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Pronunciation errors that made the English language
- Jun8 13y agoVery interesting article with cool examples. Here are a few more: * In the "words that begin with an n" category he didn't include the most famous example: orange, the fruit, which has an n in Persian and Arabic from which it was borrowed but lost it (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orange_(fruit)#Etymology http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orange_(fruit)#Etymology) * I used to think that baby was the actual word and babe was a corruption, turns out most probably it was just the reverse (baby < babe + y) (http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/44883/was-baby-originally-baby-talk http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/44883/was-baby-or...) * Somewhat related to the last category: Have you ever wondered why the initial sound in chair and chandelier are pronounced differently in English? There was a sound change in French, chair was borrowed before that change and chandelier, like many other French word that start with ch, after that change. * According to OED the reason that some animal names have the same singular and plural was that they originally contained a long vowel, e.g. deer, sheep, fish. Turns out, horse was also in this group but after a sound change its vowel shortened, hence the -s plural now.
- azernik 13y agoAnother example of words borrowed from French before and after the 'ch' -> 'sh' shift: chief and chef are actually derived from the same French word, but chef arrived later and was applied in English only to the cooking context.
- herge 13y agoAlso catch and chase, both from chasse.
- fauigerzigerk 13y agoInteresting. In spanish, "orange" still has the n: "naranja".
- bkurtz13 13y agoI wonder how it became "laranja" in Portuguese...
- gjm11 13y agoKinda-obvious guess: definite article "la" rather than indefinite article. Apparent counter-evidence: the relevant Portuguese definite article is "a" rather than "la" as in Spanish. Counter-counter-evidence: at least one source (W V O Quine's "Quiddities") tells me that once upon a time the Portuguese definite article was "la" rather than "a". However, Quine was a philosopher rather than a historian of language, this particular book is a fairly frivolous one, and I don't know how far I can trust him. Counter-counter-counter-evidence: A few minutes of googling haven't found me any other evidence for Portuguese, or any other language spoken in Portugal, ever having had "la" as a definite article. Make of all that what you will. I'd be very surprised if it weren't derived from a definite article prefix, but exactly how it happened I would rather not guess.
- thaumasiotes 13y agoAs to the counter-counter-counter-evidence, the development of definite articles in Romance languages is well-understood (Latin didn't have them). They come from the adjective "ille, illa (, illud)" meaning "that" (imagine pointing at "that"). So we can immediately conclude that yes, there was an L in there at some point in the history of portuguese. It seems a little more likely that the adjective became an article with the degenerate form "la" and then degenerated further than that the adjective lost its only consonant and then turned into an article.
- auxbuss 13y agoPoint of pedantry, but you never need commas at the start and end of parentheses. So, (illud) == (, illud). Also, (illud) == (illud, ), etc.
- dagurp 13y agoIt makes more sense in english where you can't hear the difference between "An orange" or "A norange".
- unhammer 13y ago> * According to OED the reason that some animal names have the same singular and plural was that they originally contained a long vowel, e.g. deer, sheep, fish. Turns out, horse was also in this group but after a sound change its vowel shortened, hence the -s plural now. I learnt that by reading The Wee Free Men by PTerry: "Aye, it's no' that good for the ship, havin' tae drink oout o' that pond after we've been bathing. It's terrible, hearin' a ship try tae spit." (When in doubt, assume the more "dialectal" pronunciation is the older one. Though I think the wee free men actually overdo it and pronounce plural ship too.)
- thaumasiotes 13y ago> When in doubt, assume the more "dialectal" pronunciation is the older one. Seriously, don't do this. There is no such phenomenon.
- gjm11 13y agoIt seems very possible to me that "babe" was the original, "baby" was derived from that, and "babe" in modern colloquial use is a shortened version of "baby" that just happens to match its predecessor.
- huxley 13y agoInterestingly, Orange as a place name (and the House of Orange) has a different derivation, it came from Arausio which was named after a Celtic water god. Latterly it came to be associated with the fruit and colour.
- moioci 13y agoNot to quibble with the OED, but who ever pronounced "fish" with a long vowel?
- anaphor 13y agoThis is basically an overview of what you would learn in a Historical Linguistics course. The reason they focus so much on sounds is because the changes are much more obvious than say, syntactic changes in the language (which can be very subtle).
- jack-r-abbit 13y agoRecently I've heard several people pronounce the "l" in "salmon" and it actually made me pause to see if I had been saying it wrong all along. General consensus with my Facebook friends was that the "l" should not be pronounced. But now I wonder if it used to be but was lost.
- innguest 13y agoIt definitely used to be pronounced. I've never heard of a word that started out with a silent letter. All silent letters I've come across in my studies have been pronounced in the past. I could be wrong and if so, that would be very interesting.
- anaphor 13y agoUsually pronunciations get simplified (deletion, lenition, etc..) however it is possible (though rare) for words to gain new sounds, or regain sounds that were lost or weakened before.
- jack-r-abbit 13y agoI didn't realize that the silent "k" in knife and knight were ever pronounced. Or the "p" in pterodactyl. I'm glad those three aren't making a comeback. :)
- anaphor 13y agoEnglish spelling is a product of how people used to pronounce words. So whenever you see "silent letters" it usually means they were pronounced before (although you still need supporting evidence).
- thaumasiotes 13y agoknife and knight will have been pronounced with the 'k' originally in english; you can see this in Chaucer. Pterodactyl, being essentially coined by english speakers from classical greek roots, probably never had the 'p' pronounced in english, but it was certainly pronounced in greek. However, the closest thing I'm aware of to a word "starting out with a silent letter" is debt, which was originally spelled (and pronounced) without the 'b'. The 'b' was added by someone who felt the word should better reflect the latin 'debeo', and was never pronounced at any point.
- gsk22 13y agoAre the L's in balm and psalm really silent in British English? I have always pronounced the L, and can't imagine applying a bahm or reading psahm 23.
- baha_man 13y agoYes, definitely silent.
- edderly 13y agoYes, similar to 'alms', as in 'alms for an ex-leper' http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U74s8nFE7No http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U74s8nFE7No
- gohrt 13y agoWhich English do you speak?
- arethuza 13y agoYes, at least for this Scot, "balm" is the same as the first part of "bampot" and psalm is the same as "Sam".
- lampington 13y agoInteresting, I always thought bampot had a first syllable rhyming with "lamp", but would pronounce balm to rhyme with calm. But then I'm from the south of England so bampot isn't a word I'd normally outside of reading Trainspotting...
- arethuza 13y agoI think Scots tend to shorten sounds - consider Edinburgh, which locals pronounce "Embra". Only having been here for about 30 years I've only got to the point of referring to it as "Edinbra". Referring to it as "Eedeeenboooroooo" causes hilarity in local of all levels of seniority.
- moioci 13y agoSome days there still is a bomb in Gilead.
- jobu 13y agoI've often heard people use the term "mute point" instead of "moot point". That seems fairly similar to the borrowing similar words from other languages.
- shellac 13y agoIs that in the US? It would make some sort of sense since 'moot point' has effectively reversed its meaning in US english ('something not for discussion' there). 'Mute' seems to to agree with that sense. (See also the US meaning of 'table' as in 'postpone for discussion' which has also reversed)
- JacobAldridge 13y agoMany years ago I had a friend apologise verbally for her "forx pass". Turns out she'd only ever read the phrase faux pas. Then just last month a colleague of mine created the reverse in a group email, acknowledging a "fow par". It was a phrase she'd only ever heard and used, never (knowingly) seen spelled.
- gabemart 13y agoA friend of mine once said "caffitary" for cafetière and for about three seconds I genuinely thought, "Wow, have I been pronouncing that wrong all my life?"
- JonnieCache 13y agoSome people pronounce it "cah-FETT-ee-ay." Is this closer to the french, or is it hypercorrection?
- evincarofautumn 13y agoTook me just a moment to realise you’re from a non-rhotic area. I thought those mispronunciations were really far off.
- JacobAldridge 13y agoHa! Yes, Australian accent may be required.
- JoeAltmaier 13y agoExactly! There's a Frazz cartoon about how you can tell if a person reads a lot (mispronounces) or watches TV a lot (misspells). I know which category I'd rather be in.
- 6cxs2hd6 13y agoYep. I used to feel embarrassed about my mispronunciation fax passes, until I realized they mostly came from reading beyond my immediate opportunity to apply.
- baddox 13y agoThough not related specifically to pronunciation, a fun fact is that a lot of English words for meat and livestock are borrowed from Anglo-Saxon and French words respectively. This apparently comes from the Norman conquest: the French nobility dealt more with prepared meat while Anglo-Saxon peasants dealt more with livestock. "Beef" comes from Old French "boef" (meaning ox), while "cow" comes from Old English "cu." Same goes for sheep/mutton, pork/pig, and poultry/chicken.
- patmcguire 13y agoAnd there's doubling in the law. Cease and desist, plus a few others I can't remember.
- baddox 13y agoCool. I had never heard of that one. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_doublet http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_doublet
- gumby 13y ago"Cease and desist" is a different, and also interesting, case from the field/table distinction baddox referred to. According to Jespersen ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otto_Jespersen http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otto_Jespersen ) phrases like "kith and kin" or "cattle and kine" are very old in English and far predate the Norman invasion. My kid was learning English around the time the brand "Da Kine" became popular. In his second grade way he looked it up in the dictionary and decided it was a farm brand. Jesperson's "Growth and Structure of the English Language" is a fantastic book by the way.
- thaumasiotes 13y agoBut wait... cattle and kine are the same thing, much like cease and desist. Kith and kin aren't the same. Do you also think it's strange to say "friends and family"?
- 13y ago
- rosser 13y agoI'm actually surprised their survey found more people using "excetera" than "expresso."
- aaronbrethorst 13y agoFun fact: An acceptable, albeit dated, spelling of "et cetera" is "&c". Since et cetera literally means "and so forth," you can contract it into "& cetera," or "&c".
- JoeAltmaier 13y agoAnd that symbol is called 'ampersand' but originally was just 'and'. The alphabet song used to include it at the end (w, x, y and z, and per se 'and'). So 'ampersand' is supposed to be a corruption much like 'Saint Nicholas' turned into 'Santa Claus'. Or is this apocryphal?
- phaemon 13y ago"&" is actually a stylised way of writing "et" (as in literally writing the letters "e" and "t" together).
- vacri 13y agoAnother fun spelling is 'connexion', a somewhat archaic form of 'connection'
- rosser 13y agoI know. That's how I generally say "et cetera" in writing (navigating UNIX filesystems being the main exception).
- riffraff 13y agoOn a related note, if you haven't seen these yet, these series of videos is awesome: "A history of the english language in ten minutes" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H3r9bOkYW9s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H3r9bOkYW9s
- grey-area 13y agoIt's not in the article, but loose and lose are another two words in the process of merging, because they are almost homophones. These two are often confused and lose seems to be losing the battle.
- WalterBright 13y agocomplement and compliment are frequently reversed, too.
- knyt 13y agoIn a somewhat similar process, 'lead' (pronounced like the element) seems to have replaced 'led' (the participle or the preterite): "She lead the team."
- cubicle67 13y agoI've not seen this before. To me that reads like mixed tense, where lead (rhyming with steed) is the present tense of led
- thaumasiotes 13y agoIf "she lead the team" were in the present tense, it would be a gross foreign-speaker error; no native speaker is going to mess up our vestigial 3sg verb rule. But as with lose/"loose", I don't think this is a pronunciation change in progress; I think it's just a spelling mistake, by analogy to read/read.
- InclinedPlane 13y agoLead sounds like read whereas lead sounds like read.
- thaumasiotes 13y agoWell... they're certainly being merged as to spelling. As to pronunciation? Are juice and jews close to being homophones? Moss and maws? Place and plays? Fuss and fuzz? This is a pretty robust distinction in english.
- gumby 13y agoMy favorite is cleave/cleave one of which means to separate and the other to join together.
- JacobAldridge 13y agoIt took daddy 10 months to raise the barn, and junior with his matches just 10 minutes to raze the barn.
- JoeAltmaier 13y agoActually barn-raisings took just a couple of days, if the neighbors were helping :)
- jvanloov 13y agoI haven't seen the second meaning used in English. But in Dutch they could/would correspond to "klieven" (split in two) and "kleven" (glue together).
- Sharlin 13y agoMore examples: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auto-antonym#Examples http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auto-antonym#Examples
- vacri 13y agoMy favourite self-antonym is 'sanction' - to permit or to forbid. Plenty more here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auto-antonym http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auto-antonym
- lunchladydoris 13y agoIf you like this sort of stuff you should definitely check out Slate's Lexicon Valley podcast [1]. Bob Garfield and Mike Vuolo have great chemistry and the content is always interesting. [1] http://www.slate.com/articles/podcasts/lexicon_valley.html http://www.slate.com/articles/podcasts/lexicon_valley.html
- coldpie 13y agoThanks for the link, but holy buckets that's one of the worst pieces of web design I've ever seen. Leave it to web designers to screw up displaying an ordered list. Sanely presented list of podcasts in the form of an RSS feed at <http://feeds.feedburner.com/SlateLexiconValley?format=xml> http://feeds.feedburner.com/SlateLexiconValley?format=xml>.
- borispavlovic 13y agoI think that the king of miss-pronunciation is prof. Joseph Stiglitz. The guy is genius but the way he pronounces the words 'state', 'etcetera' and many others is hilarious.
- brightsize 13y agoI have heard native English speakers in the U.S. with a habit of attempting to pronounce the "h" in words that start with "wh". "white" being a notable example. Furthermore, in their efforts they transpose the two letters, so "white" comes out as "hwight" rather than "wite". I've always thought this to be some sort of affectation intended to elevate themselves above the hoi polloi, but maybe there's some historical basis for it.
- bane 13y agoMy understanding is that it's a middle U.S. accent-ism. Broadcasters learn to speak with this accent as it's perceived "neutral" (General American) and many end up using it. It's not part of my native local mid-East coast accent (the 'h' is silent in words like "white") and it drives me crazy when I hear it on the radio. In the golden radio and early tv days, broadcasters and actors learned to speak with a "mid-atlantic" or transatlantic accent that was constructed to sound like something halfway between American and British Englishes. For a while, it was even taught in upper-class private schools in the U.S. North East. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mid-Atlantic_English https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mid-Atlantic_English https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_American https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_American
- thaumasiotes 13y agoYou realize your link indicates that whine and wine are pronounced the same in standard american english (or as you've called it, "general american")? edit: in fact, the whine-wine merger's own page indicates that the only place they're not merged is a strip of the american South.
- t__r 13y agoLike this? https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=lich59xsjik#t=52 https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=li... and this? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Nae9L4EdRs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Nae9L4EdRs
- brightsize 13y ago
- devindotcom 13y agoThe latest iteration of the language, yes. Fifty or a hundred years from now, we'll see. I think (hope) that we'll see a backlash against merging and simplification. Perhaps leetspeak will be the new Esperanto. Since we're trading anectotes, I'll share mine here: When taking words from another language, the process often falls under one of two types: loanwords, which are taken intact from their native language (e.g. doppelganger), and calques, which are literally translated as idiom (e.g. flea market). What's the anecdote? Loanword is a calque of the German lehnwort, and calque is a French loanword.
- tomp 13y ago> What's the anecdote? I think What's the irony? would be more appropriate.
- Blahah 13y agoIrony is when you express an idea using words that normally have the opposite meaning. That's not what's happening here. This is autology - a word that describes itself.
- gjm11 13y agoI don't think "irony" is so bad here. The third meaning of "irony" in the OED is: A state of affairs or an event that seems deliberately contrary to what was or might be expected; an outcome cruelly, humorously, or strangely at odds with assumptions or expectations. I don't think that's so far out -- one might (if not thinking clearly) expect that if one of "calque" and "loanword" is a calque and one is a loanword, they should be "the right way round", so the fact that they aren't is ironic in an only-slightly-extended sense. But, speaking of autology: Call an adjective "autological" if it describes itself (examples: "recondite", "pentasyllabic"), and "heterological" if it doesn't (examples: "Greek", "monosyllabic"). Is "heterological" autological or heterological? (This little paradox is rather old, and in particular I didn't make it up. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grelling%E2%80%93Nelson_paradox. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grelling%E2%80%93Nelson_parado...)
- rcthompson 13y agoI observe that the linguistic sophistication here is significantly in excess of that of an ordinary HN comment thread.
- junto 13y agoWhen I was in school we were reading 'The Crucible'. One lesson we all took turns to read out loud. One of my peers read the word 'whore' as 'war'. Some of the boys sniggered. The teacher then needed to describe what a whore was. I think she handled it quite well in hindsight considering she had a bunch if immature teenagers to deal with.
- 72deluxe 13y agoWe had a teacher named Mrs Hoare, pronounced "whore". She was lovely. She eventually left to be replaced by Mrs Robinson, so handing in homework involved "Here's to you Mrs Robinson!" but nobody got as far as asking "Are you trying to seduce me Mrs Robinson?" chortle chortle guffaw teenage idiots
- Mindless2112 13y agoI've often imagined what an awkward look I would get mentioning Hoare logic [1] to someone who hadn't seen it written. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hoare_logic http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hoare_logic
- unhammer 13y agoShakespeare used the phrase "from hour to hour" as a joke to mean "from whore to whore". Doesn't quite work unless you hear it in the Original Pronunciation: http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=6892 http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=6892 (Also, "war" would rhyme with "far")
- victoro 13y agoSurprising that the "words that begin with n" section didn't discuss how the process works both ways. For example the word newt (as in the aquatic amphibian) used to be ewt, but because it was so often prefaced by "an" eventually the n was attached to the ewt. Wikipedia's definition for this process is juncture loss. Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_articles#Juncture_loss http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_articles#Juncture_loss
- namenotrequired 13y agoMy English teacher told me that "You" is now pronounced like that because the "th" in "Thou" used to have its own character, which looked a lot like the Y.
- Angostura 13y agohttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorn_(letter) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorn_(letter)
- shellac 13y agoSee https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorn_%28letter%29 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorn_%28letter%29. c.f. "Ye Olde Tea Shoppe".
- merrua 13y agoThats weird. I thought You and thou existed alongside each other as formal and informal. http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/138925/thou-or-you-this-is-the-problem http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/138925/thou-or-yo...
- namenotrequired 13y agoThat's well possible, that often happens with "correct" and "incorrect" versions of a word.
- gjm11 13y agoThat would be pretty astonishing given that the thou/you distinction fairly obviously comes from Latin tu/vos via French tu/vous.
- moioci 13y agoMerriam Webster differs: You -- Middle English, from Old English ēow, dative & accusative of gē you; akin to Old High German iu, dative of ir you, Sanskrit yūyam you First Known Use: before 12th century Thou -- Middle English, from Old English thū; akin to Old High German dū thou, Latin tu, Greek sy First Known Use: before 12th century So "thou" is cognate with German "du", and "you" is related to German "ihr", the plural of "sie", if I'm understanding this correctly.
- quovodis 13y agoI come from the same area as the bithplace of william the conqueror and, to my surprise, as I was learning English, I realized that some words sounded the same as the local dialect my grandparents were speaking; such as 'pear' and 'chair', etc...
- mcv 13y agoHonestly, I wouldn't mind if we could get rid on the English language as the world's dominant language altogether. The pronunciation rules are completely crazy. I recently visited Indonesia, and people who spoke Indonesian were surprised how good my Indonesian pronunciation was. Apart from some food, I didn't understand a word of Indonesian, but in Indonesian, pronunciation is pretty much phonetic. Just say what it says, and you can't go wrong. Unless you're a native English speaker, in which case all the crazy mangled pronunciation you've grown up with gets in the way. A lot of languages from totally different corners of the world have agree on pronunciation, and have practically identical rules for it. A few exceptions, like English and French, seem to require mangling it beyond all recognition.
- tomp 13y agoOr wi kud jast meyk Inglish speling ruls mor sensibl.
- Ygg2 13y agoThat requires that each sound is replaced with a letter. There are more sounds than letters AFAIK. http://w3.inf.fu-berlin.de/lehre/SS05/efs/materials/PhonSymb.jpg http://w3.inf.fu-berlin.de/lehre/SS05/efs/materials/PhonSymb...
- hessenwolf 13y agoHe has used a dipthong in the middle of meyk.
- dsego 13y agoDet iz vaj ju invent nju leters, lajk č for sendvič, or š for ader šit.
- Ygg2 13y agoWeird, I've never seen people use j for that sound. They go for y (like y in yast or yet).
- eggestad 13y agoThis is a whopper: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Vowel_Shift http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Vowel_Shift
- mrfusion 13y agoI've often wondered if nursery rhymes indicate words that used to rhyme? For example did "rain" and "again" rhyme when the itsy bitsy spider was written? Did "bone" and "none" rhyme when old mother hubbard was written?
- anon4 13y agoRain and again still rhyme for me.
- jack-r-abbit 13y agoI think of it more as "poetic license" than anything. Could be wrong though.
- mhartl 13y agoYes, usually in such cases the words used to rhyme (and sometimes still do, as with Brits pronouncing "rain" and "again"). Once you know this, pronouncing it any other way feels unfair to the author, as in Sonnet 116 by Shakespeare: Let me not to the marriage of true minds Admit impediments. Love is not love Which alters when it alteration finds, Or bends with the remover to remove: O no; it is an ever-fixed mark, That looks on tempests, and is never shaken; It is the star to every wandering bark, Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken. Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks Within his bending sickle's compass come; Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks, But bears it out even to the edge of doom. If this be error and upon me proved, I never writ, nor no man ever loved. All of the rhymes were exact in the accent of Shakespeare's day ("original pronunciation", or OP), so reading them today in a "proper" accent makes it seem like the Bard dropped the ball on his rhyme scheme. (For example, in OP "love" rhymes with "remove" and "come" rhymes with "doom".) For more on this subject, see here: http://youtu.be/gPlpphT7n9s http://youtu.be/gPlpphT7n9s and here: http://originalpronunciation.com/ http://originalpronunciation.com/ To hear Sonnet 116 in OP, see here: http://www.pronouncingshakespeare.com/op-recordings/ http://www.pronouncingshakespeare.com/op-recordings/
- napowitzu 13y agoSeeing an article that gives Latin words as an example of English language pronunciation errors makes me shake my head. Seeing that the example given contains an error itself (his "correct" version of "ex-cetera" is "etcetera," where it is supposed to be written as two words, "et cetera") makes me bang my head into my desk—twice.
- mratzloff 13y agoWords (or phrases) like "et cetera" are so commonly in use that they are effectively English, despite their origins. Otherwise, what's left of English?
- js2 13y agoAround the age of 11 or so, I heard my daughter, a voracious reader, mispronounce colonel the way it is spelled. When I corrected her she was very upset to the point of arguing with me that I must be wrong. So we went to the dictionary where we both learned the source of the confusion: http://teachinghistory.org/history-content/ask-a-historian/22270 http://teachinghistory.org/history-content/ask-a-historian/2... Borrowed from French but altered to an Italian prononciation. There are other such words in English, but I can't think what they are at the moment.
- kkl232 13y agoPretty funny! This would have been a perfect story using Soundcite- inline audio embedding: http://soundcite.knightlab.com/ http://soundcite.knightlab.com/
- sdegutis 13y agoI wonder, will we eventually start spelling "both" as "bolth"?
- viraptor 13y agoJust remembered - this is actually fairly new. May used to be spelled "may", now it's "maj". I don't think the pronunciation changed though.
- viraptor 13y agoJust remembered - this is actually fairly new. May used to be spelled "may", now it's "maj". I don't think the pronunciation changed though.
- scott_s 13y agoMany people say in-ter-sting rather than in-ter-est-ing.
- jessaustin 13y agoI think the most common three-syllable pronunciation I hear is in-tra-sting.
- CoconutPilot 13y agoI have only met a small handful of people who can pronounce "kilometre" correctly. I don't think this made the language though ... KILL-o-metre