A spelling pronunciation is the
pronunciation of a word according to its spelling when this differs from a longstanding standard or traditional pronunciation. Words that are spelled with letters that were never pronounced or that were not pronounced for many generations or even hundreds of years have increasingly been pronounced as written, especially since the arrival of mandatory schooling and universal literacy.
Examples of words with silent letters that have begun to be often or sometimes pronounced include ''often'', ''Wednesday'', ''island'', and ''knife''. In addition, words traditionally pronounced with
reduced vowels or
omitted consonants (e.g. ''cupboard'', ''Worcester''), may be subject to a spelling pronunciation.
If a word's spelling was standardized prior to sound changes that produced its traditional pronunciation, a spelling pronunciation may reflect an even older pronunciation. This is often the case with compound words (e.g., ''waistcoat'', ''cupboard'', ''forehead''). It is also the case for many words with silent letters (e.g. ''often''
[''often'']
in the American Heritage Dictionary), though not all—silent letters are sometimes added for etymological reasons, to reflect a word's spelling in its language of origin (e.g. ''victual'', rhyming with ''little''
[''victual'' in ''Oxford Dictionaries'']
/ref> but derived from Late Latin
Late Latin ( la, Latinitas serior) is the scholarly name for the form of Literary Latin of late antiquity.Roberts (1996), p. 537. English dictionary definitions of Late Latin date this period from the , and continuing into the 7th century in the ...
''victualia''). Some silent letters were added on the basis of erroneous etymologies, as in the cases of the words ''island''[''island'']
in the American Heritage Dictionary and ''scythe''.
Spelling pronunciations are often prescriptively discouraged and perceived as incorrect next to the traditionally accepted, and usually more widespread, pronunciation. If a spelling pronunciation persists and becomes more common, it may eventually join the existing form as a standard variant (for example ''waistcoat'' and ''often''), or even become the dominant pronunciation (as with ''forehead'' and ''falcon'').
Prevalence and causes
A large number of easily noticeable spelling pronunciations occurs only in languages such as French and English in which spelling tends to not indicate the current pronunciation. Because all languages have at least some words which are not spelled as pronounced, spelling pronunciations can arise in all languages. This is of course especially true for people who are only taught to read and write and who are not taught when the spelling indicates an outdated (or etymologically incorrect) pronunciation. In other words, when many people do not clearly understand where spelling came from and what it is (a tool for recording speech, not the other way around), spelling pronunciations are common.
On the other hand, spelling pronunciations are also evidence of the reciprocal effects of spoken and written language on each other.[Michael Stubbs, Language and Literacy: the Sociolinguistics of Reading and Writing. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul](_blank)
pp. 31-32. Many spellings represent older forms and corresponding older pronunciations. Some spellings, however, are not etymologically correct.
Speakers of a language often privilege the spelling of words over common pronunciation, leading to a preference for, or prestige of, spelling pronunciation, with the written language affecting and changing the spoken language. Pronunciations can then arise that are similar to older pronunciations or that can even be completely new pronunciations that are suggested by the spelling but never occurred before.[
]
Examples of English words with common spelling pronunciations
* ''kiln'' with a fully pronounced n, instead of a silent n. Kiln was originally pronounced kil with the n silent, as is referenced in Webster's Dictionary of 1828. From ''English Words as Spoken and Written for Upper Grades'' by James A. Bowen 1900: "The digraph ln, n silent, occurs in kiln. A fall down the kiln can kill you."
* ''often'', pronounced with . This is actually a reversion to the 15th-century pronunciation,[ but the pronunciation without is still preferred by 73% of British speakers and 78% of American speakers. Older dictionaries do not list the pronunciation with although the 2nd edition of the OED does (and the first edition notes the pronunciation with the comment that it is prevalent in the south of ]England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe ...
and often used in singing; see the '' Dictionary of American Regional English'' for contemporaneous citations that discuss the status of the competing pronunciations). The sporadic nature of such shifts is apparent upon examination of examples such as ''whistle'', ''listen'' and ''soften'' in which the ''t'' remains usually silent.
* ''forehead'' once rhymed with ''horrid'' but is now pronounced with the second syllable as by 85% of American speakers and 65% of British speakers. This is actually a reversion to the original pronunciation.
* ''clothes'' was historically pronounced the same way as the verb ''close'' ("Whenas in silks my Julia goes/.../The liquefaction of her clothes"— Herrick), but many speakers now insert a , a voiced ''th''. This is actually a reversion to the 15th-century pronunciation.
* ''salmon'' is pronounced by a minority of English speakers with , due to the letter l being reintroduced, despite being neither written nor pronounced in the original Anglo-French pronunciation.
* ''falcon'' is now nearly always pronounced with , and only 3% of speakers have no . The was silent in the old pronunciation: compare French ''faucon'' and the older English spellings ''faucon'' and ''fawcon''. That may suggest either analogical change or the reborrowing of the original Latin.
* ''alms'', ''balm'', ''calm'', ''psalm'', etc. are now often pronounced with in some parts of the United States
The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 U.S. state, states, a Washington, D.C., federal district, five ma ...
. In most of the United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Europe, off the north-western coast of the European mainland, continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotlan ...
, the traditional pronunciation continues to prevail.
* ''comptroller'' is often pronounced with ; the accepted pronunciation is controller (the ''mp'' spelling is based on the mistaken idea that the word is related to ''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'' (actually, ''yͤ'' or ''Þe''), the definite article
An article is any member of a class of dedicated words that are used with noun phrases to mark the identifiability of the referents of the noun phrases. The category of articles constitutes a part of speech.
In English, both "the" and "a(n)" ...
, as in '' Ye Olde Coffee Shoppe'', is often pronounced like the archaic English pronoun ''ye'' instead of as the word ''the'', based on the misleading use of the symbol ''y'' to substitute for the archaic printer's mark '' Þ'': the letter thorn. (On the other hand, the beginning of the pronoun ''ye'' in Middle
Middle or The Middle may refer to:
* Centre (geometry), the point equally distant from the outer limits.
Places
* Middle (sheading), a subdivision of the Isle of Man
* Middle Bay (disambiguation)
* Middle Brook (disambiguation)
* Middle Creek (d ...
and Early Modern English is correctly pronounced like the beginning of ''you''.)
* ''Mackenzie, Menzies, Dalziel'' now include the sound in place of the original , due to the insular flat-topped ''g'' of Gaelic scripts being commonly transcribed into English as the similar-looking letter ''z''.
* ''armadillo'' and other words from Spanish with the double-L pronounced instead of (the latter being the closest approximation to the sound in Latin American Spanish); similarly, the Italian-sourced ''maraschino'' (cherry) and ''bruschetta'' with the associated with that consonant cluster in German instead of the of Italian.
* ''victuals'', pronounced (rhyming with ''skittles''), whose ''c'' (for a consonant that had been lost long before the word was borrowed from French) was re-introduced on etymological grounds, and the word is sometimes pronounced with . The original pronunciation is reflected in, for example, the brand name " Tender Vittles".
* The pronunciation of ''waistcoat'' as ''waist-coat'' is now more common than the previous pronunciation .
* ''conduit'', historically pronounced or , is now nearly always pronounced in most of the United States.
* ''covert'', historically pronounced (reflecting its link with the verb ''cover'') is now usually pronounced , by analogy to ''overt''.
* ''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 States
The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 U.S. state, states, a Washington, D.C., federal district, five ma ...
).
* ''Bartholomew'', formerly pronounced or , is now .
* ''Anthony'' (from Latin ''Antonius''), now (in Anglophone countries outside the UK) is typically .
* Numerous placenames with traditional pronunciations have been displaced by ones influenced by the spelling: '' St. Louis'', formerly now (in the US) , ''Papillion
Papillion is a city in Sarpy County in the state of Nebraska, United States. Designated as the county seat, it developed as an 1870s railroad town and suburb of Omaha. The city is part of the larger five-county metro area of Omaha. Papillion's ...
'' (Nebraska
Nebraska () is a state in the Midwestern region of the United States. It is bordered by South Dakota to the north; Iowa to the east and Missouri to the southeast, both across the Missouri River; Kansas to the south; Colorado to the so ...
), formerly now . Montpelier, the capital of Vermont
Vermont () is a state in the northeast New England region of the United States. Vermont is bordered by the states of Massachusetts to the south, New Hampshire to the east, and New York to the west, and the Canadian province of Quebec to the ...
, is now pronounced , instead of the French .
* Sir George Everest's surname is pronounced . The mountain named after him – ''Mount Everest
Mount Everest (; Tibetan: ''Chomolungma'' ; ) is Earth's highest mountain above sea level, located in the Mahalangur Himal sub-range of the Himalayas. The China–Nepal border runs across its summit point. Its elevation (snow ...
'' – is generally pronounced .
* Interjections such as ''tsk tsk!'' or ''tut tut!'' (a pair of dental clicks), now commonly and .
* The words ''Arctic'', ''Antarctic'' and ''Antarctica'' were originally pronounced without the first , but the spelling pronunciation has become very common. The first c was originally added to the spelling for etymological reasons and was then misunderstood as not being silent.
* ''zoology'', which is often pronounced zoo-ology (), though, technically, this is likely influenced more by the word zoo (rhyming with goo) than by its spelling because it is never pronounced zoo-logy (). (It has been posited that dropping the diaeresis in ''zoölogy'' antiquated the pronunciation .) A similar case might be the pronunciation outside the United States of ''hecatomb'' as rhyming with deck a tomb and pronounced instead of .
* ''hotel'', originally pronounced because of the pronunciation of the French ''hôtel'', is now usually pronounced with an audible ''h''. Nevertheless, ''maître d'hôtel'' is pronounced .
* ''herb'', a word with origins in Old French
Old French (, , ; Modern French: ) was the language spoken in most of the northern half of France from approximately the 8th to the 14th centuries. Rather than a unified language, Old French was a linkage of Romance dialects, mutually intelligi ...
, is generally pronounced with a silent ''h'' in the United States. The same was true of the United Kingdom until the 19th century, when it adopted a spelling pronunciation, with an audible ''h''.
* ''Ralph'', originally pronounced or in the United Kingdom, is now often pronounced .
* German loanwords such as ''spiel'' and ''stein'' are sometimes pronounced as beginning with , as if they were native English words, instead of . In German, initial ''s'', immediately before ''p'' or ''t'', is pronounced as if it were ''sch'' .
* ''nephew'' was, until recent generations, predominantly pronounced in Britain, descended from Middle English '' nevew'' and originally loaned from Old French '' neveu,'' a spelling which remains unchanged into modern French. But the ''v'' was later changed to ''ph'' where the ''p'' hints at its Latin root '' nepot,'' which can be found in more recent Latin loanwords like ''nepotism.'' Today, spelling pronunciation has shifted the word's pronunciation predominantly to .
Opinions
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 earlier version to be slovenly since it slurs over a letter. Conversely, the users of some innovative pronunciations such as (for ''February'') may regard another, earlier version as a pedantic spelling pronunciation.
Henry Watson Fowler (1858–1933) reported that in his day, there was a conscious movement among schoolteachers and others encouraging people to abandon anomalous traditional pronunciations and to speak as is spelled. According to major scholars of early modern English (Dobson, Wyld et al.), in the 17th century, there was already beginning an intellectual trend in England to pronounce as is spelled. That presupposes a standard spelling system, which was only beginning to form at the time.
Similarly, quite a large number of corrections slowly spread from scholars to the general public in France, starting several centuries ago.
A different variety of spelling pronunciations are phonetic adaptations, pronunciations of the written form of foreign words within the frame of the phonemic system of the language that accepts them. An example of that process is ''garage'' ( in French), which is sometimes pronounced in English.
Children and foreigners
Children who read frequently often have spelling pronunciations because, if they do not consult a dictionary, they have only the spelling to indicate the pronunciation of words that are uncommon in the spoken language. Well-read second language
A person's second language, or L2, is a language that is not the native language ( first language or L1) of the speaker, but is learned later. A second language may be a neighbouring language, another language of the speaker's home country, or a ...
learners may also have spelling pronunciations.
In some instances, a population in a formerly non-English-speaking area may retain such second language markers in the now native-English speaking population. For example, Scottish Standard English is replete with second language marks from when Scots
Scots usually refers to something of, from, or related to Scotland, including:
* Scots language, a language of the West Germanic language family native to Scotland
* Scots people, a nation and ethnic group native to Scotland
* Scoti, a Latin na ...
started to be subsumed by English in the 17th century.
However, since there are many words that one reads far more often than one hears, adult native-language speakers also succumb. In such circumstances, the spelling pronunciation may well become more comprehensible than the other. That, in turn, leads to the language evolution mentioned above. What is a spelling pronunciation in one generation can become the standard pronunciation in the next.
In other languages
In French
French (french: français(e), link=no) may refer to:
* Something of, from, or related to France
** French language, which originated in France, and its various dialects and accents
** French people, a nation and ethnic group identified with Franc ...
, the modern pronunciation of the 16th-century French author Montaigne as , rather than the contemporary , is a spelling pronunciation.
When English ''club'' was first borrowed into French, the approved pronunciation was , as being a reasonable approximation of the English. The standard then became on the basis of the spelling, and later, in Europe, , deemed closer to the English original. The standard pronunciation in Quebec French remains . Similarly, ''shampooing'' "shampoo; product for washing the hair" at the time of borrowing was but it is now .
In Italian, a few early English loanword
A loanword (also loan word or loan-word) is a word at least partly assimilated from one language (the donor language) into another language. This is in contrast to cognates, which are words in two or more languages that are similar because t ...
s are pronounced according to Italian spelling
Italian orthography (writing) uses a variant of the Latin alphabet consisting of 21 letters to write the Italian language. This article focuses on the writing of Standard Italian, based historically on the Florentine dialect.
Italian orthography ...
rules such as ''water'' ("toilet bowl," from English '' water (closet)''), pronounced , and '' tramway'', pronounced . The Italian word ''ovest'' ("west") comes from a spelling pronunciation of French
French (french: français(e), link=no) may refer to:
* Something of, from, or related to France
** French language, which originated in France, and its various dialects and accents
** French people, a nation and ethnic group identified with Franc ...
''ouest'' (which, in turn, is a phonetic transcription of English ''west''); that particular instance of spelling pronunciation must have occurred before the 16th century, when the letters u and v were still indistinct.
A few foreign proper names are normally pronounced according to the pronunciation of the original language (or a close approximation of it), but they retain an older spelling pronunciation when they are used as parts of Italian street names. For example, the name of Edward Jenner retains its usual English pronunciation in most contexts, but ''Viale Edoardo Jenner'' (a main street in Milan
Milan ( , , Lombard language, Lombard: ; it, Milano ) is a city in northern Italy, capital of Lombardy, and the List of cities in Italy, second-most populous city proper in Italy after Rome. The city proper has a population of about 1.4  ...
) is pronounced . The use of such old-fashioned spelling pronunciations was probably encouraged by the custom of translating given names when streets were named after foreign people: ''Edoardo'' for ''Edward'', or ''Giorgio'' for ''George'' for ''Via Giorgio Washington.''
In Spanish, the ch in some German words is pronounced or , instead of . Bach
Johann Sebastian Bach (28 July 1750) was a German composer and musician of the late Baroque period. He is known for his orchestral music such as the ''Brandenburg Concertos''; instrumental compositions such as the Cello Suites; keyboard wo ...
is pronounced , and Kuchen is , but Rorschach Rorschach may refer to:
* Hermann Rorschach, a Swiss psychiatrist
** Rorschach test, his psychological evaluation method involving inkblots
* Rorschach (character), a character from the comics ''Watchmen''
* Rorschach (comic book), a 2020 comic
* ...
is , rather than , Mach
Mach may refer to Mach number, the speed of sound in local conditions. It may also refer to:
Computing
* Mach (kernel), an operating systems kernel technology
* ATI Mach, a 2D GPU chip by ATI
* GNU Mach, the microkernel upon which GNU Hurd is bas ...
is or , and Kirchner
Kirchner, a surname of German origin, from the Middle High German word, 'kirchenaere' (English: ' sexton'). Kirchner originated as an occupational surname for a church worker, such as a priest, church assistant or a church property administrator. N ...
is or . Other spelling pronunciations are club pronounced , iceberg pronounced in Spain (in the Americas, it is pronounced ), and ''folclor'' and ''folclore'' as translations of folklore
Folklore is shared by a particular group of people; it encompasses the traditions common to that culture, subculture or group. This includes oral traditions such as Narrative, tales, legends, proverbs and jokes. They include material culture, r ...
, pronounced and . Also in Spanish, the acute accent in the French word ''élite'' is taken as a Spanish stress mark, and the word is pronounced .
When Slavic languages like Polish or Czech borrow words from English with their spelling preserved, the pronunciation tends to follow the rules of Polish. Words such as ''marketing'' are pronounced as spelled, instead of the more phonetically faithful .
In standard Finnish, the sound /d/ developed as a spelling pronunciation for the letter ''d'', though it originally represented a /ð/
The voiced dental fricative is a consonant sound used in some spoken languages. It is familiar to English-speakers as the ''th'' sound in ''father''. Its symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet is eth, or and was taken from the Old Engli ...
sound. Similarly /ts/ in words like ''metsä'' (forest) is a pronunciation spelling of ''tz'' used in pre-1770s orthography, which originally represented a long /θ/
The voiceless dental non-sibilant fricative is a type of consonantal sound used in some spoken languages. It is familiar to English speakers as the 'th' in ''think''. Though rather rare as a phoneme in the world's inventory of languages, it is en ...
sound. The dental fricatives had become rare by the 1700s, when the standard pronunciations started to develop into their current forms, which became official in the 1800s. The /d/ sound, however, is not present in most dialects and is generally replaced by a /r/, /l/ or simply dropped (e.g. ''lähde'' "water spring" may be pronounced as ''lähre'', ''lähle'' or ''lähe''). Standard ''ts'' is often replaced with ''tt'' or ''ht'' (''mettä'', ''mehtä'').
In Vietnamese, initial v is often pronounced like a y () in the central and southern varieties. However, in formal speech, speakers often revert to the spelling pronunciation, which is increasingly being used in casual speech as well.
Chinese has a similar phenomenon called '' youbian dubian'' where unfamiliar characters may be read with the pronunciation of similar characters that feature the same phonetic component. For instance, the character is rarely used in Chinese but is often used in Japanese place names (where it is pronounced ''chō''). When read in Mandarin Chinese
Mandarin (; ) is a group of Chinese (Sinitic) dialects that are natively spoken across most of northern and southwestern China. The group includes the Beijing dialect, the basis of the phonology of Standard Chinese, the official language ...
, it came to be pronounced ''dīng'' (such as in Ximending, a district in Taipei
Taipei (), officially Taipei City, is the capital and a special municipality of the Republic of China (Taiwan). Located in Northern Taiwan, Taipei City is an enclave of the municipality of New Taipei City that sits about southwest of the ...
that was named during Japanese occupation) in analogy with the character (also pronounced ''dīng''), even though its expected etymological reflex is ''tǐng''.
See also
* Acronym
An acronym is a word or name formed from the initial components of a longer name or phrase. Acronyms are usually formed from the initial letters of words, as in '' NATO'' (''North Atlantic Treaty Organization''), but sometimes use syllables, a ...
* Folk etymology
Folk etymology (also known as popular etymology, analogical reformation, reanalysis, morphological reanalysis or etymological reinterpretation) is a change in a word or phrase resulting from the replacement of an unfamiliar form by a more famili ...
* Heterography
A homophone () is a word that is pronounced the same (to varying extent) as another word but differs in meaning. A ''homophone'' may also differ in spelling. The two words may be spelled the same, for example ''rose'' (flower) and ''rose'' (p ...
* Hypercorrection
* Hyperforeignism
* Orthography
* Spelling reform
* The Chaos
* Padonkaffsky jargon
References
Citations
Sources
* See the index entries under "spelling pronunciation" from Leonard Bloomfield, ''Language'' (originally published 1933; current edition 1984, University of Chicago Press, Chicago; ).
* Most of the etymologies and spelling histories above are taken from the Oxford English Dictionary
The ''Oxford English Dictionary'' (''OED'') is the first and foundational historical dictionary of the English language, published by Oxford University Press (OUP). It traces the historical development of the English language, providing a com ...
.
* Neuman, Yishai
L'influence de l'écriture sur la langue
PhD dissertation, Paris: Sorbonne Nouvelle
The New Sorbonne University (french: Université de la Sorbonne Nouvelle, also known as Paris III) is a public university in Paris, France. It is one of the inheritors of the historic University of Paris, which was completely overhauled and ...
, 2009.
* --
"Graphophonemic Assignment"
G. Khan (ed.), Encyclopedia of Hebrew Language and Linguistics, Volume 2, Leiden
Leiden (; in English and archaic Dutch also Leyden) is a city and municipality in the province of South Holland, Netherlands. The municipality of Leiden has a population of 119,713, but the city forms one densely connected agglomeration wit ...
, South Holland: Brill, pp. 135–145.
{{DEFAULTSORT:Spelling Pronunciation
Phonetics
Sociolinguistics
Spelling
Linguistic purism
Linguistic error