 June 2006 (UTC)

Talk amongst yourselves

Is the following necessarily correct?

In such common phrases as "Talk amongst yourselves", the reflexive pronoun is used where the reciprocal pronoun is grammatically appropriate. If Sam, Pat, and Joe really talk "among themselves", they are talking to themselves—Sam to Sam, Pat to Pat, Joe to Joe. The reciprocal pronoun accurately describes this reciprocral situation: "Sam, Pat, and Joe are talking with one another" (or each other) leaves no doubt that Sam is talking with Pat and Joe, Pat is talking with Sam and Joe, and Joe is talking with Sam and Pat.

If "you" is taken as a plural group, wouldn't the group be reflexively speaking to itself, and not necessarily a command to each individual to speak to him or herself (or should it be himself or herself ;) )? — ዮም (Yom) | contribs • Talk 00:08, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

There is some merit to your suggestion.

But (1) the group isn't expected to speak in one voice (imagine everyone saying in unison "How do you do?" and expecting a unifed response from himself or herself, rather than from a person nearby)—and (2) try getting away from this idiom and using another verb, maybe with another preposition. Addressing a group, say "Serve yourselves some cake"; now, addressing the same group, say "Serve one another some cake". There's probably a difference there. Or picture the difference between "Now, you two, I want you to kick yourselves" and "Now, you two, I want you to kick each other".

It's my experience that the person who says "We were talking among ourselves" (instead of "We were talking with one another") is more likely to be the "Pat and myself hope to find yourself doing well" type than someone who doesn't say "among ourselves" is.

President Lethe 01:03, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

Another thing to think about is the preposition. When we say "Joe sang to himself, and Alex sang to herself", we know that Joe sang to Joe and that Alex sang to Alex. But "among"? "Joe sang among himself"? How did he do that? Generally, a plural reflexive can be split apart into multiple singular reflexives (e.g., "Joe and Alex sang to themselves" can be broken down into "Joe sang to himself, and Alex sang to herself").

Now, yes, the people might have a party among themselves—but having a party is something they can easily do together, collectively, and isn't something that requires reciprocity. (It can be reciprocal—they can party with one another—; but it doesn't have to be.) The kind of talking expected with the idiomatic command is, I argue, definitely reciprocal: it is expected that each unit of the collective will talk to another unit, not to itself. — President Lethe 01:25, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

'is is that'; 'better of the >2'

I thought I'd introduce two new points at the Talk page before adding them to the article, in case others want to express views on them.

• Very often, I hear persons whose jobs involve public speaking say things like "The problem is is that we need more resources." I judge this usually a hypercorrection (or at least some kind of error) based on the necessary repetition of is in "What the problem is is that we need more resources." It's clearly not just stuttering repetition; and I strongly doubt that they're consciously starting off with "What the problem is [* * *]" and then consciously deciding to eliminate what but keep the second is.

• I sometimes hear things like "She is definitely the smarter of my colleagues" (from a person with more than two colleagues). As far as I can tell, this has an origin similar to that of "a picture of Alex and I": the speaker heard proscription against using the superlative in things like "put your best foot forward" (when there were only two feet) and so got the idea that comparatives were somehow to be preferred over superlatives.

Any thoughts?

President Lethe 19:30, 30 June 2006 (UTC)

Taj Mahal

From my Talk page:

I agree with the pronunciation of Taj Mahal given in the article, but I think the blooper mentioned therein reflects ignorance rather than hyperforeignism. It is hyperforeignism when one applies rules of a language to exceptions in the same language. It is ignorance if one applies rules of French pronunciation to Hindi. I personally think that the example is out of place. Hence my edit. 138.89.21.183 14:37, 4 July 2006 (UTC)

Hi there. Thanks for your message. What shall I call you, 138.89.21.183?

I grasp your distinction between intralingual and interlingual errors—but I'm not sure it's shared by all with views on this matter.

For example, that section of the "Hypercorrection" article defines a hyperforeignism thus: "When pronunciation and spelling of foreign loan words are erroneously based on rules that apply to other foreign words but not to those in question, the phenomenon is hyperforeignism. The following are examples."

It doesn't say "other words from the same foreign language".

I think the mindset is simply "In many foreign words, j has the sound [ʒ]—and Taj is a foreign word and so gets [ʒ] for its j."

We describe this same interligual issue in the bits about French forte vs. Italian forte, about pronunciation of ch in machismo, about the j in Beijing (same issue as that in Taj Mahal), and about the French acute accent on the Italian word grande.

Obviously, though, the difference between your idea and my idea hinges on whether we count these interlingual issues as hyperforeignism or not.

By the way, others may receive your edits better if (1) you use edit summaries and (2) your edit summaries are clearer than "(Ignorance)".

President Lethe 15:48, 4 July 2006 (UTC)

Can't put up with this

"Up" is actually part of the phrasal verb to put up, and its placement before put is extremely unusual. The correct way to phrase the sentence would be, "This is the sort of English with which I will not put up."

Not sure this is right. The actual phrasal verb Churchill was using was put up with, which means something different from put up. "Put up with" has the specific meaning "to endure or tolerate"; "put up" generally means "to store," and that isn't what Churchill was saying. The proposed recasting of the sentence doesn't fix it, and the only possible idiomatic phrasing is ". . . that I will not put up with." Smerdis of Tlön 16:02, 16 July 2006 (UTC)

Hi, Smerdis of Tlön. This is also being discussed in an earlier section on this Talk page, called "Churchill's famous quote". You are, of course, right. Just before finding your note, I reverted User:Chris Weimer's edit; my edit summary says "the ver[b] 'put up' is quite different from the verb 'put up with'. if, WITH my friend, i PUT UP some shelves, it's not at all the same as when i PUT UP WITH my friend." — President Lethe 20:36, 16 July 2006 (UTC)

The discussion in the section above isn't really a discussion. It's just where I posted about the matter several months ago, when my original version had been removed. After that post, I put in my shorter version, which you see in the article. But that section is where Chris Weimer posted today. — President Lethe 20:40, 16 July 2006 (UTC)