
Pronunciation errors that made the English language - jellyksong
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/mar/11/pronunciation-errors-english-language
======
Jun8
Very interesting article with cool examples. Here are a few more:

* In the "words that begin with an n" category he didn't include the most famous example: _orange_ , the fruit, which has an _n_ in Persian and Arabic from which it was borrowed but lost it ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orange_(fruit)#Etymology](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orange_\(fruit\)#Etymology))

* I used to think that _baby_ was the actual word and _babe_ was a corruption, turns out most probably it was just the reverse (baby < babe + y) ([http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/44883/was-baby-or...](http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/44883/was-baby-originally-baby-talk))

* Somewhat related to the last category: Have you ever wondered why the initial sound in _chair_ and _chandelier_ are pronounced differently in English? There was a sound change in French, _chair_ was borrowed before that change and _chandelier_ , like many other French word that start with ch, after that change.

* According to OED the reason that some animal names have the same singular and plural was that they originally contained a long vowel, e.g. _deer_ , _sheep_ , _fish_. Turns out, _horse_ was also in this group but after a sound change its vowel shortened, hence the -s plural now.

~~~
fauigerzigerk
Interesting. In spanish, "orange" still has the n: "naranja".

~~~
dagurp
It makes more sense in english where you can't hear the difference between "An
orange" or "A norange".

~~~
memsom
This is a common phenomenon in English. The "Adder" (type of snake native to
Britain) was originally "Nadder". In old/middle English, it was "a/an",
"my/mine", so "mine Edward" and "my Nedward" sounded the same, hence a
nickname (ironically originally "ekename", so another case) for Edward is
"Ned".

~~~
mhartl
Indeed, from the OP:

 _Adder, apron and umpire all used to start with an "n". Constructions like "A
nadder" or "Mine napron" were so common the first letter was assumed to be
part of the preceding word. Linguists call this kind of thing reanalysis or
rebracketing._

------
devindotcom
The latest iteration of the language, yes. Fifty or a hundred years from now,
we'll see. I think (hope) that we'll see a backlash against merging and
simplification. Perhaps leetspeak will be the new Esperanto.

Since we're trading anectotes, I'll share mine here:

When taking words from another language, the process often falls under one of
two types: loanwords, which are taken intact from their native language (e.g.
doppelganger), and calques, which are literally translated as idiom (e.g. flea
market).

What's the anecdote? Loanword is a calque of the German lehnwort, and _calque_
is a French loanword.

~~~
Blahah
Since this is a language thread, worth pointing out that an anecdote is a
story _about an event, place or person_. What you've shared is in entertaining
fact, not an anecdote.

~~~
StavrosK
It was a calque of the Greek ανέκδοτο, which means "short, amusing story", or
"joke".

~~~
devindotcom
Yes, this was the meaning I had in mind.

------
JacobAldridge
Many years ago I had a friend apologise verbally for her "forx pass". Turns
out she'd only ever read the phrase _faux pas_.

Then just last month a colleague of mine created the reverse in a group email,
acknowledging a "fow par". It was a phrase she'd only ever heard and used,
never (knowingly) seen spelled.

~~~
evincarofautumn
Took me just a moment to realise you’re from a non-rhotic area. I thought
those mispronunciations were _really_ far off.

~~~
JacobAldridge
Ha! Yes, Australian accent may be required.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Exactly! There's a Frazz cartoon about how you can tell if a person reads a
lot (mispronounces) or watches TV a lot (misspells). I know which category I'd
rather be in.

~~~
6cxs2hd6
Yep. I used to feel embarrassed about my mispronunciation fax passes, until I
realized they mostly came from reading beyond my immediate opportunity to
apply.

------
baddox
Though not related specifically to pronunciation, a fun fact is that a lot of
English words for meat and livestock are borrowed from Anglo-Saxon and French
words respectively. This apparently comes from the Norman conquest: the French
nobility dealt more with prepared meat while Anglo-Saxon peasants dealt more
with livestock.

"Beef" comes from Old French "boef" (meaning ox), while "cow" comes from Old
English "cu."

Same goes for sheep/mutton, pork/pig, and poultry/chicken.

~~~
patmcguire
And there's doubling in the law. Cease and desist, plus a few others I can't
remember.

~~~
gumby
"Cease and desist" is a different, and also interesting, case from the
field/table distinction baddox referred to. According to Jespersen (
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otto_Jespersen](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otto_Jespersen)
) phrases like "kith and kin" or "cattle and kine" are very old in English and
far predate the Norman invasion.

My kid was learning English around the time the brand "Da Kine" became
popular. In his second grade way he looked it up in the dictionary and decided
it was a farm brand.

Jesperson's "Growth and Structure of the English Language" is a fantastic book
by the way.

~~~
thaumasiotes
But wait... cattle and kine are the same thing, much like cease and desist.
Kith and kin aren't the same. Do you also think it's strange to say "friends
and family"?

~~~
JoeAltmaier
'kin' comes from 'ken', so 'kinfolk' are folks that think like you. What does
'kith' mean?

~~~
thaumasiotes
So, nothing you said is correct. Ken [know] < OE cennan "make known; declare".
Kin [family] < OE cynn "family" (among other meanings, but that one seems
apt).

[http://etymonline.com/index.php?term=kin](http://etymonline.com/index.php?term=kin)

Kith [] < OE cyðð also meaning family, but alternatively neighbors,
countrymen, or acquaintances. Obsolete and only extant today in the fixed
phrase "kith and kin", but originally meaning [countrymen] and later
[friends]. Your kith and kin are all your relationships, blood or otherwise.
Your kin are the blood and marriage relationships.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Thanks for being so kind. One thing I said isn't correct. That definition of
'kinfolk' came from a writer, Forrest Carter, so I blame them.

~~~
thaumasiotes
There are two noticeable mistakes is your prior comment. One is a simple
mistake of fact; kin is not related to ken. The other is the etymological
fallacy, which says that the meaning of a word is or should be controlled by
what it meant in the past.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Etymological_fallacy](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Etymological_fallacy)

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Cute. If a word is out of usage almost completely, I don't see how that
fallacy can be brought into play.

------
mcv
Honestly, I wouldn't mind if we could get rid on the English language as the
world's dominant language altogether. The pronunciation rules are completely
crazy.

I recently visited Indonesia, and people who spoke Indonesian were surprised
how good my Indonesian pronunciation was. Apart from some food, I didn't
understand a word of Indonesian, but in Indonesian, pronunciation is pretty
much phonetic. Just say what it says, and you can't go wrong. Unless you're a
native English speaker, in which case all the crazy mangled pronunciation
you've grown up with gets in the way.

A lot of languages from totally different corners of the world have agree on
pronunciation, and have practically identical rules for it. A few exceptions,
like English and French, seem to require mangling it beyond all recognition.

~~~
tomp
Or wi kud jast meyk Inglish speling ruls mor sensibl.

~~~
Ygg2
That requires that each sound is replaced with a letter.

There are more sounds than letters AFAIK. [http://w3.inf.fu-
berlin.de/lehre/SS05/efs/materials/PhonSymb...](http://w3.inf.fu-
berlin.de/lehre/SS05/efs/materials/PhonSymb.jpg)

~~~
tomp
You're only interested in phonemes ("The smallest contrastive linguistic unit
which may bring about a change of meaning" \- [1]), not sounds. For example,
the "th" in "thin" and "this" or "i" in "see" and "sit" and "happy" etc., even
though they are different sounds, they are the same phonemes - substituting
one for the other will not change the meaning of the word, it will just make
other people think you have a strange accent.

Also, you can combine letters - e.g. keep "naive" the same, but write "fayv"
instead of "faiv" for "five" to indicate a diphthong. And keep "ship" the
same, but write "shiip" for "sheep" to indicate a long "i" sound.

[1]:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoneme](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoneme)

~~~
anaphor
Sorry but I don't think you're right about [ð] (this) and [θ] (thin) being a
phoneme. For one, most native English speakers hear a difference if you ask
them, and it does seem possible to find a minimal pair, that is, two words
that mean different things in English but differ only in those two sounds.
(e.g. thigh vs. thy)

A better example of a phoneme in English is the aspirated and non-aspirated
[p] sound (transcribed as [pʰ] for aspirated). It's just the difference
between holding in a bunch of air and pushing it out, and most English people
can't hear a difference.

Edit: I may have been confused, were you just pointing these out as being all
different phonemes?

~~~
tomp
You're right, there might be minimal pairs, but for most words the exact
pronunciation doesn't matter - like there is a minimal pair for [i] and [i:]
(ship/sheep, beach/bitch), but (1) not everyone can pronounce it, so often you
must be able to infer the meaning from the context, and (2) for most words it
doesn't matter (see, thin, happy, ...)

------
brightsize
I have heard native English speakers in the U.S. with a habit of attempting to
pronounce the "h" in words that start with "wh". "white" being a notable
example. Furthermore, in their efforts they transpose the two letters, so
"white" comes out as "hwight" rather than "wite". I've always thought this to
be some sort of affectation intended to elevate themselves above the hoi
polloi, but maybe there's some historical basis for it.

~~~
GotAnyMegadeth
Tourists from the USA in the UK always sounds funny when pronouncing place
names that have "ham" in them. The UK English way of saying these place names
is Buckingum and Birmingum, not BuckingHam and BirmingHam.

~~~
brightsize
I would have said BuckingAm myself. Speaking of the UK, how on earth did
Worcester come to be pronounced "Wister". At least that's the way it's
pronounced in the U.S. northeast, when referring to the city in central
Massachusetts. The Brits threw New England a whole bunch of curveballs.

~~~
GotAnyMegadeth
I'd pronounce that Wooster

~~~
6cxs2hd6
Actually I always hear it pronounced Wuhster. Although maybe you did mean "oo"
as in "wood" (the sound I hear around here) rather than "root".

~~~
MLR
Yeah it's a schwa, rather than an oo.

------
victoro
Surprising that the "words that begin with n" section didn't discuss how the
process works both ways. For example the word newt (as in the aquatic
amphibian) used to be ewt, but because it was so often prefaced by "an"
eventually the n was attached to the ewt. Wikipedia's definition for this
process is juncture loss.

Source:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_articles#Juncture_loss](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_articles#Juncture_loss)

------
lunchladydoris
If you like this sort of stuff you should definitely check out Slate's Lexicon
Valley podcast [1]. Bob Garfield and Mike Vuolo have great chemistry and the
content is always interesting. [1]
[http://www.slate.com/articles/podcasts/lexicon_valley.html](http://www.slate.com/articles/podcasts/lexicon_valley.html)

~~~
coldpie
Thanks for the link, but holy buckets that's one of the worst pieces of web
design I've ever seen. Leave it to web designers to screw up displaying an
ordered list.

Sanely presented list of podcasts in the form of an RSS feed at
<[http://feeds.feedburner.com/SlateLexiconValley?format=xml>](http://feeds.feedburner.com/SlateLexiconValley?format=xml>).

------
riffraff
On a related note, if you haven't seen these yet, these series of videos is
awesome:

"A history of the english language in ten minutes"

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H3r9bOkYW9s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H3r9bOkYW9s)

------
quovodis
I come from the same area as the bithplace of william the conqueror and, to my
surprise, as I was learning English, I realized that some words sounded the
same as the local dialect my grandparents were speaking; such as 'pear' and
'chair', etc...

------
junto
When I was in school we were reading 'The Crucible'. One lesson we all took
turns to read out loud. One of my peers read the word 'whore' as 'war'. Some
of the boys sniggered.

The teacher then needed to describe what a whore was.

I think she handled it quite well in hindsight considering she had a bunch if
immature teenagers to deal with.

~~~
72deluxe
We had a teacher named Mrs Hoare, pronounced "whore". She was lovely. She
eventually left to be replaced by Mrs Robinson, so handing in homework
involved "Here's to you Mrs Robinson!"

but nobody got as far as asking "Are you trying to seduce me Mrs Robinson?"

chortle chortle guffaw teenage idiots

~~~
Mindless2112
I've often imagined what an awkward look I would get mentioning Hoare logic
[1] to someone who hadn't seen it written.

[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hoare_logic](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hoare_logic)

------
jack-r-abbit
Recently I've heard several people pronounce the "l" in "salmon" and it
actually made me pause to see if I had been saying it wrong all along. General
consensus with my Facebook friends was that the "l" should not be pronounced.
But now I wonder if it used to be but was lost.

~~~
innguest
It definitely used to be pronounced. I've never heard of a word that started
out with a silent letter. All silent letters I've come across in my studies
have been pronounced in the past. I could be wrong and if so, that would be
very interesting.

~~~
jack-r-abbit
I didn't realize that the silent "k" in knife and knight were ever pronounced.
Or the "p" in pterodactyl. I'm glad those three aren't making a comeback. :)

~~~
thaumasiotes
knife and knight will have been pronounced with the 'k' originally in english;
you can see this in Chaucer. Pterodactyl, being essentially coined by english
speakers from classical greek roots, probably never had the 'p' pronounced in
english, but it was certainly pronounced in greek.

However, the closest thing I'm aware of to a word "starting out with a silent
letter" is debt, which was originally spelled (and pronounced) without the
'b'. The 'b' was added by someone who felt the word should better reflect the
latin 'debeo', and was never pronounced at any point.

~~~
edmccard
"Doubt" is another one; borrowed from old French doute in the 13th century,
with the "b" added by scribes in the 14th century.

There's a bit in Shakespeare's _Love's Labour's Lost_ where the pedant
Holofernes is ranting about how the "b" should be pronounced in those two
words, but as you say, it was always silent.

EDIT: Turns out "salmon" and "solder" were originally "saumon" and "soudor",
with the "l" added in the 18th century (agsin to reflect the Latin spelling)

~~~
zhte415
I very much enjoyed this quick introduction to Shakespeare in Original
Pronunciation (the sound of speech at the time) and how many puns and much
interpretation is lost in modern accents. From the Open University:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gPlpphT7n9s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gPlpphT7n9s)

------
gsk22
Are the L's in balm and psalm really silent in British English? I have always
pronounced the L, and can't imagine applying a bahm or reading psahm 23.

~~~
arethuza
Yes, at least for this Scot, "balm" is the same as the first part of "bampot"
and psalm is the same as "Sam".

~~~
lampington
Interesting, I always thought bampot had a first syllable rhyming with "lamp",
but would pronounce balm to rhyme with calm. But then I'm from the south of
England so bampot isn't a word I'd normally outside of reading
Trainspotting...

~~~
arethuza
I think Scots tend to shorten sounds - consider Edinburgh, which locals
pronounce "Embra". Only having been here for about 30 years I've only got to
the point of referring to it as "Edinbra".

Referring to it as "Eedeeenboooroooo" causes hilarity in local of all levels
of seniority.

------
grey-area
It's not in the article, but loose and lose are another two words in the
process of merging, because they are almost homophones. These two are often
confused and lose seems to be losing the battle.

~~~
knyt
In a somewhat similar process, 'lead' (pronounced like the element) seems to
have replaced 'led' (the participle or the preterite): "She lead the team."

~~~
cubicle67
I've not seen this before. To me that reads like mixed tense, where lead
(rhyming with steed) is the present tense of led

~~~
thaumasiotes
If "she lead the team" were in the present tense, it would be a gross foreign-
speaker error; no native speaker is going to mess up our vestigial 3sg verb
rule.

But as with lose/"loose", I don't think this is a pronunciation change in
progress; I think it's just a spelling mistake, by analogy to read/read.

------
jobu
I've often heard people use the term "mute point" instead of "moot point".
That seems fairly similar to the borrowing similar words from other languages.

~~~
shellac
Is that in the US? It would make some sort of sense since 'moot point' has
effectively reversed its meaning in US english ('something _not_ for
discussion' there). 'Mute' seems to to agree with that sense.

(See also the US meaning of 'table' as in 'postpone for discussion' which has
also reversed)

------
rcthompson
I observe that the linguistic sophistication here is significantly in excess
of that of an ordinary HN comment thread.

------
anaphor
This is basically an overview of what you would learn in a Historical
Linguistics course. The reason they focus so much on sounds is because the
changes are much more obvious than say, syntactic changes in the language
(which can be very subtle).

------
mrfusion
I've often wondered if nursery rhymes indicate words that used to rhyme?

For example did "rain" and "again" rhyme when the itsy bitsy spider was
written?

Did "bone" and "none" rhyme when old mother hubbard was written?

~~~
anon4
Rain and again still rhyme for me.

~~~
gagege
We must have different accents. I say r-AIN and uh-GIN, with the 'g' sounding
like the 'g' in 'golf'.

That song doesn't rhyme for me either. :(

------
js2
Around the age of 11 or so, I heard my daughter, a voracious reader,
mispronounce colonel the way it is spelled. When I corrected her she was very
upset to the point of arguing with me that I must be wrong.

So we went to the dictionary where we both learned the source of the
confusion:

[http://teachinghistory.org/history-content/ask-a-
historian/2...](http://teachinghistory.org/history-content/ask-a-
historian/22270)

Borrowed from French but altered to an Italian prononciation. There are other
such words in English, but I can't think what they are at the moment.

------
borispavlovic
I think that the king of miss-pronunciation is prof. Joseph Stiglitz. The guy
is genius but the way he pronounces the words 'state', 'etcetera' and many
others is hilarious.

------
napowitzu
Seeing an article that gives Latin words as an example of English language
pronunciation errors makes me shake my head. Seeing that the example given
contains an error itself (his "correct" version of "ex-cetera" is "etcetera,"
where it is supposed to be written as two words, "et cetera") makes me bang my
head into my desk—twice.

~~~
mratzloff
Words (or phrases) like "et cetera" are so commonly in use that they are
effectively English, despite their origins. Otherwise, what's left of English?

------
gumby
My favorite is cleave/cleave one of which means to separate and the other to
join together.

~~~
JacobAldridge
It took daddy 10 months to raise the barn, and junior with his matches just 10
minutes to raze the barn.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Actually barn-raisings took just a couple of days, if the neighbors were
helping :)

------
sdegutis
I wonder, will we eventually start spelling "both" as "bolth"?

------
kkl232
Pretty funny! This would have been a perfect story using Soundcite- inline
audio embedding:
[http://soundcite.knightlab.com/](http://soundcite.knightlab.com/)

------
scott_s
Many people say _in-ter-sting_ rather than _in-ter-est-ing_.

~~~
jessaustin
I think the most common three-syllable pronunciation I hear is _in-tra-sting_.

------
namenotrequired
My English teacher told me that "You" is now pronounced like that because the
"th" in "Thou" used to have its own character, which looked a lot like the Y.

~~~
gjm11
That would be pretty astonishing given that the thou/you distinction fairly
obviously comes from Latin tu/vos via French tu/vous.

~~~
moioci
Merriam Webster differs: You -- Middle English, from Old English ēow, dative &
accusative of gē you; akin to Old High German iu, dative of ir you, Sanskrit
yūyam you First Known Use: before 12th century

Thou -- Middle English, from Old English thū; akin to Old High German dū thou,
Latin tu, Greek sy First Known Use: before 12th century

So "thou" is cognate with German "du", and "you" is related to German "ihr",
the plural of "sie", if I'm understanding this correctly.

~~~
gjm11
Yup, you're right and I was, let's say, 99% wrong. (The 1% comes from the fact
that "you" and "vos" and "vous" are all related -- but "you" is a cousin of
both, not a descendant.)

Still no way it's got anything to do with writing "thou" with a thorn at the
front and misreading it as a "y", though.

------
viraptor
Just remembered - this is actually fairly new. May used to be spelled "may",
now it's "maj". I don't think the pronunciation changed though.

~~~
mratzloff
Huh?

~~~
viraptor
It should've been a child of
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7385520](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7385520)
\- the hacker news 2 app failed to put it in the right place :(

------
eggestad
This is a whopper:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Vowel_Shift](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Vowel_Shift)

------
CoconutPilot
I have only met a small handful of people who can pronounce "kilometre"
correctly. I don't think this made the language though ...

KILL-o-metre

------
rosser
I'm actually surprised their survey found more people using "excetera" than
"expresso."

~~~
aaronbrethorst
Fun fact: An acceptable, albeit dated, spelling of "et cetera" is "&c". Since
et cetera literally means "and so forth," you can contract it into "& cetera,"
or "&c".

~~~
phaemon
"&" is actually a stylised way of writing "et" (as in literally writing the
letters "e" and "t" together).

