7 ms·

Oh this is the place where I can finally rant about _aesthetic_, the favourite word for most music/art/movie content creators I've watched in the 2020s, one eve

Oh this is the place where I can finally rant about _aesthetic_, the favourite word for most music/art/movie content creators I've watched in the 2020s, one everybody mispronounces and reads it as "asthetic" which annoys me to no end, because it is totally WRONG. And I keep hearing it daily, which is maddening. "Ae" is supposed to be one sound, like the vowel sound in "egg". The "a" is silent. I'm terribly afraid everybody will learn the wrong way of saying it, and the correct way will go extinct. Sorry for the off topic rant, but I had to try something to stop this asthetic epidemic.

Dracophoenix 5y ago
You're free to blame vapo(u)rwave for that.
srcreigh 5y ago
Do you pronounce it ayesthetic?
- kreeben 5y ago
  To my ears it's the most beautiful when you replace "ae" with the "e" sound from "meh". Eh-stetic
  - 1_player 5y ago
    It's not just a matter of beautiful, it is correct. Ah-stetic on the other hand is wrong, widespread and the reason of my crusade.
    - janto 5y ago
      tomato tomato
      - CRConrad 5y ago
        I.e. tomayto tomahto.
    - sumtechguy 5y ago
      Many words are spelt the way they were pronounced when the word was invented. However, that becomes interesting when you have hundreds of regional dialects and accents, mash it through 2 different languages and 500+ years since the spelling was set down. Take for example the word resume. Without the tick mark it means to restart something. Yet it can also mean your work history with and without the tick mark now. That is because it is a pain to type that word out with the tick mark. So the spelling of the word is changing yet pronounced in 2 wildly different ways. You have found one of those 'transition' words. Where it is changing but the spelling has not caught up yet. This comes up from the fact that the current alphabet has 26 letters yet there are at least 40+ phonemes. This weirdness comes up when 'english' borrows a word from another language that has one of those 'others'. The alphabet just does not really cover all of them in all cases. So oddities happen, and accents happen so you get weird bits like that. We paper over it with smashing together letters. But again because of accents that does not always work well.
dmurray 5y ago
In American English, unlike British English, œ and æ have mostly been collapsed into e. Compare encyclopaedia, foetus, faeces, diarrhoea, oestrogen. (But exceptions spelt the same way in both dialects: phoenix, oeconomics). If you'd like to encourage what you consider the correct pronunciation, I'd suggest favouring the spelling esthetic, which I do see but less commonly.
- 1_player 5y ago
  If they've collapsed, neither AmE nor BrE speakers got the memo, as I've heard it mispronounced by both. Non-native speakers on the other hand tend to pronounce it correctly, as it's a common diphthong in other languages, such as French.
- raverbashing 5y ago
  Apple still uses an A for that sound (though true, it does not come from the latin æ)
- nieve 5y ago
  In American English the word is spelled economics, not oeconomics. Not the same spelling at all.
  - dmurray 5y ago
    It's also spelt that way in British English, which was my point.
- nyuszika7h 5y ago
  Perhaps interestingly, in some languages like German and Hungarian, (o)estrogen is written with just an ö and no e (Östrogen, ösztrögén).
  - CRConrad 5y ago
    That's probably because the dots on top are, historically, a vestige of the 'e'.
  - 5y ago
brotherofsteel 5y ago
>I'm terribly afraid everybody will learn the wrong way of saying it, and the correct way will go extinct. Is that really so bad?
- kreeben 5y ago
  The correct way is more aesthetic.
  - smitty1e 5y ago
    Particulary for the ascetic.
- 1_player 5y ago
  My life is pretty boring at the moment, we all need something to pass the time.
OJFord 5y ago
It's not that simple, for starters 'the a is silent' isn't really right, because it's just a modern rendering of æ, there is no 'a' (or 'e') really. Secondly, æ pronunciation differs depending on etymology (here, Latin's borrowing from Greek). Thirdly, the (ancient) Greek pronunciation changed over time anyway. So how far back do you want to go for 'original' and 'correct'?
- 1_player 5y ago
  > So how far back do you want to go for 'original' and 'correct'? As far back as the pronunciation guide from modern English dictionaries. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/aesthetic https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/aesthetic Yours is a nitpick over the nature of æ that doesn't invalidate my point that most people mispronounce that word.
  - amanaplanacanal 5y ago
    Well... dictionaries are attempting to document actual English usage, so if most people pronounce it differently I would suggest the dictionary is wrong, not the people pronouncing it differently. And that’s on top of the fact that languages change over time and regional accents and dialects can pronounce words very differently.
  - jacobolus 5y ago
    That dictionary documents es-, is-, and ēs- as common pronunciations (perhaps IPA vowels ɛ, ɪ, and iː), with the 'es-' form (short e sound) most common in the USA (this is the one I generally hear people use, with a vowel sound somewhere between IPA ɛ, e, ə, æ sounds and short enough that identifying the precise vowel can be tricky) and the ēs- form (long e sound) most common in the UK. Having multiple accepted pronunciations is different from “most people mispronounce this”. I don’t really understand what you are criticizing. Maybe you can put up an audio recording including what you consider the “correct” and “incorrect” pronunciations to be?
  - fknorangesite 5y ago
    What does invalidate your point though is that you've got the cause and effect backwards: a dictionary is not the source of truth - native speakers are. A dictionary describes not prescribes. If a dictionary is in disagreement with native speakers, it is the dictionary that will change, not the other way around.
Koshkin 5y ago
Asthetic, exetera, exetera…
- andrewshadura 5y ago
  also alUminum
fileeditview 5y ago
To me it sounds a lot like the German "ä", which can also be written as "ae". I wonder if this is somehow related.
- CRConrad 5y ago
  Do you really need to wonder?
- Tagbert 5y ago
  The umlaut (dots) represent a vestigial “e”. In pronunciation, it shifts the A phoneme forward in the mouth closer to E. The same thing happens with “ö”.
xeromal 5y ago
How do you pronounce egg? Hahaha I've heard it pronounced two ways. Ayegg. Ehgg. So I still don't know how you pronounce asthetic.
Ancapistani 5y ago
Ooh, this is a good one. I pronounce it "ass-thet-ic". ... but I pronounce "aesthetician" as "ess-tha-tish-in".
chmod775 5y ago
The correct way to pronounce something is always the way people do it. Language is defined by its speakers, not some committee or your preference.
- anonAndOn 5y ago
  Mon dieu! Don't tell the Académie Française! [0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acad%C3%A9mie_Fran%C3%A7aise https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acad%C3%A9mie_Fran%C3%A7aise
fknorangesite 5y ago
> because it is totally WRONG. If native speakers are pronouncing it a certain way, then that pronunciation is correct by definition. Friends don't let friends be prescriptivists.

Dracophoenix 5y ago

You're free to blame vapo(u)rwave for that.

srcreigh 5y ago

Do you pronounce it ayesthetic?

kreeben 5y ago
To my ears it's the most beautiful when you replace "ae" with the "e" sound from "meh". Eh-stetic
- 1_player 5y ago
  It's not just a matter of beautiful, it is correct. Ah-stetic on the other hand is wrong, widespread and the reason of my crusade.
  - janto 5y ago
    tomato tomato
    - CRConrad 5y ago
      I.e. tomayto tomahto.
  - sumtechguy 5y ago
    Many words are spelt the way they were pronounced when the word was invented. However, that becomes interesting when you have hundreds of regional dialects and accents, mash it through 2 different languages and 500+ years since the spelling was set down. Take for example the word resume. Without the tick mark it means to restart something. Yet it can also mean your work history with and without the tick mark now. That is because it is a pain to type that word out with the tick mark. So the spelling of the word is changing yet pronounced in 2 wildly different ways. You have found one of those 'transition' words. Where it is changing but the spelling has not caught up yet. This comes up from the fact that the current alphabet has 26 letters yet there are at least 40+ phonemes. This weirdness comes up when 'english' borrows a word from another language that has one of those 'others'. The alphabet just does not really cover all of them in all cases. So oddities happen, and accents happen so you get weird bits like that. We paper over it with smashing together letters. But again because of accents that does not always work well.

dmurray 5y ago

In American English, unlike British English, œ and æ have mostly been collapsed into e. Compare encyclopaedia, foetus, faeces, diarrhoea, oestrogen. (But exceptions spelt the same way in both dialects: phoenix, oeconomics). If you'd like to encourage what you consider the correct pronunciation, I'd suggest favouring the spelling esthetic, which I do see but less commonly.

1_player 5y ago
If they've collapsed, neither AmE nor BrE speakers got the memo, as I've heard it mispronounced by both. Non-native speakers on the other hand tend to pronounce it correctly, as it's a common diphthong in other languages, such as French.
raverbashing 5y ago
Apple still uses an A for that sound (though true, it does not come from the latin æ)
nieve 5y ago
In American English the word is spelled economics, not oeconomics. Not the same spelling at all.
- dmurray 5y ago
  It's also spelt that way in British English, which was my point.
nyuszika7h 5y ago
Perhaps interestingly, in some languages like German and Hungarian, (o)estrogen is written with just an ö and no e (Östrogen, ösztrögén).
- CRConrad 5y ago
  That's probably because the dots on top are, historically, a vestige of the 'e'.
- 5y ago

brotherofsteel 5y ago

>I'm terribly afraid everybody will learn the wrong way of saying it, and the correct way will go extinct. Is that really so bad?

kreeben 5y ago
The correct way is more aesthetic.
- smitty1e 5y ago
  Particulary for the ascetic.
1_player 5y ago
My life is pretty boring at the moment, we all need something to pass the time.

OJFord 5y ago

It's not that simple, for starters 'the a is silent' isn't really right, because it's just a modern rendering of æ, there is no 'a' (or 'e') really. Secondly, æ pronunciation differs depending on etymology (here, Latin's borrowing from Greek). Thirdly, the (ancient) Greek pronunciation changed over time anyway. So how far back do you want to go for 'original' and 'correct'?

1_player 5y ago
> So how far back do you want to go for 'original' and 'correct'? As far back as the pronunciation guide from modern English dictionaries. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/aesthetic https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/aesthetic Yours is a nitpick over the nature of æ that doesn't invalidate my point that most people mispronounce that word.
- amanaplanacanal 5y ago
  Well... dictionaries are attempting to document actual English usage, so if most people pronounce it differently I would suggest the dictionary is wrong, not the people pronouncing it differently. And that’s on top of the fact that languages change over time and regional accents and dialects can pronounce words very differently.
- jacobolus 5y ago
  That dictionary documents es-, is-, and ēs- as common pronunciations (perhaps IPA vowels ɛ, ɪ, and iː), with the 'es-' form (short e sound) most common in the USA (this is the one I generally hear people use, with a vowel sound somewhere between IPA ɛ, e, ə, æ sounds and short enough that identifying the precise vowel can be tricky) and the ēs- form (long e sound) most common in the UK. Having multiple accepted pronunciations is different from “most people mispronounce this”. I don’t really understand what you are criticizing. Maybe you can put up an audio recording including what you consider the “correct” and “incorrect” pronunciations to be?
- fknorangesite 5y ago
  What does invalidate your point though is that you've got the cause and effect backwards: a dictionary is not the source of truth - native speakers are. A dictionary describes not prescribes. If a dictionary is in disagreement with native speakers, it is the dictionary that will change, not the other way around.

Koshkin 5y ago

Asthetic, exetera, exetera…

andrewshadura 5y ago
also alUminum

fileeditview 5y ago

To me it sounds a lot like the German "ä", which can also be written as "ae". I wonder if this is somehow related.

CRConrad 5y ago
Do you really need to wonder?
Tagbert 5y ago
The umlaut (dots) represent a vestigial “e”. In pronunciation, it shifts the A phoneme forward in the mouth closer to E. The same thing happens with “ö”.

xeromal 5y ago

How do you pronounce egg? Hahaha I've heard it pronounced two ways. Ayegg. Ehgg. So I still don't know how you pronounce asthetic.

Ancapistani 5y ago

Ooh, this is a good one. I pronounce it "ass-thet-ic". ... but I pronounce "aesthetician" as "ess-tha-tish-in".

chmod775 5y ago

The correct way to pronounce something is always the way people do it. Language is defined by its speakers, not some committee or your preference.

anonAndOn 5y ago
Mon dieu! Don't tell the Académie Française! [0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acad%C3%A9mie_Fran%C3%A7aise https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acad%C3%A9mie_Fran%C3%A7aise

fknorangesite 5y ago

> because it is totally WRONG. If native speakers are pronouncing it a certain way, then that pronunciation is correct by definition. Friends don't let friends be prescriptivists.