I was watching an old commercial a minute ago featuring “Robert the Robot”, only the last word was pronounced “ro-but”, not “ro-bot”. What is the story about the change to the current pronunciation?
I hypothesize this is simply a function of the announcer’s accent. Do you know approximately where he or she is from?
Some accents may come up with an “o” but others will give you ɒ, ɔ, ɑ, ə…
The commercial was from the 40’s or 50’s I think, and it was a midwestern accent.
I954 or so, Ideal Toys. Robert the Robot | American Classic Toy
Wiktionary lists the pronunciation with the schwa as “dated” (and under RP) but there is no link; Webster’s Third Edition has it as one of the alternatives, though.
That’s how Zoidberg pronounced it when he addressed Bender on Futurama - perhaps as a nod to his throwback Borscht Belt persona.
In lots of 1950s sci-fi movies that have robots, that’s how they pronounce robot, too many to list here. I’ve been binging them on Amazon Prime, so I’m kind of used to that pronunciation.
One similar jarring pronunciation from back then is in the 1953 movie Invaders From Mars. The boy has a telescope and tells his father that he wants to look at Orion. Instead of saying it as we do “O-RYE-in”, he said “OAR-ee-in”. It took me about 30 minutes to figure out what he was referring to.
I started saying robut because of Zoidberg and never stopped.
This undated clip (probably from the 1940s - Electro was a feature at the 1939 World’s Fair) presents “Elektro the Robot”, but at the very beginning pronounces it ROB -ut, with a short “o” in the first syllable. It’s always bothered me.
My 8th grade science teacher always said “robarts”. As in “robarts are going to take over the world” Never could take him quite seriously, he also said “The interesting thingin about” whatever the topic was.
But I still remember why there is wind. “The tilt of the earth leads to unequal heating of the atmosphere where hot wet air replaces cool dry air.” I think I’m leaving out some of the quote, but that was damn near 40 years ago.
Old radio and television is great for identifying shifts in pronunciation and usage. “Vitamin” and “Protein” get mentioned in commercials from the 40s and (as I recall) get pronounced “vita-meen” and “pro-te-in” for example.
And shifts in syllable emphasis, like “ice CREAM cone” and “boy SCOUTS.”
I was just going to mention that! “Chinese FOOD” becomes “CHINESE food” (and ultimately “Chinese” (as in “We’re going out for Chinese”)).
You also hear things like “Hamburger sandwich” instead of “Hamburger”
The earliest pronunciation I’ve been able to find is from a review of the New York debut of R.U.R. in the Tribune on October 10, 1922.
A robot (pronounced Rubb-bit)
Other articles in different papers on Nov. 5 and Nov. 22 confirm this.
the correct pronunciation of “Robots” is “rub-its.”
The pronunciation of “robot” can be fixed by remembering the phrase “Don’t robot in.”
But a Pittsburgh reviewer said on Oct. 15
the robot (pronounced “robbut”)
Both rubbit and robbut are probably just dialectal variations, more similar to one another than the pronunciations given above. They must have been accepted because after some early 1923 mentions newspapers stopped giving the pronunciation of the word in articles about the play. That only happens when they assume most readers don’t need a guide anymore.
Asimov’s robot named Robbie appeared in a 1939 story. For assonance I have to think that he intended “robot” to be pronounced “rob-it” or halfway between rubbit and robbut.
That’s how Paul “The Rest of the Story” Harvey used to pronounce it.
Thanks. I haven’t heard a Harvey story in a long time (but I listen to 1940s radio reasonably often), so I had forgotten (or never noticed that.
He pretty much was a 40s radio announcer until he died.