Spelling pronunciation
A spelling pronunciation is the pronunciation of a word according to its spelling, different from a standard or traditional pronunciation. Words spelled with silent letters, or traditionally pronounced with reduced vowels or omitted consonants, may be subject to a spelling pronunciation.
If a word's spelling was standardized prior to sound changes that produced its "traditional" pronunciation, a spelling pronunciation may reflect an even older pronunciation. This is often the case with compound words. It is also the case for many words with silent letters, though not all—silent letters are sometimes added for etymological reasons, to reflect a word's spelling in its language of origin. Some silent letters were added on the basis of erroneous etymologies, as in the cases of the words island and scythe.
Spelling pronunciations are often prescriptively discouraged and perceived as incorrect next to the traditionally accepted, and usually more widespread, pronunciation. If a spelling pronunciation persists and becomes more common, it may eventually join the existing form as a standard variant, or even become the dominant pronunciation.
Prevalence and causes
A large number of easily noticeable spelling pronunciations occurs only in languages such as French and English in which spelling tends to not indicate the current pronunciation. Because all languages have at least some words which are not spelled as pronounced, even those such as Finnish with most words being written phonetically, spelling pronunciations can arise in any language in which most people obtain only enough education to learn how to read and write but not enough to understand when the spelling fails to indicate the modern pronunciation. In other words, when many people do not clearly understand the relationship between spelling and pronunciation, spelling pronunciations are common.On the other hand, spelling pronunciations are also evidence of the reciprocal effects of spoken and written language on each other. Many spellings represent older forms and corresponding older pronunciations. Some spellings, however, are not etymologically correct.
Though many people may believe that the written language is "more correct", that, in turn, can become a self-fulfilling prophecy, with the written language affecting and changing the spoken language and resulting in a pronunciation that is similar to an older pronunciation or even to a new pronunciation that is suggested by the spelling but had never occurred before.
Examples of English words with common spelling pronunciations
- kiln with a fully pronounced "n" is a reversion to an older pronunciation, only accepted as standard since the early 20th century. The pronunciation of the "kil" with the "n" silent is, for example, referenced in Webster's Dictionary of 1828. Phonetically, the "ln" in "kiln" is categorized as a digraph: a combination of two letters that make only one sound, such as the "mn" in "hymn." From English Words as Spoken and Written for Upper Grades by James A. Bowen 1900: "The digraph ln, n silent, occurs in kiln. A fall down the kiln can kill you."
- often, pronounced with. This is actually a reversion to the 15th-century pronunciation, but the pronunciation without is still preferred by 73% of British speakers and 78% of American speakers. Older dictionaries do not list the pronunciation with although the 2nd edition of the OED does. The sporadic nature of such shifts is apparent upon examination of examples such as whistle, listen and soften in which the t remains usually silent.
- forehead once rhymed with horrid but is now pronounced with the second syllable as by 85% of American speakers and 65% of British speakers. This is actually a reversion to the original pronunciation.
- clothes was historically pronounced the same way as the verb close, but many speakers now insert a, a voiced th. This is actually a reversion to the 15th-century pronunciation.
- salmon is pronounced by a minority of English speakers with, due to the letter "l" being reintroduced, despite being neither written nor pronounced in the original Anglo-French pronunciation.
- falcon is now nearly always pronounced with, and only 3% of speakers have no. The was silent in the old pronunciation: compare French faucon and the older English spellings faucon and fawcon. That may suggest either analogical change or the reborrowing of the original Latin.
- alms, balm, calm, psalm, etc. are now often pronounced with in some parts of the United States. In most of the United Kingdom, the traditional pronunciation continues to prevail.
- comptroller is often pronounced with ; the accepted pronunciation is "controller".
- ye, the definite article, as in Ye Olde Coffee Shoppe, is often pronounced like the archaic English pronoun ye instead of as the word the, based on the misleading use of the symbol y to substitute for the archaic printer's mark Þ: the letter thorn.
- Mackenzie, Menzies, Dalziel now include the sound in place of the original, due to the insular flat-topped g of Gaelic scripts being commonly transcribed into English as the similar-looking letter z.
- armadillo and other words from Spanish with the double-L pronounced instead of ; similarly, the Italian-sourced maraschino and bruschetta with the associated with that consonant cluster in German instead of the of Italian.
- victuals, pronounced , whose -c- was re-introduced on etymological grounds, and the word is sometimes pronounced with.
- The pronunciation of waistcoat as waist-coat is now more common than the previous pronunciation.
- conduit, historically pronounced or, is now nearly always pronounced in most of the United States.
- covert, historically pronounced is now usually pronounced, by analogy to overt.
- medicine, historically pronounced with two syllables but now quite often with three.
- Bartholomew, formerly pronounced or, is now.
- Anthony, now is typically.
- Numerous placenames with traditional pronunciations have been displaced by ones influenced by the spelling: St. Louis, formerly now , Papillion, formerly now, Beatrice formerly and still somewhat currently, now. Montpelier, the capital of Vermont, is now pronounced, instead of the French.
- Sir George Everest's surname is pronounced. The mountain named after him – Mount Everest – is generally pronounced.
- Interjections such as tsk tsk! or tut tut!, now commonly and.
- The words Arctic, Antarctic and Antarctica were originally pronounced without the first, but the spelling pronunciation has become very common. The first "c" was originally added to the spelling for etymological reasons and was then misunderstood as not being silent.
- zoology, which is often pronounced "zoo-ology", though, technically, this is likely influenced more by the word "zoo" than by its spelling. A similar case might be the pronunciation outside the United States of hecatomb as rhyming with "deck a tomb" and pronounced instead of.
- hotel, originally pronounced because of the pronunciation of the French hôtel, is now usually pronounced with an audible h. Nevertheless, maître d'hôtel is pronounced.
- herb, a word with origins in Old French, is pronounced with a silent h in the United States. The same was true of the United Kingdom until the 19th century, when it adopted a spelling pronunciation, with an audible h.
- Ralph, originally pronounced or in the United Kingdom, is now often pronounced.
- German loanwords such as spiel and stein are sometimes pronounced as beginning with, as if they were native English words, instead of. In German, initial s, immediately before p or t, is pronounced as if it were sch.
- nephew was, until recent generations, predominantly pronounced in Britain, descended from Middle English and originally loaned from Old French , a spelling which remains unchanged into modern French. But the v was later changed to ph where the p hints at its Latin root , which can be found in more recent Latin loanwords like nepotism. Today, spelling pronunciation has shifted the word's pronunciation predominantly to.
Opinions
Henry Watson Fowler reports that in his day, there was a conscious movement among schoolteachers and others encouraging people to abandon anomalous traditional pronunciations and to "speak as you spell". According to major scholars of early modern English, in the 17th century, there was already beginning an "intellectual" trend in England to "pronounce as you spell". That presupposes a standard spelling system, which was only beginning to form at the time.
Similarly, quite a large number of "corrections" slowly spread from scholars to the general public in France, starting several centuries ago.
A different variety of spelling pronunciations are phonetic adaptations, pronunciations of the written form of foreign words within the frame of the phonemic system of the language that accepts them: an example of this process is garage sometimes pronounced in English. Such adaptations are quite natural and often preferred by speech-conscious and careful speakers.
Children and foreigners
Children who read a great deal often have spelling pronunciations because if they do not consult a dictionary, they have only the spelling to indicate the pronunciation of words that are uncommon in the spoken language. Well-read second language learners may also have spelling pronunciations.In some instances, a population in a formerly non-English speaking area may retain such second language markers in the now native-English speaking population. For example, Scottish Standard English is replete with spelling pronunciations from when Scots was subsumed by English in the 17th century.
However, since there are many words that one reads far more often than one hears, adult native-language speakers are also affected. In such circumstances, the "spelling pronunciation" may well be more comprehensible than any other. That, in turn, leads to the language evolution mentioned above. What is a spelling pronunciation in one generation often becomes the standard pronunciation in the next.
In other languages
In French, the modern pronunciation of the 16th-century French author Montaigne as, rather than the contemporary, is a spelling pronunciation.When English club was first borrowed into French, the approved pronunciation was, as being a reasonable approximation of the English. The standard then became on the basis of the spelling, and later, in Europe,, deemed closer to the English original. The standard pronunciation in Quebec French remains. Similarly, shampooing "product for washing the hair" at the time of borrowing was but it is now
In Modern Hebrew, the word חֵטְא is sometimes pronounced, as suggested by its spelling, especially by children. Other examples of spelling pronunciations are the Sephardic Hebrew כָּל being pronounced as and צָהֳרַיִם being pronounced as because of how the kamatz katan vowel point, which indicates, is visually identical to the kamatz, which indicates.
In Italian, a few early English loanwords are pronounced according to Italian spelling rules such as water, pronounced, and , pronounced. The Italian word ovest comes from a spelling pronunciation of French ouest ; that particular instance of spelling pronunciation must have occurred before the 16th century, when the letters u and v were still indistinct.
A few foreign proper names are normally pronounced according to the pronunciation of the original language, but they retain an older spelling pronunciation when they are used as parts of Italian street names. For exame, the name of Edward Jenner retains its usual English pronunciation in most contexts, but Viale Edoardo Jenner is pronounced. The use of such old-fashioned spelling pronunciations was probably encouraged by the custom of translating given names when streets were named after foreign people: Edoardo for Edward, or Giorgio for George for Via Giorgio Washington.
In Spanish, the "ch" in some German words is pronounced or,instead of. Bach is pronounced, and Kuchen is, but Rorschach is, rather than, Mach is or, and Kirchner is or. Other spelling pronunciations are club pronounced, iceberg pronounced in Spain, and folclor and folclore as translations of folklore, pronounced and. Also in Spanish, the acute accent in the French word élite is taken as a Spanish stress mark, and the word is pronounced.
When Slavic languages like Polish or Czech borrow words from English with their spelling preserved, the pronunciation tends to follow the rules of Polish. Words such as "marketing" are pronounced as spelled, instead of the more faithful "markytyng".
In Vietnamese, initial "v" is often pronounced like a "y" in the central and southern varieties. However, in formal speech, speakers often revert to the spelling pronunciation, which is increasingly being used in casual speech as well.