Talk:Spelling pronunciation

message: The definition we had before:
:A spelling pronunciation is a pronunciation based on spelling that differs from the accepted pronunciation standard
is not, I believe, the usual definition of this term.  I've replaced it with
this:
: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
The former definition, in addition to being non-standard, has the further defect of getting us into endless debates about what is "the accepted pronunciation standard".  NRicardo has weighed in with his opinion about "forrid"--"hick"--which doubtless will offend many speakers of British dialect, where (at least according to the Oxford English Dictionary) "forrid" is actually the preferred alternative.  It's not our job to put our own tastes and opinions about pronunciation into the Wikipedia; we should just report the facts.Opus33 16:38, 30 Jan 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Lowering the POV level

message: According to my dictionary, forehead comes from 'fore' and 'head' and waistcoat comes from 'waist' and 'coat' so using them as examples of popular etymology seems to be misleading and incorrect. -Acjelen 06:19, 23 Apr 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree that we have a problem, in that the Wikipedia article on popular etymology specifically requires that a popular etymology must be historically wrong in order to count as one.  I've substituted "analogical pronunciation" to avoid confusion on this count.  Opus33 16:06, 24 Apr 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Popular Etymology

message: Could /treIt/ for "trait" be a spelling pronunciation. I always use /treIt/ but this article on Languagehat tells me that others use /treI/. — Hippietrail 10:44, 31 May 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I think the English way of saying "Paris" is actually more or less the old pronunciation. It's the French who have ceased pronouncing the "s". Eric Kvaalen (talk) 15:02, 27 May 2015 (UTC)

text: re Paris: The French have dropped the s, but the English have replaced /a/ with /æ/ and replaced the stress to the first syllable (the Latin tribe name it derives from is Parisii with stress on the first i; that the French have kept).--2001:A61:20CD:AA01:7475:E186:91DA:5478 (talk) 12:18, 29 November 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  Trait 

message: We are told that the traditional British pronunciation of "ate" is "ett", and that to pronounce it in the same way as "eight" is either an Americanism or a spelling pronunciation.  However, any reader of Jane Austen or Trollope will notice that there was an alternative past tense "he eat", which presumably really was pronounced "ett"; so "ate" was probably pronounced as spelled all along.  Today I regard "ett" as a British provincialism, and non-standard.--Sir Myles na Gopaleen (the da) 13:11, 22 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I think this is something else. Old English had five classes of "strong" verbs in which there were two stems (for the price of one) in the preterite, one for the 1st and 3rd persons singular, and the other for everything else. This was all shaken out, except for was/were, in the course of Middle English. Different verbs generalized different stems, but usually the spelling agrees with the chosen stem (including divided usage like rung preferred in Britain but rang in the US and Canada) but there were some exceptions. Sate as the past tense of sit persisted as the spelling long after /seyt/ (Dryden rimes it with state) had been ousted by /sæt/. To this day, though the verb is edging toward obsolescence, the preterite of bid (in the sense "request") is spelled bade but pronounced /bæd/. I haven't researched the eat/et/ate business specifically but I'm assuming it's the same thing. (And it's an interesting footnote that not uncommonly consevative forms are disparaged as ignorant while innovations, blunders, and whatever become standard and approved: thus catched vs caught, "figger" vs /figyur/.) Alsihler 19:00, 17 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: If anything, ring-rang-rung preferred in Britain but ring-rung-rung in the US and Canada jnestorius(talk) 21:50, 17 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Poor example. Sorry. According to my authorities, pret rung seems to be old-fashioned everywhere that it still occurs (certainly not in my own Simon-pure American) but apparently enjoyed a certain currency in 19th cent. British usage, if the handbook are anything to go by. Maybe a better ex. would be the pret. of drink, which was quite commonly drunk from the the 17th - 19th cents. but receding for some reason in the 20th. Alsihler 22:14, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

text: Alsihler, in Old English, the 1st and 3rd person singular was æt, while the plural was ǣton. Would these have developed into different vowels in Modern English? By the way, I discovered recently that in an 1844 translation of the books of the Maccabees, the translator used "shrank" when the subject was singular and "shrunk" when the subject was plural! (See wiktionary:shrunk.) Eric Kvaalen (talk) 15:02, 27 May 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: As a matter of fact, Tolkien writes et in oral speech within the Lord of the Rings. I don't know whether that is an actual English writing or he is just making sure that noone pronounces Sam in a wrong manner.--2001:A61:20CD:AA01:7475:E186:91DA:5478 (talk) 12:20, 29 November 2017 (UTC)
thread_title: Ate

message: Should the pronunciations given in the article (ie: pronounced "kondit" or "kundit", is now nearly always "conndewit" or Wednesday, historically "Wensday" or "Wendsday" ) be changed over to use IPA pronunciation guides?
:Yes, I suppose in theory we should. However on some browsers (e.g. mine) IPA symbols appear as rectangles, making the article much less accessible.  If necessary, use both (IPA first, then the current version in inverted commas or brackets or both). --Sir Myles na Gopaleen (the da) 12:29, 25 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Pronunciations 

message: Somebody with expertise in this subject needs to take a look at the recent edits by anon. user 82.57.95.229 which I came across only because I was reverting a series of nonsense edits by another anon. IP user (on this & other articles). User 82.57.95.229 added a sort of mini-essay along with a shorter edit, which I nearly reverted. But I thought it would be better for somebody else who edits this particular article to exercise their judgement on this. Cgingold 20:43, 3 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Recent edits by anon. IP user ?? 

message: The article says:
:falcon /fælkən/ is now standard; the old pronunciation was 'fawkin' cf. the family name Faulkner and a long history of variant spellings without -l- 
There are two issues here.  It is quite true that the "l" was formerly not pronounced, but is almost invariable now.  However I do not agree that the "a" has universally become æ.  In England, the standard pronunciation of the first syllable rhymes with "all", as if the word were "faulcon".  I have never heard /fælkən/, though I am not aware of the position in the United States. --Sir Myles na Gopaleen (the da) (talk) 12:53, 24 January 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: It is pronounced /fælkən/ in the United States. Funnyhat (talk) 04:12, 25 July 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Falcon

message: Could someone who knows what they're doing cover the pronunciation of wrath (roth/rath)? (I can't IPA.)--87.159.100.173 (talk) 17:47, 8 October 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: It's pronounced "rath" in America and "roth" in England. But I don't know whether "rath" is a spelling pronunciation. I doubt it. Eric Kvaalen (talk) 15:02, 27 May 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: It's definitely not pronounced "Roth" in England, but "rawth".  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 142.254.1.132 (talk) 01:36, 9 December 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Wrath 

message: I have just added a bit of additional material to the main page; some background info thereto can also be found on the talk page belonging to "history of English vowels before r" or whatever it's called.
The main point I'd like to make about spelling pronunciations is that, at least in the initial stages of formation, they are not really "linguistic behavior" per se. Grammar -- that is to say, all linguistic behavior such as using certain sounds, certain syntactic structures, etc. -- is a set of subconscious behavior which develops in the brain of each human living in any society. If we consciously decide to give a certain word a certain pronunciation (I used to have some friends who thought it was clever to say jape instead off gape, jamble instead of gamble etc.), that is just fooling around, but if it becomes a part of the internalized grammar sometime later (perhaps with some naive, younger speaker), then it is language --at least as far as their idiolect goes. The point worthy of study -- and this is really sociolinguistics -- is how these transitions and innovations occur. E.g. why, when I was a kid (60s) did most people say jigga (giga-) and selt (Celt), but now practically all younger people (and elders who want to be hip) say gigga and Kelt? Is this sort of change related to spelling pronunciation?Jakob37 (talk) 07:57, 13 May 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Obviously pronouncing Celt as "kelt" is not spelling pronunciation! It's the opposite. Eric Kvaalen (talk) 15:02, 27 May 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  a social phenomenon, but perhaps not linguistic 

message: There is an enormous amount of unsourced personal-opinion tripe in this article, some of if completely hare-brained, especially assertions of "American" pronunciation, as if there were only one US dialect. I think this article could very safely be pared down by about 80%, into a sourced stub, and then built upon from there, with sources. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont]  ‹(-¿-)› 13:11, 14 May 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: It might be good to have sources for pronunciation, but I don't think we need a source to say that something is a spelling pronunciation so long as it is known that the word was formerly pronounced not as spelled. Eric Kvaalen (talk) 15:02, 27 May 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Let's pare this down to sourced material 

message: "Forehead" is a good example of the phenomenon, and can be sourced, too. "Pumpkin" is another, although not so easily sourced.
221.222.122.100 (talk) 01:32, 15 March 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Was "pumpkin" ever universally pronounced "punkin"? Perhaps not, since the word used to be "pumpion" or "pompon". The "mp" is etymological. Eric Kvaalen (talk) 15:02, 27 May 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  More examples 

message: Just what is a "common spelling pronunciation" ? I suggest the title of this section be revised to: 
"Examples of commonly found English words with spelling pronunciations" Jakob37 (talk) 06:10, 17 August 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  "Examples of English words with common spelling pronunciations" 

message: The example of גבוה (m.) being pronounced as 'gavoha' instead of 'gavoah' due to patach ganuv isn't very accurate. It's actually pronounced neither * nor *, but simply . Maybe if someone is trying to speak "proper" Hebrew they would say *, but I highly doubt it has anything to do with the Niqqud (which is almost never encountered). Since Modern Hebrew doesn't allow /h/ syllable-finally, *, although very unnatural, is simply the only way to pronounce it.
Taliandr (talk) 18:10, 6 February 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: Spelling pronunciations hardly exist in Hebrew because it's almost always correct to pronounce words as written. People often mispronounce words though. One example which might be called spelling pronunciation is pronouncing a word like חָקְרֵ֣נִי as ħakreni instead of ħokreni. The trouble is that qamatz can be either "a" or "o", and in this case it should be "o". Eric Kvaalen (talk) 15:02, 27 May 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Hebrew example 

message: I recently added the examples of "zoology" and "hecatomb", but this was reverted because I had no source (as though certain authorities have the right to say that a pronunciation is a spelling pronunciation and we simple people don't). What do you folks think about these two words? What I wrote was:
* zoology, which is often pronounced "zoo-ology". This is not quite "spelling pronunciation" because it is never pronounced "zoo-logy". It is probably influenced by the word zoo (derived from zoological garden), which rhymes with goo. A similar case might be the pronunciation (not in the US) of hecatomb as rhyming with "deck a tomb".
Eric Kvaalen (talk) 15:02, 27 May 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: Sorry to leave you hanging —I wasn't so concerned about making sure there is a clear citation, but I couldn't make heads or tails of the pronunciation you were trying to convey with your hyphenation. I thought a source would help me understand what sounds you were intending. You'll note that the rest of the examples use IPA to convey pronuciations because it so greatly reduces ambiguity. If we can get zoology and hecatomb into IPA (and I'm happy to assist), then let's do it! Cheers! —jameslucas (" " / +) 12:35, 2 June 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks James. By "zoo-ology" I meant /zuˈɑlədʒi/, and by "zoo-logy" I meant /ˈzulədʒi/. And when I said that people pronounce "hecatomb" as though it rhymes with "deck a tomb", I meant that they say /ˈhɛ.kə.tuːm/. As though they think the -tomb at the end of the word should be pronounced like "tomb". These two examples, unlike cases where the spelling reflects an older standard pronunciation, are probably examples where the only justification for the pronunciation in question is that the spelling looks like that (if one doesn't understand the derivation from Greek). Eric Kvaalen (talk) 18:25, 2 June 2015 (UTC)
thread_title: Zoology and hecatomb

message: There should be a section (#Hypercorrection? #Foreign terms?) for English appropriation of foreign terms and the (mis)use of their usual conventions. Valet and chalet are examples of English words brought over with Norman French that separately maintained their original pronunciations (shifting to /-ɪt/ from being unstressed) while French French went on to mangle them into /-eɪ/. Their upper-class British (i.e., Norman Frenchy) pronunciation matches standard English pretty well but were imagined to be "spelling pronunciations" and (hyper)corrected using a French-based spelling pronunciation to rhyme with Malay. All the same, it's not "wrong". It's a reborrowing of the term from the original language that eventually becomes standard.
There must be other examples where English follows the general rule in a foreign language but misses a pronunciation exception (or original language) in the manner that octopi muffs the grammar. Maybe bolognese? — LlywelynII 04:41, 10 June 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: Actually, in modern French valet is /vale/, not /valeɪ/. Eric Kvaalen (talk) 10:23, 11 June 2015 (UTC)
thread_title: Valet

message: I know we go where the  lead us, but there has to be a less biased term. There's nothing wrong with pronouncing the  in often and many of this page's examples are no longer "nonstandard" within their dialect of English. There should be some way of talking about this (that we should use) that simply talks about the fact that spelling is influential on pronunciation and sometimes pulls words back or shifts the pronunciation from what it would have been otherwise. — LlywelynII 04:41, 10 June 2015 (UTC)
thread_title: Ridiculously pejorative

message: :
Contemporary (literally 'of the same time') is ambiguous; does it mean of Montaigne's time, or of the present?  The modern word /mɔ̃taɲ/ is written sans «i».  Is it known how Michel de Montaigne pronounced his name? —Tamfang (talk) 19:31, 25 March 2024 (UTC)
thread_title:  Montaigne