Many of the self proclaimed intelligentsia, politcians, bureaucrats, t.v. newspeople, and academics pronounce ‘s’ as ‘sh’. It’s becoming more comon in the past few years. Street, straight, strong, style, strain, are some of the favorites. It’s the new wave, the in thing, cutting edge, they are with it and you peons who don’t see it are being left behind. Incidently I still have not gotton over that horrendous concoction ‘ongoing’. Somebody please defend the English language!!
What’s the question?
The English language pulls out of the station whether you are on board or not. Today’s mispronunciation becomes tomorrow’s pronunciation. Today’s incorrect usage becomes tomorrow’s standard usage. If you want the language defended then you should be speaking the way they did in the 1400s. Try reading a little Chaucer.
Common is commonly spelled with two m’s. Even by politicians which you also misspelled. Incidentally, you also misspelled “incidentally”. And I won’t even mention “gotton”. Well, I guess maybe I just did. How’s THAT for defending the English language?
You’re welcome.
ETA, you misspelled “mispronunciation” too. Work on your spelling before you preach on pronunciation.
People don’t “pronounce letters.” People speak by nature, without regard to letters. (Otherwise, no one would be able to talk until the could read, obviously.) Letters are used to represent speech that we already produce, (or to represent thoughts and ideas in extended discourse).
Now, if you are saying that these politicians and “intelligentsia” are affecting their speech–that is, changing how they would normally speak for some reason–then that’s different. However, that would not be “mispronouncing,” but rather just an affectation. Moreover, I haven’t heard what you describe, and I usually notice things like this, so maybe you could provide some examples (audio clips) so that we can know what we’re talking about here.
What country is this alleged rampant mis-pronunciation taking place? Here in USA, where I watch and listen to the media news daily, I cannot recall EVER hearing it. And as a past English Major, I am somewhat of a linguistics and grammar nerd. Maybe you could show us a link with an example of what you claim? Thanks.
Yeah, I don’t know where the OP getshit from.
Hwæt! We Gar-Dena in gear-dagum
þeod-cyninga, þrym gefrunon,
hu ða æþelingas ellen fremedon!
Oft Scyld Scefing sceaþena þreatum
monegum mægþum meodo-setla ofteah;
egsode eorl[as] syððan ærest wearð
feasceaft funden; he þæs frofre gebad,
weox under wolcnum, weorð-myndum þah,
oðæt him æghwylc þara ymb-sittendra
ofer hron-rade hyran scolde,
gomban gyldan. Þæt wæs god cyning!
All the OP’s examples are st-. I think it’s called “palatization of a sibilant before a dental” — making it more of a fricative. The Beatles did this sometimes when singing (not talking) in 1963 (“…I think you’ll undershtand…”) — they had been told (maybe by Brian Epstein, who was into Judy Garland and the like) that the professional thing was to avoid sibilants, which are difficult to record without distortion.
I haven’t noticed an uptick in this lately, but maybe NPR broadcasters are advised to do this, for the same reason.
At first Chaucer looks like a foreign language, but if you look again, it is not that hard to understand.
WHAN that Aprille with his shoures soote
The droghte of Marche hath perced to the roote,
And bathed every veyne in swich licour,
Of which vertu engendred is the flour;
Whan Zephirus eek with his swete breeth
Inspired hath in every holt and heeth
The tendre croppes, and the yonge sonne
Hath in the Ram his halfe cours y-ronne,
And smale fowles maken melodye,
That slepen al the night with open ye,
(So priketh hem nature in hir corages:
Than longen folk to goon on pilgrimages,
And palmers for to seken straunge strondes,
To ferne halwes, couthe in sondry londes;
And specially, from every shires ende
Of Engelond, to Caunterbury they wende
^ When I first read the OP, I literally laughed out loud because what he was describing sounded so absurd to me. I certainly hadn’t noticed anything of the kind, and the idea of it actually being a thing seemed utterly ridiculous. Then I actually tried thinking about it hard, to try to figure out of there was any possible validity to what he observed. While I haven’t noticed an increase in what he’s talking about, I think it’s true that there is, indeed, a way of pronouncing certain words - as described above, only when there’s an S followed by a T - in such a way that, while not exactly approaching Sean Connery levels, IS kind of slurring the S and T together in such a way that the S is not enunciated as clearly, or distinguished as audibly, from the T. And it does result in, for lack of a better word, sounding…subtly…like “shtreet” or “shtyle.” Not as overtly as Sean Connery would say it. But I actually kind of get what he means.
The question is whether this is something that’s becoming more prevalent than it was before. As to that, I have no clue.
We discussed this previously:
It happens only in words with an st sound. In fact, it may happen only in words with a str sound. It only happens in certain regional and social groups even if you restrict yourself to those letter combinations. It’s hard to say which groups those are. Even in those groups where it’s happening it’s not consistent. There might even be groups where any tr sound is pronounced differently. In any case, your claim, Lamaisonbleu, that this change in pronunciation happens for all s sounds and happens particularly for “self proclaimed intelligentsia, politcians, bureaucrats, t.v. newspeople, and academics” is blatantly false. In any case, should this change become more common in the future, it wouldn’t be a big deal. All languages are always slowly changing. That’s how languages work. No languages ever stay the same in pronunciation, grammar, vocabulary, etc. In 500 years a language will change enough that it will be difficult for people from a given year to understand the people from 500 years back (if they could somehow talk to them) In 1000 years it will be very difficult or even impossible for people from a given year to understand the people from 1000 years back. After 1500 years it will be just plain impossible. Nothing stays the same forever.
Moderator Action
I don’t see a question here.
Moving thread from GQ to MPSIMS.
The only example I can think of is shtamina
I do notice a slight slip in some BBC announcers (well, Katie Derham, actually) towards “orcheshtra”, but it doesn’t leap out of the loudspeaker at me. I think it’s an individual thing, rather than a major social shift.
BTW, I don’t doubt there were plenty of people in Chaucer’s day who deplored all those rude and common Anglo-Saxonisms in someone who worked in government service, no less.
And who knows who might have been in the back row at some performance of Beowulf chuntering away at some linguistic annoyance?
If you pronounce truck like “chruck,” you will probably pronounce string as “sh-chring.”
Or, for IPA purists: [tʃɹʌk] and [ʃtʃɹɪŋ]. And, yes, I realize it may be more of a palatalized [t] than a [tʃ]. For me personally, however, it is definitely a full on affricate.
Yes, it’s common in my accent, if not simply a part of the Chicago accent, to render “tr” sounds as “chr” or similar. And “str” combos become “shtr.” It’s nothing to do with academics or intelligentsia or whatever nonsense the OP is about. It’s simply the dialect. I don’t know nothin bout pronouncing “style” with a “sh,” though.
The same exact thing is done to “truck”, “train”, etc. in my dialect, as well. I believe this to be very common in American English dialects, and common in the U.K. as well – especially in relaxed conversation-speed speech. Not sure about Irish English speakers.
In my dialect, however, “s” in “string”, “straight”, etc. will not typically palatize to [ʃ] to yield, e.g., [ʃtʃɹɪŋ]. However, such sound changes are routine in human language, and pronunciations such as [ʃtʃɹɪŋ] are to be expected from some group of speakers.
Potty mouth! 
The only thing I’ve noticed is a shift to pronouncing Budapest as Budapesht, and on the phone I have currently, the google maps navigation voice calls one local road “Park Shinder” instead of “Park Center”.