My post on the use of third person pronouns and the problems of sexism in language has generated quite a few comments. In fact, although we can bemoan the lack of a neutral third person singular pronoun in English, at least we can get round it by using ‘they’ and making the sentence plural. The Romance languages have it even harder: the third person plurals are also gender-specific. How do French, Spanish, Italian, etc. feminists cope with that?

In that paragraph, I used the word “gender-specific”. I meant precisely that: that the Romance language pronouns show the grammatical gender of the nouns they refer to. They do not indicate the sex of the animate beings. Or do they? What does French do when confronted with the necessity for using a pronoun for the second reference to army recruits? The French for recruit is “la recrue”, despite the fact that until fairly recently, they will all have been male. Similarly “la sentinelle”. I have read quite extensively in French, but I don’t recall ever coming across a solution to this conundrum. Any evidence will be very welcome …

John Wells’ blog has been talking about the mispronunciation of ‘chorizo’ in a TV advert, in which the ‘z’ is pronounced /ts/, as if this were an Italian (or maybe German) word rather than either /θ/ or /s/, depending on the variety of Spanish the speaker uses.

There are at least two other cases of orthographic ‘z’ being misinterpreted by English speakers. One is standard, the other rather more doubtfully acceptable. Both are Greek prefixes: schizo-, almost invariably pronounced /’skıtsou/ and piezo-, frequently heard as /’pi:tsou/, although “correctly” it ought to be /paı’i:zou/. All the current pronouncing dictionaries give many versions of the second of these, but the Oxford BBC Guide, as usual more prescriptive, allows only the pseudo-Greek version, not mentioning any of the hybrid German/Greek/English interpretations.

In today’s blog, John Wells quotes a long piece by Eric Armstrong, a voice, speech and dialect coach. I have no complaint with any of the content of what he says, but towards the end, the pronoun he invariably uses for “actor” is “she”, “her”: “But silliness has great value to an actor! It frees her up, lets her connect to those new sounds in a joyous, unfettered manner, stripping away all those value judgments of sounds (and ultimately symbols) as being “mere math”. And once she can hear those sounds in her own mouth, to feel the physical action required, the visualize the action of her articulators, she is ready to begin to learn how to write them down systematically with IPA.”

Am I the only person who finds this pandering to the extremist feminist lobby offensive? The English language has no neutral pronoun for the third person singular, either as subject or object, but to use “she” and “her” in this way brings me up short every time. I am given the impression that it is only Eric’s female students who value silliness. Earlier in his piece, Eric has avoided the problem by keeping to the plural form. Why could he not continue? This is an increasing tendency among American writers. I do not believe it does anything to enhance the feminist cause, and simply annoys large numbers of otherwise peaceable citizens.

To quote John Wells from yesterday: “End of rant”.

The re-spelling system used in the recent BBC Oxford Guide to Pronunciation introduces some dubious practices. For instance, the short vowel (John Wells’ FOOT vowel) is represented there by UU. This is counter intuitive, especially as the GOOSE vowel is re-spelled as OO. This means that the closer vowel is represented by what is usually thought of as a more open vowel symbol. Consequently, Rushdie is re-spelt ‘ruush-di’ in the BOGP. I have used the more traditional BBC re-spelling system for non-adapted typewriters, which has ‘oo’ for the FOOT vowel, and ‘oo:’ for GOOSE. Not perfect, but at least it doesn’t contradict IPA practice. Hence ‘ROOSH-di’.

Petr Roesel asks about the history of the Pronunciation Unit, and various other questions.

The Unit had a predecessor body called the Advisory Committee on Spoken English, that was set up by the BBC’s first Director General, John Reith, in 1926 – when the C still stood for Company rather than Corporation. This committee originally had six members, including the then Poet Laureate, Robert Bridges, as Chairman, and George Bernard Shaw as Deputy Chairman. The Secretary was Arthur Lloyd James, at that time a lecturer in phonetics at the School of Oriental Studies, London University, but later to become the Professor of Phonetics there. Daniel Jones, the Professor of Phonetics at University college, London, and author of the English Pronouncing Dictionary, was also a member. The initial job of the committee was to make recommendations to announcers on the pronunciation of words that presented them with some difficulty – either because they were unfamiliar, or because they had two or more current pronunciations. The linguists on the committee were well aware that they were not deciding on correctness, but Bridges and Shaw, and the other non-professionals on the committee, believed that they were helping to maintain high standards in English usage. When Bridges died in 1930 (aged 86), Shaw (who was merely 74 years old) took his place as Chairman, and other luminaries were asked to join. The Committee eventually reached a figure of thirty members, and as anyone who has worked on committees knows, the greater the number of members, the smaller the amount of work completed. However, apart from the pronunciation of vocabulary words, the Committee set about discovering the pronunciations of place names and personal names, first in the British Isles, and later in the wider world. For British names in particular, this is something about which some degree on unanimity can be achieved – establish who “owns” a name (the bearer if a person, or the inhabitants if a place), and follow them. Inevitably there are a few disagreements, such as the quality of the vowel in the place Bath: long (as in the south) or short (as in the north)? In some cases, the inhabitants of a place disagree among themselves: Shrewsbury: -ew as in ’sew’, or as in ’shrew’? There are even families some of whose members pronounce the family name in one way, others in a different one. Foreign names are more problematical, as I have pointed out in other posts, since the differences between English phonology and that of the language from which the word or name is borrowed have to be accommodated in some way.

The Committee was suspended at the outbreak of the Second World War, and replaced (originally ‘for the duration’, but so far the War has apparently not ended!) by the Pronunciation Unit, staffed by two Scottish maiden ladies: G.M.(’Elizabeth’) Miller, and Elspeth Anderson (’Andy’), and a clerk. Despite an increasing workload – more radio and TV networks, more daily hours of broadcasting – this remained the entire staff until 1957, when a third linguist was appointed. I never met either Elizabeth or Andy, but their influence was still felt when I joined the Unit in 1979, when I succeeded yet another Scot, Mrs Hazel Wright, as head of the Unit, with the title Pronunciation Adviser. One of Elizabeth’s last successes was the publication by OUP of the BBC Pronouncing Dictionary of British Names (1971), and I was the editor of the second edition which came out in 1983 (paperback 1990). This is now out of print, and neither the BBC nor OUP seems interested in a third edition, which I feel is a shame, as there is no equivalent available.

I eventually persuaded my management in 1984 that we needed more staff, and a fourth linguist was appointed, but five years later, in one of the BBC’s periodic hair shirt periods of retrenchment, that post was withdrawn when one of our number resigned. From the start of my career in the Unit, I was keen to improve the technology employed, and suggested as early as 1983 that the index, by then numbering the hundreds of thousands, could be computerized, and a synthesized voice added so that our service would be available 24 hours a day. No money was forthcoming for this until the early 90s, but eventually by 2002, the index was available to every employee on the BBC desktop, complete with the audio component. I also got the official name of the Unit changed to Pronunciation Research Unit, to reflect more accurately the nature of the work we were doing.

In 2001 another round of cuts required volunteers for redundancy, and since my management had been hounding me for the last four years, I decided that enough was enough, and put my name forward. It was accepted with alacrity, and the post of Pronunciation Adviser was closed. The Unit is now managed, so far as I understand, by a non-linguist, although one of the three remaining linguists (the clerk’s post disappeared with computerization) has the title Co-ordinator. Her name is Catherine Sangster, and her CV can be found on the BBC website.

I hope this answers Petr’s questions?

Petr Roesel asks if the pronunciation of Salman Rushdie that I gave as the “correct” one is an accurate reflexion of the pronunciation in Urdu.

All words borrowed from one language into another, whether names or not, have to be adapted in order to fit the phonology of the borrowing language. Sometimes, when the borrowing language is a well-established literary language and has its own writing system, it prefers to adopt a pronunciation that reflects the spelling as interpreted by the borrowing language. For instance, the word football has been borrowed by French with the English spelling, but with the second syllable pronounced ‘bal’ (as in ballet), whereas Spanish has borrowed a close approximation to the English pronunciation, changing the spelling to fit: fútbol.

In the special case of names, the BBC always aimed to make a recommendation that was as close to the native pronunciation as was possible while using mainly English sounds. I am not a speaker of Urdu, but I think I am safe in saying that in Salman Rushdie’s name, the two vowels of the first name are both open, that the second is long while the first is short, and that stress falls on the second syllable. In the family name, the first vowel is back and close rather than open, the second front and close, and the stress is on the first syllable. I would expect a French or German speaker to use a uvular R at the beginning of the family name, a dental L, N and D, and a clear L in the first name, where English speakers would have an approximant R, alveolar L, N, and D, and a dark L. While the French speaker would have no trouble with the initial voiceless S, a German might substitute a voiced sound, although Austrians would find the voiceless sound natural to their dialect of German.

As a reminder, the pronunciation recommended to the BBC by friends of the author is salMAAN ROOSHdi (-al as in “pal”, -oo as in “book”, and the stressed syllables in capitals). It is what you might call “Urdu with an English accent”.

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 ~ analyses.

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?