And if I heard someone not pronounce that second “t”, I’d think they were an ignorant moron. They’re not the same word. They’re not pronounced the same.
It’s not a word per-se, but I get pretty chapped when I hear someone say some variant of “for all intensive purposes” instead of “for all intents and purposes” in conversation.
Most things like “axs” or “expecially” bug me, but things associated with non-rhotic accents like “flo” for floor, or “f’sho” for for sure don’t bother me, because it’s an accent issue, not egregious mispronunciation.
I started noticing this about maybe 10 years ago. People will use the word “anymore” in place of “these days”. It sounds weird and doesn’t really make sense either.
If it’s followed immediately by another consonant sound, like “s” if it’s plural, or another word like “digestive tract problem,” then I may be thinking of that “t” but in conversation my tongue wouldn’t actually make the sound.
I’ve been around and around this one before on this board. I use it. And I’m sorry, but it makes perfect sense, and I genuinely cannot understand people who say that it doesn’t.
We’ve [del]ranted[/del] err discussed this one several times. It’s definitely a regionalism, and not one I encounter much nor approve of. Not that I’m holding myself out as an arbiter of anyone’s taste but my own.
I enjoy language evolution - slang, new pronunciations, new grammatical fashions. I think it is a source of great interest and provides extra character for society’s groups - whether these groups are divided by region, generation, or culture.
I have a teenage daughter so I have had to endure ‘Probs’ - for probably, ‘versing’ as a verb (kids don’t compete against each other these days - they verse each other - from ‘versus’) and many others. Whether these become common usage or not - who can tell? Most don’t - a few from each generation do. (‘cool’, ‘groovy’ and ‘far out’ for example).
As to the minor misunderstandings that may occur from people not using ‘Correct Grammatical English Rules’ in conversation - well, get over it. The misunderstandings rarely last more than a few seconds, are cleared up easily, and often provide a bit of a laugh (and my Uncle Jack never even owned a horse, let alone tried to get on one).
So if you heard someone talking about someone distributing religious “tracks”, or talking about their digestive “track”, or selling “tracks” of land, you wouldn’t think that sounds ignorant and somewhat stupid?
I never said I’d be ungracious or even say a word, but I’d still be thinking “How does this person not know that it’s “tract” not “track”?”
No. Homonym is NOT simply for words that are spelled alike, as your post claims. When you neglect to incorporate pronunciation into your description, then you are talking about homographs. That’s why the example of “read” given upthread was wrong - it is a homograph but it is not a true homonym.
Once again, “true” homonyms are spelled the same AND sound the same. There are TWO characteristics to satisfy if one wants to be a stickler about the definition, and the second part is just as important as the first.
So why is it that you keep skipping over that second part?
Oh - because it doesn’t jibe with your simplistic argument that “homonym” means “same name” so spelling is the only thing that matters.
Unfortunately, since the etymology of “homonym” doesn’t fully convey the strict iterpretation of the concept, your claim is not persuasive. By your logic there should be no distinction between homographs and homonyms.
Similarly unconvincing is your accusation that cites you don’t agree with must be on crack.
As I’ve noted, there are plenty of cites that agree with me that “homonym” is commonly used to refer to words that sound alike regardless of how they’re spelled. That’s the way the world actually is, like it or not.
Honestly, it’s not a difference I personally would hear in fluid speech unless I was specifically looking out for it–and even then I’m not sure I’d be able to definitively tell whether the “t” was being pronounced or not. “Tracts” and “tracks” sound very similar to my ear.
In general, the way people pronounce words do not, for me, cause me to make any intelligence judgments. It’s not so much that I’m such a virtuous person that I’m better than that–it’s just that experientially, some of the smartest people I know have pronunciation or dialectical quirks that it would be, frankly, idiotic of me to make such an assumption based on whether they pronounce a “t” in a word or not.
no, because I don’t call people “stupid” over such trivial and pointless things. If anyone said those things to me in the way you write, I wouldn’t give it a second thought because I’d understand what they mean.
Seriously, English is such an enormous mess of a language that I can’t understand why you’d insult someone’s intelligence because they don’t adhere to your idea of its “purity.” I mean, seriously. If someone said what sounded like “digestive track” to you, you’d know damn well what they were talking about. there’s no need to smugly pat yourself on the back for how much smarter you think you are.
No, because it’s how pretty much everyone talks. I’d be willing to bet that, unless you just sound strange, you most often to not clearly pronounce the T, although you think you do because your tongue is in that position.
A /t/ before an /s/ is just not pronounced the same way as a normal /t/. It just makes what sounds like a sharp S sound. How sharp it is depends on accent and how fast you are speaking, but it’s still the same basic sound.
Yes, I agree, I would know exactly what they were talking about.
But if someone is talking about a digestive tract, then I would expect them to at least occasionally read about digestive tracts. When someone pronounces it as “track”, they are announcing that they don’t read about it, or they don’t read enough about it.
It’s not the mispronunciation that makes them sound ignorant. It’s the lack of reading.