Comments on: More on 1880s pronunciation

By: dw

dw — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 02:46:09 +0000

@Carol:

If you mean pronouncing /r/ as a labiodental approximant, I don’t know about the 1800s but it is pretty common now in Britain. I grew up doing it myself until I got teased about it in university and decided to change.

By: Carol

Carol — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 20:29:07 +0000

Was it peculiar to aristocrasy in the 1800’s to pronounce r like w? I just watched “Wives and Daughters” and have heard it in other “period” pieces.

By: Graham

Graham — Sun, 24 Jan 2010 15:41:48 +0000

Petr – Sorry, no!

By: Petr Roesel

Petr Roesel — Sun, 24 Jan 2010 11:54:23 +0000

Graham,

does the dict. happen to contain the word fracas?

By: JP Villanueva

JP Villanueva — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 18:17:23 +0000

sorry… premature enter…

As I was saying… I always assumed that Ira Gershwin was stretching a little for a rhyme in that (home in/abdo’men) line, the same way. Goliath/dieth is obviously a stretch…

Li’l David was small but oh my
Li’l David was small but oh my
He fought big Goliath who lay down and dieth
Li’l David was small but oh my

By: JP Villanueva

JP Villanueva — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 18:14:29 +0000

Wow, I was just about to weigh in with “Ain’t Necessarily So” but got beat to the punch!

By: Amy Stoller

Amy Stoller — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 12:40:30 +0000

Thanks for this. It’s the sort of thing I need to help my clients open their minds about “correctness” or “propriety” of speech. I have six or seven editions of Daniel Jones’s English Pronouncing Dictionary through the years, starting with the first, and ending with the latest Cambridge edition. It’s very interesting to track the RP pronunciations of words such as controversy through the years.

“ab-do’-men, not ab’-dŏm-ěn” calls to mind Ira Gershwin’s eye-dialect lyrics for “It Ain’t Necessarily So”:

Oh Jonah, he lived in de whale,
Oh Jonah, he lived in de whale,
Fo’ he made his home in
Dat fish’s abdomen.
Oh Jonah, he lived in de whale.