# Who decides “proper” pronunciation? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [June 2, 2025, 6:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-decides-proper-pronunciation/1019111 "2025-06-02T18:12:44Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 5
**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:** [June 3, 2025, 1:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-decides-proper-pronunciation/1019111/81 "2025-06-03T01:52:26Z")
> [@Topologist](#): > > Do you really pronounce “insincere” with > [@Topologist](#): > > > [@Northern\_Piper](#): > > > > The emphasis in all three of Wolfpup’s examples (insurance, infallible, insincere ) is on the second syllable for me, not IN- . > > The point was that a common southern American pronunciation does put the accent on the prefix “in-”. > > Do you really pronounce “insincere” with the accent on the second syllable? What I usually hear is the primary accent on the third, with a secondary accent on the first. This may again be a regional thing, but when “in-” is used as a negation, it seems very natural to me to emphasize the negation – “IN-sincere”, “IN-coherent”, “IN-convenient” – you want to emphasize the negation. “Insurance” is just a word. Why are you emphasizing the first syllable as if there were such a thing as “surance”, which you want to emphasize that this this thing is definitely not? ---
**Author:** ![Slithy\_Tove](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slithy_tove/32/18248_2.png) [@Slithy\_Tove](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Slithy_Tove)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2025, 1:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-decides-proper-pronunciation/1019111/82 "2025-06-03T01:53:20Z")
> [@XOldiesJock](#): > > The young lady who did the weather was a local. We tried in vain to break her of “wooder.” That was even worse, because she then overpronounced it as “WAW-turr,” with a very hard “T.” We finally gave up, figuring the number of times she actually had to say the word “water” was so few that it didn’t matter. Besides, everyone in town pronounced it “wooder” anyway. Too many lifetimes ago I went through [DINFOS,](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defense_Information_School) a multi-service military journalism school. Kind of like the Columbia School of Journalism, but if you bombed out you were still on the hook for four years as a axle-greased boatswain’s mate or an infantryman using a red-lensed flashlight to find a spot to shit in between armored personnel carriers in the Korean winter. They did the usual training: we had to read copy with a pencil jammed back across our mouths while holding a tennis ball in place with our spines. But whenever anyone came in and tried to talk like Johnny Goldentone, they were laughed out of the studio. ---
**Author:** ![Kent\_Clark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kent_clark/32/105_2.png) [@Kent\_Clark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kent_Clark)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2025, 1:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-decides-proper-pronunciation/1019111/83 "2025-06-03T01:53:21Z")
> [@Ann\_Hedonia](#): > > I studied theatre and broadcasting in college (50 years ago) and I took a class in “proper US pronunciation”. I can’t remember the actual name of the class, but this was the textbook. @Ann_Hedonia do you remember whether they taught you “Mid-Atlantic” pronunciation or some other variety. When I studied broadcasting I was taught that “standard” American pronunciation was a flat Midwestern dialect. Of course, the only broadcaster who spoke in anything close to a flat Midwestern dialect was Harry Reasoner - and as you can tell [in this clip](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WPqu03Wm0OY), even he had a distinctive way of clipping some vowels short, and lengthening others. ---
**Author:** ![TriPolar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tripolar/32/3008_2.png) [@TriPolar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TriPolar)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2025, 2:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-decides-proper-pronunciation/1019111/84 "2025-06-03T02:00:27Z")
How dy’all pernounce victuals? It ain’t vick-chew-uls. ---
**Author:** ![Slithy\_Tove](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slithy_tove/32/18248_2.png) [@Slithy\_Tove](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Slithy_Tove)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2025, 2:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-decides-proper-pronunciation/1019111/85 "2025-06-03T02:04:22Z")
“Might tasty vittles, Ma!” ---
**Author:** ![fedman1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/e495f1/32.png) [@fedman1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/fedman1)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2025, 2:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-decides-proper-pronunciation/1019111/86 "2025-06-03T02:04:26Z")
and we like to mix them together–Saint Louie, and then there’s the ongoing argument over Missouri ---
**Author:** ![Beckdawrek](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/beckdawrek/32/3647_2.png) [@Beckdawrek](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Beckdawrek)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2025, 2:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-decides-proper-pronunciation/1019111/87 "2025-06-03T02:05:03Z")
Oh. I think I get it, @wolfpup . You’ve enlightened one person, I’m sure more, but you’ve got one. 😊 ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2025, 2:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-decides-proper-pronunciation/1019111/88 "2025-06-03T02:18:04Z")
Victuals is pronounced vittles. It always has been since it entered the language hundreds of years ago. Here’s the American Heritage. > The modern pronunciation of victual, (vtl), represents an Anglicized pronunciation of the Old French form vitaille, which was borrowed into English in the early 14th century. The modern English spelling reflects the fact that in both French and English the word was sometimes spelled with a c, and later also with a u, under the influence of its Late Latin ancestor victulia, meaning “provisions.” The word is now occasionally spelled vittle rather than victual, but in either case the pronunciation is (vtl). No dictionary that I’m aware of, dating back to Webster’s 1828 dictionary, admits of an alternate pronunciation. But it is a perfect example of people encountering an unfamiliar word in print and trying dutifully to pronounce it as it is written. ---
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2025, 5:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-decides-proper-pronunciation/1019111/89 "2025-06-03T05:44:49Z")
> [@RealityChuck](#): > > Language experts divide into two camps: prescriptionists and descriptionists. The former tell people how things are pronounced; the latter describe how people pronounce things. Descriptionists hold the upper hand these days. I think in reality, they always did - prescriptivists like to wave the dictionary around like it’s law or dogma, but dictionaries are created and maintained by descriptivists. The prescriptivist’s battle was lost before they began fighting it, precisely because: > [@RealityChuck](#): > > Pronunciation changes over time and as more people use one, it becomes standard. -and since this is happening in different places, in different directions at once, any attempt to standardise English can at best only pick one of those directions, which makes the standard irrelevant or even offensive to the others. ---
**Author:** ![DPRK](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/4491bb/32.png) [@DPRK](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DPRK)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2025, 11:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-decides-proper-pronunciation/1019111/90 "2025-06-03T11:05:23Z")
> [@RitterSport](#): > > if that’s because it’s based on French Is it? What about the Italian? Do French “forte” and Italian “forte” amount to different words when borrowed into English? All things to consider. > [@Hari\_Seldon](#): > > I agree with your English teacher. The t is not silent because of the e that follows. “fort” (masculine) → silent “t” “forte” (feminine) → not silent > [@Hari\_Seldon](#): > > it ought to be “It am I”. Plenty of that in Chaucer ---
**Author:** ![pulykamell](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pulykamell/32/3166_2.png) [@pulykamell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pulykamell)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2025, 11:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-decides-proper-pronunciation/1019111/91 "2025-06-03T11:41:41Z")
> [@wolfpup](#): > > This may again be a regional thing, but when “in-” is used as a negation, it seems very natural to me to emphasize the negation – “IN-sincere”, “IN-coherent”, “IN-convenient” None of those have their primary stress on the first syllable in my dialect. They’re in-sin-SEER, in-co-HEAR-ent, in-con-VEEN-yent. Checking Merriam-Webster, all of those have one listed pronunciation, and they follow mine. Maybe they do things differently in Canada. Now, I did say “primary.” You maybe could put a lighter, secondary stress on the first syllable. So far as I can tell, I do not. The first and second syllables have equal stress. But a gentle touch of extra oomph on the first doesn’t sound too strange to me. Definitely not the weight of a primary stress, though. > [@Mangetout](#): > > and since this is happening in different places, in different directions at once, any attempt to standardise English can at best only pick one of those directions, which makes the standard irrelevant or even offensive to the others. Exactly. And anyone who has ever wondered why English orthography is maddeningly incongruous with its pronunciation, it’s often because spellings became fossilized at some point while pronunciations continued to drift. If you’ve taken a Chaucer class in Middle English, you’ll know that _knight_ originally vocalized all its letters—it wasn’t “nite” but “k-neekht,” with the “gh” representing a sound like the Scottish _loch_ or German _Bach_ (a voiceless velar fricative). Another reason spelling may not match pronunciation is etymological spelling, where scholars inserted letters to better reflect a word’s Latin roots—like adding a “b” to _debt_ (from Latin _debitum_) or a “d” to _Wednesday_ (from _Woden’s Day_). And “slough” is “slew” over here in Chicago. I go walking through the woods outside Chicago every so often and there are a number of sloughs around here, including a “Cranberry Slough.” It drove me nuts the first few times I saw the sign as I had no idea how the word was pronounced locally and I didn’t want to sound like an idiot pronouncing it (Chicago has a few shibboleth placenames, so the dictionary can’t always be trusted.) Does it rhyme with “bough,” “rough,” “cough,” “though?” Oddly, rhyming with “through” was not even one that occurred to me. I had to ask around to figure out the local pronunciation (and even then it took asking a few people, as “slough” is not a word in most city-goers’ everyday speech. I think it was at the nature house nearby I finally got a definitive answer.) ---
**Author:** ![vbob](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/vbob/32/4439_2.png) [@vbob](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/vbob)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2025, 12:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-decides-proper-pronunciation/1019111/92 "2025-06-03T12:21:15Z")
> [@Q.Q.Switcheroo](#): > > You have to figure Algernon pronounces it “for-tay” in _The Importance of Being Earnest_ when he says > > > As far as the piano is concerned, sentiment is my forte. I built a secure locker in the corner of the garage for an upstairs tenant to keep his big electric keyboards in, rather than drag them down the stairs for each gig. We called it the ‘piano garage’ for about a day, when it clearly defined itself as the ‘piano forte’ - pronounced BOTH ways. ---
**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:** [June 3, 2025, 12:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-decides-proper-pronunciation/1019111/93 "2025-06-03T12:30:29Z")
> [@pulykamell](#): > > > [@wolfpup](#): > > > > This may again be a regional thing, but when “in-” is used as a negation, it seems very natural to me to emphasize the negation – “IN-sincere”, “IN-coherent”, “IN-convenient” > > None of those have their primary stress on the first syllable in my dialect. They’re in-sin-SEER, in-co-HEAR-ent, in-con-VEEN-yent. Checking Merriam-Webster, all of those have one listed pronunciation, and they follow mine. Maybe they do things differently in Canada. Now, I did say “primary.” You maybe could put a lighter, secondary stress on the first syllable. So far as I can tell, I do not. The first and second syllables have equal stress. But a gentle touch of extra oomph on the first doesn’t sound too strange to me. Definitely not the weight of a primary stress, though. On further consideration, you’re right. As usually spoken, unless there’s a specific intent to emphasize the negation, the first syllable generally takes on a secondary stress, not the primary one. Which makes the way “IN-surance” is sometimes spoken all the more strange and inexplicable. It appears to be a regionalism in some parts of the US. Since I’ve only ever heard it said that way on bodycam videos, it might also be a part of cop-speak culture, like the persistent use of the redundant “at”, as in “where are you at?” ---
**Author:** ![Northern\_Piper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/northern_piper/32/5304_2.png) [@Northern\_Piper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Northern_Piper)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2025, 12:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-decides-proper-pronunciation/1019111/94 "2025-06-03T12:36:32Z")
I don’t think “at” is redundant. It’s asking for a specific location. The answer to “Where are you?” could legitimately be : “Downtown”, which then could trigger “Where downtown?” Putting “at” asks for specifics, such as “Corner of Main and Smith streets” ---
**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:** [June 3, 2025, 12:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-decides-proper-pronunciation/1019111/95 "2025-06-03T12:58:42Z")
> [@Northern\_Piper](#): > > I don’t think “at” is redundant. It’s asking for a specific location. > > The answer to “Where are you?” could legitimately be : “Downtown”, which then could trigger “Where downtown?” I don’t know what in the world would lead you to imagine that there’s anything about the misplaced preposition “at” that implies greater precision. “At” is of course a preposition associated with the specification of a location or time, but not necessarily of any greater precision than other formulations. “Where are you?” and “Where are you at?” could both be answered either with a generality or with a specific location, depending on the context of the conversation. In this example of cop-speak, I am absolutely not being critical. Yes, it’s redundant, but redundancy can be important when speaking over a noisy low-bandwidth radio channel and there’s no time to mess around. If nothing comes through except “where … you … at” that’s good enough. ---
**Author:** ![RitterSport](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rittersport/32/6326_2.png) [@RitterSport](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RitterSport)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2025, 1:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-decides-proper-pronunciation/1019111/96 "2025-06-03T13:04:13Z")
I always assume that the speaker thinks my name is Atticus when they say “Where are you, At?”. ---
**Author:** ![pulykamell](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pulykamell/32/3166_2.png) [@pulykamell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pulykamell)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2025, 1:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-decides-proper-pronunciation/1019111/97 "2025-06-03T13:06:52Z")
And in New Orleans, it means “how are you?” (Often rendered as “where y’at?”) ---
**Author:** ![Q.Q.Switcheroo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/q.q.switcheroo/32/5713_2.png) [@Q.Q.Switcheroo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Q.Q.Switcheroo)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2025, 1:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-decides-proper-pronunciation/1019111/98 "2025-06-03T13:08:39Z")
Freshman from South Boston arrives for his first day at Harvard and approaches an upperclassman: “Where’s the library at?” “At Harvard, we don’t end sentences with prepositions.” “Okay - where’s the library at, asshole?” ---
**Author:** ![RitterSport](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rittersport/32/6326_2.png) [@RitterSport](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RitterSport)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2025, 1:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-decides-proper-pronunciation/1019111/99 "2025-06-03T13:12:33Z")
Man jumps into a cab in Boston and, wanting to try the local cuisine, asks “Where’s the best place to get scrod?” Taxi driver says, “You know, I’ve heard that question a lot, but never in the pluperfect subjunctive.” ---
**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:** [June 3, 2025, 1:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-decides-proper-pronunciation/1019111/100 "2025-06-03T13:18:26Z")
> [@RitterSport](#): > > Man jumps into a cab in Boston and, wanting to try the local cuisine, asks “Where’s the best place to get scrod?” Taxi driver says, “You know, I’ve heard that question a lot, but never in the pluperfect subjunctive.”   That must routinely make the rounds at any university’s Department of Linguistics! 😆 [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-decides-proper-pronunciation/1019111.md?page=4) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-decides-proper-pronunciation/1019111.md?page=6)