quote: Usage Note: During the 15th century English experienced a widespread loss of certain consonant sounds within consonant clusters, as the (d) in handsome and handkerchief, the (p) in consumption and raspberry, and the (t) in chestnut and often. In this way the consonant clusters were simplified and made easier to articulate. With the rise of public education and literacy and, consequently, people's awareness of spelling in the 19th century, sounds that had become silent sometimes were restored, as is the case with the t in often, which is now frequently pronounced. In other similar words, such as soften and listen, the t generally remains silent.
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I don't say the t in listen, but I think I do in often. Then again, I go off of what I heard growing up, so *shrugs* Blame my teachers.
Posts: 1960 | Registered: May 2005
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What amuses me is that the people from the Pittsburgh area cannot pronounce an "l" at the end of a word. It gets turned into an "lw" with a mostly "w" sound. So my husband pronounces "owl" and "ow" nearly identically. Both of his parents are the same way.
At any rate, there are a lot of regional dialects. As long as we understand each other, why does it matter?
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I don't mind regional dialects too much. What I dislike is when people with a heavy accent speak really fast. I find myself having to constantly ask them to repeat themselves, and I'm not hard of hearing or anything. Speak a little slower and I may understand the first time.
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I've found it's a lot easier to get through life if you don't let others' pronunciation bother you so much.
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You know, that's a lesson that I think my Mario playing friends should learn. Half the time it comes out of my mouth Merio, I don't know why.
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Not to mention, folks, that it is REE-al-tor, not REEL-a-ter. If it is your profession, you should know how to say it.
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I think most the time I prounounce the "t" in often. I might leave it off occasionally, but not offin. Posts: 7050 | Registered: Feb 2004
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I say "offen", but if the "t" were pronounced in it by a British person, it wouldn't bother me at all. But to me it sounds pretentious in an American accent.
I used to say "in-ter-est-ing" all the time instead of "in-tris-ting", which was pointed out to me as unusual. I've gotten lazy with that one. And my best friend teases me for lightly pronouncing the "th" in "clothes" - he firmly contends that it's meant to be pronounced "close". I disagree. Posts: 952 | Registered: Jun 2005
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Anyone else find I and l confusing when in sans serif, or whatever this font is? In case you didn't know, that was a capital i and a lowercase L.
I'm so clueless that it took me a while to realize that theCrowsWife was talking about words ending in L, not words ending in i. I even looked at her examples, not realizing they were examples but thinking they were evidence of yet another pronunciation oddity.
quote:Originally posted by Nell Gwyn: And my best friend teases me for lightly pronouncing the "th" in "clothes" - he firmly contends that it's meant to be pronounced "close". I disagree.
Meant to be? That's sort of hard to argue. It's not like someone invented the word and decided how everyone should pronounce it. The dictionary shows that his pronunciation is more common, though.
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I pronounce clothes more like cloze. Close makes me think of the soft s sound at the end, but I suppose it can also be pronounced like cloze. So never mind...
I think in-ter-est-ing when I spell it out, and it's gotten to the point where I don't know what is the correct way to pronounce it.
I have a similar problem with words like incidentally. I don't know if I'm supposed to spell it incidently or incidentally--and I don't know exactly how I'm supposed to pronounce it either. I'm sure I used to. But I forgot.
I used to pronounce across like acrosst, until a friend of mine made a point about how much that annoyed him. (I wasn't the only one who did it.) So I broke myself of the habit and dropped the t.
I pronounce often as ofTen. I didn't know I had the option of pronouncing it offen. It sounds a little weird to me.
When I was a kid, I thought chaos was pronounced Chah-ose (Ch as in cherry) for years as a kid. I was an avid reader, so I came into contact with the word while reading way before I heard it (or rather before I heard it and realized what it was) out loud. And it was even longer before I learned what the word even meant. Somewhere around watching Jurassic Park.
quote:Originally posted by Nell Gwyn: And my best friend teases me for lightly pronouncing the "th" in "clothes" - he firmly contends that it's meant to be pronounced "close". I disagree.
Meant to be? That's sort of hard to argue. It's not like someone invented the word and decided how everyone should pronounce it. The dictionary shows that his pronunciation is more common, though.
Yep. He asserts that I am wrong. I, in turn, assert that he's being an idiot. This tends to be brought up when we have nothing better to argue about. We have a very loving relationship. Posts: 952 | Registered: Jun 2005
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quote:Originally posted by Katarain: I pronounce clothes more like cloze.
Actually, that's what I really meant - "close" as in "close the door," not "close together". I'm just not used to writing phonetically. Posts: 952 | Registered: Jun 2005
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quote:Originally posted by Katarain: I'm so clueless that it took me a while to realize that theCrowsWife was talking about words ending in L, not words ending in i. I even looked at her examples, not realizing they were examples but thinking they were evidence of yet another pronunciation oddity.
Heh. After I posted it, I wondered if that would be a problem. But then I thought, "Surely the examples will make it clear..."
It is difficult talking about phonetics without using the phonetic alphabet. But I'm too lazy to go look up codes for the special characters.
quote:Originally posted by Katarain: I pronounce clothes more like cloze. Close makes me think of the soft s sound at the end, but I suppose it can also be pronounced like cloze. So never mind...
You want to hear something really mind-blowing? In linguistics, s is hard and z is soft. In other words, vocal cord vibration = soft, no vibration = hard.
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You know what really bugs me in the media in the last decade is the fact that the only journalists anyone seems to hire these days all have speech impediments.
It drives me crazy to hear them all pronounce "str" words shtr. String. Not shtring. Christ, they all sound like Andy Gibb. I blame him for it and that stupid Puppet on a Shtring song of his.
Shtreet. Shtrong. It's driving me mad. Or, in my case, it already drove me mad!
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As for tv journalists, many of the women annoy me because they all sound like they have phlegm in their throats and have to swallow. Another way to describe it would be that they all have marbles on their tongues. I say just the women because I've never noticed this from a male tv journalist.
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I’ve always said often, and it never occurred to me to not pronounce the t.
Regional differences in pronunciation are always something that gets argued about (light heartedly) when groups from different areas get together. I don’t know if you have as many regional variations as we do (UK), but with strong dialects English can become like different languages.
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quote:Originally posted by Katarain: I pronounce clothes more like cloze. Close makes me think of the soft s sound at the end, but I suppose it can also be pronounced like cloze. So never mind...
You want to hear something really mind-blowing? In linguistics, s is hard and z is soft. In other words, vocal cord vibration = soft, no vibration = hard.
I'm used to "voiced" and "unvoiced" being used.
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Mispronunciation of this sends me into FITS. I can't watch Presidential addresses. If I could spit venom at the TV when they say this, I would.
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quote:Originally posted by starLisa: I'm used to "voiced" and "unvoiced" being used.
Those are the more technical terms, and they are more often used within the linguistic community. Hard and soft are layman's terms. They're more likely to be seen in a dictionary pronunciation guide and things of that nature.
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quote:All you're really saying is that people who don't talk like you are annoying.
Seems to me that accent-based prejudice (which I am not accusing anyone here of) is strong precisely because it isn't recognized.
I relate. Some things sound affected to me, and thus annoying. But they aren't really affected; they're just how people talk. But, being a Southerner, I know how people pre-judge based on accents, and say, "I have no accent," which means, "I talk the way I talk, and everyone else should do the same."
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ElJay can be confusing with the i-L business. I added in my dictionary that it is occasionally mistaken to be "eijay" (e, i & j being capitals, of course).
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quote:Originally posted by Jon Boy: You want to hear something really mind-blowing? In linguistics, s is hard and z is soft. In other words, vocal cord vibration = soft, no vibration = hard.
In my head, that seems like it should be the other way around, ie, hard = vibration, soft = no vibration. But I'll just stick with voiced/unvoiced for now.
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And I don't think I really have an accent. It's not realy Aussie of any of the thre kinds, not RP, not Ireland, not Yorkshire, DEFINITELY not Kiwi nor SA. Poms think I'm a local, Aussies know I'm Aussie, Israelis know I'm no American, Americans think I'm English, people from London think I'm from Oxford and people from Oxford think I'm from London. South-Africans can detect I'm not English but can't really tell I'm Aussie.
I'm a soft type of centralised Home-County with Aussie affection.
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I agree, kojabu. It made no sense to me at first, either. I believe the reasoning is that vowels are soft and consonants are hard, so a consonant that is voiced is softer because it is more vowel-like.
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From Webster's New International Dictionary, Second Edition (Unabridged)
quote:often (ofen) see note below
Note below reads: The pronunciation often, until recently considered as more or less illiterate, is not uncommon among the educated in some sections, and is often used in singing.
I say ofen. Always. What really bothers me about this is that I find people overpronouncing the t as if to point out to people that don't pronounce it that they're wrong. And more recently, I've heard people doing the same thing with WeDnesday.
Posts: 3735 | Registered: Mar 2002
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I say WeDnesday when I'm being silly, but only then. What I really don't like is when you say something to someone one way and they repronounce the word back to you and overemphasize the change. I was working in a DQ and someone asked what yogurt flavors we had. I replied Strawberry and Butter PeCAHN. They said back, I'll have a Butter PeCAN, like the way I said it was wrong.
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