# Mother-tongue "traps" [rebracketing/mishearing]



## Loob

Until the age of 14 or so, I was convinced that there was a verb 'to misle' because I had often read the past tense 'misled'.  

It was only by chance that I realised that 'misled' was actually the past tense of the verb 'to mislead'...

Do others have similar "traps" in their own language?

Loob


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## jazyk

I don't know if it qualifies as a trap, but I'd always (mis)pronounced escaravelho (scarab) in Portuguese with an open e, possibly influenced by the pronunciation of velho (old), which has an open e. Not until a few months ago did I learn that the correct pronunciation has a closed e.

Jazyk


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## danielfranco

From a Gallagher riff:
How can you possibly learn to spell logically in English? Consider the word "bomb" and how it sounds. But if you change the "b" for a "c" it says "comb" and doesn't sound similar at all. Even worse: change the "c" for a "t" and now you've got "tomb".
What the hell is going on?


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## gaer

danielfranco said:


> From a Gallagher riff:
> How can you possibly learn to spell logically in English? Consider the word "bomb" and how it sounds. But if you change the "b" for a "c" it says "comb" and doesn't sound similar at all. Even worse: change the "c" for a "t" and now you've got "tomb".
> What the hell is going on?


I am most often totally surprised when I hear someone pronounce a word I have only read and find out that I have "heard it wrong in my mind" my entire life.

For instance, I have never said "they had a row", meaning a quarrel. I thought it rhymed with "so, know". But recently I've been listening to books because of tired eyes, and I notice that I only heard "row" as "now". I thought it could be pronounced either way, and the second was BE. It appears I've been wrong my whole life.

And just the other day I learned that "herb" does not have a silent "h".


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## LouisaB

Hi, everyone,

I used to be fooled (and probably still am without knowing it) by the existence of negatives in BE, where their positive has long ago dropped out of use. For instance, misled by the word '*disgruntled*', I was using the word '*gruntled*' to mean 'contented' until well into my teens, when somebody finally told me not to be a pretentious twit... 

Louisa


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## linguist786

danielfranco said:


> From a Gallagher riff:
> How can you possibly learn to spell logically in English? Consider the word "bomb" and how it sounds. But if you change the "b" for a "c" it says "comb" and doesn't sound similar at all. Even worse: change the "c" for a "t" and now you've got "tomb".
> What the hell is going on?


Haha! That reminds me of my dad when he says English is a silly language - "p-u-t" = put, "b-u-t" = but.

Gujarati and Hindi are very regular in their pronunciation, being abudigas - you basically read what you see, so I can understand where he's coming from. 



gaer said:


> And just the other day I learned that "herb" does not have a silent "h".


You might get away with that here in the North


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## Arrius

gaer said:


> I am most often totally surprised when I hear someone pronounce a word I have only read and find out that I have "heard it wrong in my mind" my entire life.
> 
> For instance, I have never said "they had a row", meaning a quarrel. I thought it rhymed with "so, know". But recently I've been listening to books because of tired eyes, and I notice that I only heard "row" as "now". I thought it could be pronounced either way, and the second was BE. It appears I've been wrong my whole life.
> 
> And just the other day I learned that "herb" does not have a silent "h".


 
That you continued to pronounce *row* meaning dispute for so long as "roe" meaning fish eggs is quite remarkable. I think this may have occurred because Americans use the word _"fight_" in this sense _("I had a fight with my wife"_), where I as an Englishman would use _row_ instead and never _fight_ unless actual blows were exchanged. Also, you probably heard "_racket_" where an Englishman would say _"row"_ in the sense of unpleasant noise (Stop that darn racket/ infernal row!). Thus you were less exposed to the correct pronunciation than would have been the case in the UK.

As regards the silent H in *herb(s)*, I am quite sure I have heard well-spoken Americans say the word in that way, which struck me because the H is always pronounced in Britain (unless you're a Cockney). In the original French the H here is regarded as an H mute not an aspìrated H, that is to say they say_ l'herbe (grass)_ unlike _le hublot (porthole) _where the H is said to be aspirated, although in practice you never hear an aspirated H unless the speaker is rather pedantic and then only before an A. So the American pronunciation with no H is closer to the original than the British.


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## viera

I always pronounced (in my mind) the word *abrupt* as a-burped - I probably spelled it aburpt too - until my last year of high school when I pronounced it in my usual way in English class and was corrected by the teacher. Because of my amazement and embarrassment I have never forgotten the incident.

Another mistake that sticks in my mind is a mistake I made in a grade 2 spelling test. It was a list of words without any context, and I wrote "uv" instead of the word *of*. I remember being extremely annoyed at not having recognized a word I knew perfectly well. I felt that the test was somehow unfair, not giving any context.

I recently heard "*herbs*" always pronounced without the 'h' on Canadian and American TV, and it made me cringe every time.


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## Chaska Ñawi

That's interesting .... I've never heard anybody in Ontario pronounce "herbs" without that h.

I still get frustrated when I hear people pronounce "kilometre" to rhyme with "pedometer", probably because the e and r on the end get reversed so often.


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## ernest_

In Catalan there's a problem which is that the feminine article "la" may be confused with the masculine article abbreviated ("l") when the noun begins with "a".  So:

la moto (the motorcycle), and
l'amoto

sound exactly the same. As a result, many people (especially in the countryside) think that the noun is "amoto", and they say things like "He's got a new _amoto_" instead of "He's got a new _moto_". This thing irritates me the most.


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## jonquiliser

I don't know if this is really an "mtt" p) but for some reason, when younger I used to pronounce "syrén" (lilac) as "surén" with a u-sound instead of a y-sound. And the same but the other way round with "ungefär" (approximately) that I'd say "yngefär". I still do, at times, seems to be a difficult habit to get rid of.. and I don't even know where I got that pronounciation from.

Another tricky part is the pronounciation of words borrowed from other languages, but that still maintain some sort of half-way original pronounciation - should you adapt them more fully to Swedish pronounciation patterns and be seen as ignorant, or (if you know it) use the original pronounciation and, apart from sounding weird, be considered pretentious? I avoid certain words like the plague...!

I can't think of more things right now, but I think there's a good bunch of them, and the misle-as-verb kind of mistake sounds familiar! 

I really enjoy this thread!


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## panjabigator

In my house, we refer to a drawer set as a "chester-drawer" which apparently is the incorrect form of "chest of drawers."  I was corrected a couple months ago, and it was embarrassing to say the least!

I have a million of these...let's see if I can remember.


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## alexacohen

In Spain there is a lot of trouble with the verb "abolir" (to abolish), which is defective and can't be used as a regular verb.
But many people don't know (specially politicians  ) and you can hear the most extraordinary sentences with that verb conjugated as regular such as "yo abuelo" = I grandfather.
Alexa


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## curly

Today I learned that one doesn't FREquent a pub, they freQUENT it. I hate English


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## elroy

alexacohen said:


> In Spain there is a lot of trouble with the verb "abolir" (to abolish), which is defective and can't be used as a regular verb.
> But many people don't know (specially politicians  ) and you can hear the most extraordinary sentences with that verb conjugated as regular, such as "yo abuelo" = I grandfather.
> Alexa


 I'm confused.  Wouldn't "abuelo" be irregular?


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## alexacohen

elroy said:


> I'm confused. Wouldn't "abuelo" be irregular?


Yes, it would. But people don't realize they've chosen the wrong way to use the verb until it's too late... the trick is that it cannot be used in the active voice.
"Yo.... (searching desperately for verb form; finding none; realizing there must be some way in which the verb must be conjugated; doing so in a last desperate attempt)... Errr... estoooo..... yo abuelo..." 
Alexa


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## LaReinita

Well, this is embarrassing, but since I was little I have always pronounced the word "bedroom" like "bedgeroom" . . I don't know where it came from, I'm originally from Brooklyn, so maybe that has something to do with it.


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## gaer

Arrius said:


> That you continued to pronounce *row* meaning dispute for so long as "roe" meaning fish eggs is quite remarkable. I think this may have occurred because Americans use the word _"fight_" in this sense _("I had a fight with my wife"_), where I as an Englishman would use _row_ instead and never _fight_ unless actual blows were exchanged.


It's not a word I have ever used. My wife also thought it was pronounced "roe". 


> Also, you probably heard "_racket_" where an Englishman would say _"row"_ in the sense of unpleasant noise (Stop that darn racket/ infernal row!). Thus you were less exposed to the correct pronunciation than would have been the case in the UK.


Exactly. Lately I have been listening to many books written by "BE authors", so I immediately picked up the difference.


> As regards the silent H in *herb(s)*, I am quite sure I have heard well-spoken Americans say the word in that way, which struck me because the H is always pronounced in Britain (unless you're a Cockney). In the original French the H here is regarded as an H mute not an aspìrated H, that is to say they say_ l'herbe (grass)_ unlike _le hublot (porthole) _where the H is said to be aspirated, although in practice you never hear an aspirated H unless the speaker is rather pedantic and then only before an A. So the American pronunciation with no H is closer to the original than the British.


Right. 

Gaer


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## gaer

Chaska Ñawi said:


> That's interesting .... I've never heard anybody in Ontario pronounce "herbs" without that h.
> 
> I still get frustrated when I hear people pronounce "kilometre" to rhyme with "pedometer", probably because the e and r on the end get reversed so often.


Do you mean that that it bothers you when people don't rhyme "kilometer" with "centimeter"?


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## HistofEng

I used to say _"extrapolate"_ as "extraPOlate" as if it were a compound word (extra - polate). 

Only a few months ago did someone correct me by saying "exTRApolate".
The funny thing is, I knew this pronunciation by hearing it all the time, but I never put 2 and 2 together, never realizing that what I read as "extrapolate" was the same word as "exTRApolate" which came from people's mouths.

Weird!


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## timpeac

ernest_ said:


> In Catalan there's a problem which is that the feminine article "la" may be confused with the masculine article abbreviated ("l") when the noun begins with "a".


This is a known phenomenon in language - the name of which escapes me - but examples are Latin HEDERA > "La lierre" in French and "mine Ann" > "my Nan" (creating the alternative form for the name Ann, Nan).

My embarrassments are 

- thinking that there were two words, one pronounced and written "casm" (hard c) and another pronounced and written "chasm" (with the "ch"). I was quite old before I realised that I had never actually _heard_ "*ch*asm" and never actually _read _"*c*asm" and that there was actually just one word "chasm" pronounced as if the "h" wasn't there!

- thinking that "ethereal" was pronounced "ether-real".
- thinking that the name Imogen was pronounced with a hard "g".

I suppose I must just have read those last two for a long time before hearing them said!


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## HistofEng

timpeac said:


> thinking that "ethereal" was pronounced "ether-real".


 
 ...I thought it was "ether-real".

So is it pronounced "eTHEEreal" (with the "th" unvoiced)?

Luckily I've never spoken this word aloud.


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## ShOoK

A mistake I hear at school all the time...
"I need to presentate my project" instead of "I need to present my project"
When I first heard it I didn't even notice the mistake.. but I hear it more and more now. I guess it's just one of those words that sticks with you.. I even catch myself almost saying it by accident, at times!


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## Lemminkäinen

curly said:


> Today I learned that one doesn't FREquent a pub, they freQUENT it. I hate English



Really?  


Well, one thing that I did up until two years ago (and still find myself doing) was to use the non-existing word *imidlertidig* when I wanted to say 'however / on the other hand, meanwhile'.

Turns out the word is *imidlertid*, and I've been confusing it with the word for 'temporary/-ily', *midlertidig*.


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## timpeac

HistofEng said:


> ...I thought it was "ether-real".
> 
> So is it pronounced "eTHEEreal" (with the "th" unvoiced)?


Absolutely! Glad to know I'm not the only one who made this mistake, then!


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## gaer

timpeac said:


> This is a known phenomenon in language - the name of which escapes me - but examples are Latin HEDERA > "La lierre" in French and "mine Ann" > "my Nan" (creating the alternative form for the name Ann, Nan).


My favorite in English:

people, pee-pole.  


> My embarrassments are
> 
> - thinking that there were two words, one pronounced and written "casm" (hard c) and another pronounced and written "chasm" (with the "ch"). I was quite old before I realised that I had never actually _heard_ "*ch*asm" and never actually _read _"*c*asm" and that there was actually just one word "chasm" pronounced as if the "h" wasn't there!


Now, for MY most embarrassing moment:

I thought "pubic hair" was _public_ hair until I was about 12. Go ahead and laugh.  

Gaer


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## Stefanie1976

Due to the region I grew up in, and in family where no standard German was spoken, I was always teased for not being able to pronounce the standard German "ch" (the soft version like in "ich" - "I")... In elementary school all the kids made fun of me, so that I started practising a lot. I think now I can do it, but German natives can still pin point the region I come from pretty quickly


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## Jigoku no Tenshi

Loob said:


> Until the age of 14 or so, I was convinced that there was a verb 'to misle' because I had often read the past tense 'misled'.
> 
> It was only by chance that I realised that 'misled' was actually the past tense of the verb 'to mislead'...
> 
> Do others have similar "traps" in their own language?
> 
> Loob


Hello Everybody!

Of course We have, in Spanish the verbs that end in "ar" usually end in "e" in the first person past tense for example

Caminar-Caminé,nadar-nadé, but for "Andar" is "anduve" not "ande", as you logically might think, so irregular verbs can usually be traps for most uf us, and this is only the top of the Iceberg, When I remember more examples I'll write them.

In English I always thought that the past paticiple of TO DIE was DEAD, because I had always heard "He/she/it's dead", so I thought it was "He/she/it has dead" but when I really started studying English I dicovered my awful mistake


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## Sepia

Despite all this I don't think one can say there is no logic in the spelling. The problem is that there are simply different patterns of logic that one should learn to distiguish. Sometimes you need a sense of history, something you need something else to distiguish. This basically not at problem that only exists in English only. And also not in spelling only. In grammar it is similar - take irregular verbs as an example: In many languages that have all 1-3 person, singular and plural foms occasionally there are verbs of where the sing. and plur. forms seem to have no similarity in at least one of the tenses if not all. Seems absurd but even behind this there is usually some logic to be found.


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## gaer

Sepia said:


> Despite all this I don't think one can say there is no logic in the spelling.


Despite all "what"? 

I don't think that anyone is saying that there is no logic at all in the spelling of English, but I can tell you from personal experience that it is far easier to spell in German.

Anyone who has taught children how to read will most likely agree with me that it is VERY hard to teach children to "sound out words" in English because of the many "exceptions".

Gaer


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## JamesM

I remember I saw a commercial as a child for longline girdles, guaranteed to help with "midriff bulge."  I had never heard the word "midriff" and I thought they had said, "drifting bulge."  I formed this idea in my head that older adults suffered from some terrible condition where bulges would pop out on their body and then drift around and that the longline girdle covered enough area to catch most of the places it might drift.  It became yet another reason that I never wanted to be an adult.

As it turns out, I wasn't too far off the mark.  

- James


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## Arrius

ShOoK said:


> A mistake I hear at school all the time...
> "I need to presentate my project" instead of "I need to present my project"
> When I first heard it I didn't even notice the mistake.. but I hear it more and more now. I guess it's just one of those words that sticks with you.. I even catch myself almost saying it by accident, at times!


 
*Presentate* based on the noun _presentation_ derived from the verb_ to present _is what they call a "back-formation". I have never heard _presentate_ myself so perhaps it never occurs in England, but I've certainly heard a headmaster at a Sports Day say to his schoolchildren," "If you're here as a participant then paricipate, but if you are only a spectator just *spectate ".* I think the use of this non-dictionary word is pretty widespread now. Another example, that irritates me rather more is the common use of the noun "loan" to replace the verb "*lend*" from which it derives: " Can you* loan* me your comb/ pen/car etc.?" It is very widely used now in the UK and even more in the States.


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## linguist786

A lot of Gujarati-speakers (whose English accent I find really funny) sometimes mispronounce the letter *i* as "aay" when it should be "i" (like in "ink")

A good example would be DIVORCE -> DIE-VORCE


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## Henryk

Loob said:


> Until the age of 14 or so, I was convinced that there was a verb 'to misle' because I had often read the past tense 'misled'.
> 
> It was only by chance that I realised that 'misled' was actually the past tense of the verb 'to mislead'...
> 
> Do others have similar "traps" in their own language?
> 
> Loob



Till some years ago, I used the word "erstens" in the wrong way. Actually it only means "first/firstly" but because my mother always used it in the meaning of "a short while ago" (in German something between "vorhin" und "letztens") I adopted it and it still comes to my mind today when describing an activity I did earlier a day. Accordingly I was looked at oddly by my friends. In the meantime, I can suppress this usage always coming up, though.



> I don't think that anyone is saying that there is no logic at all in the spelling of English, but I can tell you from personal experience that it is far easier to spell in German.


Absolutely. It might be the case that homophon words are spelled differently but there are no such irregularities as in English. For instance words in which you have to decide whether to use "s" or "ß" or one or two vowels. (Meer/mehr, Moor, ...) Plus, no word that is pronounced irregularly comes across my mind (If we leave out the "v" at the beginning of words which is pronounced according to the word's origin.)


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## gaer

Arrius said:


> Another example, that irritates me rather more is the common use of the noun "loan" to replace the verb "*lend*" from which it derives: " Can you* loan* me your comb/ pen/car etc.?" It is very widely used now in the UK and even more in the States.


I think this is a bit like being "irritated" by "disorientate". 

Cambridge says this:

loan
verb [T] MAINLY US 
to lend:
This library loans books, CDs and videotapes.

In other words, I'm not sure that "loan", used in the way you mentioned, is so much "wrong" as typically "AE". Perhaps Panjy can find a usage note for us that will clear up the matter. 

Gaer


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## timpeac

gaer said:


> I think this is a bit like being "irritated" by "disorientate".


Yes - I can assure the AE speakers that "he was completely disoriented" sounds very strange to us too (well at least to me I should say), like management speak - which is exactly, by the sound of it, the effect "disorientated" has on your ears!

However - does the (BE?) use of "lend" sound strange to AE ears? Personally it wouldn't come naturally to say "he loaned me his book".


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## gaer

timpeac said:


> Yes - I can assure the AE speakers that "he was completely disoriented" sounds very strange to us too (well at least to me I should say), like management speak - which is exactly, by the sound of it, the effect "disorientated" has on your ears!


"Disorientate" now sounds perfectly fine to me because I have listened to so many book-recordings of "BE books", but it is true that at one time I thought it was wrong. Period. 


> However - does the (BE?) use of "lend" sound strange to AE ears? Personally it wouldn't come naturally to say "he loaned me his book".


Not to my ears.  I am tempted to say that either sounds fine, but I'm not sure.

I THINK I would say:

My friend loaned (lent) me his car.
Would you please lend me your pen.

But I'm not sure now, because "Heisenberg Language Uncertainty Principle" has kicked in.

(This means that any attempt to analyze what is natural destroys the ability to "be natural".)  

Gaer


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## badgrammar

Row and roe are _*not*_ homonyms?
Herb, my neighbor, and Herb, a plant, _*are*_ homonyms?
Kilometer and pedometer _*don't*_ rhyme?

I'll be going back to bed now...

(I would have said "I'm going to go lay down", but I am incapable of remembering how to use the verbs "to lay" and "to lie" correctly, so I simply avoid them altogether - I can't be alone on that one...  Or am I?).


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## badgrammar

HistofEng said:


> ...I thought it was "ether-real".
> 
> So is it pronounced "eTHEEreal" (with the "th" unvoiced)?
> 
> Luckily I've never spoken this word aloud.



Hmmm, I think the tricky part with this word is that the "real" part is not pronounced like "real".  It is pronounced like "rEE-al".  So the "real" has two syllables, not just one.  So the whole word has 4 syllables, it's "E-thee-ree-al.


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## timpeac

badgrammar said:


> Row and roe are _*not*_ homonyms?
> Herb, my neighbor, and Herb, a plant, _*are*_ homonyms?
> Kilometer and pedometer _*don't*_ rhyme?


From BE point of view -

Not homonyms if "row" means "argue", are if it means "line".
Are homonyms (in BE - although we never call anyone "Herb" so it's never an issue!).
Depends on the person. Prescriptivists would say they shouldn't rhyme. In my experience they usually do.


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## timpeac

badgrammar said:


> Hmmm, I think the tricky part with this word is that the "real" part is not pronounced like "real". It is pronounced like "rEE-al". So the "real" has two syllables, not just one. So the whole word has 4 syllables, it's "E-thee-ree-al.


I think either way they have 4 syllables - it's just that the stress should be on the 2nd and not the 3rd (with a secondary stress on the first) as I once thought.


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## badgrammar

timpeac said:


> I think either way they have 4 syllables - it's just that the stress should be on the 2nd and not the 3rd (with a secondary stress on the first) as I once thought.



Ahhh, perhaps we have stumbled on another AE/BE difference - in AE, "real" is not pronounced "re-al", but simply "reel"...  atleast my pronunciation of it is monosyllabic, unless I am searching for some sort of alliteration effect.  

Have you no Herberts in your neck of the woods, then ?


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## panjabigator

timpeac said:


> From BE point of view -
> 
> Not homonyms if "row" means "argue", are if it means "line".
> Are homonyms (in BE - although we never call anyone "Herb" so it's never an issue!).
> Depends on the person. Prescriptivists would say they shouldn't rhyme. In my experience they usually do.



Prescriptivists and pronunciation, in my hand book, do not match.  Which pronunciation would be correct then?


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## tanager

Loob said:


> Until the age of 14 or so, I was convinced that there was a verb 'to misle' because I had often read the past tense 'misled'.
> 
> It was only by chance that I realised that 'misled' was actually the past tense of the verb 'to mislead'...
> 
> Loob


 
I'm glad I'm not the only one!

This word still gives me problems and I am in my 30s.... Every time I see it, I read it as the past tense of "misle" and I have to work to see it the right way. I used to imagine that it had some sort of meaning like "to confuse, fluster". (What do you think--sounds like a good word to add to the language! )


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## timpeac

panjabigator said:


> Prescriptivists and pronunciation, in my hand book, do not match. Which pronunciation would be correct then?


For "kilometer"? (Or kilometre to me!). Prescriptively stress on the 3rd syllable, secondary stress on the first.


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## tanager

A common mistake in English is to use "analyzation" (which as far as I know doesn't exist) instead of "analysis" -- an example of using the right rules to get the wrong result.

One mistake it's taken me a long time to correct involves the word "surprise".  I always thought it had only one "r" because I hear it as "Suhprise!"


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## badgrammar

More than that, there is a difference in the vowel sounds in kilometer.  you've got your "ka-la-ma-der" (as I say), and then you've got your "kill-oh-mee-ter".  I would not dare to say advance that one pronunciation is better or more correct than the others...  It's not like certain North American presidents that pronounce "nuclear" as "nuke-u-lar", or anything !


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## SaritaSarang

gaer said:


> And just the other day I learned that "herb" does not have a silent "h".



Wait, the " h" isn't silent??  So you're supposed to say it with the h??? I've never heard that before, it sounds so weird.


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## badgrammar

Well, to me, too, Sarita.  I seem to remember my Mom telling me at some point that the "h" is silent, so I've always said it that way...
P.S. She was an "Okie" (Oklahoma)... I wonder if that's where you're from too...


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## HistofEng

badgrammar said:


> Ahhh, perhaps we have stumbled on another AE/BE difference - in AE, "real" is not pronounced "re-al", but simply "reel"... atleast my pronunciation of it is monosyllabic, unless I am searching for some sort of alliteration effect.
> 
> Have you no Herberts in your neck of the woods, then ?


 
I pronounce "real" as a diphthong. But I'm not sure whether diphthongs are counted as monosyllabic or disyllabic.


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## Outsider

I've always thought that "psychedelic" was spelled "psych*a*delic", because it's spelled with an "a" in Portuguese. And I still do.


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## SaritaSarang

badgrammar said:


> Well, to me, too, Sarita.  I seem to remember my Mom telling me at some point that the "h" is silent, so I've always said it that way...
> P.S. She was an "Okie" (Oklahoma)... I wonder if that's where you're from too...



yep I'm an Okie.


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## timpeac

Outsider said:


> I've always thought that "psychedelic" was spelled "psych*a*delic", because it's spelled with an "a" in Portuguese. And I still do.


That's not a mother-tongue error then - it's a foreign-tongue error!


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## Outsider

...Caused by the different spelling in my mother tongue. A translinguistic mother-tongue trap.


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## gaer

timpeac said:


> For "kilometer"? (Or kilometre to me!). Prescriptively stress on the 3rd syllable, secondary stress on the first.


I'm not a prescriptivist, but I've always said "kilo MEE ter". I thought I was wrong. It just seemed logical to me:

meter (metre)
millimeter (millimetre)
centimeter
decimeter
kilometer

Why would anyone logically pronounce "kilometer" differently? I've never understood that!

Gaer


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## LouisaB

gaer said:


> I'm not a prescriptivist, but I've always said "kilo MEE ter". I thought I was wrong. It just seemed logical to me:
> 
> meter (metre)
> millimeter (millimetre)
> centimeter
> decimeter
> kilometer
> 
> Why would anyone logically pronounce "kilometer" differently? I've never understood that!
> 
> Gaer


 
I still don't understand it, Gaer. We've just had a discussion on words like this in timpeac's thread on 'hydrogenised'.

On the other hand, how would you pronounce 'pedometer'? The same rules of logic should make it 'pedo-MEE-ter', but I don't think I've ever heard anything other than 'pe-DOM-eter'. I wish I had....

Louisa


----------



## karuna

In Latvian I used to say _ņem*j*u _instead of the correct form _ņemu _(1st person present of the verb _ņemt – _to take). Maybe this is dialectal however it is wrongly modeled by another verb conjugation, i.e., _stumt – stum*j*u_(to push). 

And probably there are no native Latvian speaker who hadn't used the word _piedzērušais _(a drunk person) at least once in their life_. _The problem is that there is no such word and it sounds silly and childish even to those who pronounce it. The adjective is _piedzēries _(drunk)_. _The language logic doesn't allow to form a noun from it but the formal logic urges, why not. One can even observe that conflict the speaker struggles with until he finds the correct word – _iereibušais. _


----------



## gaer

LouisaB said:


> I still don't understand it, Gaer. We've just had a discussion on words like this in timpeac's thread on 'hydrogenised'.
> 
> On the other hand, how would you pronounce 'pedometer'? The same rules of logic should make it 'pedo-MEE-ter', but I don't think I've ever heard anything other than 'pe-DOM-eter'. I wish I had....
> 
> Louisa


Lousia, I've never in my life used the word "pedometer", and in fact I'm not quite sure what it is. I would have to look it up.

Purely by pattern, I would assume it would rhyme with "speedometer", but such words are not part of the metric system and don't indicate lengths. (Of course, trying to be logical about English never gets us very far, does it?) 

Gaer


----------



## Sallyb36

SaritaSarang said:


> Wait, the " h" isn't silent??  So you're supposed to say it with the h??? I've never heard that before, it sounds so weird.


The h is only silent if you are a Rastafarian


----------



## timpeac

gaer said:


> Why would anyone logically pronounce "kilometer" differently? I've never understood that!
> 
> Gaer


Oh I didn't mean to suggest that there would be any logic to it (although there often is in language change, usually moving towards what's "easier" in some way (sound change has a lot of examples of that)).

My understanding is that, based on the etymology, the pronunciation should be - and often _is_, given that a sizeable number of people do pronounce it that way, yourself included - "kilom*e*ter".

For reasons unknown, or as yet unascertained in this thread, the pronunciation for many - myself included - became "kil*o*meter".

I think it was probably this pronunciation that influenced "speed*o*meter" ("speedom*e*ter" surely sounding ridiculous to even the most hardened "kilom*e*ter" fans?) and the same for "ped*o*meter".

I guess the "mother-tongue "trap"" in all this is that there is no way to tell from the spelling of an English word which syllable should be stressed - and even quite clear etymologies contained in the spelling are not enough to prevent stress shifting sometimes.


----------



## Outsider

timpeac said:


> Oh I didn't mean to suggest that there would be any logic to it [...]


I believe ki-LO-me-ter follows the Greek accentuation pattern.


----------



## timpeac

Outsider said:


> I believe ki-LO-me-ter follows the Greek accentuation pattern.


Oh right - thanks for that. Then it turns out that the "kilom*e*ter" people are the newbies in pronunciation then. So this is an example of apparently reasonable pronunciation based on etymology taking over from traditional pronunciation. Same trap as above - although on reflection I don't think I was right to say it was to do with spelling. I think that language change is rarely because of spelling (although I know it is sometimes). I suppose the trap is that in English there is nothing in a given string of phonemes that tell us where the stress will necessarily fall.


----------



## badgrammar

Well, to shed a little light on _why_ someone would pronounce kilometer in two different ways, I took a look at the entry in my big and beautiful Webster's Universal Unabridged.  

It states (I'll paraphrase a bit to avoid any nasty copyright issues) "The usual pronunciation for units of measurement beginning with kilo-... and for measurements ending in -meter, puts primary stress on the first syllable and secondary stress on the third.  'It would seem logic'* (in the text) that kilometer follow this pattern, and this pronunciation has been around since the early 1800's.
However a second pronunciation exists, with only one stressed syllable, the second.  This was first recorded in America before 1830, and its popularity has been increasing since then, both in AE and BE.  It is reinforced by the pronunciation of words for instruments (barometer, thermometer, etc.).  Both pronunciations are used by educated speakers and members of the scientific community.

So, the question is, why would it be illogical or incorrect to use this pronunciation?

As a side note, the same dictionary offers two phonetic versions of "real", one is re'al, the other, rel (with a long e sound).


----------



## SaritaSarang

Sallyb36 said:


> The h is only silent if you are a Rastafarian



I've never heard one person in all my life say herb pronouncing the h. And I'm pretty sure I've never met a Rastafarian.


----------



## badgrammar

And I am sorry to say I agree, the only folks  I remember say "_h_erbs" are Brits...  And again, my Webster's Universal Unabridged offers 2 pronunciations, the _first_ being "ûrb", and the second "hûrb", noted as being "esp. British" English.

So, I'll continue to say "ûrb"... 

Can't teach an okie nuttin'  !


----------



## Outsider

timpeac said:


> Oh right - thanks for that. Then it turns out that the "kilom*e*ter" people are the newbies in pronunciation then. So this is an example of apparently reasonable pronunciation based on etymology taking over from traditional pronunciation. Same trap as above - although on reflection I don't think I was right to say it was to do with spelling. I think that language change is rarely because of spelling (although I know it is sometimes). I suppose the trap is that in English there is nothing in a given string of phonemes that tell us where the stress will necessarily fall.


It seems to be a simple case of mistaken analogy:

_*me*ter_, hence kilo_*me*ter_

Except that the more educated English speakers know that in Greek it would be ki*lo*meter. And, since they like Greek and they are educated, their version has greater prestige.

By the way, what makes you call the "kilometer" accentuation "traditional"? Are you sure it's the oldest?...

P.S. Oh wait, Badgrammar has found a different, quite convincing explanation (above).



badgrammar said:


> It states (I'll paraphrase a bit to avoid any nasty copyright issues) "The usual pronunciation for units of measurement beginning with kilo-... and for measurements ending in -meter, puts primary stress on the first syllable and secondary stress on the third.  'It would seem logic'* (in the text) that kilometer follow this pattern, and this pronunciation has been around since the early 1800's.[...]


And that is yet another way to accentuate it: *ki*lometer. This one, in a sense, is the most traditional, as it follows the accentuation pattern of Old English: always on the first syllable.

In all honestly, I think the difference between *ki*lometer and kilo*me*ter isn't much in English. Perhaps they're the same!


----------



## french4beth

I recently found out that the word "Celtic" is supposed to be pronounced with an _sss_ at the beginning, not a _k_ sound. Oops!

I also used to confuse "nauseous" and "nauseated". If you say that you're _nauseous_, it actually means that you are making other people sick. If you're _nauseated_, it means that you're not feeling well.

The religious education instructor at my church told a group of us that when her children were quite young, her youngest daughter popped her head into the kitchen and asked, "Mommy, what are you making?" to which Mom replied, "Lasagna". Her 4 year old daughter got very excited and said, "Oh, Mommy, you mean like 'Lasagna in the highest'?" The daughter had misinterpreted the lyrics of the church refrain "Hosanna in the highest". How cute!


----------



## timpeac

Outsider said:


> By the way, what makes you call the "kilometer" accentuation "traditional"? Are you sure it's the oldest?...


No - I said the other pronunciation was the "traditional" one, based on the fact that presumably the Greek pronunciation was the root. Based on the excerpt above it sounds as if the analogical "kilom*e*ter" came after "kil*o*meter".


Outsider said:


> P.S. Oh wait, Badgrammar has found a different, quite convincing explanation (above).
> 
> And that is yet another way to accentuate it: *ki*lometer. This one, in a sense, is the most traditional, as it follows the accentuation pattern of Old English: always on the first syllable.
> 
> In all honestly, I think the difference between *ki*lometer and kilo*me*ter isn't much in English. Perhaps they're the same!


Yes - I think that we're talking about the same pronunciation - When I say the word that way it's very difficult to decide which is the primary stress and which is the secondary. I think we have basically two pronunciations - one with the stresses on the 1st and 3rd syllables and one with the stress on the second.

In any case, to link this all to the thread title, it still seems that whatever the intricacies of this specific case the mother-tongue trap is unpredictable stress location in English (which allows analogy or false-analogy etc to change the pronunciation). We simply couldn't be having this conversation about French, for example, which has phrase stress rather than word stress, or Russian where the pronunciation of the "o" as "o" or "a" depends on whether it's stressed or not. I suppose in this specific case you could argue there is no trap, though, since both pronunciations are accepted.


----------



## badgrammar

french4beth said:


> I recently found out that the word "Celtic" is supposed to be pronounced with an _sss_ at the beginning, not a _k_ sound. Oops!



Well, wouldn't you know it, I used to say "Keltic", too...  Until somebody told me it could only be "Seltic", and wasn't I silly to say otherwise...

But, lo and behold, once again in my big and beautiful dictionary , two pronunciations are given, the first of which is (drumroll, please...) "Keltic".

And to link this to the thread title, pronunciation of the English language is not a fixed, one-pronunciation-fits-all prescription.  There is a lot of variety, and some things we are told are mistakes, are not mistakes at all, simply variations on a theme .


----------



## timpeac

french4beth said:


> I recently found out that the word "Celtic" is supposed to be pronounced with an _sss_ at the beginning, not a _k_ sound. Oops!
> 
> I also used to confuse "nauseous" and "nauseated". If you say that you're _nauseous_, it actually means that you are making other people sick. If you're _nauseated_, it means that you're not feeling well.
> 
> The religious education instructor at my church told a group of us that when her children were quite young, her youngest daughter popped her head into the kitchen and asked, "Mommy, what are you making?" to which Mom replied, "Lasagna". Her 4 year old daughter got very excited and said, "Oh, Mommy, you mean like 'Lasagna in the highest'?" The daughter had misinterpreted the lyrics of the church refrain "Hosanna in the highest". How cute!


 
According to Wiki, both "keltic" and "celtic" are allowed http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pronunciation_of_Celtic

Edit - Badgrammar beat me to it!


----------



## Outsider

And this is how English gets to have one of the most unpredictable spellings in the world.


----------



## Sallyb36

SaritaSarang said:


> I've never heard one person in all my life say herb pronouncing the h. And I'm pretty sure I've never met a Rastafarian.



Ok then, Rastafarians and Americans!


----------



## Outsider

Outsider said:


> I've always thought that "psychedelic" was spelled "psych*a*delic", because it's spelled with an "a" in Portuguese. And I still do.


Apparently, they use "psicodélico" in Brazil. I've started a poll about Portugal, in case anyone's interested.


----------



## Vanda

Outsider said:


> Apparently, they use "psicodélico" in Brazil. I've started a poll about Portugal, in case anyone's interested.


 
About that I've never heard the word used as psicadélico in here. As I have told Outsider before, I doubt if any Brazilian says that way or has even listened it that way.  We get it straight from Greek:
  psic(o)- [From Greek psycho- < gr. psychL, ás.]


----------



## LouisaB

badgrammar said:


> So, the question is, why would it be illogical or incorrect to use this pronunciation?
> .


 
I’m not personally a believer in the prescriptive approach to language. A dictionary records current usage; it does not issue rules. Where more than one pronunciation is current (and therefore understandable), then _both_ are allowable, and neither (in my opinion) is ‘incorrect’.

My _personal_ preferences are another matter. To me, words are a means of communication so I always prefer the pronunciation that makes the meaning clearest. Hence, I would prefer *kilo-metre* to *kil-OM-eter*, because it clarifies its two recognisable elements – kilo (thousand) and metre (unit of measurement) – and makes the meaning of the whole instantly clear, potentially even to a non-native speaker. That doesn’t mean an alternative pronunciation is _wrong_ – just (by definition) less clear. I also prefer *‘Keltic’* to ‘*Seltic*’, but only because I’ve never heard the Celts pronounced in any way other than the ‘Kelts’, and it’s helpful to make the link clear between them. If I find other people _do_ say ‘the Selts’, then the reason for my preference disappears. If someone comes up with a good reason why ‘Seltic’ is a clearer way to express the concept, then I may have to rethink my pronunciation.

For that reason, I don’t think these kind of pronunciations are really ‘mother-tongue traps’ except in the sense timpeac has already mentioned. To be a genuine ‘mispronunciation’, a word would have to be stressed in a manner virtually nobody else uses at all, or that is blatantly at odds with its spelling.

One of my favourite of these last is ‘*anemone*’. This seems to be almost impossible to pronounce correctly – I certainly really struggle with it. The urge for the tongue to say ‘anenome’ is almost unbearable – which is why so many people _do_ say that, and subsequently misspell it. I think we should all gang up on the dictionaries and get them to change the spelling to something easier! 

Louisa


----------



## badgrammar

I agree, and along the same lines as anemone, Phoebe is impossible to pronounce correctly from simply looking at it.  It defies all the laws of spelling and pronunciation logic.


----------



## curly

badgrammar said:


> Well, wouldn't you know it, I used to say "Keltic", too... Until somebody told me it could only be "Seltic", and wasn't I silly to say otherwise...
> 
> But, lo and behold, once again in my big and beautiful dictionary , two pronunciations are given, the first of which is (drumroll, please...) "Keltic".
> 
> And to link this to the thread title, pronunciation of the English language is not a fixed, one-pronunciation-fits-all prescription. There is a lot of variety, and some things we are told are mistakes, are not mistakes at all, simply variations on a theme .


 
 Here's where the Irish guy weighs in, even though I'm in no way celtic. I've never heard two pronounciations for this word. I heard Keltic for all things celtic, swords people tribalism etc. The only time I've heard Seltic is to do with the two teams, I've never heard of a seltic sword etc. That's not to say there isn't such a thing. 

Also, I thought for a very long time that there were two words, inflammable and enflammable, despite the fact that I must have only ever read enflammable a very few times as I've never seen it since I found out.


----------



## Brioche

I say KIL-o-metre, for the same reason that I put the stress on the KIL in kilogram, kilolitre, kilowatt, kilopascal &c, &c, &c.

Seltic is the name of a football team. For all other uses I say Keltic.


----------



## tanager

badgrammar said:


> I agree, and along the same lines as anemone, Phoebe is impossible to pronounce correctly from simply looking at it. It defies all the laws of spelling and pronunciation logic.


 
I believe it was George Bernard Shaw, an advocate of English spelling reform, who pointed out that the word "fish" could be spelled "ghoti" by analogy with other spellings of the constituent sounds: "gh" from "enough," "o" from "women," "ti" from "-tion".


----------



## jlc246

Being spelling-challenged, I always appreciate evidence of traps in English spelling and pronounciation. There are so many that I feel I have some excuse. The explanation that English comes from many sources, including both Latin and Germanic languages, is only somewhat comforting. 

My first attempts to spell "ruff," "thru," "doe" (as in pastry) and "awt" would never have come up with rough, through, dough, and ought!


P.S.  If you search on the web for the keywords Reasons English Difficult Learn, you will find several copies of a list of sentences using words that are spelled the same way and pronounced differently.


----------



## MarcB

badgrammar said:


> And I am sorry to say I agree, the only folks I remember say "_h_erbs" are Brits... And again, my Webster's Universal Unabridged offers 2 pronunciations, the _first_ being "ûrb", and the second "hûrb", noted as being "esp. British" English.
> 
> So, I'll continue to say "ûrb"...
> 
> Can't teach an okie nuttin'  !


I never pronounce the h in herb and 95% of AE speakers I have heard do not either but the other 5% do.


----------



## Arrius

tanager said:


> I believe it was George Bernard Shaw, an advocate of English spelling reform, who pointed out that the word "fish" could be spelled "ghoti" by analogy with other spellings of the constituent sounds: "gh" from "enough," "o" from "women," "ti" from "-tion".


 
When G.B.S. said that he was being, as usual, playfully provocative. He knew very well that in those positions in a word neither *gh* can be _/f/_ not *ti* without -on after it _/sh/_. However the* O* of women pronounced as short _/i/_ is really an anomaly. There is an old joke concerning some foreigner who, having dedicated his life to perfecting his English, saw to his horror on disembarking at Dover, a large notice proclaiming "Shaw's Pygmalion - Pronounced Success". Whereupon he threw himself in despair into the sea#. Shaw was preoccupied with spelling, used always to spell "honour and favour in the American way without the U, and left a large part of his fortune to the cause of Spelling Reform. But to no avail: it is an impossibility, because there are so many ways of pronouncing the language both nationwide and worldwide that anglophones could never agree on an acceptable new system (e.g. in Scotland night is often pronounced as Swiss Germans pronounce _nicht_ with the ach-Laut not the ich-Laut and in Received Pronunciation the R is unpronounced in many instances. Thus we are stuck with a spelling system that is largely historical/etymological, like the French where août from Latin AUGUSTUS is usually pronounced as a short /oo/, the circumflex indicating where various letters have got lost. But I suppose both nations should feel glad that they don't have to learn thousands of ideograms that over the years have lost any resemblance to the original pictures representing the words they stand for as in Chinese.
As regards personal language traps, I used to wonder when singing the national anthem as a child why King George VI expected people to bring him juicy plums: "Send him victorias (for _victorious_)". And I have since heard children singing carols at Christmas who would bestow on Baby Jesus "Gold and merde and Frankenstein instead of the more traditional "Gold and _myrrh and frankincense_". Incidentally, the way _myrrh_ is spelt is a good example of our bizarre phonetics and the way I say it is entirely without R single or double and certainly without the H.
# To understand this joke you need to know that the word _pronounced _is often used to mean very great/ considerable and also that Pygmalion is a play by Shaw whose hero is Professor Higgins a phonetician. The show and the film "My Fair Lady" were based on this play.


----------



## Loob

Thanks for all your contributions on traps. I'm really glad I'm not alone!

I just thought, given the posts on the pitfalls caused by English spelling, that I'd post a link to the poem "The Chaos" (you need to scroll down a bit before you find the poem itself). A health warning - it's mind-boggling 

Loob


----------



## Brioche

Arrius said:


> As regards personal language traps, I used to wonder when singing the national anthem as a child why King George VI expected people to bring him juicy plums: "Send him victorias (for _victorious_)". And I have since heard children singing carols at Christmas who would bestow on Baby Jesus "Gold and merde and Frankenstein instead of the more traditional "Gold and _myrrh and frankincense_".



I suppose that is in the category of mondegreen.

During my early years at school, we had prayers before and after each break.  I used to think that "The Word was made flesh" was "The world was made flush", and thought it had something to do with flushing toilets.


----------



## tanager

I wonder how many US schoolchildren, having to recite the "Pledge of Allegiance," thought it went "one nation, invisible..." instead of "one nation, indivisible..." (Like I did.)


----------



## Arrius

I was very impressed by the poem "The Chaos" supplied by *Loob.* I think the only word whose pronunciation (and meaning) I was unsure about was "_hough_", but it really does present a horrifying challenge to foreign learners of the language. I suppose having only one grammatical gender for inanimate objects and "unmarked" animate ones, and simple verb forms and word order, we can afford the luxury of hoarding in a more-or-less intact state the confused bric-à-brac we have collected like Citizen Kane, or Big Daddy in "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof" from the (linguistic) treasure troves of the entire world. I think that this also allows us a much bigger vocabulary than any language I am aware of, as can be seen from the relative thickness of the English section of any bi-lingual dictionary.


----------



## jlc246

_The Chaos_ is awe-fully awful -- that is to say, wonderful! Thank you, Loob.

Growing up in California, my mother-tongue had words that came originally from Mexico and Spain and retained something of their original pronounciation. These included the names of the California cities, San Jose, San Jacinto, and La Jolla, which were traps for the unwary because (among other things) the "J" is projounced like the "H" in "hole" instead of like the "J" in "joke." I lived not far from San Jose, but I stumbled over the other names on maps as a kid.

When someone mispronounced the name of one of these cities, out would come the joke about the lady who visited California. Someone asked her, "What cities are you going to visit?" and she replied, "I'm starting in San Josie" (with the j as in joke). She was politely corrected, "That's San Jose" (more or less Hosay for those who aren't familiar with Californian or Spanish). Then she said she was going to "San Jak-into" and was politely told that it was "San Jacinto" (more or less Hasintoe or Haseentoe). She was ending her trip in La "Joll-la". Once more, she was corrected to "La Jolla" (like Hoiya, for the CA city). Finally, someone asked how long she was planning to stay in California, and she said, "Well, I was going to stay until Hune, but I like it so much, I think I'll stay until Huly." (June/July)

When we moved to San Antonio, there were a whole new set of traps for my tongue, because many countries and cultures contributed to the language here, which then got it's very own Texan flavor. A few local favorites are Bexar county (pronounced "Bear" like the animal) and the cities of Boerne (Bernie) and Gruene (Green).


----------



## Sprache

tanager said:


> I wonder how many US schoolchildren, having to recite the "Pledge of Allegiance," thought it went "one nation, invisible..." instead of "one nation, indivisible..." (Like I did.)


I did that. When I was in grade school, I said "I pledge of allegiance to the flag..." also. Since the title is The Pledge *of *Allegiance, I assumed that's how it was recited.


----------



## timpeac

tanager said:


> I wonder how many US schoolchildren, having to recite the "Pledge of Allegiance," thought it went "one nation, invisible..." instead of "one nation, indivisible..." (Like I did.)


And similar how many children in "wish you a merry christmas" wish it "to you and your king" instead of "kin" and in "away in a manger" emplore Jesus to "stay by my side til morning is night" instead of "nigh"?

I guess this is the trap of still using old or unusual words, or simply English having a large vocabulary? After all who other than in these instances ever says "kin" or "nigh"?


----------



## Sairen

> "Can you* loan* me your comb/ pen/car etc.?" It is very widely used now in the UK and even more in the States.



Wow, that is widespread. I'm a voracious reader, and consider my vocabulary and grammar both to be quite strong, and I STILL had no idea that wasn't correct.


----------



## jonquiliser

Sairen said:


> Wow, that is widespread. I'm a voracious reader, and consider my vocabulary and grammar both to be quite strong, and I STILL had no idea that wasn't correct.



Earlier on in this thread, someone said this:




gaer said:


> I think this is a bit like being "irritated" by "disorientate".
> 
> Cambridge says this:
> 
> loan
> verb [T] MAINLY US
> to lend:
> This library loans books, CDs and videotapes.
> 
> In other words, I'm not sure that "loan", used in the way you mentioned, is so much "wrong" as typically "AE". Perhaps Panjy can find a usage note for us that will clear up the matter.
> 
> Gaer


----------



## cattivabambina

A few years ago I wrote "unindependent" in an English class test. The teacher marked it red, of course, and I asked him what was wrong about it. I never heard the word "dependent" or "depend" before, so I didn't realise independent is the negative form of dependent.

When I was a child, I always thought the German "Gott sei Dank!" (Thanks god) is only one word and spelled it "gozeidank" in my mind. When a friend used this "word" once, it struck to my mind and I proudly told everyone that it actually means "Gott-sei-Dank". My friends were a bit confused, coz they already knew it for some reason...


----------



## danielfranco

A word that always seems to make people pause to search for the logic of its relationships is the "flammable" one. Both in English and Spanish.

English: If something that burns easily is flammable, something that doesn't is... What? Unflammable? Inflammable? Ah... Yes, non-flammable. But wait: it should have been "inflammable", in the beginning, no?

Spanish: The word for something that burns easily is "inflamable", which sounds actually like the contrary, since many words that are "not the thing" start with "in-" (incauto, imprescindible, independiente, etc.). So, what's the word for something that is not "inflamable"? "Incombustible". Argh!

That was easy, no?


----------



## Sprache

cattivabambina said:


> When I was a child, I always thought the German "Gott sei Dank!" (Thanks god) is only one word and spelled it "gozeidank" in my mind. When a friend used this "word" once, it struck to my mind and I proudly told everyone that it actually means "Gott-sei-Dank". My friends were a bit confused, coz they already knew it for some reason...


 
I did something similar with the word _Gesundheit_, which is sometimes said in English. I had no idea it was all one word until I saw it written out, which was less than a year ago.


----------



## cattivabambina

You really say "Gesundheit" in English?


----------



## Sprache

Yes. Sometimes people say _Gesundheit_ for "[God] bless you".


----------



## rodoke

I read a lot of books as a child, many of them written in British English. As a result, a lot of those spellings have crept into my writing.  I don't do it as much as I used to, but I always notice the odd "criticise" "catalogue" or "aeon" every now and then.

As for the pronunciation debate. o-RE-ga-no, o-re-GA-no, let's call the whole thing off!


----------



## Arrius

*cattivabambina:*
"*You really say "Gesundheit" in English?"*

In America, yes, where it is reinforced by the simillar word in Yiddish, as often happens there, but in the UK it's "Bless you!"


----------



## Sprache

Arrius said:


> *cattivabambina:*
> "*You really say "Gesundheit" in English?"*
> 
> In America, yes, where it is reinforced by the simillar word in Yiddish, as often happens there, but in the UK it's "Bless you!"


As I said above, it is almost always _Bless you!_ in America too. That's the norm. But people will sometimes say _Gesundheit _to "spice things up" a bit; if that makes sense...


----------



## Brioche

danielfranco said:


> A word that always seems to make people pause to search for the logic of its relationships is the "flammable" one. Both in English and Spanish.
> 
> English: If something that burns easily is flammable, something that doesn't is... What? Unflammable? Inflammable? Ah... Yes, non-flammable. But wait: it should have been "inflammable", in the beginning, no?
> 
> Spanish: The word for something that burns easily is "inflamable", which sounds actually like the contrary, since many words that are "not the thing" start with "in-" (incauto, imprescindible, independiente, etc.). So, what's the word for something that is not "inflamable"? "Incombustible". Argh!
> 
> That was easy, no?



The word in English was/is *inflammable*.

Then someone decided that the in- prefix looked like a negative and could confuse the semi-literate.  So _ flammable_ was created. 

So now we have two words, the traditional inflammable, and the neologism flammable with the same meaning.


----------



## Arrius

Yes, the Americans coined *flammable* for items that ignite and burn easily, lest, as* Brioche *says, the prefix in *inflammable* which the neologism was to replace might be taken to be a negative as in _in_operable or _in_admissible. (The opposite is non-flammable). Such a step was quite advisable as such items tend to travel anywhere in the world and one cannot expect foreign or even anglophone stevedores unloading cargo to have much appreciation of the multi-purpose prefix _*in-.* _There are normally pictures of flames as well to aid comprehension.


----------



## Hockey13

I haven't got time to read through more than 60 or so posts on this thread, but I'd just like to put in my two cents on the issue of "herb" vs. "herb"...ahem.

I think it's clearly an AE vs. BE thing. I've been all around the country and lived in many different places, and the only place I could honestly ever imagine anyone saying "herbs" with the H pronounced is Boston and north along the Atlantic. Beyond that, not pronouncing the H is practically ingrained into every American child's mind when he says "herbs" with the H and some adult says, "No, you're wrong."

One thing that always got to me was the spelling of the word "people." I used to think (until I was about 13) that it was "pepole" and until I was about 16 I had to write it down as pepole and then realize it was wrong and change it to people. Incidentally, a peepole is not something I'd like to be around.

Another thing that always used to get me was the use of the pluperfect with regard to the verb to have. "I had had six dogs before ever losing one to death." To be honest, I think the form is useless as it is and I always was really excited to find a printing error in books (though I suppose it should have occured to me that the only doubles ever happened with the word "had").


----------



## ernest_

I used to say "crucifixar" instead of the correct "crucificar" (to crucify). It was a mistake but it had some logic: cruci (cross) + fixar (to stick) = crucifixar (to stick to the cross).


----------



## timpeac

Arrius said:


> Yes, the Americans coined *flammable* for items that ignite and burn easily.


What do you base this on? Poking around a few sources all indications I can find is that both inflammable and flammable have always existed.

By the way - to try to tie this to the original question, I guess the "trap" here is false, or popular, etymology (giving the "in" of "inflammable" a meaning it never had)?


----------



## timpeac

Actually, answering own question, _Merriam-Webster's Concise Dictionary of English Usage_
 supports the idea that "flammable" is newer than "inflammable", albeit based on Latin of course, although it doesn't say where it was coined.


----------



## alexacohen

badgrammar said:


> I'll be going back to bed now...
> 
> (I would have said "I'm going to go lay down", but I am incapable of remembering how to use the verbs "to lay" and "to lie" correctly, so I simply avoid them altogether - I can't be alone on that one... Or am I?).


No, I mix them up too. But, well, I can always lie about being laid ...

Alexa


----------



## Arrius

*Inflammable* "able to be set alight" is from _*1605* (Online Etymological Dictionary)_

*Flammable* is *of relatively recent origin*. However, it has in many contexts (especially safety) taken the place of the older *Inflammable*, which some people may take to mean its exact opposite (Wikipedia)
There is more enlightening information iin the second article but I believe I have reached the permitted limit.


----------



## Brioche

timpeac said:


> Actually, answering own question, _Merriam-Webster's Concise Dictionary of English Usage_
> supports the idea that "flammable" is newer than "inflammable", albeit based on Latin of course, although it doesn't say where it was coined.



Inflammable dates from 1605.

Apparently "flammable" dates from 1813.
http://alt-usage-english.org/excerpts/fxflamma.html

Click on the link and read about "flammable" in the US and the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis.


----------



## Voxy

timpeac said:


> From BE point of view -
> 
> Not homonyms if "row" means "argue", are if it means "line".
> ...


Just to get it straight, does that mean, that one and the same word
can sound differently, depending what its meaning is actually?

All in all i am very glad, that i am not the only one, who has some 
*issues* with the English pronunciation (rules).


----------



## timpeac

Voxy said:


> Just to get it straight, does that mean, that one and the same word
> can sound differently, depending what its meaning is actually?


Yes, I'm afraid so. I think they're known as homographs. I'm sure there are other common examples - but I can't think of any off hand.


----------



## tanager

timpeac said:


> Yes, I'm afraid so. I think they're known as homographs. I'm sure there are other common examples - but I can't think of any off hand.


 
There's "lower" with the ordinary meaning compared with "lower" pronounced "lour" (and sometimes spelled that way) which means something like to become gloomy and threatening, as in a "lowering sky".

Oh, and of course, there's "lead" the verb vs. "lead" the element...


----------



## JamesM

Voxy said:


> Just to get it straight, does that mean, that one and the same word
> can sound differently, depending what its meaning is actually?
> 
> All in all i am very glad, that i am not the only one, who has some
> *issues* with the English pronunciation (rules).




This does seem to fall into the "mother tongue traps" subject, doesn't it?   

These words are called heteronyms, a subset of homographs that change meaning based on pronunciation.  Here's a great site for more examples:

http://www-personal.umich.edu/~cellis/heteronym.html

These words trip up students in English all the time, mother tongue or not.


----------



## gaer

JamesM said:


> This does seem to fall into the "mother tongue traps" subject, doesn't it?
> 
> These words are called heteronyms, a subset of homographs that change meaning based on pronunciation. Here's a great site for more examples:
> 
> http://www-personal.umich.edu/~cellis/heteronym.html
> 
> These words trip up students in English all the time, mother tongue or not.


Yikes, I never knew there was a name for these pesky words. I was shocked at how many there are.


----------



## Voxy

JamesM said:


> This does seem to fall into the "mother tongue traps" subject, doesn't it?
> 
> These words are called heteronyms, a subset of homographs that change meaning based on pronunciation.  Here's a great site for more examples:
> 
> http://www-personal.umich.edu/~cellis/heteronym.html
> 
> These words trip up students in English all the time, mother tongue or not.



Great site, thank you.


----------



## Angel.Aura

Per un sacco di tempo ho pensato che si dicesse "nu*n*ziale" anzi che *nuziale* (anello nunziale, torta nunziale, etc. etc.). Poi, ad un certo punto ho fatto caso a quello che mi pareva un refuso di stampa, per scoprire che in realtà l'errore lo commettevo proprio io... 
Sapete che è un errore piuttosto comune? Provate a dare uno sguardo su google!

For a long time I thought that "nu*n*ziale" was correct, until I read what it looked to me as a typo (*nuziale*) and I eventually found out that I was the one to blame...
Do you know that it's a common mistake? Try to type the right (nuziale) and the wrong (nunziale) word on google!


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## Arrius

Per un sacco di tempo ho pensato che si dicesse "nu*n*ziale" anzi che *nuziale* (anello nunziale, torta nunziale, etc. etc.). Poi, ad un certo punto ho fatto caso a quello che mi pareva un refuso di stampa, per scoprire che in realtà l'errore lo commettevo proprio io... (*Angel.Aura*)

It appears that you are accusing yourself unjustly: according to our on-site dictionaries both forms are correct. I suppose the second N of nu*n*ziale (nuptial/wedding) was difficult to pronounce in that position and so was sometimes dropped, thus creating the alternative form *nuziale*.


----------



## JamesM

gaer said:


> Yikes, I never knew there was a name for these pesky words. I was shocked at how many there are.


 
I had no idea there were so many, either.  There are a few on that list that I've never heard ("mau" for a stack of hay (spelled "mow), for example.)


----------



## la_vagancia

As far as Herb vs, Erb... I believe in the U.S. we say Erb, but there are people with the name Herb, pronounced with the "h", that may confuse some. I know alot of my pronunciations are incorrect, my vocabulary is strongly influenced by my father, who was southern born and raised, but I believe my worst mistake is saying boLth, and also spelling it the same way up until the 8th grade when a teacher noticed after having marked it wrong on several papers. Oops. A question, does anyone else ever say 'trill'? I use it as in when people roll rr's as in 'carro' in Spanish, I say they 'trill it out' and sometimes I have used it to describe a person's or bird's singing. I have only heard one other person ever use it to my memory but used it long before I ever met them. I just looked it up, and apparently it is a real word but not in common usage????


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## Arrius

Welcome to the fora,* la vagancia !*

You really did use to say _bo*l*th_ with an* L*, presumably instead of *both*? I quite believe you, but it is a strange lapsus linguae or slip, because I think most people would find it almost impossible to say the word that way since it requires much oral gymnastics to do so. A German would have the kind of L necessary to perform this feat but not the /th/, of course.
*Trill*, _to warble and quaver_, is known to all in England and in common use, and the term _trilled R_ is used by those involved with linguistics to indicate the _vibrated R_ of Spanish, Italian, Swedish, Southern French, and Scots dialect.
"Och mon, have ye niveRRRR biin te EdinbuRRRah?" The word derives from the Italian _trilliare_ or _trigliare_ with the same meaning but obviously of onomatopoeic origin (which refers to words like _thud ping crash_, based on the sound of the noise they describe).
Like yourself, I too wrote at school phrases from my own (London) dialect such as "*and we didn't half have a good time*" (pronounced "an' we di'n' ahf 'av a good tah-im") = and we had a very good time, which were much disapproved of by my teachers. My dad normally said _serstificate_ for certificate, which I at first imitated, and I had an uncle with a more extreme version of the dialect who spoke of _p'lice ossifers_ and (I kid you not) even _'orses*' *piddle_ for "hospital" without any wish to make a joke, both of which variants I refrained from imitating.


----------



## danielfranco

I now leave you with a quotation from Eddie Izzard's "Dressed to Kill", in regards to the "herb" conundrum. I think it quite addresses the pronunciation of it. 

"[...] In Britain we pronounce it *hûrb* because it has a f#%&ing _*h*_ in it."

Succinct, the man.


----------



## tomandjerryfan

danielfranco said:


> I now leave you with a quotation from Eddie Izzard's "Dressed to Kill", in regards to the "herb" conundrum. I think it quite addresses the pronunciation of it.
> 
> "[...] In Britain we pronounce it *hûrb* because it has a f#%&ing _*h*_ in it."
> 
> Succinct, the man.



I prefer the "h" myself. "Erbs" sounds like there's something missing.


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## Arrius

In London the name_* Herbert*_ amputated at *both ends* to become _'*erb*_, is used to indicate young ruffians, but older than what was once known as street arabs, who loiter in the streets, probably up to no good:
"_There was a gang of 'erbs waitin' ahtside to do me over, so I staiyed indoors_". I wonder if His Holiness will mention this matter in his next address _urbi_ et orbi.


----------



## la_vagancia

Arrius said:


> Welcome to the fora,* la vagancia !*
> 
> You really did use to say _bo*l*th_ with an* L*, presumably instead of *both*? I quite believe you, but it is a strange lapsus linguae or slip, because I think most people would find it almost impossible to say the word that way since it requires much oral gymnastics to do so. A German would have the kind of L necessary to perform this feat but not the /th/, of course.
> *Trill*, _to warble and quaver_, is known to all in England and in common use, and the term _trilled R_ is used by those involved with linguistics to indicate the _vibrated R_ of Spanish, Italian, Swedish, Southern French, and Scots dialect.
> "Och mon, have ye niveRRRR biin te EdinbuRRRah?" The word derives from the Italian _trilliare_ or _trigliare_ with the same meaning but obviously of onomatopoeic origin (which refers to words like _thud ping crash_, based on the sound of the noise they describe).






I still do say bo*l*th, it's one of those idiosyncrasies that I've been unable to change, although I do spell it correctly now, I only notice my pronunciation of the word if it is brought to my attention. So 'trill' is used in everyday language by other people? That's nice to know. I've had to explain what I mean by that so many times that I was beginning to wonder. Thanks!


----------



## JamesM

tomandjerryfan said:


> I prefer the "h" myself. "Erbs" sounds like there's something missing.


 
But it doesn't sound like there's something missing in "honor"?   It's a funny thing, this "feeling right" or "feeling wrong."   I completely empathize.  I believe it's really a sort of validation that our brain does by comparing the sound to the way we've heard it thousands of times before.  If it doesn't match it just feels wrong.


----------



## tomandjerryfan

JamesM said:


> But it doesn't sound like there's something missing in "honor"?   It's a funny thing, this "feeling right" or "feeling wrong."   I completely empathize.  I believe it's really a sort of validation that our brain does by comparing the sound to the way we've heard it thousands of times before.  If it doesn't match it just feels wrong.



I can agree with that. The same thing happens with the letter "z" pronounced as "zee." I hate it when people say "zee," but that may be you tend to hear "zed" here - even in the media - rather than "zee."


----------



## Loob

la_vagancia said:


> I still do say bo*l*th, it's one of those idiosyncrasies that I've been unable to change, although I do spell it correctly now, I only notice my pronunciation of the word if it is brought to my attention. So 'trill' is used in everyday language by other people? That's nice to know. I've had to explain what I mean by that so many times that I was beginning to wonder. Thanks!


As for "bolth", you're absolutely not alone!  There's even an ongoing academic discussion about the possible theoretical causes of this pronunciation - google "bolth" and you'll find it 

Loob


----------



## timpeac

tomandjerryfan said:


> I can agree with that. The same thing happens with the letter "z" pronounced as "zee." I hate it when people say "zee," but that may be you tend to hear "zed" here - even in the media - rather than "zee."


Ah that reminds me of another mother-tongue "trap" - regional pronunciation. For a long time I wondered what "la zed boy" chairs were all about! (spelt la-z boy, but apparently pronounced "lazy boy" in America!) This also explained the various "e zed" items around (easy...whatever).


----------



## lizzeymac

timpeac said:


> Ah that reminds me of another mother-tongue "trap" - regional pronunciation. For a long time I wondered what "la zed boy" chairs were all about! (spelt la-z boy, but apparently pronounced "lazy boy" in America!) This also explained the various "e zed" items around (easy...whatever).



The name is  pronounced "lazy boy" because the chair was created in Michigan in 1930s.  I don't think they considered the zee / zed issue.  Is it really advertised as La Zed Boy?  I think that sounds much more interesting.


----------



## timpeac

lizzeymac said:


> The name is pronounced "lazy boy" because the chair was created in Michigan in 1930s. I don't think they considered the zee / zed issue. Is it really advertised as La Zed Boy? I think that sounds much more interesting.


No, no! I think you're missing the point - I _read_ "la z boy" and wondered "why on earth are they naming a chair "la zed boy"?". Same with "EZ computers" - "why would they name their shop "ee zed computers?""


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## MrJamSandwich

I've never understood the American "Zee" - Maybe it just rhymes better in the ABC song!


----------



## Arrius

I wonder where the inhabitants of the United States (for the Canadians as often use the British name) got the name *zee* from for the letter Z.

"Zed: c.1400, from M.Fr. _zede,_ from L.L. _zeta,_ from Gk. _zeta_, from Heb. _zayin_, letter name, lit. "weapon;" so called in allusion to the shape of this letter in ancient Hebrew. U.S. pronunciation _*zee*_ *is first attested 1677*. *Other* *dialectal* names for the letter are _izzard, ezod, uzzard_ and _zod."_ (Online Etymological Dictionary).My italics and bold letters.

Strong local influences were Spanish which has _zeta (/theta/ _or_  /seta/_) , French which has _zet_ with an atypically pronounced T, and German _Zet_ (/_tset_/), so they are not responsible. That it is a borrowing from (New) *Zea*land or a noise indicating irritation made by chimpan_*zee*_s are theories also to be discounted (_bad joke_). The name would appear to have emerged quite late presumably among the semi-literate - not that there was any shame in being so in those days.


----------



## timpeac

Arrius said:


> I wonder where the inhabitants of the United States (for the Canadians as often use the British name) got the name *zee* from for the letter Z.
> 
> "Zed: c.1400, from M.Fr. _zede,_ from L.L. _zeta,_ from Gk. _zeta_, from Heb. _zayin_, letter name, lit. "weapon;" so called in allusion to the shape of this letter in ancient Hebrew. U.S. pronunciation _*zee*_ *is first attested 1677*. *Other* *dialectal* names for the letter are _izzard, ezod, uzzard_ and _zod."_ (Online Etymological Dictionary).My italics and bold letters.
> 
> Strong local influences were Spanish which has _zeta (/theta/ _or_ /seta/_) , French which has _zet_ with an atypically pronounced T, and German _Zet_ (/_tset_/), so they are not responsible. That it is a borrowing from (New) *Zea*land or a noise indicating irritation made by chimpan_*zee*_s are theories also to be discounted (_bad joke_). The name would appear to have emerged quite late presumably among the semi-literate - not that there was any shame in being so in those days.


By analogy with most other letters in the alphabet (bee see dee etc) would be my guess - especially since it is a relatively little used letter ("irregular" language items, such as verbs, are often the most common also - the irregularities of the little used ones being more easily forgotten).


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## Outsider

Arrius said:


> Strong local influences were Spanish which has _zeta (/theta/ _or_  /seta/_) , French which has _zet_ with an atypically pronounced T [...]


Isn't the French name of this letter _zède_? Or was _zète_ an older pronunciation?


----------



## Angel.Aura

Arrius said:


> Per un sacco di tempo ho pensato che si dicesse "nu*n*ziale" anzi che *nuziale* (anello nunziale, torta nunziale, etc. etc.). Poi, ad un certo punto ho fatto caso a quello che mi pareva un refuso di stampa, per scoprire che in realtà l'errore lo commettevo proprio io... (*Angel.Aura*)
> 
> It appears that you are accusing yourself unjustly: according to our on-site dictionaries both forms are correct. I suppose the second N of nu*n*ziale (nuptial/wedding) was difficult to pronounce in that position and so was sometimes dropped, thus creating the alternative form *nuziale*.


You know Arrius, if you enter the word nu*n*ziale on many online italian dictionaries (Garzanti, DeMauro, etc.), no match will be found. 
I guess I have to PM some of the Forum Moderators and ask them to fix the whole thing. Or maybe I'm just accusing them unjustly...


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## Arrius

*Isn't the French name of this letter zède? Or was zète an older pronunciation?*

_Right again Outsider: your first version zède looks right, but I have never seen it in print and it is difficult to locate in dictionaries. My main point was that in French the name of the letter Z is not zee and ends with a dental consonant. We have in recent years often seen how the Americans write the name of the letter W (for obvious reasons) but I really don't know how to write this in BE where it is pronounced differently_.


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## Outsider

Well, if it's any comfort to Americans, we call it _zê_ in Portuguese, too.


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## tomandjerryfan

AmE (and CaE to a degree) went through a major spelling reform at some point. Perhaps that has something to do with why Americans prefer "zee" over "zed."


----------



## timpeac

tomandjerryfan said:


> AmE (and CaE to a degree) went through a major spelling reform at some point. Perhaps that has something to do with why Americans prefer "zee" over "zed."


How would spelling reform change pronunciation? Spelling reform aims to get spelling closer to pronunciation - you seem to be suggesting that people were saying "zed" but that the spelling was changed to "zee" and this affected the pronunciation accordingly? Sounds extremely unlikely to me.


----------



## Outsider

Probably not the spelling reform itself, but the reform may have been part of a more general movement aimed at distancing American English from British English, or at "rationalizing" it.
I'm only guessing here...


----------



## gaer

timpeac said:


> How would spelling reform change pronunciation? Spelling reform aims to get spelling closer to pronunciation - you seem to be suggesting that people were saying "zed" but that the spelling was changed to "zee" and this affected the pronunciation accordingly? Sounds extremely unlikely to me.


Maybe, maybe not. But doesn't it strike you as at least somewhat illogical that only one letter ends with "ed"?

I did not even know that "zed" existed until reading here. I never bothered to learn to pronounce the German alphabet either!


----------



## tomandjerryfan

timpeac said:


> How would spelling reform change pronunciation? Spelling reform aims to get spelling closer to pronunciation - you seem to be suggesting that people were saying "zed" but that the spelling was changed to "zee" and this affected the pronunciation accordingly? Sounds extremely unlikely to me.



Maybe I didn't explain myself well. Zed and zee both appear in the dictionary as accepted spellings depicting the pronunciation of the letter "z." Perhaps there was a debate to start pronouncing it as "zee" because it fit the pattern of other letters in the alphabet (bee, cee, dee), and it somehow caught on in the U.S., where it would be eventually added to dictionaries.

Just an unsupported thesis.


----------



## gaer

My questions, which may belong in a new thread, would be these:

1) Why was "zed" changed to "zee" in AE?
2) When did it happen?
3) Who was behind the change?

I searched for answers, but so far I have been unsuccessful.


----------



## Loob

Thank you to all for your fascinating responses to my original post - all the best to you!

Loob


----------



## lacallada

As regards the silent H in *herb(s)*, I am quite sure I have heard well-spoken Americans say the word in that way, which struck me because the H is always pronounced in Britain (unless you're a Cockney). In the original French the H here is regarded as an H mute not an aspìrated H, that is to say they say_ l'herbe (grass)_ unlike _le hublot (porthole) _where the H is said to be aspirated, although in practice you never hear an aspirated H unless the speaker is rather pedantic and then only before an A. So the American pronunciation with no H is closer to the original than the British.[/quote]

Hello!

I was once asked by a very gracious woman from the Phillippines whether or not I would like a lovely cup of "hairball" tea.  Thinking that there was, perhaps, something about her native culture's tea-drinking habits that I really did not want to learn first-hand, I politely declined her offer. It was mere seconds later that I figured out what she meant and quickly told her that I had changed my mind and would love a cup.

I've heard "herbal" pronounced both with a silent H and with it aspirated in the U.S., although mostly with the silent H around these parts.

La Callada


----------



## Mrs JJJ

My grandfather worked on farms, but was a keen reader.  Throughout his life, her pronounced "compromise" as com-PROM-iss. (as in  "promise"). Apparently, that's quite a common error. 

Like many here, I read a lot as a child and I later discovered that I was wrong about a lot of words. I remember feeling humilated when a younger friend corrected my mispronunciation of "oasis". (I said "OH-a-siss.) When I was about fourteen, I was in an English literature lesson and, as usual, we each had to take a turn at reading aloud from the set book. As one girl was reading, everyone started laughing, but I had no idea why. Then I found out that she had pronounced the name Penelope just as I would have done - PEN-e-loap. I was SO relieved that it hadn't been my turn to read!

In a class lower down the school, when it_ was _my turn to read (something that made me very anxious) the teacher interrupted me and asked my friend Diana to read. I was surprised, but fell silent, until the teacher explained, and I found that what she'd actually done was correct my mispronunciation of "mariner" as "mar-EEN-er."


----------



## Mrs JJJ

In an early post in this thread, Ernest, from Barcelona wrote:



> In Catalan there's a problem which is that the feminine article "la" may be confused with the masculine article abbreviated ("l") when the noun begins with "a". So:
> 
> la moto (the motorcycle), and
> l'amoto
> 
> sound exactly the same.



Toddlers have a similar problem in English, in distinguishing between (a + consonant) and (an + vowel). When our godson was learning to talk, he was sometimes given a choice of breakfast foods, and he would often opt for "negg" . Since then, my husband and I have frequently referred to eggs as "neggs".


----------



## L'irlandais

This occurs naturally in spoken English, it’s sometimes called rebracketing.  I use it when teaching English to train learners’ ears to the sound of a new language.
How A Napron Became An Apron


> An important point to remember when thinking about these changes is that when many of them happened—in the Middle Ages—most people didn’t read. Instead of seeing the words written on the page, they only heard words spoken. People couldn’t see how the words were supposed to be divided, which made it much easier for mishearings to propagate.


This being a language forum perhaps the thread title could be amended to include [*rebracketing/mishearing] *in spoken (mother tongue) language.


----------



## Awwal12

In Russian your main problem when you read rare (or probably even not so rare) words is their stress. That's how I've got my "severnéye" [~sʲvʲɪr'nʲe.ɪ] ("farther north", literally "norther") instead of the normal "séverneye" [~'sʲevʲɪr'nʲɪ.ɪ], apparently by the analogy with "yuzhnéye" ("farther south") which also loses the stress on the root.

Another issue is the softening vs. the non-softening "e" in loanwords. I am still used to [sʲɛks] instead of the much more common [sɛks] (well, in unstressed positions that "e" does usually become softening! And [sɛks] sounds too dull, in my opinion  ).

But in general the relationships between the spelling and the pronunciation are too obvious in Russian to create any serious traps in reading.


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## Terio

I have an example in French, at least in familiar speech in Québec :

_L'évier_ (kitchen sink) becomes _le lévier_.

I also heard : _la queduc _instead of _l'aqueduc_.

Some of these "rebracketings" belong to the history of the language : _l'hierre_ (old french) is now _le lierre _(from latin hedera_), la bandon_ is now _l'abandon _(hence English _abandon_), etc.


----------



## Terio

Mrs JJJ said:


> My grandfather worked on farms, but was a keen reader.  Throughout his life, her pronounced "compromise" as com-PROM-iss. (as in  "promise"). Apparently, that's quite a common error.
> 
> Like many here, I read a lot as a child and I later discovered that I was wrong about a lot of words. I remember feeling humilated when a younger friend corrected my mispronunciation of "oasis". (I said "OH-a-siss.) When I was about fourteen, I was in an English literature lesson and, as usual, we each had to take a turn at reading aloud from the set book. As one girl was reading, everyone started laughing, but I had no idea why. Then I found out that she had pronounced the name Penelope just as I would have done - PEN-e-loap. I was SO relieved that it hadn't been my turn to read!
> 
> In a class lower down the school, when it_ was _my turn to read (something that made me very anxious) the teacher interrupted me and asked my friend Diana to read. I was surprised, but fell silent, until the teacher explained, and I found that what she'd actually done was correct my mispronunciation of "mariner" as "mar-EEN-er."



Imagine the difficulty for foreign learners! The English orthography is a very poor reference as to pronounciation. French is easier: though there are many ways to write some sounds, decoding the written form is generally simple.


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## pollohispanizado

lacallada said:


> I was once asked by a very gracious woman from the Phillippines whether or not I would like a lovely cup of "hairball" tea.  Thinking that there was, perhaps, something about her native culture's tea-drinking habits that I really did not want to learn first-hand, I politely declined her offer. It was mere seconds later that I figured out what she meant and quickly told her that I had changed my mind and would love a cup.


This reminds me of a scene in the movie Snatched where the mom and daughter arrive at their resort in Ecuador and are greeted with a white beverage and a hearty "Welcome!", but pronounced "waylc..." Goldie Hawn's character was having none of it. 😂 I had never made that phonetic connection until then, and now I will never forget it.


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## anahiseri

I don't know if it qualifies, but it's fun. As a little girl I heard ny mother sing a famous song which has a chorus that goes "Guantanamera, guajira guantanamera"...._guantanamera_  is an adjective that refers to  people from Guantánamo (the island in Cuba recently turned into a prison) guajira means girl. My interpretation of these strange words was this: I thought Guantanamera was a woman's name, and guajira the imperative form of guajirar; it was for me obviously a verb, though I had no idea what it  meant; for me, the phrase went something like,   (Mary / Susan) sing ! / play!  / talk !/ .... (Mary, Susan) -- If you're curious about what the song sounds like, you can find it in You Tube.


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## Yendred

anahiseri said:


> My interpretation of these strange words was this: I thought Guantanamera was a woman's name, and guajira the imperative form of guajirar


I know the song very well and I thought _Guantanamera_ was a place (I made no special link with the sadly famous Guantanamo), and _guajira_ was an adjective that could mean something like _beautiful, sweet_ or whatever 
As if the singer was kind of celebrating a beautiful place of his childhood or something like this.
Something similar to "_Barcelona, sweet Barcelona!_"...

Thanks for the explanation!


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## anahiseri

Yendred said:


> I know the song very well and I thought _Guantanamera_ was a place (I made no special link with the sadly famous Guantanamo), and _guajira_ was an adjective that could mean something like _beautiful, sweet_ or whatever
> As if the singer was kind of celebrating a beautiful place of his childhood or something like this.
> Something similar to "_Barcelona, sweet Barcelona!_"...
> 
> Thanks for the explanation!


it's funny that your interpretation was  similar to mine! Especially considering that Spanish is my native  language but not yours, I understand.


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