(The only real difference between the process giving us the metathetic pronunciations of “comfortable” and “iron” (and now giving us “nucular” and “reelator”) and that giving us “bird”, “horse”, and “wasp” is that, for the latter, it happened to occur before their spellings standardized into their modern form)
This is a British thing that really, really grates on my nerves. I don’t think it’s London because a workmate used to do this, and he was from one of the northern cities - but I forget which one:
“tickITS” for tickets
“Ga-RIDGE” for “garage”
etc.
The worst one in Australia for me is the L-less “VUN-erable” for “vulnerable”. This is becoming near universal now, with over 50% of news reporters using it.
The others are common ones that seem to annoy everyone else I know: mis-chee-vee-ous, bur-gyoo-lar, nyoo-cyoo-lar (US: noo-coo-lar - just as annoying).
There are yet others that have been around so long that they have become parodies, and I don’t mind them so much: EYE-talian, fillum…
You’d have to live here to really get how irritating this gets but ‘Mo-Hab’. It’s four fucking letters; a first grader should be able to get it right ‘Mo-Ab’.
No “H”, okay?
Don’t even get me started on how the state prison located at ‘The Point of the Mountain’ gets pronounced ‘poynadamow’ :rolleyes:
103 posts without the jew-la-ree/jew-el-ree discussion? Damn. We’re slippin’.
It is pronounced that way for the French word- such as "owning a Rolls just has that certain cache*" But not as in "we found a cache of weapons". *Forte is also weird, having two different pronunciations, based upon meaning. But in that case, “ForTAY” is gaining acceptance for both meanings.
As far as I know, the spelling would actually be “owning a Rolls just has that certain cachet”. But, yes, this is part of “the etymological relation to such words which are pronounced as ‘ka-shay’” I was referring to.
The business about “forte” is weird, because when people point out that, in French, the word is pronounced with a silent <e>, they generally conveniently fail to point out that, in French, it is also pronounced with a silent <t>. But English is not French, so there’s no need to let any of that trouble us too much.
processes as proceces
Don’t get me started. It’s amazing that someone can own a jewelry store and mispronounce the word in his own commercials.
And speaking of jewelry: I once heard someone pronounce “onyx” as “oinks.”
I have exactly the same reaction to 'erb. Americans usually seem to pronounce each and every letter in a word (unlike New Zealanders- we don’t often pronounce the R in words) so why no H in herb?
'Erb makes me laugh every time I hear it.
Not at all. English has a ton of silent letters and we respect that. We don’t pronounce the “h” in honest either, or the “b” in subtle, the “g” in phlegm, the “s” in island, the “w” in answer, etc. etc. ad nauseum
We also generally seem to retain the silent letters in foreign words (ex. Pinot Noir, Merlot. Although as a former server I did once have a poor schlub pronounce the latter with a hard “t”)
When I worked in a liquor store in Sydney’s snooty Eastern Suburbs, I had a B rate society matron of a certain type (kept woman, a bit batty, big watery eyes from years of rather too much gin) swan into the shop and ask me for as bottle of “Claré”.
“Eh, pardon? Oh, claret!”
“Yeees, daaaahlink.”
“asked” is probably the word I hear mispronounced most often. Back in the Midwest it came out as “ast,” which is preferable to “axed” certainly. Those consonant sounds in quick succession are the culprit. LikewiseWe used to say “fith,” not “fifth.” A speech teacher of mine would say “fift.” It was a real mental block for him—we could all pronounce “sixth” but he said “sixt.”
Not a mispronunciation but some differences between US/UK pronunciation that always jar me a little:
13, 14…US: |fort teen| UK: |fordeen| I wonder why we double pronounce the “t” here.
And the berries…US: |straw bare eez| UK: |straw breez| or |straw buh reez|
Word I am guilty of mispronouncing: probably as probly. Or prolly [exaggerated, tongue-in-cheek]
My mom warshed our clothes like her mother before her. And we went to Warshington DC on vacation. In college I once said at dinner with friends that I had to warsh clothes that night and the flameout was horrendous.
I’ve been washing them ever since.
I always figured the etymology here was from Italian, not French. In music, forte=loudly, strong.
Hahaha! Totally. And when people say “yooge,” as in, “Isn’t it a yooge pain in the arse that we do that to our Hs?”
I used to as well, and absolutely, there is some conflation with the musical term which has influenced the pronunciation. However, it turns out, whatever the later history, the “forte = strength, talent” use of the term originally came to English from the French, by way of its use in fencing.
And NEW Englanders…drives me batty…
They drop the “R” when it’s supposed to be there, like in words like “HAH-vid U-ni-VEH-si-tee.” That doesn’t bother me at all. It’s when they add an “R” where no “R” should ever be: after an “A” or an “A” sound. Yeah —>Yeahr, Florida —> FLAH-rid-er, Lisa —> LEESE-er. Pizza —> PETE-zer. :smack: You get the point.*
*I know you’re reading this, Sweetheart…and I’m sorry. You know I wuv oo! I take the good with the bad, right Baby Doll?
No, it isn’t. “Fort” in French has a silent t, but not “forte.”
“Cohabitate” drives me nuts. I don’t care that it’s in some dictionaries. It’s “cohabit”, dammit.
You’re missing the etymological history here.
The English word forte (the one that means “strong point”) comes from French. But the original French word is not forte. The French word is, in fact, fort, which is pronounced without the “t” at the end. And yet when this word entered English, an orphan letter “e”, looking for a new home after its parents were brutally murdered by Germans, was added to the end of the word. And so the English word became forte. And with this new spelling came a new pronunciation. Some half-clever English speakers showed up who knew enough about French pronunciation to realize that if there’s an “e” at the end, that we’re supposed to pronounce the “t”.
And so in English, we started pronouncing the word forte the same as “fort”, as in a defensive construction that can be made of concrete, wood, or pillows. English forte and French fort have identical meanings, but the English pronunciation had already begun to wander away from its origins.
The story doesn’t end there. We also have another English word forte, this one a musical term borrowed from Italian. This other word, with a completely different meaning and etymology, is pronounced with two syllables. But in one of those wonderful linguistic coincidences, it is spelled identically to the new English spelling of the French word fort. And in the resulting confusion, the ruggedly handsome Italian pronunciation wooed English speakers away from the flaccid faux-French pronunciation, which just couldn’t compete in the charm department, perhaps because it wasn’t genuine in the first place.
So now we have two words that are spelled the same and (mostly) pronounced the same, but with two different meanings that are the result of their different etymologies.
Some prescriptivists still like to insist on using the faux-French pronunciation for the word that means “strong point”, but these people are high on fake cheese and wine and can safely be ignored. Dictionaries still list both pronunciations, but the “fort” pronunciation of forte is pulling a Terry Schiavo. The only reason it hasn’t been unplugged yet is interference from people who don’t know when to let go.
Bravo, Kendall Jackson. Well written. I’d enjoy reading a book on this subject written in the style of that post.
Please help out this non-linguist and explain what you’re talking about with bird, horse, and wasp. They’re all pronounced pretty much as they’re spelled, and the pronunciations don’t vary much with dialect or accent. What are these other pronunciations to which you refer?