I am wondering whether the pronounciation of the word “a” (the indefinite article) as “ay” has roots independent of the pronounciation of the letter “a” as “ay.”
(By “ay” I mean what is called the “long a” sound, not a “long i” sound, of course.)
-FrL-
I would think so; all of the letters have names and the names are often not all that closely-related to their sound (W, for example). The characters have names distinct from their sounds in many other languages too, so I would say, yes, the letter A has a name (‘ay’) and happens to sometimes sound like ‘ay’, but the two things, although obviously not completely unrelated, are distinct functions.
There’s also the issue of the “word a” being pronounced quite often as “ah” or even more as the schwa “uh” sound. In fact, about the only time “word a” is pronounced “ay” in my experience is when it’s used for emphasis. Most often that emphasis is to stress that one item is being referred to as opposed to more than one.
I could be wrong about the frequency, of course, and that may depend on dialects and regional pronunciations. But there it is, anyway.
Right, I asked this question because I noticed that people pronounce it as “ay” just when they’re trying to enunciate exaggeratedly.
I speculate that this “enunciated pronounciation” derives from the pronounciation of the name of the letter itself, not from any pronounciation of the word “a” which developed independently of the name of the letter. I was wondering if this can be confirmed or disconfirmed.
-FrL-
Interesting speculation, for sure. But consider the different ways of saying “the” in its normal “thuh” and its stressed “thee” variations. I would expect the same dynamics to be involved.
Unless somebody has trouble, due to dialect predilections, of pronouncing the “word I” as “eye”, it’s only in lampoons of rustic speech to have it be “ah” or worse. It’s probably easiest to tell where somebody’s from by how they say “word I” and how, if it all, it differs from their way of saying the word for what you see with.
One of the funniest things is to hear a Southerner or a C&W singer exaggerate the “word I” to try to sound uptown. It is to laugh. In those cases the “word I” becomes at least two syllables, and I have heard three!
Branching off this question, I wonder if the /ei/ pronunciation is a derived emphasis of the original schwa pronunciation, or if the schwa is a deterioration (no moral connotation here) of the /ei/; ie, which is the original?
And can it core a apple?
Free Variation in pronunciation is a deeply interesting topic in Linguistics for me. I suggest you do a web search on that term (be sure to put it in quotation marks) and see what pops up. I’ll do the same when I get home tonight (I’m in Hong Kong and have to catch a plane soon).
“a” is pronounced “uh” in rapid speech and “ay” in careful speech because of a phenomenon that’s common in English called vowel reduction. That means the vowel is shortened and becomes a schwa. This happens to many English vowels in non-stressed positions.
Yeah, I’m aware of that phenomenon.
What I was wondering though, is whether the pronounciation of the word as /ei/ itself has origins independent of the pronounciation of the name of the letter. The vowel reduction explanation rules out either of these possibilities–it’s not explaining what I’m asking for an explanation of, since I’m asking about the origin of the unshortened pronounciation.
-FrL-
Sorry, I misunderstood your question, though I think that explains some questions other people had.
According to the OED, a is the weakening of the Old English ane meaning “one.” As it was weakened, the vowel became a schwa, though as a number it remained /ei/. I would conclude from this that the /ei/ pronunciation comes from the earlier, unweaked version. I could, however, be misunderstanding the etymology in the OED, so please don’t take this as gospel.
When referring to the letter A, most Irish people will say “ah” - but they are probably influenced by the vestiges of the Irish language.
Good find, that.
Also, my previous post should have said “neither” where I put “either” but no matter.
-FrL-