# Supposably - have mispronounced words become standard? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [February 17, 2015, 12:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/supposably-have-mispronounced-words-become-standard/712875 "2015-02-17T00:36:45Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 14
**Author:** ![eburacum45](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eburacum45/32/8690_2.png) [@eburacum45](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/eburacum45)\ **Post date:** [March 7, 2015, 7:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/supposably-have-mispronounced-words-become-standard/712875/261 "2015-03-07T07:26:51Z")
“Thee operators do not require an electrician to wire them assuming an outlet is within 1000 feet. Thuh system is low voltage. Everything wires to thuh control boards.” I suppose that works, even in parts of England. Of course in some parts of Yorkshire you’d say; “T’ operators don’t need an electrician to wire them if there’s an outlet within 1000 feet. T’ system’s low voltage. Everything wires to t’ control boards.” or similar. ---
**Author:** ![abderian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/9de0a6/32.png) [@abderian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/abderian)\ **Post date:** [March 7, 2015, 6:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/supposably-have-mispronounced-words-become-standard/712875/262 "2015-03-07T18:36:09Z")
> [@Ambivalid](#): > > I see the word “to” mistakenly being used in place of the word “too” _all the freaking time_. So it’s only a matter of time before “to” means “too” 2. I keep seeing “could of” and “would of”, as in “we could of gone to the party but we would of been out too late.” I can’t tolerate the thought of that becoming acceptable. ---
**Author:** ![wolfpup](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wolfpup/32/10618_2.png) [@wolfpup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wolfpup)\ **Post date:** [March 7, 2015, 6:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/supposably-have-mispronounced-words-become-standard/712875/263 "2015-03-07T18:45:50Z")
> [@abderian](#): > > I keep seeing “could of” and “would of”, as in “we could of gone to the party but we would of been out too late.” > > I can’t tolerate the thought of that becoming acceptable. [A handy Internet grammar lesson](http://fc08.deviantart.net/fs70/i/2012/286/d/1/internet_grammar_by_epicmanphilip-d5ho49b.jpg). 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![wonky](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wonky/32/393_2.png) [@wonky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wonky)\ **Post date:** [March 7, 2015, 6:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/supposably-have-mispronounced-words-become-standard/712875/264 "2015-03-07T18:59:18Z")
> [@abderian](#): > > I keep seeing “could of” and “would of” I keep seeing it, too. In this thread. ---
**Author:** ![Sailboat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sailboat/32/461_2.png) [@Sailboat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sailboat)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2015, 6:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/supposably-have-mispronounced-words-become-standard/712875/265 "2015-03-13T18:18:29Z")
Ran into this little gem today: “…the up most important thing is…” ---
**Author:** ![dougie\_monty](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/439d5e/32.png) [@dougie\_monty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dougie_monty)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2015, 9:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/supposably-have-mispronounced-words-become-standard/712875/266 "2015-03-13T21:56:59Z")
> [@Sailboat](#): > > Ran into this little gem today: “…the up most important thing is…” You’d better open your eyes and quit running into gems ---
**Author:** ![Jackmannii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jackmannii/32/311_2.png) [@Jackmannii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jackmannii)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2015, 12:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/supposably-have-mispronounced-words-become-standard/712875/267 "2015-03-14T00:02:22Z")
Mispronunciations and grammatical errors are mildly annoying. But if I hear one more pundit talking about conditions “on the ground” “at the end of the day”, I’ll…well, I’ll make a nasty face at the radio. ---
**Author:** ![BwanaBob](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bwanabob/32/2985_2.png) [@BwanaBob](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BwanaBob)\ **Post date:** [November 3, 2015, 8:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/supposably-have-mispronounced-words-become-standard/712875/268 "2015-11-03T20:05:21Z")
> [@pulykamell](#): > > Just a quick Google, but [here is an example of it.](https://www.englishclub.com/pronunciation/the.htm) I forgot about this thread. This link makes me feel somewhat vindicated. ---
**Author:** ![Wallaby](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/dc4da7/32.png) [@Wallaby](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wallaby)\ **Post date:** [November 3, 2015, 10:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/supposably-have-mispronounced-words-become-standard/712875/269 "2015-11-03T22:27:32Z")
> [@BwanaBob](#): > > I forgot about this thread. This link makes me feel somewhat vindicated. But as others have said - it’s not a rule. If anything it’s a mis-pronunciation. It’s far easier to say ‘thee apple’ than ‘thuh apple’ - the vowel sounds just slide together so much easier when using ‘thee’ - when using ‘thuh’ there is a complete stop in the flow of sounds coming from the mouth (no doubt there is some technical term - not sure what). So because people are lazy and want to make life that bit easier, they (naturally) fall into the trap of saying things the easy way rather than the slightly more awkward way. So the mispronounce the word ‘the’ in some cases. It’s not a rule. The proof is if a speaker is making a declamatory speech and pausing between words for effect - ‘He is…the …only…choice for the presidency!’ - they will often use ‘thuh’, because without the need to run/slide words together (as in normal speech), the brain doesn’t automatically trigger ‘Thee’. No different to why many people slightly mispronounce ‘library’, ‘February’, and ‘tracts’. ---
**Author:** ![Mister\_Rik](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mister_rik/32/491_2.png) [@Mister\_Rik](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mister_Rik)\ **Post date:** [November 4, 2015, 8:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/supposably-have-mispronounced-words-become-standard/712875/270 "2015-11-04T08:44:54Z")
> [@Wallaby](#): > > But as others have said - it’s not a rule. If anything it’s a mis-pronunciation. > > It’s far easier to say ‘thee apple’ than ‘thuh apple’ - the vowel sounds just slide together so much easier when using ‘thee’ - when using ‘thuh’ there is a complete stop in the flow of sounds coming from the mouth (no doubt there is some technical term - not sure what). > > So because people are lazy and want to make life that bit easier, they (naturally) fall into the trap of saying things the easy way rather than the slightly more awkward way. So the mispronounce the word ‘the’ in some cases. It’s not a rule. The proof is if a speaker is making a declamatory speech and pausing between words for effect - ‘He is…the …only…choice for the presidency!’ - they will often use ‘thuh’, because without the need to run/slide words together (as in normal speech), the brain doesn’t automatically trigger ‘Thee’. > > No different to why many people slightly mispronounce ‘library’, ‘February’, and ‘tracts’. I am more concerned with the fact that the college-educated people I used to work with managed to misspell the word “raisin” eleven different ways (hello, ladies, am I the only one here to have actually read something more complex than a text message?!". And you’re concerned about how zombies pronounce, “the”? ---
**Author:** ![Mister\_Rik](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mister_rik/32/491_2.png) [@Mister\_Rik](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mister_Rik)\ **Post date:** [November 4, 2015, 8:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/supposably-have-mispronounced-words-become-standard/712875/271 "2015-11-04T08:47:19Z")
Erm, sorry, \*\* Wallaby\*\*, I didn’t see it was you. ETA: Dammit, I had a photo of my mom feeding a wallaby, but it ain’t there. ---
**Author:** ![Mister\_Rik](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mister_rik/32/491_2.png) [@Mister\_Rik](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mister_Rik)\ **Post date:** [November 4, 2015, 8:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/supposably-have-mispronounced-words-become-standard/712875/272 "2015-11-04T08:55:54Z")
Whoop, there it is! [http://www.mister-rik.com/hosted/HPIM9011.jpg](http://www.mister-rik.com/hosted/HPIM9011.jpg) ---
**Author:** ![jjimm](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ba8739/32.png) [@jjimm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jjimm)\ **Post date:** [November 4, 2015, 9:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/supposably-have-mispronounced-words-become-standard/712875/273 "2015-11-04T09:13:24Z")
> [@Wendell\_Wagner](#): > > Peking is the name in the Wade-Giles romanization system for Mandarin Chinese for the name of the city. Beijing is the name for it in the Pinyin romanization system. I’m rather late to this discussion, but I don’t believe this is strictly true. While admitting that I’m not familiar with the history of Wade-Giles, as far as I can tell, the “ei” sound has always been transliterated by W-G as “[ei](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wade%E2%80%93Giles#Chart)” and the “j” sound has always been transliterated as “[j](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wade%E2%80%93Giles#Initials)”. Much more likely is that “Peking” was a result of romanising another (southern, non-Mandarin) dialect, through which westerners first heard the name of the city. E.g. in Cantonese Beijing is “Bak Ging” which is much closer to “Peking” in sound. ---
**Author:** ![BwanaBob](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bwanabob/32/2985_2.png) [@BwanaBob](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BwanaBob)\ **Post date:** [November 4, 2015, 1:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/supposably-have-mispronounced-words-become-standard/712875/274 "2015-11-04T13:24:18Z")
> [@Wallaby](#): > > But as others have said - it’s not a rule. If anything it’s a mis-pronunciation. > > It’s far easier to say ‘thee apple’ than ‘thuh apple’ - the vowel sounds just slide together so much easier when using ‘thee’ - when using ‘thuh’ there is a complete stop in the flow of sounds coming from the mouth (no doubt there is some technical term - not sure what). > > So because people are lazy and want to make life that bit easier, they (naturally) fall into the trap of saying things the easy way rather than the slightly more awkward way. So the mispronounce the word ‘the’ in some cases. It’s not a rule. The proof is if a speaker is making a declamatory speech and pausing between words for effect - ‘He is…the …only…choice for the presidency!’ - they will often use ‘thuh’, because without the need to run/slide words together (as in normal speech), the brain doesn’t automatically trigger ‘Thee’. > > No different to why many people slightly mispronounce ‘library’, ‘February’, and ‘tracts’. We’ll have to agree to disagree, I would not use thuh in your example. I do not see ‘thee’ as a mispronunciation; I hear ‘thuh apple’ as a mispronunciation, as grating as ‘liberry’. To my ears it sounds uneducated. And I must emphasize, our teachers taught us this as a rule. Feel free to research Rockville Centre union free school district 21 and its high ratings before you decide to pound on the school system. ---
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [November 4, 2015, 2:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/supposably-have-mispronounced-words-become-standard/712875/275 "2015-11-04T14:12:20Z")
jjimm, No. Look at the following article. It’s the way I said: > **[Beijing or Peking?](https://www.economist.com/johnson/2010/11/11/beijing-or-peking)** > > And why are only the English nagged about this? ---
**Author:** ![jjimm](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ba8739/32.png) [@jjimm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jjimm)\ **Post date:** [November 4, 2015, 7:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/supposably-have-mispronounced-words-become-standard/712875/276 "2015-11-04T19:27:28Z")
> [@Wendell\_Wagner](#): > > jjimm, > > No. Look at the following article. It’s the way I said: > > [http://www.economist.com/blogs/johnson/2010/11/chinese\_transliteration](http://www.economist.com/blogs/johnson/2010/11/chinese_transliteration) Did you not see the correction at the bottom that contradicts the assertion? _As noted below in reader comments, the name Peking pre-dates the Wade-Giles transliteration system. Sorry._ [Whereas](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Peking#Etymology): > [@](#): > > From the Postal Map romanization of Mandarin Chinese 北京, itself derived from French Pekin, a transcription based on the **Nanjing-dialect pronunciation**. My emphasis. ---
**Author:** ![Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spectre_of_pithecanthropus/32/12343_2.png) [@Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spectre_of_Pithecanthropus)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2015, 1:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/supposably-have-mispronounced-words-become-standard/712875/277 "2015-11-05T01:36:59Z")
> [@abderian](#): > > I keep seeing “could of” and “would of”, as in “we could of gone to the party but we would of been out too late.” > > I can’t tolerate the thought of that becoming acceptable. It bugs me too, but only a little. In many cases the person who writes it really knows the correct spelling, but the fingers have worked faster than the brain. This can only happen with keyboard-based communication, and it’s keyboard-based communication that has been edging out cursive and manual printing for years. In spoken English, when somebody says _would’ve_ or _could’ve_, but it sounds like “would of” or “could of”, I can’t blame them for that. There has to be some kind of vowel sound there; you can’t really say “would’vvvv” or “could’vvvv”. It’s hard to pronounce those contractions without having them sound very much like “would of” or “could of”. ---
**Author:** ![lance\_strongarm](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/87869e/32.png) [@lance\_strongarm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lance_strongarm)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2015, 1:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/supposably-have-mispronounced-words-become-standard/712875/278 "2015-11-05T01:45:52Z")
Pretty much every word of English, or any modern language, consists of words that are pronounced (or constructed) differently than they used to be. ---
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2015, 1:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/supposably-have-mispronounced-words-become-standard/712875/279 "2015-11-05T01:47:18Z")
That correction is true but irrelevant to my point. Yes, there was a romanization system that existed before Wade-Giles called the Postal system in which the romanization of the city’s name was Peking. The romanization of the name for the Wade-Giles system is Pei-ching, while the romanization of it for Pinyin is Beijing. The reason that p is used for that sound in Wade-Giles has nothing to do with the Nanjing dialect. The problem is that the two phonemes in Mandarin that cover the phonetic area that the two phonemes b and p in English cover do not match up with the phonemes of English in a one-to-one fashion. The difference between b and p in English is that b is voiced and p is unvoiced. The difference between the two phonemes in Mandarin is that one is aspirated and the other is unaspirated. There’s no natural way to match up the two phonemes in English and the two phonemes in Mandarin. There are sounds that both English and Mandarin speakers make that cover all these four possibilities: 1. Aspirated and voiced 2. Aspirated and unvoiced 3. Unaspired and voiced 4. Unaspired and unvoiced 1 and 3 are a single phoneme in English (written as b), while 2 and 4 are the other phoneme in English (written as p). 1 and 2 are a single phoneme in Mandarin, while 3 and 4 and the other phoneme in Mandarin. Arbitrarily, in Wade-Giles the phoneme that is 1 and 2 is written as p and the phoneme that is 3 and 4 is written as p’. Arbitrarily, in Pinyin the 1-2 phoneme is written as p and the 3-4 phoneme is written as b. ---
**Author:** ![Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spectre_of_pithecanthropus/32/12343_2.png) [@Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spectre_of_Pithecanthropus)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2015, 1:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/supposably-have-mispronounced-words-become-standard/712875/280 "2015-11-05T01:51:33Z")
> [@Alessan](#): > > So are “Rome” and “Jerusalem”. Regarding “Rome”, I’m pretty sure we got that from French, where the word had evolved naturally as late Vulgar Latin eventually became French. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/supposably-have-mispronounced-words-become-standard/712875.md?page=13) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/supposably-have-mispronounced-words-become-standard/712875.md?page=15)