Spelling pronunciation
Encyclopedia
A spelling pronunciation is a pronunciation
that, instead of reflecting the way the word was pronounced by previous generations of speakers, is a rendering in sound of the word's spelling.
Fowler
reports that in his day there was a conscious movement among schoolteachers and others encouraging people to abandon anomalous traditional pronunciations and "speak as you spell". According to major scholars of early modern English (Dobson, Wyld et al.), already in the 17th century there was beginning an "intellectual" trend in England to "pronounce as you spell". This of course presupposes a standard spelling system which was in fact beginning to form at that time.
Similarly, quite a large number of "corrections" slowly spread from scholars to the general public in France, starting several centuries ago.
Others would argue that this trend, though understandable from a socio-psychological point of view, is, from a strictly linguistic perspective, irrational, since writing was invented to represent the sounds of the language and not vice versa. According to this belief, there is no good reason to "speak as one spells", but there are many good reasons to "spell as one speaks", i.e., to reform the orthography of a language whenever it does not render its pronunciation clearly and unambiguously – which is the task of a writing system. How easy such a reform would be in practice is of course quite another matter.
A different variety of spelling pronunciations are phonetic adaptations, i.e., pronunciations of the written form of foreign words within the frame of the phonematic system of the language that accepts them: an example of this process is garage ([ɡaʀaːʒ] in French) sometimes pronounced [ˈɡæɹɪd͡ʒ] in English. Such adaptations are quite natural, and often preferred by speech-conscious and careful speakers.
Well-read second language
learners are likewise vulnerable to producing spelling pronunciations.
However, since there are many words which one reads far more often than one hears, the problem also affects adult native-language speakers. This, in turn, leads to the language evolution mentioned above. What is a spelling pronunciation in one generation often becomes standard in the next.
, the modern pronunciation of the 16th century French author Montaigne as [mɔ̃tɛɲ], rather than the contemporary [mɔ̃taɲ], is a spelling pronunciation.
When English club was first borrowed into French, the approved pronunciation was /klab/, as being a reasonable approximation of the English. The standard then became /klyb/ on the basis of the spelling, and later, in Europe, /klœb/, deemed closer to the English original. The standard pronunciation in Canada
remains /klʏb/. Similarly, shampooing "product for washing the hair" at the time of borrowing was /ʃɑ̃puiŋ/; now it is /ʃɑ̃pwɛ̃/
In Hebrew
, there is a vowel called patach genuvah, consisting of an "a" sign placed underneath a final guttural but pronounced before it: an example is ruach (meaning 'spirit), which looks like *rucha. Where the final consonant is a sounded he (h), many speakers do indeed place the vowel after it, mistakenly pronouncing Eloah (meaning God) as "Eloha" and gavoah (meaning high) as "gavoha". Other examples of spelling pronunciations are the Sephardic "kal" for "kol" (meaning all) and "tsahorayim" for "tsohorayim" (meaning noon): see Sephardic Hebrew language.
In Swedish
, there has been a tendency towards spelling pronunciation in many words. The plural ending spelled -or, which was formerly often pronounced /-er/, is now often pronounced /-ur/.
In Spanish
, the ⟨ch⟩ in some German words and surnames is pronounced tʃ or ʃ instead of x. Bach
is correctly pronounced [bax], and kuchen
is [ˈkuxen], but Mach
is [maʃ] or [matʃ], Rorschach
is [ˈrorʃax], and Kirchner is [ˈkirʃner] or [ˈkirtʃner]. Other spelling pronunciations are club
pronounced [kluβ], iceberg
pronounced [iθeˈβer] in Spain (in America, it's pronounced [ˈaizβerɡ]), and folclor and folclore as translations of folklore
, pronounced [folˈklor] and [folˈkloɾe]. In the French word élite the acute accent is often misinterpreted as a Spanish stress mark and the word is pronounced [ˈelite].
Pronunciation
Pronunciation refers to the way a word or a language is spoken, or the manner in which someone utters a word. If one is said to have "correct pronunciation", then it refers to both within a particular dialect....
that, instead of reflecting the way the word was pronounced by previous generations of speakers, is a rendering in sound of the word's spelling.
Examples of English words with common spelling pronunciations
- often, pronounced with /t/, though the pronunciation without /t/ is still prefered by 73% of British speakers and 78% of American speakers. Older dictionaries do not even list the pronunciation with /t/, though the 2nd edition of the OEDOxford English DictionaryThe Oxford English Dictionary , published by the Oxford University Press, is the self-styled premier dictionary of the English language. Two fully bound print editions of the OED have been published under its current name, in 1928 and 1989. The first edition was published in twelve volumes , and...
does (and the first edition notes the pronunciation with the comment that it is prevalent in the south of EnglandEnglandEngland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
and "often used in singing"; see the Dictionary of American Regional EnglishDictionary of American Regional EnglishThe Dictionary of American Regional English is a record of American English as spoken in the United States, from its beginning up to the present...
for contemporaneous citations discussing the status of the competing pronunciations) The sporadic nature of such shifts is apparent upon examination of examples such as whistle, listen and soften, where the t remains universally unpronounced. - forehead once rhymed with horrid, but is now pronounced with the second syllable as /hɛd/ by 85% of Americans and 65% of people in Britain. This is in fact a reversion to its original pronunciation.
- clothes was historically pronounced the same way as the verb close ("Whenas in silks my Julia goes/.../The liquefaction of her clothes" --HerrickRobert Herrick (poet)Robert Herrick was a 17th-century English poet.-Early life:Born in Cheapside, London, he was the seventh child and fourth son of Julia Stone and Nicholas Herrick, a prosperous goldsmith....
), but many speakers now insert a /ð/, pronouncing a voiced th. - salmon, occasionally pronounced with /l/.
- falcon is now nearly always pronounced with /l/, and just 3% of speakers have no /l/. The /l/ was lacking in the old pronunciation: compare French faucon and the older English spellings faucon and fawcon. This may suggest either analogical change or the reborrowing of the original Latin.
- alm, balm, calm, palm, psalm; often now pronounced with /l/ in the United StatesUnited StatesThe United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
. In the United KingdomUnited KingdomThe United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
, the traditional /ɑːm/ pronunciation continues to prevail. - comptroller, often pronounced with /mp/; accepted pronunciation is "controller" (the mp spelling is based on the mistaken idea that the word has something to do with comp(u)tare "count, compute", but it comes from contre-roll "file copy", both the verb and its agent noun meaning "compare originals and file copies").
- ye the article, pronounced as if spelled with a y instead of the printer's mark for Þ, the letter thorn.
- taking the "insular flat-topped g of northern scripts as a z- in names like Mackenzie, Menzies, Dalziel (in the last with the value of /j/ originally).
- tortilla and other words from SpanishSpanish languageSpanish , also known as Castilian , is a Romance language in the Ibero-Romance group that evolved from several languages and dialects in central-northern Iberia around the 9th century and gradually spread with the expansion of the Kingdom of Castile into central and southern Iberia during the...
with the double-LLlLl/ll is a digraph which occurs in several natural languages.-In English:In English, ll represents the same sound as single l:...
pronounced /l/ instead of /j/ (the latter being the closest approximation to the sound in Spanish); similarly the ItalianItalian languageItalian is a Romance language spoken mainly in Europe: Italy, Switzerland, San Marino, Vatican City, by minorities in Malta, Monaco, Croatia, Slovenia, France, Libya, Eritrea, and Somalia, and by immigrant communities in the Americas and Australia...
-sourced maraschino (cherry) with /ʃ/ instead of /sk/. - victuals "vittles" whose -c- (for a consonant lost long before the word was borrowed from French) was reintroduced on etymological grounds, and sometimes pronounced with /kt/.
- The pronunciation of waistcoat as waist-coat is now more common than the previous pronunciation weskit.
- conduit, historically pronounced /ˈkɒndɪt/ or /ˈkʌndɪt/, is now nearly always /ˈkɒndjuːɪt/ or /ˈkɑndwɪt/ in the United States.
- covert, historically pronounced /ˈkʌvɚt/ (reflecting its link with the verb cover). Today usually /ˈkoʊvɚt/.
- medicine, historically pronounced with two syllables but now quite often with three (some speakers use two when they mean medicaments and three when they mean medical knowledge; the pronunciation with three syllables is standard in the United StatesUnited StatesThe United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
). - Bartholomew, formerly pronounced /ˈbartəlmi/, is now /barˈθɒləmju/.
- Anthony (< Lat. Antonius), now (in USA) /ˈænθəni/.
- Probably to be included in this general category are the place-names whose traditional ("old-fashioned") pronunciations have been displaced by ones influenced by the spelling: St. Louis, formerly /sænt ˈluːwiː/ now /seɪnt ˈluːɪs/, PapillionPapillion, NebraskaPapillion is a city in Sarpy County in the U.S. state of Nebraska. It is a suburb to the southwest of neighboring Omaha, and is the county seat of Sarpy County. The population of Papillion was 18,894 at the 2010 census. In 2009, Papillion was named the #3 best place to live in the United States by...
(NebraskaNebraskaNebraska is a state on the Great Plains of the Midwestern United States. The state's capital is Lincoln and its largest city is Omaha, on the Missouri River....
), formerly /pæpijoʊ/ now /pəˈpiljən/, BeatriceBeatrice, NebraskaBeatrice is a city in and the county seat of Gage County, Nebraska.Beatrice is located south of Lincoln on the Big Blue River. It is surrounded by agricultural country. The population was 12,459 at the 2010 census.-History:...
(Nebraska) formerly and still somewhat currently /biˈjætrəs/, now /ˈbijətrəs/. MontpelierMontpelierMontpelier or Montpellier is the name of several places:in Canada:* Montpellier, Quebec* Montpellier , a train station in Montreal, Canadain France:* Montpellier, a city in southern France** The University of Montpellierin Ireland:...
, the capital of VermontVermontVermont is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States of America. The state ranks 43rd in land area, , and 45th in total area. Its population according to the 2010 census, 630,337, is the second smallest in the country, larger only than Wyoming. It is the only New England...
, is pronounced as spelled instead of the French-influenced /mõpelie/ - Sir George EverestGeorge EverestColonel Sir George Everest was a Welsh surveyor, geographer and Surveyor-General of India from 1830 to 1843.Sir George was largely responsible for completing the section of the Great Trigonometric Survey of India along the meridian arc from the south of India extending north to Nepal, a distance...
's surnameSurnameA surname is a name added to a given name and is part of a personal name. In many cases, a surname is a family name. Many dictionaries define "surname" as a synonym of "family name"...
is pronounced ˈ. The mountain named after him – Mount EverestMount EverestMount Everest is the world's highest mountain, with a peak at above sea level. It is located in the Mahalangur section of the Himalayas. The international boundary runs across the precise summit point...
– is generally pronounced ˈ. - Interjections such as tsk tsk! or tut tut! (a pair of dental clickDental clickDental clicks are a family of click consonants found, as constituents of words, only in Africa and in the Damin ritual jargon of Australia. The tut-tut! or tsk! tsk! sound used to express disapproval or pity is a dental click, although it isn't a speech sound in that context.The symbol in the...
s), now commonly /ˈtɪsk ˈtɪsk/ and /ˈtʌt ˈtʌt/. - The words arctic, antarctic, and Antarctica. These were originally pronounced without /k/, but the spelling pronunciation has become very common. The "c" was originally added to the spelling for etymological reasons and was then misunderstood as not being silent.
Spelling pronunciation vs. analogical pronunciation
In some cases, we cannot tell if a pronunciation is a true spelling pronunciation. The alternative is that a word is being pronounced analogically, in essence as the "sum of its parts". Thus, forehead is commonly pronounced as a sequence of fore plus head, instead of the historically earlier "forrid"; and waistcoat is commonly pronounced as a sequence of waist and coat, instead of the historically earlier "weskit".Opinions about spelling pronunciation
Spelling pronunciations give rise to varied opinions. Often those who retain the old pronunciation consider the spelling pronunciation to be a mark of ignorance or insecurity. Those who use a spelling pronunciation may not be aware that it is one, and consider the historically authentic version to be slovenly, since it "slurs over" a letter. Conversely, the users of some innovative pronunciations such as "Febuary" (for February) may regard the historically (and phonetically) authentic version as a pedantic spelling pronunciation.Fowler
Henry Watson Fowler
Henry Watson Fowler was an English schoolmaster, lexicographer and commentator on the usage of the English language...
reports that in his day there was a conscious movement among schoolteachers and others encouraging people to abandon anomalous traditional pronunciations and "speak as you spell". According to major scholars of early modern English (Dobson, Wyld et al.), already in the 17th century there was beginning an "intellectual" trend in England to "pronounce as you spell". This of course presupposes a standard spelling system which was in fact beginning to form at that time.
Similarly, quite a large number of "corrections" slowly spread from scholars to the general public in France, starting several centuries ago.
Others would argue that this trend, though understandable from a socio-psychological point of view, is, from a strictly linguistic perspective, irrational, since writing was invented to represent the sounds of the language and not vice versa. According to this belief, there is no good reason to "speak as one spells", but there are many good reasons to "spell as one speaks", i.e., to reform the orthography of a language whenever it does not render its pronunciation clearly and unambiguously – which is the task of a writing system. How easy such a reform would be in practice is of course quite another matter.
A different variety of spelling pronunciations are phonetic adaptations, i.e., pronunciations of the written form of foreign words within the frame of the phonematic system of the language that accepts them: an example of this process is garage ([ɡaʀaːʒ] in French) sometimes pronounced [ˈɡæɹɪd͡ʒ] in English. Such adaptations are quite natural, and often preferred by speech-conscious and careful speakers.
Spelling pronunciations in children and foreigners
Children who read a great deal often produce spelling pronunciations, since they have no way of knowing, other than the spelling, how the rare words they encounter are correctly pronounced.Well-read second language
Second language
A second language or L2 is any language learned after the first language or mother tongue. Some languages, often called auxiliary languages, are used primarily as second languages or lingua francas ....
learners are likewise vulnerable to producing spelling pronunciations.
However, since there are many words which one reads far more often than one hears, the problem also affects adult native-language speakers. This, in turn, leads to the language evolution mentioned above. What is a spelling pronunciation in one generation often becomes standard in the next.
In other languages
In FrenchFrench language
French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...
, the modern pronunciation of the 16th century French author Montaigne as [mɔ̃tɛɲ], rather than the contemporary [mɔ̃taɲ], is a spelling pronunciation.
When English club was first borrowed into French, the approved pronunciation was /klab/, as being a reasonable approximation of the English. The standard then became /klyb/ on the basis of the spelling, and later, in Europe, /klœb/, deemed closer to the English original. The standard pronunciation in Canada
Canada
Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...
remains /klʏb/. Similarly, shampooing "product for washing the hair" at the time of borrowing was /ʃɑ̃puiŋ/; now it is /ʃɑ̃pwɛ̃/
In Hebrew
Hebrew alphabet
The Hebrew alphabet , known variously by scholars as the Jewish script, square script, block script, or more historically, the Assyrian script, is used in the writing of the Hebrew language, as well as other Jewish languages, most notably Yiddish, Ladino, and Judeo-Arabic. There have been two...
, there is a vowel called patach genuvah, consisting of an "a" sign placed underneath a final guttural but pronounced before it: an example is ruach (meaning 'spirit), which looks like *rucha. Where the final consonant is a sounded he (h), many speakers do indeed place the vowel after it, mistakenly pronouncing Eloah (meaning God) as "Eloha" and gavoah (meaning high) as "gavoha". Other examples of spelling pronunciations are the Sephardic "kal" for "kol" (meaning all) and "tsahorayim" for "tsohorayim" (meaning noon): see Sephardic Hebrew language.
In Swedish
Swedish language
Swedish is a North Germanic language, spoken by approximately 10 million people, predominantly in Sweden and parts of Finland, especially along its coast and on the Åland islands. It is largely mutually intelligible with Norwegian and Danish...
, there has been a tendency towards spelling pronunciation in many words. The plural ending spelled -or, which was formerly often pronounced /-er/, is now often pronounced /-ur/.
In Spanish
Spanish language
Spanish , also known as Castilian , is a Romance language in the Ibero-Romance group that evolved from several languages and dialects in central-northern Iberia around the 9th century and gradually spread with the expansion of the Kingdom of Castile into central and southern Iberia during the...
, the ⟨ch⟩ in some German words and surnames is pronounced tʃ or ʃ instead of x. Bach
Johann Sebastian Bach
Johann Sebastian Bach was a German composer, organist, harpsichordist, violist, and violinist whose sacred and secular works for choir, orchestra, and solo instruments drew together the strands of the Baroque period and brought it to its ultimate maturity...
is correctly pronounced [bax], and kuchen
Kuchen
Kuchen , the German word for cake, is used in other languages as the name for several different types of sweet desserts, pastries, and gateaux...
is [ˈkuxen], but Mach
Mach number
Mach number is the speed of an object moving through air, or any other fluid substance, divided by the speed of sound as it is in that substance for its particular physical conditions, including those of temperature and pressure...
is [maʃ] or [matʃ], Rorschach
Rorschach test
The Rorschach test is a psychological test in which subjects' perceptions of inkblots are recorded and then analyzed using psychological interpretation, complex algorithms, or both. Some psychologists use this test to examine a person's personality characteristics and emotional functioning...
is [ˈrorʃax], and Kirchner is [ˈkirʃner] or [ˈkirtʃner]. Other spelling pronunciations are club
Club
A club is an association of two or more people united by a common interest or goal. A service club, for example, exists for voluntary or charitable activities; there are clubs devoted to hobbies and sports, social activities clubs, political and religious clubs, and so forth.- History...
pronounced [kluβ], iceberg
Iceberg
An iceberg is a large piece of ice from freshwater that has broken off from a snow-formed glacier or ice shelf and is floating in open water. It may subsequently become frozen into pack ice...
pronounced [iθeˈβer] in Spain (in America, it's pronounced [ˈaizβerɡ]), and folclor and folclore as translations of folklore
Folklore
Folklore consists of legends, music, oral history, proverbs, jokes, popular beliefs, fairy tales and customs that are the traditions of a culture, subculture, or group. It is also the set of practices through which those expressive genres are shared. The study of folklore is sometimes called...
, pronounced [folˈklor] and [folˈkloɾe]. In the French word élite the acute accent is often misinterpreted as a Spanish stress mark and the word is pronounced [ˈelite].
Books
- See the index entries under "spelling pronunciation" from Leonard Bloomfield, Language (originally published 1933; current edition 1984, University of Chicago Press, Chicago; ISBN 81-208-1195-X).
- Most of the etymologies and spelling histories above are taken from the Oxford English DictionaryOxford English DictionaryThe Oxford English Dictionary , published by the Oxford University Press, is the self-styled premier dictionary of the English language. Two fully bound print editions of the OED have been published under its current name, in 1928 and 1989. The first edition was published in twelve volumes , and...
.
See also
- Folk etymology
- HeterographyHeterographyIn linguistics, heterography is a property of a written language, such that it lacks a 1-to-1 correspondence between the written symbols and the sounds of the spoken language...
- MispronunciationMispronunciationMispronunciation is defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as "incorrect or inaccurate pronunciation". The matter of what is or is not mispronunciation is a contentious one, and indeed there is some disagreement about the extent to which the term is even meaningful...
- OrthographyOrthographyThe orthography of a language specifies a standardized way of using a specific writing system to write the language. Where more than one writing system is used for a language, for example Kurdish, Uyghur, Serbian or Inuktitut, there can be more than one orthography...
- Spelling reformSpelling reformMany languages have undergone spelling reform, where a deliberate, often officially sanctioned or mandated, change to spelling takes place. Proposals for such reform are also common....