Starting in the early 1990s, I was increasingly asked at the BBC how we should be pronouncing the names of the years following 1999. Until then, there was only one way of naming the years: by grouping the numbers in twos, i.e. 1899 was eighteen ninetynine, or, in the case of the last year of a century, by saying, for example, nineteen hundred. The choice for the future appeared to be between two thousand and twenty hundred, and then two thousand and one and twenty oh one, etc.
For 2001, I always thought that two thousand and one was inevitable, as that was the title of the Stanley Kubrick film from the 1960s, and for over thirty years it had been pronounced like that, but the rest of the decade would have to wait until we got there. The oddity was 2000, which was (and is) rarely called two thousand, and never twenty hundred. The usual pronunciation is the year two thousand, and very often the words “the year” precede “2000″ in writing as well.
Charlotte Green was, I think, unique among BBC newsreaders and radio announcers in calling the subsequent years twenty oh …, and this habit was questioned on Radio 4’s Feedback (BBC domestic radio’s ‘listeners’ letters’ programme). But early in 2006, she succumbed to the adverse criticism, and started to say two thousand and … like all her colleagues.
Interestingly, for years following 2009, we hear much more the twenty oh … style, and I suspect that at New Year 2010, we shall start to hear this regularly.
It is very disappointing that Charlotte received hate mail for this pronunciation. There was nothing wrong in English terms with the style she had adopted, and the British public should be more tolerant. However, I know from bitter experience that there is nothing that makes British people more angry and abusive than a perceived mispronunciation.
In the case of year pronunciations, the French have always had two styles, and as a student of French at secondary school, I was made aware of this very early on: 1968 is either mille neuf cent soixante-huit, or dix-neuf cent soixante-huit. Why should English be restricted to a single way? There’s more than one way of skinning a cat!

In John Wells’s blog today, he talks about the interjection (or should that be exclamation?) most usually associated nowadays with Homer Simpson - variously spelt doh, d’oh or duh. He quotes from the Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English, and says this may be the only dictionary to include the word. In fact it is also in the 10th edition of the Concise Oxford (1999), Oxford Dictionaries having researched its origins, and taken it back at least to Laurel and Hardy films, in which the word is often to be heard, in very much the same context as that in which Homer uses it. The definition in COD, at DOH(2) is “exclamation, informal, used to comment on a foolish action”, but the only pronunciation given is more suitable for the spelling duh. At DUH, we are told it is an alternative spelling for DOH(2).
But, as John says, duh is a comment on someone else’s stupidity, while DOH admits that the speaker has been stupid. Oxford has not grasped this difference (or at least it hadn’t when it published the 10th COD. Perhaps the 11th, which I haven’t seen yet, has got it right).

What is the plural of diocese? Easy, you might think - it’s dioceses. Ah yes, but how do you pronounce it? Until 1999, and the tenth edition of the Concise Oxford Dictionary, no help was given by most ‘ordinary’ dictionaries. They said nothing at all about the plural, with the implication that it was regular: di-o-ce-ses (4 syllables). This is still the case for the English Pronouncing Dictionary, and the Oxford Dictionary of Pronunciation. However, starting in 1990 with his first edition, John Wells noted in the Longman Pronunciation Dictionary that an alternative was to make an analogy with analysis ~

An older spelling for diocese was ‘diocess’. If we had kept this spelling, perhaps the plural, ‘diocesses’, would have stood more chance of surviving. We already have abscess ~ abscesses, and process ~ processes.

A few weeks ago, just after we changed the clocks to GMT, Fi Glover, presenting ‘Saturday Live’ on Radio 4, referred to the ‘moniker’ “Spring forward, fall back”. What she meant was mnemonic (pronounced ‘neeMONNik’). None of the possible scenarios I can think of as the reason for this mistake reflects very well on her. Was it wrongly written in her script, was she unable to pronounce the word, or did she genuinely believe that this was the correct term or pronunciation for this sort of aide-mémoire?

I have been reminded of this as I read Down and Out in Eighteenth-Century London by Tim Hitchcock, Professor of History at the University of Hertfordshire. This is a book crammed full of facts about the lives of poor people in London at that time, including comments on the weather conditions on particular days, but there is a curious mistake that keeps appearing: the word pre-requisite, where perquisite is clearly intended. For instance, in the chapter entitled “Sleeping Rough”, we find the following sentence:

“At night, cleared and disregarded, the bulks [wooden shelves that stuck out over the pavement in front of shops], formed a convenient shelter for the homeless, an almost traditional prerequisite of the poor.”

The required reading here is definitely perquisite, or its modern abbreviation, perk. The same is true for most of the other instances I have so far come across. One however, is ambiguous:

“Even parish paupers demanded fresh linen every week, and its provision formed one of the most substantial prerequisites of domestic service.” (p.100)

Does this mean that it was necessary to have enough linen for a fresh set every week in order to be employed in domestic service, or, more likely, that as a consequence of being employed in domestic service, fresh linen was provided every week?

Once more, the reason for this mistake is unclear. Does Prof. Hitchcock really believe that ‘perk’ is an abbreviation for prerequisite? Does his spell-checker automatically ‘correct’ perquisite to prerequisite? Does the fault lie with Prof. Hitchcock’s editor or proof reader at the publishers (Hambledon Continuum)? Does no one at the publishers bother to check the copy before publishing it?

Both my son and my daughter have reported that when giving their name, it has been repeated back to them as “Quinton” rather than “Pointon”, and this has twice happened to me recently. Neither name is particularly common. What we have here is surely a synchronic example of the diachronic development of one of these sound complexes into the other, as is postulated for one of the differences between P-Celtic and Q-Celtic (Welsh pedwar and pump - ‘four’ and ‘five’ - versus Irish a ceathair and a cúig, for instance). The reconstructed Indo-European *kw developed into Latin ‘qu’ - quattuor and quinque, but into Germanic ‘p’ and then ‘f’ (English four, five, German vier, fünf). Celtic went both ways. I think it is interesting that a mis-hearing of an uncommon word can lead to the same development today.

Both labial and velar consonants are [+grave] in the Jakobson and Halle system of distinctive features (they have more energy in the lower frequency range), as do the back vowel that immediately follows in both Pointon and Quinton, and this is taking priority over the compact vs diffuse feature that distinguishes labial and alveolar consonants - and high vowels (+compact) - from the velar consonants and low vowels (+diffuse).

This is the same feature that ventriloquists take advantage of when they say ‘gottle of geer’ for ‘bottle of beer’ to disguise the fact that it is they rather than their dummy that is speaking.