Pronunciation and the effects on the English language

Pronunciation is a funny thing. While you may say "skeletal", someone else may say "skee-lee-tal", the same with "cere-bal" and "cee-ree-bral". I know these are both medical terms, but they are the first ones to pop into my head.

The way in which we say things can be determined by a lot of things. The way your parents said, how your teachers taught you, where you heard it (I've often heard of the American pronunciation for things like "sked-jule" instead of "shed-ule" - and I blame the abundance of American-based TV programmes). You may also have only ever read a word and not heard it, so you pronounce it according to whichever arbitrary English pronunciation rule you're feeling suits the occasion. There is actually a lovely poem on why English is so hard to learn that juxtaposes words with similar spellings against the rhyming scheme. In fact, there's a collection of them on Spelling Society.

One of my personal foibles includes typing to a colleague (my managing editor at the time) expressing how I wasn't "ofay" with something. His correction to "au fait" made a lot more sense at the time! But I'd only ever heard the word and never seen it in the correct written format.

There is an article I came across this week on 8 pronunciation errors that made the English language what it is today. It highlights that pronunciation can change over time, depending on things like a dialect, and misunderstanding of the word's origin, or even just our basic inability to manipulate our speaking appendages (lips, tongue, etc.) to accentuate the correct part of a word. There's a quick summary below, but the original is well worth a look.

1. Reanalysis or rebracketing

Words like "adder" and "apron" used to be spelled "nadder" and "napron", but the phrase "an adder" or "mine napron" were so common that eventually the initial letter was dropped. Basically, the letter was assumed to be part of the preceding word.

2. Metathesis

I get exceptionally frustrated when I hear people say "aks" instead of "ask". But apparently words like "wasp", "bird" and "horse" used to be spelled "waps", "brid" and "hros". It may be a thing, but I'm still holding onto hope that we don't start "aksing" for all sorts of things.

3. Syncope

This happens in cases where we are too lazy to pronounce things, like Wednesday. Derived from the Norse "Woden's Day", it really should have a "d" in the middle. It makes it more tricky to pronounce though so over the years, it has lost the correct pronunciation. The article suggests the same will eventually happen with "Christmas", since no-one really pronounces the "t" anymore.

4. Epenthesis

This is another example of lazy speakers. It happens during the quick switch from a nasal to non-nasal sound. To make it easier on the mouth, a consonant gets added, like in "thunder" and "empty" - previously "thuner" and "emty".

5. Velarisation

It's that pesky "l", I tell you (lowercase L, not uppercase I - for clarification purposes). When it follows a vowel, we tend to pronounce it as a "w" instead, such as "walk" and "folk". Try it: see if you can say: "The folk walked and talked" three times fast. Correctly. Without an American accent.

6. Affrication

That's a lovely word, now, isn't it? Affrication. This happens to me a lot. My mother and best friend hate it when I don't pronounce my vowels correctly. It's "duke" (d-yuke), not "juke". Same goes for "tune". In spite of the South Africanism, you shouldn't really say "choon".

7. Folk Etymology

You know what happens when you assume, don't you? For instance, "crayfish" is a kind of lobster, right? It has nothing to do with fish. But we say that because it comes from the French "écrevisse". Likewise, a "muskrat" is neither musky, nor ratty. The word comes from the Algonquin word "muscascus", meaning red. However, my favourite example was "female", which came from the French "femelle" and actually has nothing to do with men.

8. Spelling pronunciation

This is the opposite of my little "ofay" error. I'd only heard the word, never pronounced it so I made a ridiculously silly assumption of the spelling. But when you only read or see a word, and don't hear the pronunciation, you also make an assumption based on the position of the letters. If you'd only ever heard the way "skiing" was pronounced (correctly, by the Norwegians we stole it from), you'd realise that "sk" together are pronounced "sh" - so you'd go "shying". It's the same with words like villa - in French and Spanish, a double "l" creates a "y" sound so you should be saying "vee-ya" instead of "vill-a".

Do make sure you check out The Guardian's post on this. It really is a fantastic resource for language lovers.