People don’t pronounce the th? Are you all a buncha slackjawed country bumpkins?
How do you feel about words like “knight” which were not “intended” to be spoken note as “nite” but with both the “k” and “gh” pronounced, but no longer are? What about the missing “l” in “folk”?
Are you against regional accents? If so, why isn’t Australian English or South African English similarly “lazy”? I just don’t understand why anyone would consider somebody speaking the language they grew up with and the sounds they grew up with “lazy,” just because they don’t make the sounds of the prestige “neutral” dialect. It would never occur to me to characterize somebody from Brooklyn who uses “dese, dem, and dose” for “these, them, and those” as speaking “lazy” English. He’s just speaking with a Brooklyn accent. And I personally hate it how regional accents are becoming more and more watered down because of the influence of mass media. Accents are beautiful.
My lecturers would beg to differ, but I suppose it’s a matter of perspective. From a British perspective, the ‘r’ is being added (even though at one time both our countries used heavily rhotic accents).
Wait a minute, you’re making a huge leap here with your assumptions. When I read an entry in the OED, it does not claim that the pronunciation it offers is the ‘default’ pronunciation, or that it is the only pronunciation. In fact, it often gives two, a British and a US one.
It’s not like someone sat down one day and invented the English language. I find the idea that there is ‘intent’, that someone intended on certain words to sound certain ways to be very strange.
‘Lazy’ is just a really bad term to use, because it assumes a lot. Sometimes it’s just the way people talk, and they’re not purposeful relaxing their speech because they can’t be bothered concentrating on how they pronounce things.
I consider whatever to be most commonly used in a given area to be ‘standard’, not what is used by a small percentage of the country.
Fine. Throw out the term lazy. I’m not attached to it.
I’m not making a huge leap. I don’t know, but I’m pretty sure that the OED doesn’t claim, as you state above, that the pronunciation it offers is the default one. But what else would it be? If it’s just a wag, why put them in at all? If you don’t like the word “intent” don’t use it. I don’t think someone sat down and determined how to pronounce every word in the language. I think they heard the word, and put the pronunciation guide in there based on what they heard. It came from somewhere, didn’t it?
If you are saying that the pronunciation provided with the word isn’t the suggested pronunciation, what the hell is it? And as I asked before, why provide it at all? Why not just leave the thing out of the dictionary as being a waste? Because if you look up a word that you don’t know the definition of and have never heard it spoken before, you might just use the pronunciation guide to take a stab at pronouncing it. That pronunciation came from someone’s idea of how the word sounds. If there are more than one pronunciation provided, that still doesn’t change what the guide is there for.
For instance, the word coupon. I’ve heard people pronounce it “Queuepon” and “coopon”. I have no idea which one is “correct”, and I’m guessing they are used regionally. I also don’t really care. But I have never seen a word like “both” with two pronunciations. “boath” or “boaf”? Have never seen it, but I’ve heard it.
I’ve thrown out the words “intent” and “lazy” (however they are pronounced. I don’t care!) Select the verbiage that makes you happy. I’m already happy. I leave this thread to the rest of you linguists, academics, and speech therapists. I’m sure you’ll still find something to argue about.