Wednesday November 4, 2009
Getting it right
By GRANT BARRETT
BECAUSE I do a radio show in the United States about language, my pronunciation of English is often under scrutiny.
Listeners expect that I will pronounce every word in the most traditional, most formal, most conservative way. Of course, I don’t. That means I receive lots of e-mail and phone calls reprimanding me for setting a bad example.
This criticism, is, in my opinion, a big load of hooey (rubbish, nonsense). Judge not unless ye be hired to do the judging (which I am!).
It’s one of those situations in which I am quite certain that each one of my correspondents pronounces some part of the language in a way that is considered something other than highly formal or traditional. I can know this with certainty because we all do. All of us!
Dangerous act: Many people confuse flaunt with flout. To flout the law means to break it, even though you are aware of it. Flaunt means to do something ostentatiously. The number one complaint about my pronunciation is the word “often.” I pronounce the T, so it does not sound like “offen.”
While I readily admit that “offen” is the most common pronunciation “ofTen” with a pronounced T isn’t wrong, it’s just less common. Any claims that it’s more correct or more sophisticated are unsupportable and insufferable.
Both pronunciations have existed in English as long as there are records of the pronunciation of the word. There was a time, however, when certain consonant clusters, such as “ft” started to be less pronounced. This was before there was such a thing as American English.
So, the T-ful pronunciation — ofTen — is older than the T-less pronunciation — offen. That doesn’t make it right, it’s just a fact.
Now, some historical linguists have suggested that the T-ful often pronunciation had a resurgence after more people became literate. They could see the T in the word so they pronounced it, assuming that the T-less offen pronunciation was something to be corrected. This sort of thing happens in English all the time, but usually on a one-on-one or personal level, not as a widespread trend.
To me, the facts are stronger behind the idea that the T-full often pronunciation simply just kept persisting among certain groups who migrated to the New World and brought the pronunciation with them. (The ofTen pronunciation does still exist in places in Britain, too).
Now, as to my particular case, I claim heritage as to the reason why I pronounce it as ofTen. As far back as the 1920s you can find language researchers reporting, and I quote, that “the Ozarker nearly always pronounces the T in ofTen.” My father’s family is from the Eastern Ozarks Mountain region (which is in Missouri and Arkansas in the centre of the United States). He talks a bit of hillbilly (meaning, he talks like a rustic or a rural person) and I have a feature of such language here and there in my own speech.
So, you can call it unsophisticated, but I call it roots and blood.
The radio show receives other calls about other non-standard pronunciations. One woman from Connecticut explained that her family has loud, friendly arguments about how to say “sorry.”
Should it rhyme with “lorry?” With “sari”? With “starry?” (These three words do not rhyme for most Americans.) Some other way?
The great Dictionary of American Regional English explains that there are two main pronunciations of the word in the United States. Most people say it in such a way that it more or less rhymes with “sari,” the garment. But in the Great Lakes region, which would include Chicago, many people tend to say something that sounds more like SAW-ree.
Canadians have still another pronunciation that’s more or less like SORE-ree or even SOE-ree, which is so delightful to my ears that I tend to intentionally say the word that way when I am really sorry but the matter is not an important one.
Going back to the matter of folks complaining about me: let me list a couple of my most recent true failures (as opposed to my imagined failures).
Last week I made a simple homophonic error not once, but twice. Homophonic errors are those which occur because there are two or more words in English which sound the same but which are spelled differently. I used the wrong one.
In this case, I wrote: “The principle reason I am pleased with the situation...” when I should have written “The principal reason I am please with the situation...”
Principle means “basis in truth” or “an ideal” or “fact serving as a foundation for ideas.”
Principal means “most important.”
Then I confused them again in another message. Failure is the principal human condition!
Another error I made recently was confusing flaunt and flout. I said something like, “Jaywalking is one of those laws I’m so used to flaunting in New York City that I would be shocked to get a ticket for it in San Francisco.” (Jaywalking is when you cross the street without waiting for a walk signal.)
Flout would have been the right word, though. To flout a law means to break it, even though you are aware of it.
Flaunt means to do something ostentatiously, or in a showy way, especially in defiance.
So I could “flaunt my flouting of the law” but I couldn’t really “flaunt the law.”
That’s all for now. If I keep going on with my mistakes, this will turn into a book.
n Grant Barrett is editorial director of the online dictionary http://www.Wordnik.com.
Source:
RSS
