Generated by All in One SEO v5.0.0.1, this is an llms.txt file, used by LLMs to index the site. # Linguism Language in a word ## Sitemaps - [XML Sitemap](https://www.linguism.co.uk/sitemap.xml): Contains all public & indexable URLs for this website. ## Posts - [Spanish orthography](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/spanish-orthography) - Last week's post was my own translation of an interview that Professor Salvador Gutiérrez, member of the Real Academia Española, and Professor of General Linguistics at the University of León in Spain, gave to the Spanish newspaper "La Razón" in May (¿Sabemos escribir?). There has been a lot of discussion about education in general this - [One, two, many](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/one-two-many) - It is sometimes said that there are so-called 'primitive' languages which cannot count beyond two. I find this difficult to believe; but there are certainly languages which distinguish grammatically between one, two and many. They have not simply a singular and plural, but also a dual number. They are therefore not less sophisticated, but in - [TOWIE](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/towie) - For anyone reading this who is not familiar with British TV, the heading is the acronym for the programme "The Only Way Is Essex", a reality show featuring natives of that county. I have to admit that this is not a programme I have ever watched, but its title is relevant here. Earlier this year - [Uttoxeter](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/uttoxeter) - I thought Uttoxeter deserved a post of its own, because it also raises a transcription and dialect question. Both /ʊ/ and /ʌ/ have been quoted, by Michael Lamb and John Maidment, as possible pronunciations of the initial sounds, and I agree. But in northern dialects the /ʊ/ ~ /ʌ/ split never happened, so the vowel - [er ... ar ... or ...?](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/er-ar-or) - It's well known that Middle English /ɛr/ became more open in quality and merged with /ar/, while also in some dialects remaining as a distinct phoneme, but now pronounced /ɜː(r)/, leading to alternative forms for many words, of which one has remained as standard, the other becoming merely dialectal or regional: market, but merchant; person - [surveillance ~ surveyance](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/surveillance-surveyance) - When Marmaduke Hussey was Chairman of the BBC Governors in the 1990s, he received a letter from one of his cronies, who happened also to be a former governor of the BBC, asking why 'we' were pronouncing the word surveillance 'with the lls', rather than as 'surveyance', given that the origin of the word was - [Back to English spelling](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/back-to-english-spelling) - One of the problems with English spelling is the number of borrowings there have been from other languages. It is often said that English should follow the lead of languages like Spanish, that spell as they are pronounced. Leaving aside the fact that this is not strictly true of Spanish in any case, English adopts - [Sloth](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/sloth) - Whether it is the cardinal sin, or the (cuddly?) slow-moving animal, there is a question mark over its pronunciation. On this morning's edition of Saturday Live on BBC Radio 4, the well-known 'sloth-woman', Lucy Cooke, was interviewed. She always says the name to rhyme with 'moth', because, as she says, there is a moth that - [Turkey vs Türkiye](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/turkey-vs-turkiye) - So, the UN has accepted a request from Ankara to change the spelling of the name of the country of which it is the capital, to that used in the written version of the Turkish language. Well, if they also expect English speakers to change their pronunciation as well, good luck with that! I should - [What is "Classical" Music?](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/what-is-classical-music) - A discussion is apparently going on to define "classical" music as opposed to other genres. This morning's Today programme on BBC Radio 4 invited Debbie Wiseman and Nitin Sawhney to give their views, and Ms Wiseman proposed the most outrageous - and clearly erroneous - definition, perhaps as a provocation, or perhaps she believed it. - [Omicron](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/omicron) - The only pronunciation I've heard for this letter of the Greek alphabet since it was used for the name of the latest Coronavirus variant stresses the first letter, which is being pronounced to rhyme with both ohm and Tom indiscriminately. And yet the name 'means' "little O" as opposed to "big O" which is omega. - [Two deliberately created alternative pronunciations?](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/two-deliberately-created-alternative-pronunciations) - During the past week, I lstened to a fascinating radio programme which included a contribution by the world expert on meerkat behaviour, Tim Clutton-Brock. I was surprised that he pronounced the word for their mating behaviour as /pɒliˈgaɪnəs/. As always these days, not trusting my own memory and usage, I consulted all the pronouncing dictionaries - [Notify, mandate and sanction](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/notify-mandate-and-sanction) - Thomas West (@IntermarkLS) has tweeted: "In BrE I keep seeing things like “the last address you notified to the company” and “the complaint notified to the police.” This sounds so wrong in AmE (we notify someone of something; we don’t notify something to someone)." I refer him to the OED, which gives the following quotation - [The Commonwealth of Poland and Lithuania](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/the-commonwealth-of-poland-and-lithuania) - The latest edition of In Our Time on Radio 4 (first broadcast on 14 October 2021), the programme that tries to deal in depth with a narrow topic, was about the medieval elective kingdom of Lithuania and Poland (or the other way round). One of the speakers, as he introduced the topic, described the kingdom - [/s/ - apical or laminal](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/s-apical-or-laminal) - I've been asked about the pronunciation of /s/ in initial strings of /str/. I know that it is common to pronounce it with a post-alveolar, apical articulation in Glasgow and London (David Abercrombie was talking about its occurrence in Glasgow at least forty years ago, and I have heard it from many Londoners myself). I'm - [A new development in English phonology?](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/a-new-development-in-english-phonology) - With the increasing number of BBC journalists who have South Asian heritage, we are hearing an ever greater number of examples of a non-traditional pronunciation of the orthographic symbol {t} in words of South Asian origin. I'm thinking in particular, but not solely, of the word Taleban. The initial T is pronounced with a dental - [BBC news writing](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/bbc-news-writing) - Are BBC news scriptwriters using a system with predictive spelling? In the last few days, I've been hearing nonsensical statements from reputable, and usually reliable Radio 4 newsreaders, and either they are uncharacteristically mis-reading their script, or the script is mis-spelt in a way that I can only attribute to predictive spelling. First, Alan Smith - [A chasm in education](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/a-chasm-in-education) - It never ceases to amaze me how people can find new ways in which to mispronounce words. I have just heard a writer (a writer, and so one would assume a person who is interested in words) on The Radio 4 programme Saturday Live, pronounce, in all seriousness, the word chasm with the same initial - [Alba](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/alba) - This is the Scots Gaelic name for Scotland, and has been chosen by Alex Salmond, former First Minister of Scotland for the Scottish National Party, as the name of his new party, set up in opposition to the SNP after his 'disagreements', to put it politely, with his former colleagues. I have been very surprised - [Richard III - The Reunion](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/richard-iii-the-reunion) - I have always thought the Radio 4 programme The Reunion as being reliable and well presented. When Sue MacGregor was leading it, I never had any quibbles with it, but this morning, the programme about the discovery of Richard III's body in a car park in Leicester (they didn't ask why he was buried in - [Souls and Ghouls](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/souls-and-ghouls) - Amanda Vickery, Professor of Early Modern History at Queen Mary, University of London, from this month, recently presented a TV series on domestic life in Georgian England - At Home with the Georgians. Professor Vickery is a Lancastrian, and her accent is as might be expected from such a background. She had one very idiosyncratic - [Perpetuate or perpetrate](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/perpetuate-or-perpetrate) - In the interview that the Duke and Duchess of Sussex have given to Oprah Winfrey, the Duchess implied that Buckingham Palace (not mentioning individual names) had been "perpetuating falsehoods about us". When I heard the clip for the first time, I was puzzled: did she mean that there were falsehoods circulating, and that the Palace - [The Queen's English - literally](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/the-queens-english-literally) - Serendipitously, not long after writing my last post, I watched a TV programme called "The Queen: in her own words", which, as it said on the tin, included many examples of her speaking, the extracts used coming from the whole of her public life, from the first radio broadcast during the Second World War, when - [Althorp, Northamptonshire, England](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/althorp-northamptonshire-england) - The approaching tenth anniversary of Diana, Princess of Wales's death brings Althorp back into the news. This is where she grew up, and where she is buried. The BBC first became aware of the difficulty about pronunciation well before the Second World War - Broadcast English II, published in 1930, included it, with the pronunciation - [Accentism](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/accentism) - It's interesting to read that the French are adding "accent discrimination" to their equality laws. In Britain, we seem to be getting past the stage of despising people for the way they speak. When I joined the BBC in 1979, it was still very rare for a national newsreader to have a regional accent, and - [How do you pronounce 'GH'?](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/how-do-you-pronounce-gh) - We're all accustomed to the many ways that the letter combination 'ough' is pronounced in English, depending on the word: cough, rough, though, through, thought, Slough, and the whimsical hiccough. But the letters -gh- by themselves are only pronounced in two ways here: /f/ and silent. Originally -gh- represented the voiceless velar fricative, /x/, which - [B(e)aring all](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/bearing-all) - I went to my GP surgery this morning for a standard blood test, but because of the current pandemic, there was a notice stuck to the inside of the door's window giving me instructions on how to behave. As I said to the nurse who came to open the door for me, I was not - [Regionalisms](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/regionalisms) - I wrote in an earlier post about regional variation in terms for lying snow. There are also phrases that belong to one part of the country rather than another. My mother would look at a lowering sky, when dark clouds were gathering before a storm, and say "It's looking a bit black over Bill's mother's". - [Flexible truths](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/flexible-truths) - I'm reading "Shaw's Music" (i.e. George Bernard Shaw's music criticism) at the moment (three volumes, each of nearly 1000 pages), and came across a comment he made in 1891 that he could easily have written yesterday. "There is nothing that we do in this country more thoroughly and artistically than our authorized denials of statements - [Shielding](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/shielding) - This word has achieved a lot of prominence in the last three months, but it is being used in a way that the Oxford English Dictionary doesn't - yet - recognise. Shield as a verb in English goes back a long way: it appears in Beowulf. But there it is used as a transitive verb, - [My name](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/my-name) - In the late 1980s and 1990s, Oxford University Press published three books of names: The Oxford Dictionary of Surnames (Patrick Hanks and Flavia Hodges, 1988); A Dictionary of First Names (Hanks and Hodges, 1990); and A Dictionary of English Place-Names (A.D.Mills, 1998). Then in 2002, OUP decided to reissue all three volumes under a single - [Coronavirus](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/coronavirus) - This seems an unlikely heading for a post from me - how can this possibly have any interest for pronunciation nerds? Until this week, I have only heard a single pronunciation for this - the 'obvious' one: koROHna(virus). (I'm sorry to use a modified spelling rather than IPA, but after a time, all my IPA - [Course and Sauce](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/course-and-sauce) - My friend Alec is taking the opportunity of being locked down to catch up on some reading he'd been intending to get round to for the last fifty or so years, and has reached D H Lawrence. In "Lost Girls", chapter 6, he has found the following: "Of course," he said - he used the - [Vichai Srivaddhanaprabha](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/vichai-srivaddhanaprabha) - The tragic events of last Saturday in Leicester, when the owner of Leicester City FC was killed in his helicopter shortly after taking off from the centre of the pitch following the match with West Ham United, have also highlighted a discrepancy in BBC policy. While the coverage of Jemal Khashoggi's murder clearly led to - [Gumomics](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/gumomics) - Jim Daley (https://www.jimdaleywrites.com/) has written an interesting piece on the discovery of a piece of birch gum chewed by someone in Denmark 5700 years ago. At the end of the piece he says, by way of light relief, "Fortunately, no one has yet tried to coin the word gumomics." And yet that is precisely what - [Buttigieg](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/buttigieg) - We're all going to have to get used to this, apparently, odd name in the coming months as Pete Buttigieg tries to become the next president of the US. I think it's an interesting case, not because the name itself is odd - if you come from Malta, where the name originates, it is distinctly - [What is Rudy Giuliani's job?](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/what-is-rudy-giulianis-job) - Alec Bamford has reported: "Anyone with lingering doubts about the BBC’s blatant left-wing bias should have been listening to Gary O’Donoghue’s reporting on the impeachment story in the World News on the evening of 21 January. Before he corrected himself, O’Donoghue clearly described Rudy Giuliani as ‘Trump’s personal liar’. This is an outrage. Trump lies - [Cheops](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/cheops) - Cheops is the well-known name of the Egyptian Pharaoh whose tomb is the Great Pyramid at Gizeh. This is actually the Greek form of the name, and in modern times he has had his name 're-egyptianized', if I may coin such a word, as Khufu. The pronunciation of the Greek version, in English as given - [Greta Thunberg](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/greta-thunberg) - Since this teenager became world famous, I've heard her name pronounced in several ways by BBC journalists and announcers. I don't know how she herself pronounces her name, as I've never heard her say it, and I'm no longer in a position to find out easily, but certainly, only one of the at least four - [Heatwave](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/heatwave) - As I sit sweltering in a heat of the high thirties Celsius, I've become very aware of the French word for heatwave - canicule. When a friend asked me its etymology, I turned to my trusty Larousse Dictionnaire étymologique. This is what it says: "de l'ital. canicula, petite chienne, désignant l'Etoile (ou Chien) de Sirius, - [Roaming stress](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/roaming-stress) - Alec Bamford uses this term in his comment on my last post. He first mentions it as a description of his own pronunciation of decade, by which I assumed he meant that his pronunciation one way or the other was randomly distributed, but he then goes on to use the term to describe contextually varying - [More stressed](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/more-stressed) - Jack Windsor Lewis has devoted his latest blog post to amplifying my efforts on the changing pattern of English stress. One comment he makes is that he has not personally heard 'trajectory. This is actually my own pronunciation. I'm a few years younger than Jack, and I don't think I've been influenced in my stressing - [English under stress](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/english-under-stress) - I think we can safely say that the 'battle' for second syllable stress on contribute and distribute is now lost. Almost all age groups now appear to me, with no valid statistical evidence whatever, to be putting the stress on the first syllable, and if John Wells' survey was to be carried out again, I'm - [Welwyn and Willian](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/welwyn-and-willian) - These are two villages in Hertfordshire. Welwyn /ˈwɛlɪn/ is better known these days for Welwyn Garden City, founded by Ebenezer Howard, but somewhat later than Letchworth Garden City (the world's first garden city), and which is situated a couple of miles away from the old Welwyn village. Willian /ˈwɪlɪən/ is in fact one of the - [Hindemith and Violas](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/hindemith-and-violas) - This is unusual - I'm not commenting on pronunciation or usage this time, but asking for help. I've been asked to provide a translation of the German-language instructions to performers for the programme of our local Music Club, where we are about to have a recital of viola and piano works. Mostly, it's straightforward, because - [Slivers or Slithers](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/slivers-or-slithers) - I wrote about the confusion between these two words three years ago (here). From the evidence we appear to be losing the word 'sliver' completely. I recently offered a slice of cake to a very well-educated person who wanted to accept "just a slither, please". And three separate examples from newspapers in otherwise well-written and - [Journalistic naïvety, or malice?](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/journalistic-naivety-or-malice) - Once again, Saturday Live, BBC Radio 4's morning programme, has displayed linguistic ignorance, whether by accident or design. Last week's programme (4 May) interviewed the 'caller' (British English 'commentator') for the Kentucky Derby (surprisingly the current caller is British). Twice, the presenters made the point that they had consulted a professor of applied linguistics, and - [Bellerophon](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/bellerophon) - Until about two years ago, I had never heard any pronunciation for this Greek name other than that given by all the current English pronunciation dictionaries: /bəˈlerəfɒn/ (with allowances for varying qualities of unstressed vowels). Then I went to a day's series of lectures on Napoleon, and the lecturer consistently called the ship which took - [Khashoggi](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/khashoggi) - Until ten days or so ago, the only person with the name Khashoggi who was well-known was the rather dodgy Saudi Arabian businessman, Adnan Khashoggi, who according to Wikipedia was the brother of Mohamed Al-Fayed's wife, and so uncle to Dodi Fayed who died with Diana Princess of Wales. So far as I can remember, - [French place names - again](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/french-place-names-again) - The tragic events in France have once again shown the difficulties reporters have in knowing how to pronounce the names of the places involved. Obviously, they have rather more important things on their minds, but when names are constantly repeated, you would think that at some point they would have a few seconds to check - [Thai cave rescue - some language notes](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/thai-cave-rescue-some-language-notes) - My regular correspondent in Thailand has sent me the following, which includes IPA script. I hope that it doesn't suffer the same fate as other of my posts, where the IPA has become corrupted over time. "Good old BBC. No sooner have they managed to get SE Asia correspondent Jonathan Head to stop saying ‘Pa-TAY-a’ - [Ambiguity](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/ambiguity) - We're all used to the confusion between the words 'diffuse' and 'defuse' as verbs, caused by the pronunciation of the latter with the KIT vowel rather than the more etymologically correct FLEECE. If we were to introduce a hyphen into 'defuse', and wrote it 'de-fuse', we might start hearing it differentiated rather more, but that's - [So, ... again](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/so-2) - So, if any of my readers in the UK, or who can otherwise access BBC Radio 4, have not yet discovered John Finnemore, can I suggest that they start with the last in the current series of "John Finnemore's Souvenir Programme", which went out from 6.30 to 7.00 pm this evening, Around half way through - [BBC Today programme](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/bbc-today-programme) - On the Today programme this morning on BBC Radio 4, Nick Robinson interviewed my successor in the Pronunciation Unit, Catherine Sangster (who is now in charge of pronunciation for the Oxford Dictionaries) about the problems of pronunciation. This piece arose out of his botched attempt to pronounce some Polish names in yesterday's programme. What was - [Hear, Hear!](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/hear-hear) - There was a lot of discussion in the early days of broadcasting about what the audience should be called. The first issues of Radio Times regularly placed the word listener in inverted commas, wherever it appeared, although there are exceptions, such as the headings of articles “Lord Gainsford's Message to Listeners” and “Letters from Listeners” - [Rohingya](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/rohingya) - I can claim no expertise in either the languages or the peoples of the area of the Bay of Bengal littoral. Today, 15 January 2018, the BBC has been highlighting the plight of the Rohingya people with a series of broadcasts, which started with the Today programme on Radio 4 this morning, and went on - [Dental fricatives](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/dental-fricatives) - I've been watching Lucy Worsley's latest TV series on the monarchy - "Fit to Rule". Dr Worsley is the Chief Curator of Historic Royal Palaces, and this is not the first series she has presented. They all seem well researched, and I've enjoyed them. Even her Wikipedia entry notes her over-rounded /r/ (which it calls - [Historians and "historians"](https://www.linguism.co.uk/general/historians-and-historians) - This post has very little to do with language. My opinion of Emma Dabiri, mentioned in my last post, has nose-dived since I wrote that. I've now watched the last of the series of 'Britain's Lost Masterpieces', which featured a painting found at Hospitalfield, an arts centre near Arbroath. For a start, she consistently mispronounced - [Whose benefit?](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/whose-benefit) - We appear to be in danger of completely losing what I consider to be a useful distinction between two phrases, one of which seems to be disappearing. Earlier this year, a cyclist, Charlie Alliston, riding an illegal bicycle (it had no rear-wheel brake) knocked over a pedestrian, Kim Briggs. Blaming her for the accident, he - [Pottery Phonology (2)](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/pottery-phonology-2) - This post may be something of a disappointment to anyone wanting a comprehensive analysis. As I said last week, while the modern accent can be compared, for its differences, with standard British English accents, it would be wrong to compare the dialect in the same way, as both the modern standard and the local dialect - [Potteries phonology](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/potteries-phonology) - Thanks to Ed for suggesting this post. The first thing is to distinguish between the modern Potteries accent, which I suppose I still have, although modified after 45 years' non-residence, and the traditional dialect. Both have a phonology that is different from RP, but whereas the modern accent is an approximation to RP, with certain - [A pre-internet troll](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/a-pre-internet-troll) - In sorting through a box of miscellaneous papers the other day, I came across this letter, which the recipient, a BBC newsreader, gave me at some point (it is undated). I have replaced all names with initials, for obvious reasons. The address from which it was written is limited to the name of the county. - [Emmanuel Macron](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/emmanuel-macron) - Thank you Alec for alerting me to the number of mispronunciations American broadcasters have come up with for the new French president's name. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AGgHy3BLloY Has anybody come up yet with any jokes about the meaning of his name? Perhaps a diacritic meaning "long" isn't funny ... - [A sad time](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/a-sad-day) - I had started to think that someone in the BBC hierarchy had issued an edict that the Syrian president's name should be pronounced by all journalists in accordance with the Pronunciation Unit's recommendation, with stress on the first syllable of his family name: ASSad. This was because I was hearing not only Jeremy Bowen (Middle - [Mistakes or Neologisms?](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/mistakes-or-neologisms) - Whenever I hear a word that is new to me, or is used in a new way, I now take the precaution of looking in the OED before claiming in these posts that it is either a mistake or a neologism. Two usages have come to my ears this week which have sent me scuttling - [More malapropisms](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/more-malapropisms) - Following my last post, there seems to have been a spate of malapropisms perpetrated (not perpetuated!) by eminent people on radio and television. The leader of the populist British political party UKIP, Paul Nuttall, described Donald Trump as an anglophobe in a Radio 4 interview, a faux pas that was later reported by both the - [Gates Foundation philanthropy not good enough!](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/gates-foundation-philanthropy-not-good-enough) - The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has given $9 million to a Cambridgeshire company for research into infectious diseases. Clearly, the company is not satisfied! Paul Kellam, the VP of Infectious Services for the company, Kymab, told BBC Look East that this grant was an indictment of the research capabilities of the company and the - [More on dental fricatives](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/more-on-dental-fricatives) - In a recent post, Jane Setter wrote about the possible future loss of the dental fricatives (/θ, ð/) from English, in favour of /f,v/. I also wrote not so long ago about the confusion between these two pairs of fricatives here. I've since heard another hypercorrection: "sheathes of corn". This tendency to hypercorrection could be - [How many ways to skin a cat?](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/how-many-ways-to-skin-a-cat) - I don't usually watch the BBC's science programme "The Sky at Night", but last night I accidentally caught the beginning, and was hooked for the full half hour. What struck me, apart from the science, was the number of ways the various participants found to pronounce the name of a star: Proxima Centauri. Proxima: /ˈprɒksɪmə/, - [Athletics](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/athletics) - With the Olympics taking place in Rio, we are hearing the words athlete, athletic(s) and to a lesser extent athleticism all around us. This group of words seems to be unusual among those containing the sequence /θl/ in that it is quite common to hear a schwa inserted between the two consonants. The Longman Pronunciation - [Slithery Slivers](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/slithery-slivers) - As we know, many English-speaking people use the labiodental /f/ and /v/ in place of intervocalic /θ/ and /ð/. This was at one time claimed to be a feature of Cockney, but it is far more widespread than that. An interesting hypercorrection is to use /ð/ where standard English would have /v/. When this happens - [Religious misunderstanding?](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/religious-misunderstanding) - Two statements heard on television recently: "If not kept under control, large numbers of moths can desecrate crops." "Medieval knights would go on crusade in order to reduce the amount of time they would have to spend in perjury." - [Some data on criteria for plural phenomena in English](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/some-data-on-criteria-for-plural-phenomena-in-english) - In response to Matthew Phillips' comment on my last post, I thought I should add more on Latin and Greek plurals in English. He raises the question of consortia being used as a singular noun in English, but is relieved to find that retaining consortium as the singular is not yet a lost cause, as - [A Dangerous Thing](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/a-dangerous-thing) - It's not only the pronunciation of Classical names and words that has changed as a result of the pseudo-knowledge of Latin and Greek by British people. Grammatical forms have also been affected. As 'every skuleboy no', Latin nouns that end in -US have their plural in -I. So, for instance, ALUMNUS gives ALUMNI, and DOMINUS - [A Little Learning](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/a-little-learning) - Until the end of the 19th Century, when, in Britain at least, we began to have universal education, most people, however intelligent they were, didn't have access to as much knowledge as we have today. The 'educated' classes tended still to learn Latin, and in many cases Greek, to a reasonable level (whether they retained - [Palmyra](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/palmyra) - All three of the current standard pronouncing dictionaries of English give only one pronunciation for this historic Syrian place name - /pælˈmaɪrə/. I assume that this is still the recommendation of the Pronunciation Unit, and yet today, almost every commentator, reporter or newsreader that I've heard on either BBC Radio or TV - including those - [Return to Bosnia](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/return-to-bosnia) - The wheels of international justice grind exceeding slow, and eight years after his arrest, Radovan Karadzić is eventually being sentenced today. I commented in 2008 (here) on the confusion between at least two pronunciations of his family name, and it is continuing today. Where does the pronunciation /ˈkærədɪtʃ/ come from? Both Sarah Montague (Radio 4 - [Amiens](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/amiens) - A Franco-British summit is being held in Amiens today. The name is pronounced in French /amjɛ̃/, which is often misinterpreted in English as /ˈæmiɑ̃ː/. The BBC's recommendation is the closer /æmˈjæ̃/. Chris Aldridge, Radio 4's Chief Announcer, had obviously not had time to check before he read the 7 o'clock news this morning, because he - [Queen's English Society, RIP](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/queens-english-society-rip) - Two years ago, I wrote a post on the Queen's English Society as it set up an "English Academy", and I ended my post "Who will prove the futility of the Queen’s English Society’s efforts to its members?" We now have the answer: its own members. BBC News has just reported that fewer than twenty - [Prisoners interred in Russia](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/prisoners-interred-in-russia) - Back in 2007, I wrote about the confusion of the words inter and intern, in the context of going to a funeral. This week, the confusion has surfaced again, but this time the other way round. In her BBC series on the Romanovs, Lucy Worsley has reached the end of her story, and told of - [Diplodocus](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/diplodocus) - My friend and co-author Stewart Clark has drawn my attention to this BBC blog, which discusses the 'correct' pronunciation of the dinosaur's name. Apparently the Natural History Museum, which is moving its model, stresses the third syllable: /ËŒdɪpləʊˈdÉ’kÉ™s/ on the grounds that the word is derived from the two Greek words "diplos" (διπλόος) and "dokos" - [What's brown and sticky?](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/whats-brown-and-sticky) - As every British seven year old knows, the answer is "a stick". We can add -y to almost any word to make it mean something like 'like a ...' or 'quite ...', rather like -ish. Generally we add just the letter -y to do this, even when it creates an otherwise unfamiliar sequence of letters: - [Wounds and injuries](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/wounds-and-injuries) - What is the difference between a wound and an injury? In general, I would say that an injury is something that a person suffers as a result of an accident, while a wound is something that is inflicted by an assailant, so that to move to the verb, I am injured if a wall collapses - [So,](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/so) - I was at the Phonetics Congress in Glasgow the other week, and just about every paper began with the word "so", as did every answer to a question afterwards, regardless of its format. I've noticed the same in radio and TV interviews recently. "So" seems to have taken over completely from "Well" as the all-purpose - [A helping hand](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/a-helping-hand) - Yesterday I had to go to the Royal Free Hospital in London for a routine annual check up, and afterwards was sent for a blood test. In the "blood room", you take a ticket as you might at a butcher's to indicate your place in the queue, and sit and wait. An illuminated sign flashes - [... and counting](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/and-counting) - I'm not sure how much the pronunciation of numbers is taught around the world, but it is not completely straightforward. If we start counting, from one upwards, there is no problem: one, two, three, ... ninety-nine, one hundred. But then, would you go on with "one hundred and one" or "a hundred and one"? In - [Eggcorns and spell checkers](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/eggcorns-and-spell-checkers) - I'm not sure whether errors of spelling or grammar introduced to a text by spell checkers are eggcorns in the same way as those caused by a misunderstanding in the mind of a person, but here are two that I've come across lately, one of which is clearly an eggcorn, and the other is presumably - [Lewis Carroll and Walt Disney](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/lewis-carroll-and-walt-disney) - It gets worse! Walt Disney couldn't even spell his nom-de-plume. This is a still from the beginning of the cartoon version of the book. - [The pronunciation of names from history](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/the-pronunciation-of-names-from-history) - Martin Ball has commented on my post about the pronunciation of Lewis Carroll's 'real' family name - Dodgson. He raises a more general point that I think deserves a full post rather than simply a reply to his comment. My position is fairly ambiguous - a linguist with a professed 'classical' attitude of descriptivism, but - [Lewis Carroll](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/lewis-carroll) - I was listening to "Start the Week" on BBC Radio 4, presented by Andrew Marr, and dealing mainly with the anniversary of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll. I was not surprised that Mr Marr should pronounce Carroll's 'real' surname as /ˈdÉ’dÊ’sÉ™n/, when all the evidence points to his pronouncing it /ˈdÉ’dsÉ™n/ - as - [Foreign or native](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/foreign-or-native) - This may seem heretical for a phonetician, but I've often thought that it is possible to learn a foreign language too well. When I was a post-graduate student, there was another person around whose first language was not English, but who spoke it as if he'd been at a public school. It was very difficult - [Inexorable change?](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/inexorable-change) - Every one of the current pronunciation dictionaries agrees that the stress in the word inexorable is on the second syllable. On Monday this week, in the Radio 4 programme charting the history of Britain in numbers, Professor Jane Humphries, Professor of Economic History, All Souls, Oxford, clearly said /ɪnekˈsÉ’rÉ™bÉ™l/. It might have been less surprising - [Composers' whimsies](https://www.linguism.co.uk/music/composers-whimsies) - During the 18th and early 19th centuries, it was normal for composers to give speed indications for their music in Italian. Beethoven started to vary this with German, and Schumann followed suit, but Italian is still the main language for tempi - even this word is the Italian one. Sometimes these indications are hard to - [Is this a new word?](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/is-this-a-new-word) - The 'Today' programme on BBC Radio 4 is a rich seam for unusual usages. Yesterday threw up two, of which one could be a new word (unless someone can find a previous example?) The eminent economist Jim O'Neill, best known perhaps for inventing (or at least popularizing) the acronym BRIC for the rapidly developing economies - [Baristas again](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/baristas-again) - Here baristas were mentioned in some of the comments. I’m reading “The Falls” by Ian Rankin at the moment, and have come across this: ‘Not often I see you smiling,’ his barista said as she made him a double latte. Those were her words: barista, latte. The first time she’d described her job, she’d pronounced - [Aaron and Maria](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/aaron-and-maria) - When did the name Aaron start to be pronounced /ˈarÉ™n/? John Wells has included it as a pronunciation for the modern personal name since the first edition of the Longman Pronunciation Dictionary (1990), and the 15th edition of the English Pronouncing Dictionary (1997) followed suit, but I've only become aware of its widespread use since - [An error in Domesday Book translations?](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/an-error-in-domesday-book-translations) - I talked about the etymology of the names Welwyn and Willian in an earlier post (here). I apologize in advance for the length of this post. The earliest reference to Welwyn that is given in the English Place Name Society volume on Hertfordshire (1938), is ultimately from AD 944-6, in a copy of the 13th - [An English educational website](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/an-english-educational-website) - I've just come across this website: http://www.primaryhomeworkhelp.co.uk/ It contains an amazing amount of information about Britain, its history, geography, etc, including the way in which the Union flag was developed, stage by stage, which I don't think I've ever seen so clearly set out anywhere else. It's a shame, therefore, that no one has thought - [The Festive Season is upon us](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/the-festive-season-is-upon-us) - This sign is no doubt gracing every one of Costa's 1755 coffee shops in the UK. I've shown this picture to quite a few of my friends and relatives, and a minority so far have spotted the reason I took it. - [Ebola](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/ebola) - Martin Ball writes: "Did anyone hear Jonathan (I think rather than David) Dimbleby pronounce ebola as /ˈɛbÉ™lÉ™/ on Radio 4 the other day? Is this pronunciation somehow nearer to that of West African languages?" I didn’t hear Jonathan Dimbleby say this, but as I recall from the ever more distant past, the recommendation the Pronunciation - [How Dutch is Louis van Gaal?](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/how-dutch-is-louis-van-gaal) - Yesterday morning the Radio 4 Today programme wasted several minutes of valuable airtime discussing the pronunciation of Manchester United's manager's name. The editors no doubt see this as "good broadcasting", but when you consider that most items are cut short through lack of time, this is a pointless discussion. All that needs to be done - [Pronunciation mayhem?](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/pronunciation-mayhem) - Now that my far-from-expert piano playing is no longer needed for a few weeks, I've been catching up on reading the various phonetic blogs I usually follow, and have found my name mentioned a couple of times. In particular by Jack Windsor Lewis in relation to the pronunciation of names by BBC newsreaders. He in - [Google and Potteries accent](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/google-and-potteries-accent) - In this centenary year of the outbreak of the First World War, it seems incredible that a Memorial should be in danger of destruction, but that is what is happening in Stoke on Trent, where one of the six historic town halls (the one for Fenton - the town that Arnold Bennett left out of - [Confusing place names](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/confusing-place-names) - We're used, in the British Isles, to place names that have more than one pronunciation - Shrewsbury (/ˈʃrəʊzbÉ™ri/~/ˈʃruːzbÉ™ri/) is probably the best known, although those with long memories will recall that there was a veiled threat to my position over the pronunciation of Althorp 17 years ago (/ˈɔːltrÉ™p/ - as used by the Spencer family, - [Galilee and Galileo](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/galilee-and-galileo) - I don't usually watch or listen to the First Night of the Proms, but as yesterday evening's concert was Elgar's "The Kingdom", an oratorio I have never heard, I decided to make an exception. Part way through, when the disciples are touched by the Holy Spirit and start speaking languages of which they had no - [A team of pronouns](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/a-team-of-pronouns) - When I was learning French, our excellent teacher gave us a mnemonic for learning the positions of the personal pronouns - other than the subject forms - in relation to the verb. It was in the form of a football team: me nous te vous se le la les lui leur y (en was the - [-ed or not -ed](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/ed-or-not-ed) - There was a time when, if you wanted to buy a complete set of some publication which came in its own slip-case, it was known as a "boxed set". The OED records this from as early as 1895 (Chicago Tribune, 22 December: "The boxed set of three volumes"), and in the case of recorded music, - [Potteries accent](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/potteries-accent) - I don't think I've ever heard such a long stretch of a genuine Potteries accent on Radio 4 before this - usually actors are attempting it from some other starting point, but here is the Real Thing, in a short story called "Pot Luck". Final 'ng' is [Å‹g], intervocalic /t/ often becomes /r/ (for instance - [Ukraine](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/ukraine) - The present upheavals in Ukraine bring the pronunciation of its place names into prominence. Even the country's name is now subtly different from what it was thirty years ago. Then the geographical area was always called "The Ukraine", which was suitable for what was a part of a larger whole (cf. "The Midlands", "The Algarve") - [Railway Station](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/railway-station) - This is what I call the place where I catch the train both to and from London. Increasingly, what I've always considered to be an Americanism - train station - is being used, even by friends of my own generation. Until about 15 years ago, I had the feeling that 'train station' was current only - [One sentence, two meanings](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/one-sentence-two-meanings) - About a month ago, John Maidment wrote about an ambiguous phrase: here Now here is a proverb that has two meanings, and they are quite difficult to distinguish even by their intonation: "No news is good news". When this means that the absence of news constitutes good news, it may be "\No /news is \good - [Portmanteau words](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/portmanteau-words) - According to the OED's examples, Lewis Carroll may have invented the use of 'portmanteau' to mean a word made up of the elements of two or more other words in order to somehow combine their meanings: in Through the Looking-glass, the words slithy and mimsy, which he coined for the poem Jabberwocky, are called by - [Doctor Who](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/doctor-who) - This weekend it has been almost impossible to avoid Doctor Who. Even Google introduced a simple game to its home page for both Friday and Saturday. I don't understand why they didn't commemorate JFK's assassination on Friday, but there was Doctor Who and a dalek ... My regular weekend crossword was also full of references - [Haiyan and Tacloban](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/haiyan-and-tacloban) - It's over a week since the appalling typhoon hit the Philippines and I'm still unsure what the "official" BBC pronunciation of these names is. Most broadcasters are calling the typhoon itself /ˈhaiˈjæn/ or /ˈhaiˈæn/, but Radio 4 newsreaders appear to be saying /ˈhaiˈjen/, which puzzles me: the name is Chinese, and I always understood that - [Indignance](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/indignance) - The other day, I forget exactly when, I heard someone on BBC Radio 4 use a word I hadn't come across before, and one to which my immediate reaction was "he's making it up". However, I should have remembered that it is actually very difficult to make up a "new" word in English as so - [Funetics!](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/funetics) - In the 1970s a series of books (well, they were more like pamphlets really) were published that illustrated local English dialects by making fun of them, not in a nasty way, but affectionately, by people who wanted to record local phrases and pronunciations before they disappeared. One of the first was "Krek Waiter's Peak Bristle" - [Interview on spelling](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/interview-on-spelling) - I've recently read this newspaper interview with a professor of General Linguistics. Q: Do we have a low level of spelling? A: In general, yes. Above all, young people. It's more - it's one of the perennial problems, our major battlefield. And that's because nobody is born with the knowledge and the process of learning - [Rhoticity](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/rhoticity) - Following from Ed's comment about the occurrence of rhoticity in English dialects as reported by Ellis, Joseph Wright, and the Survey of English Dialects, it seems to me that Ellis was having great trouble identifying exactly what sounds he (and his principal co-workers, Thomas Hallam and Prince Louis Lucien Bonaparte) was hearing when the orthography - [Apology](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/apology) - This blog has recently been migrated from one server to another, causing problems with the coding of "unusual characters", e.g. IPA, in the comments. This is being worked on, and the hope is to have it corrected soon. - [Old dialectologists](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/old-dialectologists) - Ed's comment to my last post allows me to widen the discussion from the specific question of th > f in modern English, and its history, to that of how much linguists/dialectologists/orthoepists - call them/us what you will - have or have not registered change in the language. I've been reading Alexander J Ellis's monumental - [th > f (again!)](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/th-f-again) - I've just been made aware of reports of a project being carried out at Glasgow University which apparently demonstrates that exposure to and engagement with television soaps can affect the accent of the viewers. The particular feature that the press has picked up on is the 'infiltration' (my word) of /f/ for /θ/ into Glaswegian - [French place names](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/french-place-names) - I've recently come back from France, and once again been puzzled by many place names. They just don't correspond to any spelling conventions in the everyday vocabulary, and yet the French give us no help: to the best of my knowledge, there is no pronouncing dictionary that includes place names (or family names). The Petit - [surveillance again](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/surveillance-again) - Matthew Phillips has commented that his step-uncle complained about the change in pronunciation of this word in about 1990, blaming the BBC for the change. I thought it might be useful to look at the pronunciations given in a range of dictionaries over the years. The OED's 1st edition (this fascicle published in March 1918) - [Is it possible to dement in a choiceful way?](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/is-it-possible-to-dement-in-a-choiceful-way) - My daughter has reported what she and her work colleagues clearly thought was an amusing conversation. One of them had been sent on a workshop or some such event, and in describing it back in the office used a word and a phrase that the rest of the team raised eyebrows at. First the word - [Online grammar teaching](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/online-grammar-teaching) - Radio 4's "Saturday Live" programme, broadcast on Saturday mornings at 9 am, this week included a contribution from Nevile Gwynne. We were told that Mr Gwynne (and throughout the programme he was called "Mr Gwynne" rather than "Neville") retired as a businessman (we weren't told what line of business he was in) twenty years ago, - [Penthesilea and satyrs](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/penthesilea-and-satyrs) - Melvyn Bragg trailed this week's In Our Time (on the Amazons) on Radio 4 this morning (Thursday 11 April) at 8.30 pronouncing these two words as /penθəˈsiːlɪə/ and /ˈsætaɪəz/. I was interested to learn what he was going to say in the actual programme, when confronted with three Greek scholars. On the first mention of - [Pronunciations new to me](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/pronunciations-new-to-me) - Just a couple of pronunciations I've come across recently that I'd never encountered before: 1) /ˈdiːtrɪtÉ™s/ (Harold Evans, former editor of the Sunday Times, on Broadcasting House, Radio 4, Sunday 31 March 2013) I've heard /ˈdetrɪtÉ™s/ quite often, but never the version from Mr Evans. OED, LPD and EPD give only second syllable stress: /dɪˈtraɪtÉ™s/, - [metonille](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/metonille) - I've been working with a group of archaeologists and historians on the local manorial rolls, which are remarkably complete. We are all amateurs, and have called in a professional palaeographer to translate the medieval Latin. There is one word which even he has failed to translate, and it is one which is very clearly written - [Multilingual education and prejudice](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/multilingual-education-and-prejudice) - Almost all the British papers have carried the story this week that Gladstone Primary School in Peterborough has not a single native English speaking pupil out of 450. Predictably the story as run by the Daily Mail and the Daily Express is slanted towards the anti-immigration lobby, but the reason I mention it here is - [Genealogy](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/genealogy) - A headline in the Daily Mail reads "Richard III's ancestors demand a York burial". Really? How have they got in touch? Through a ouija board? The article begins "The living descendants of King Richard III have joined the campaign to demand that his remains are reburied in York." So the writer of the article, as - [Listeners](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/listeners) - I've just been listening to Nick Robinson's programme about the BBC and the General Strike of 1926, and noticed that he referred to "listeners-in" throughout. In fact this was something that Reith thoroughly disapproved of. In 1924 he had written a book called "Broadcast over Britain, in which we find "An objectionable habit is to - [A crooked pronunciation](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/a-crooked-pronunciation) - We've all come across words that when read quickly can appear to have one pronunciation, but in fact have a totally different one, because the wrong one shows that the structure of the word has been misread. Two famous such words are "misled" and "underfed", pronounced /ˈmaɪzÉ™ld/ and /ÊŒnˈdɜːft/ respectively. Because they look like perfectly - [Radio 3](https://www.linguism.co.uk/general/radio-3) - So Patricia Hughes has died, aged 90. She was one of the team of fairly eccentric announcers that Cormac Rigby gathered for Radio 3, and who were some of my first colleagues and 'customers' when I joined the BBC. Most of them have gone now - Robin Holmes, blind in one eye, who at least - [New words for BBC News](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/new-words-for-bbc-news) - The unfortunate pollution in the English Channel (at least that's where it's assumed to be), that has caused the oiling of several hundred seabirds, means that two new words have been added to the vocabulary of BBC Radio News. Friday (1st February)'s 5 pm bulletin included "goo" and "gloopy". The presenter of the "PM" programme - [Is't confusing?](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/ist-confusing) - The tragic events in Algeria have once more brought the words Islamist and Jihadist (should they be capitalized or not?) into the news. Two things strike me - first, where is the stress on Islamist? The 'rule' in English is that the suffix -ist does not change the stress position of the stem to which - [Another proposed new spelling system](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/another-proposed-new-spelling-system) - I've just found this on the BBC website. In case anyone has problems linking to it, it says 'Learning a language is often tricky, particularly when it comes to spelling new words. "The Spell As You Pronounce Universal Project" (SAYPU) wants everyone to spell words the way they are pronounced - and for the world - [The Dark Ages - An Age of Light](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/the-dark-ages-an-age-of-light) - Further to my comments about Mark Lawson and his programmes about European crime writing, and his expertise, which some readers of this blog thought inappropriate as he was not setting himself up as an expert (a view I cannot share), we now have Waldemar Januszczak as not only the presenter, but also the writer and - [Politics alert!](https://www.linguism.co.uk/general/politics-alert) - I don't often comment on BBC politics or indeed any BBC matters apart from language use, but here goes: In the now notorious interview that George Entwistle gave to John Humphrys on the Radio 4 "Today" programme last Saturday morning, Mr Entwistle admitted to not being aware of the front-page article in the Guardian newspaper - [Crime against Scandinavia](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/crime-against-scandinavia) - The BBC's Arts guru Mark Lawson is setting himself up as an expert in Scandinavian crime writing. As such, you would think that he would care about the pronunciation of the names of the writers he's interviewing and talking about, wouldn't you? Not a bit of it! In a programme broadcast this lunchtime on BBC - [Annecy](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/annecy) - The awful events near Lake Annecy have brought this place name into prominence. At first sight it is a straightforward French name, with no problem for people needing to pronounce it, such as British radio and TV newsreaders and journalists, and yet over the past week I have been hearing three anglicised pronunciations: /ˈænsi/, /ˈænəˈsiː/ - [What the 'll'](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/what-the-ll) - I've written before about the name Purcell, and the evidence that indicates it must originally have been pronounced with first syllable stress, but it isn't the only name ending in -ell to be stressed in this way: Marvell, Durrell, Cavell, Parnell, Angell, Mitchell, are all traditionally stressed by bearers of the name in the UK - [New coinage or resurrection?](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/new-coinage-or-resurrection) - John Simpson of the OED was interviewed by Evan Davies on last Friday's Radio 4 Today programme, about 'new words' in the OED. One of the words mentioned was medal, used as a verb, which Evan had noticed for the first time this summer, in connexion with the London Olympics, meaning "to win a medal". - [This is a must-have thing](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/this-is-a-must-have-thing) - Standing in the check-out queue at my local supermarket yesterday afternoon, I noticed that the person behind me was buying a Jamie Oliver knife block set. Like many products these days, it is labelled in several languages. The German, however, was easier to understand than usual. Why does it say that the product is "must-have", - [IPA versus Respelling](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/ipa-versus-respelling) - Dictionaries which try to show the pronunciation of words can basically use one of two methods: either they can use a respelling system (this was the only possibility for dictionaries compiled up to the middle of the 19th century), or they can use a phonetic alphabet. To all intents and purposes nowadays, this means the - [What do you call someone?](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/what-do-you-call-someone) - The question has arisen this week particularly because of the behaviour of Bob Diamond towards the MPs on the House of Commons Select Committee questioning him about the LIBOR scandal. He consistently called them by their first name, while they equally consistently and ostentatiously called him "Mr Diamond". Is he genuinely on first name terms - [The tentacles of spelling pronunciations](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/the-tentacles-of-spelling-pronunciations) - Tentacle, barnacle, manacle: all words that are stressed on the first syllable. But now, in a Today programme interview on BBC Radio 4, our erstwhile Foreign Secretary, brother of the current leader of Her Majesty's loyal opposition, has brought us a new one in all seriousness: debacle /ˈdebəkl/. He was referring to the current situation - [Rhotic/non-rhotic spelling problems](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/rhoticnon-rhotic-spelling-problems) - This weekend's papers have brought up (quite inadvertently on their part) a problem caused by the development of non-rhotic accents: "High Street banks are often reluctant to invest in what they see as risky and uncharted territory" (Mail on Sunday, 24 June 2012) "We're in somewhat unchartered territory in 2020." (The Independent, 23 June 2012). - [Ukraine and other anglicisations](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/ukraine-and-other-anglicisations) - On Saturdays, The Independent newspaper has a column called "Errors and Omissions", which discusses infelicities in the language used in the paper over the previous seven days. Yesterday it discussed the use (or not) of the definite article with "Ukraine". Guy Keleny (writer of the piece) seems to be against omitting the article on the - [What is iconic?](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/what-is-iconic) - It seems that anything can be "iconic". I've collected all of the following in just a few weeks: The turtle is an iconic species. The beauty of a traditional radio telescope is iconic. Al-Qaeda targets iconic buildings. The Roundhouse, in London, is iconic, as are the ruins of Greyfriars at Dunwich (both obviously to be - [News Corporation](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/news-corporation) - This Murdoch company is in the news again today with the most recent appearance of James Murdoch before the Leveson Inquiry into phone hacking at the News of the World. The name of the company is usually abbreviated to "News Corp", and it's interesting how many people pronounce this without the final 'p' - /'njuːz - [Anders Breivik](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/anders-breivik) - Following my post on Utøya last July, John Maidment asked me about the pronunciation of Breivik, and I gave an answer here. I'm still hearing the pronunciation with schwa from some broadcasters, including some Radio 4 newsreaders, so maybe that is what the BBC's Pronunciation Unit is recommending. I don't want to get into a - [Pleonasm or useful linguistic device?](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/pleonasm-or-useful-linguistic-device) - During the 1970s and 1980s, there was frequent adverse comment in the press and to the broadcast media (I was at the end of quite a lot of complaints) about the phrase "at this moment in time". Complainants generally said things like "what's wrong with just saying 'now', or 'at the moment'?" I think the - [Hesitation, deviation, repetition](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/hesitation-deviation-repetition) - In a New Year broadcast, the veteran radio critic of the Daily Telegraph, Gillian Reynolds, took the BBC's "Today" presenters to task for their umming and erring. When they were about to interview someone, she said, they must often have prepared the questions hours in advance. They give a lengthy introduction to the interviewee for - [One word, two opposing meanings](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/one-word-two-opposing-meanings) - The points of the compass provide us with an interesting example of one word having two opposite meanings: A westerly wind is coming from the west. A person travelling in a westerly direction is going to the west. The same is true for all the directions. Admittedly, 'from the west' appears to be limited to - [(labio-)dental fricatives](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/labio-dental-fricatives) - The realisation of /θ/ as /f/ in English (and similarly for its voiced equivalent) has long been thought of as a Cockney trait, made fun of by generations of comedians, and bemoaned by countless traditionalists as heralding the demise of 'proper' English. Less well-known is its occurrence in other varieties of English, such as certain - [Coerced pronunciation](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/coerced-pronunciation) - Jack Windsor Lewis (here) either acclaims me as or accuses me of - according to your point of view - being a champion player of the rant against unusual pronunciations. He also names John Maidment in the same context. I can't speak for John, of course, but my rants are always aimed at people who - [Eviscerating cholera](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/eviscerating-cholera) - I don't know why, after all these years, I should still be surprised by odd pronunciations, but I am. Two that have recently come my way, both from the BBC, are eviscerate, pronounced /iˈvɪskəreɪt/ by Simon Sebag Montefiore presenting the first of a series of programmes on the history of Jerusalem, and cholera, pronounced /kəˈlɛərə/ - [Breast implants](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/breast-implants) - I thought that would get your attention! The substance that these controversial objects are made from is causing some confusion. There are two separate materials: silicon and silicone. Silicon is a non-metallic element, symbolised by Si, used for its properties as a semi-conductor in electronic circuits, and therefore in the insides of whatever device you - [Ejectives again](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/ejectives-again) - John Wells' blog post yesterday deals with ejectives in English. He's kind enough to mention my own post on this subject some time ago, but I'm surprised he believes that I think it's a recent phenomenon. I wrote then "I suppose I first became properly aware of ejectives being used in English about twenty years - [Garrow's Law](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/garrows-law) - For the benefit of those who can't receive BBC1 television, I shall start by saying that Garrow's Law is a period courtroom drama, set in late 18th entury London. Garrow is a young barrister intent on improving the quality of justice for poorer people, and he is based, apparently, on a real person. The developing - [Clever Scientists](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/clever-scientists) - A report on BBC's regional news programme for East Anglia yesterday evening (10 November 2011), and unfortunately not available for watching again after 6 o'clock GMT on 11 November (so you can't check what I'm about to say after that time) drew attention to a potential breakthrough in the treatment and prevention of malaria by - [Wrest or Wrestle?](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/wrest-or-wrestle) - Caroline Hawley, reporting from Libya for the BBC has a couple of times recently said that the new rulers had "wrestled" control of the country from Gaddafi. She is not, of course, the only person to confuse the two words wrest and wrestle, to the extent that it can't be long before the OED has - [An unusual 'intrusive' r](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/an-unusual-intrusive-r) - We're all used to the so-called intrusive r in English - the 'r' pronounced after a word ending in /ɑː, ɔː, ɜː, ə/ when the following word also begins with a vowel. A few days ago, I heard one which was new to me, although perhaps it has just passed me by until now. Mark - [Political language](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/political-language) - The newspapers and news and current affairs programmes this week are full of Labour "apologising" for the mistakes they made during their period of office between 1997 and 2010. I do not remember politicians ever apologising for their own actions in government over the time when I have been taking an interest (about 50 years). - [A "new" word](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/a-new-word) - They say (whoever 'they' are) that travel broadens the mind. In my case it's just broadened my vocabulary. I've come back from a fortnight's holiday in Germany with a new word in my armoury - cater-cornered. I had never come across this before, but it appeared in two separate guides, one in Munich, the other - [Nordic languages](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/nordic-languages) - The Germanic group of Indo-European languages split into three sub-groups - East, West and North Germanic. East Germanic, now extinct, included Gothic, in which the earliest example of a Germanic language in writing - the extracts from the Bible translated by Ulfilas - still exists. This manuscript dates to the 4th century, and is housed - [Prescriptive and Descriptive](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/prescriptive-and-descriptive) - These days, any linguists who claimed to be prescriptivists would find themselves cast out of the linguistic community, and yet to a greater or less extent, we are all prescriptivists, in private at least, and those of us who teach a language to non-native students are necessarily prescriptivist - languages do have rules, and it - [Norwegian - Bokmål and Nynorsk](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/norwegian-bokmal-and-nynorsk) - In response to my last post, on Utøya, John Maidment has asked: "How should “Breivik” be pronounced in Norwegian? I keep hearing /ˈbreɪəvɪk/ or sthg similar from Brits on tv." I've replied briefly on the specific question, but it raises a more general question. Norwegian has two standard written forms: Bokmål, or 'book language', has - [Utøya](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/utøya) - The tragic and shocking news from Norway in the last days has brought the name of this formerly insignificant island in a lake not far from Oslo to the world's attention. The name means "the outer island", illustrating the Scandinavian feature of placing the definite article, in this case feminine, after the noun as a - [Phonetic twaddle](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/phonetic-twaddle) - I've just come across this, entitled "Learning Pronunciation with Dictionary IPA" and was appalled. Macquarie University is quite rightly acclaimed as the home of the standard Dictionary for Australian English, which you would think would entitle users of the language pages of its website to expect a high standard of scholarship. Yet this document appears - [Pronunciation in Dictionaries (2)](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/pronunciation-in-dictionaries-2) - The addition of a comprehensive pronunciation history to all the entries in a dictionary would be wonderful - and comments to my last post confirm my opinion. However, there are just a few slight problems. Jack Windsor Lewis has pointed out that the OED gives a full list of spelling variants through the ages for - [Pronunciation in Dictionaries](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/pronunciation-in-dictionaries) - I've been thinking about the way in which pronunciation is shown in general dictionaries, and have come to the conclusion that really, editors are uncertain what to do about it. There is a famous exchange between Boswell and Johnson given in Boswell's "Life" - BOSWELL. 'It may be of use, Sir, to have a Dictionary - [The unwisdom of prophecy](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/the-unwisdom-of-prophecy) - "Citoyens, le dix-neuvième siècle est grand, mais le vingtième siècle sera heureux. Alors plus rien de semblable à la vieille histoire; on n'aura plus à craindre, comme aujourd'hui, une conquête, une invasion, une usurpation, une rivalité de nations à main armée, une interruption de civilisation dépendant d'un mariage de rois, une naissance dans les tyrannies - [The anniversary of Chernobyl](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/the-anniversary-of-chernobyl) - On the 25th anniversary of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster it seems appropriate to discuss the way the name is pronounced in English. In 1986, the main question was whether the stress should be placed on the first or second syllable: 'Chernobyl, or Cher'nobyl. As it happens, this was a question that had been settled for - [Robert Bridges](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/robert-bridges) - Robert Bridges (1844-1930) became the Poet Laureate (largely an honorary position under the Crown) in 1913. I think that his poetry is mostly forgotten nowadays, and arguably his greatest claim to poetic fame is his championing of Gerard Manley Hopkins. However, he also had linguistic interests, particularly to do with English spelling and pronunciation. In - [A label on a lapel](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/a-label-on-a-lapel) - I was taken aback to hear Anthony Horowitz, scriptwriter for many TV programmes, including Midsomer Murders, Foyle's War, and Poirot as well as many children's books, use the pronunciation /ˈleɪpəl/ in an interview Saturday Live, BBC Radio 4's Saturday morning programme (9-10 am): "I'm wearing my Blue Peter badge in my /ˈleɪpəl/". According to his - [Garage](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/garage) - This word has caused more trouble than most when trying to decide on a pronunciation. The BBC's pre-war Advisory Committee on Spoken English managed to change its mind twice in the course of ten years before giving up on a recommendation. In 1928, the first edition of Broadcast English I - Recommendations to announcers regarding - [Ajdabiya](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/ajdabiya) - I suspect I'm not the only person who had never heard of this place in Libya until yesterday. My suspicion is more-or-less confirmed by the inability of the BBC's World Affairs Editor, John SImpson, to make his mind up over it. In his report to the Today programme on Radio 4 this morning (Wednesday 2 - [Bahrain](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/bahrain) - Eric Hayman has commented that BBC newsreaders and journalists are vacillating between /bɑːˈhreɪn/ (where /h/ may represent either a glottal fricative or a velar fricative) and /bɑːˈreɪn/, leaving the orthographic 'h' unpronounced. I cannot believe that the Pronunciation Unit has changed its recommendation, which was always the second of these, and was published as such - [TRAP and BATH](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/trap-and-bath) - There was some discussion on John Wells' blog a couple of months ago (here) about traditionally SBE BATH words now being increasingly reported with TRAP. John said "The fact that more younger people than older report a preference for /ɒ/ in one and for /æ/ in chance can be seen as a greater willingness on - [Short news item](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/short-news-item) - Narathiwat, the most south easterly of Thailand's provinces, is most often in the news because of a long-standing insurgency, but a regular correspondent tells me that a BBC World News report claims three rivers have overflown their banks in the province. This conjures up the most wonderful mental images. The standard past tense and participle - [Abidjan](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/abidjan) - The current stand off between the two factions in Ivory Coast has brought the former capital Abidjan into the news again. The French-derived spelling tells us that the nearest English pronunciation of this name should be /æbiˈʤɑːn/, and yet I don't think I've heard a single broadcaster say this. Invariably, it seems to me, the - [Producers and Presenters](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/producers-and-presenters) - In response to a comment made by Michael Lamb to my last post, I blame the producers. There was a time, and I hope that in radio that time is also now, when scripts were sent or taken by hand to the Pronunciation Unit for one of its members to go through and add helpful - [Ancient Worlds](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/ancient-worlds) - John Maidment has drawn attention to Richard Miles' yodophobia. I mentioned his pronunciation of confines in my last post, but now, having watched all the series, I can give a list of some, frankly, astonishing pronunciations he has used in the course of the six-week series. Tigris ˈtɪgrɪs Chaldees ˈtʃældiːz Levant ˈlevænt Sennacherib senətʃəˈrɪb and - [Confines](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/confines) - We're all used to the phenomenon of nouns becoming differentiated from their homographic verbs by stress movement: dis'pute becoming 'dispute for instance, and that this is happening despite the best efforts of the Queen's English Society and its supporters. Now I've twice, from different speakers, in separate television programmes, heard the opposite happening. Jeremy Burckardt, - [Own Goal](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/own-goal) - I've just bought a second-hand dictionary and thesaurus, which has a contents list as follows: "Abbreviations Used in this Book Dictionary Thesuarus Appendices Commonly Misspelt Words Weights and Measures" Strangely enough, "thesaurus" is not included in the list of Commonly Misspelt Words. - [Henry Purcell](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/henry-purcell) - This BBC programme about Henry Purcell is available on line for the next couple of weeks. In it Charles Hazlewood claims that we know so little about the composer that we are not even sure how to pronounce his name. It is true that many people (including Mr Hazlewood in this film - although he - [Greek Names](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/greek-names) - Simon Armitage is a poet who is now presenting TV documentaries, particularly on what might be called 'poetic' subjects. I have recently watched one on Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, and now one tracing the journey of Ulysses through Homer's Odyssey. I was surprised that he seemed to know so little about Greek pronunciation, - [audacious, visceral, burgeoning](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/audacious-visceral-burgeoning) - Still watching TV programmes that I've previously recorded, I've just caught up with two episodes of the BBC series on the Pre-Raphaelites. One of the experts used in the programmes was Alison Smith, Curator at Tate Britain. She had two unusual pronunciations, one remarkable for not being consistent. She used the word audacious four times - [Brahms and Priestley](https://www.linguism.co.uk/music/brahms-and-priestley) - Music is often used to depict works of art in other disciplines - Debussy's "Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune", for instance, is a musical interpretation of a poem by Mallarmé; there are likewise many overtures or symphonic poems based on the plays of Shakespeare (Hamlet and Romeo & Juliet by Tchaikovsky, for example) and other - [prenuptial mortgagors](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/prenuptial-mortgagors) - I've written before about the pronunciation of nuptial and haven't got much to add, except that a couple of weeks ago, the word was much in the news when the British courts were asked to decide on the legality of a pre-nuptial agreement. Not a single person I heard use the word, on radio or - [Footballers](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/footballers) - Sportsmen - and I suppose sportswomen as well - are often given nicknames by their team mates. For instance, Andrew Flintoff became "Freddy" because of the similarity of his surname to "Flintstone". The most unimaginative of these is simply to add '-y' at the end of the name, as in Jimmy Greaves becoming "Greavesy' ("Saint - [Protagonist](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/protagonist) - In last week's In Our Time, (Radio 4, Thursday 14 October) one of Melvyn Bragg's guests was Tim Blanning, Emeritus Professor of Modern European History at Cambridge University The discussion was about the Sturm und Drang movement in 18th Century Germany. In the course of the programme, Professor Blanning used the word protagonists, but he - [A Quotation from Eric Partridge](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/a-quotation-from-eric-partridge) - I've been reading "The World of Words" by Eric Partridge (published by Routledge, 1938). In Chapter 2, entitled "The English Language" - chapter 3 is "The American Language" - he draws largely on Otto Jespersen's Growth and Structure of the English Language, quoting often, and sometimes not acknowledging the source directly. On page 68, we - [Prostrate and known](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/prostrate-and-known) - Catching up on some TV programmes recorded while I've been away, I've inevitably found some usages to comment on. First a common confusion of two words, but this time in the less usual way: prostate and prostrate. It's quite common to hear about men of a certain age having trouble with their 'prostrate' (does this - [Athenaeum - pronunciation and plural](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/athenaeum-pronunciation-and-plural) - Dr Jonathan Foyle, presenting a BBC 4 TV programme on the public buildings of the north of England, repeatedly pronounced the Athenaeum in Liverpool as /æθəˈneɪəm/, although his interviewees, members of the club, used the more anglicized /æθəˈniːəm/. I attributed this to a knowledge of Latin, but wondered whether he also pronounced aesthetic with /eɪ/, - [Bulger](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/bulger) - Over the last couple of weeks, the name of the tragic child James Bulger has come back into the news after nearly twenty years, because one of his killers, Jon Venables, has been found guilty of child pornography crimes. As a result, we have been hearing two pronunciations of the name Bulger - /ˈbʌldʒə/ and - [Unclear English](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/unclear-english) - Apologies for my long silence - my musical life has taken over recently (three concerts down, and another on Saturday). As I'm not a natural performer, I've had to do lots of practice, something I'm not used to! The Queen's English Society is wrong on so many points, but I have sympathy with some of - [The Queen's English Society](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/the-queens-english-society) - I've been having run-ins with the Queen's English Society since the early 1980s. Now they have raised their head again with the setting up of an English Academy, which the Society will run, and which is intended to be on a par with the French, Spanish and Italian Academies. I'm all in favour of children - [A taliswoman, and how to remediate](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/a-taliswoman-and-how-to-remediate) - My local BBC News programme yesterday included what were, for me at least, two linguistic oddities. First a wheelchair basketball player was described as being a taliswoman for the British team. This word has not yet reached the OED, and doesn't appear in the British National Corpus. Google brings up between 4000 and 5000 hits, - [Paradisical vestiges](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/paradisical-vestiges) - In Our Time, on BBC Radio 4, continues to throw up unusual pronunciations. This morning (30 April 2010) we have had two more, both from the same speaker, who I think was Julia Lovell, Professor of Chinese History and Literature in the University of Cambridge. First, she pronounced vestige to rhyme with prestige, a pronunciation - [Latin and English - again](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/latin-and-english-again) - I've just been listening to "In Our Time" on BBC Radio 4 (the latest one available as a podcast, 22 April 2010), and was struck yet again how inconsistent English speakers are in their treatment of Latin names. The discussion was about Roman satirists, and was between Melvyn Bragg (of course) and three professors who - [Olivia O'Leary](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/olivia-oleary) - I notice that BBC Radio 4 announcers regularly pronounce Ms O'Leary's family name as /əʊˈlɛəri/. I suppose from her accent that this is what she calls herself, but I'm wondering if following suit when one does not have an Irish accent is mimicking her rather than representing her name in 'neutral' terms. For those unfamiliar - [Spanish rhythm](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/spanish-rhythm) - Attending BAAP last week, I was very pleased to find there was a whole session devoted to rhythm, which I have written about before (here). One of the general conclusions was that the perception of rhythm in a language depends on the native language of the perceiver. English has a relatively complex syllable structure, while - [Waverley](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/waverley) - The main railway station in Edinburgh is named after the first of Walter Scott's novels, which he published anonymously. The pronunciation known to everyone and contradicted nowhere is /ˈweɪvərli/, but is this really what Scott intended? There are certain characters whose dialogue is rendered in a - fairly inconsistent - attempt at Scots. Most of - [Homing in](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/homing-in) - At about 8.20 this morning, on the Today programme, Nick Robinson (the BBC's Political Editor) said that the opposition parties would want to 'hone in' on the revelations that Stephen Byers (former Minister for Transport) had been caught claiming to be able to influence government policy. Here he is. The OED gives examples of hone - [Trend Setters](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/trend-setters) - In all aspects of culture, the leaders who introduce innovations, whether consciously or not, are gradually followed by the rest of the population who wish to emulate them. This is most obvious in clothes, where before the instant communications of the present day, it was well-known that the fashions of London and Paris slowly percolated - [Port-au-Prince, Haiti](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/port-au-prince-haiti) - Is it because of the enormity of the tragedy playing out in the western part of the island of Hispaniola that the pronunciations being used by the BBC have been standardised so quickly? Has the management sent down an edict that the established anglicisations be used for both the name of the state and that - [Abergavenny, etc](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/abergavenny-etc) - John Wells was mentioning (here) the unpredictability of the pronunciation of British place and family names from their spellings, and some are recorded in the Dictionary of Blunders. The fact that they are mentioned at all must mean that in the author's opinion they were being mispronounced, and this may be giving us an indication - [More on 1880s pronunciation](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/more-on-1880s-pronunciation) - Most of the pronunciations given in the Dictionary of Blunders are what one would expect for 1880, and show that the arguments about what is 'right' and what is 'wrong' are very much the same as today: ab-do'-men, not ab'-dŏm-ěn (OED1 agrees with this, but OED2 gives initial stress before second syllable stress, although many - [hospital ~ orbital ~ digital](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/hospital-orbital-digital) - Jack Windsor Lewis has mentioned (here) the frequently different pronunciation in BE of the /t/ in hospital and orbital. I wonder if part of the reason for the /t/ of hospital becoming voiced in British English, while that in orbital does not (I know the grammar of that is a bit odd, but I'm sure - [Wymondham (Norfolk) and Wymondley (Hertfordshire)](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/wymondham-norfolk-and-wymondley-hertfordshire) - Here are two place names whose pronunciation history converged for a time and then diverged again. Wymondham is, in my experience, always pronounced /ˈwɪndəm/. I don't have access to either of the Engish Place Name Society (EPNS)'s volumes on Norfolk, but the Oxford Names Companion gives its origin as 'homestead of a man called Wīgmund'. - [Moshtarak](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/moshtarak) - The BBC New website tells us that this mean "together" in Dari, but there seems to be a disagreement between Radio and Television about its pronunciation. Radio 4 newsreaders are all stressing the first syllable, while their television colleagues are stressing the second. I don't know if Dari has a strong preference for stress placement, - [Bleck Het](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/bleck-het) - John Humphrys has been sounding off about the English language - again. Why is it that reporters - journalists - believe that because language is their stock in trade, therefore they know all about it? This particular article, published in the Mail on Sunday (28 February) is headed 'Thet men in the bleck het (... - [Cognitive](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/cognitive) - Listening to "Start the Week" on BBC Radio 4 this morning (15 March) I was astonished to hear one of the participants use this word and pronounce it /kɒgˈnaɪtɪv/. This is not given by any of the current dictionaries of pronunciation, nor by the OED, and I've been wondering what model he was taking in - [1880s English](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/1880s-english) - A few more interesting entries from the Dictionary of Blunders: "ABSQUATULATE (introduced from America) means to run away from your 'squatting' or settlement. The word is applied in England to any one running away from his creditors." OED1 has the word, but the first fascicle of the OED was published in 1884, probably three years - [More Blunders](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/more-blunders) - The anonymous author of A Dictionary of Blunders has a thing about syllabic /l/: BRIDAL should not be pronounced bri'-dle, but as spelled, bri'-dal. GRAVEL ... should not be pronounced grav'-l, but grav'-vel. MEDAL ... should be pronounced med'-al, not med-dle. MORTAL ... should not be pronounced mor'-tle, but mor'tăl. But he makes no comment - [Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/umar-farouk-abdulmutallab) - I've been rather disappointed by the BBC since Christmas Day over the attempted bombing of an airliner approaching Detroit airport. For at least the first week, there was absolutely no consistency among even radio newsreaders in the pronunciation of the suspect's name. Stress on the last element varied between Abdul'mutallab and Abdulmu'tallab. Christmas Day is - [Intrusive r](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/intrusive-r) - There are many articles available on the internet about the so-called 'intrusive r', but as a visitor to this blog has written asking me to correct people who "persist in inserting an extra [R] between the [W] and the [I] (of 'drawing') making the word into [DRAWRING] ! WRONG !!!!!", perhaps yet another will not - [Dictionary of Blunders](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/dictionary-of-blunders) - I've recently been given a copy of this little book, which appears to have been published about 1880 (no author's name is given, and it's undated) by Whittaker & Co., London. In fact even the title is in some doubt as the cover gives the title as above, but inside it appears as "A Dictionary - [English stress - again](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/english-stress-again) - Jack Windsor Lewis has sent a comment to my post on "two names and a word" which dealt with an unusual pronunciation of sedentary: This morning, 28 Dec 09, also on Radio 4 but on Andrew Marr’s ‘Start the Week’ discussion programme, I he’rd Cambridge Professor of Neuroscience Barbara Sahakian, use the stressing ef`ficacy inste’d - [A rary bird](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/507) - I've been following John Wells' thread on nursery rhymes, and have found this rare example from a French one: "Oui, oui, choux!" un maire y crie, "ça masse!" - [Two names and a word](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/two-names-and-a-word) - Nicholas Glass, in his report for Channel 4 News yesterday on the arrest of five men charged with stealing the "Arbeit Macht Frei" sign from Auschwitz, named two other places: Gdynia and Wrocławek. He can be excused (as we are talking about Channel 4, not the BBC, here) for being unable to pronounce the second - [How many words?](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/how-many-words) - It's often said that English has more words than any other language. I'm not aware of any bona fide linguist who's said this, but the statement crops up in newspaper articles from time to time. Is it true? How would you start to count? I suspect that one reason the idea has arisen is that - [Eva Sivertsen](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/eva-sivertsen) - The death has been announced of Professor Eva Sivertsen, at the age of 87. She was born in 1922 in Trondheim, Norway, and was Professor of English there from 1961, first at the then Norges Lærerhøgskole, and then, when this became part of the University of Trondheim, in the English Department there. Her doctoral thesis - [Pity poor Belgium](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/pity-poor-belgium) - Not only do most people find it difficult to name ten famous Belgians without falling back on Tintin and Hercule Poirot, but Belgium seems to be the only country name that English-speaking people get mixed up with its adjective. From The Independent on Saturday 21 November 2009: Sweet treats are available at Marks & Spencer - [Pronunciation spelling - or not?](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/pronunciation-spelling-or-not) - One of my voluntary jobs is proofreading a local newsletter. In this month's offering, I have just changed the following description: Beautiful singing and top draw musicianship in the English folk tradition My immediate reaction - and the one I have acted on - was to change 'draw' to 'drawer', but on reflexion, 'top draw' - [Ground Floor](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/ground-floor) - "An elderly woman was the victim of a street robbery which netted the thief just £10. ... The offender walked behind the victim for a short time before grabbing her handbag, causing her to fall to the floor." (My local paper this week) In this context, I should have written ground rather than floor, as - [Film biographies](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/film-biographies) - In this morning's (9 November 2009) Start the Week (BBC Radio 4, 9 a.m.), there was a discussion of a new film biography. In introducing it, Andrew Marr, the presenter, used the word biopic, and pronounced it to rhyme with "myopic". I assume he was reading from a script, in which case it might simply - [Evenin' All](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/evenin-all) - Many of yesterday's British papers (e.g. here, here, here, here and here) reported on Warwickshire Police's handbook "Policing Our Communities", with headlines that were critical of the Political Correctness inferred from statements such as "Don't assume those words for the time of day, such as afternoon and evening, have the same meaning [in other languages - [Fixed and Free](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/fixed-and-free) - Stress in English is often said to be "fixed and free", by which is meant that for each word it is fixed, but that there is no fixed position in the word where it must occur, unlike Czech, Finnish or Hungarian, for instance, where it is invariably on the first syllable of a word, or - [Latin for choirs](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/latin-for-choirs) - Once you've decided how you're going to pronounce Latin when you're speaking English, the next problem comes up for singers. It's not only English that has its own version of Latin pronunciation, but every language in Europe has its idiosyncratic ways as well. In German, for instance, they pronounce C before E and I (and - [More on Latin in English (2)](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/more-on-latin-in-english-2) - In the middle of the nineteenth century, following the great strides made in philology, the teaching of Latin in schools began to use a reconstructed "Classical" Latin pronunciation. This 'restored' the long and short vowel sounds of Latin to /iː, ɪ, eɪ, e, æ, ɑː, ɒ, ɔː, ʊ, uː/ and the diphthongs AE, AU, OE - [More on Latin in English](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/more-on-latin-in-english) - The pronunciation of Latin words and phrases in an English-speaking context is quite complicated, because three separate traditions clash, making it difficult to be consistent. John Wells has been writing about this recently, here, here and here. First there is the traditional treatment, which arises from the way in which English pronunciation has changed over - [Stephen Hawking's voice](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/stephen-hawkings-voice) - The Investor's Business Daily has now changed its article alleging that if Stephen Hawking were British he would be dead by now. As Geoff Pullum at Language Log has pointed out, Prof. Hawking is and ever has been British, and has lived all his life in Britain. It is the voice synthesizer that confuses people. - [Email etiquette](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/email-etiquette) - A couple of years ago, when the television film about my brother's death was making headlines, I had an email from a Sky News journalist, wanting to interview me. It began "Hi Graham". The woman writing had never heard of me until two days before, and yet she was presuming to write as if we - [Latin pronunciation](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/latin-pronunciation) - Philip Belcher points out that the "correct" Latin pronunciation of 'difficile' is [di'fɪkɪleɪ]. He is right - for Classical Latin. The letter C was always pronounced [k]. However, the way in which English developed through the centuries meant that gradually the pronunciation of Latin words that were frequently used in English changed at the same - [Deprecated](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/deprecated) - This blog is hosted by Wordpress, whose own development blog today has this: "The WordPress team had initially committed to maintaining the WordPress 2.0.x legacy branch until 2010. Unfortunately, we bit off more than we could chew—the 2.0.x branch is now retired and deprecated, a few months shy of 2010." What is "deprecated" supposed to - [Moon Landing](https://www.linguism.co.uk/general/moon-landing) - This has nothing to do with language, but this weekend, the world commemorates the 40th aniversary of the first moon landing. In the US, it is celebrated as 20 July. This is correct (in UTC) for the landing, but I remember clearly staying up until three in the morning of 21 July to watch Neil - [More on money](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/more-on-money) - Following on from my previous post on money, it occurred to me that 1½d was almost always pronounced three ha'pence, and less often a penny ha'penny while 1½p was always one and a half pence. The abbreviation for the old penny was d, standing for the Latin denarius, just as s stood not for shilling - [Iranian](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/iranian) - With this word in the news almost every day at the moment, we are hearing two pronunciations from British broadcasters: /ıˈreınıən/ and /ıˈrɑːnıən/. The first of these is, I think, the majority pronunciation, but the second is heard from many who would probably consider themselves better informed about the country and its people - for - [By or for?](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/376) - Interviewed on this morning's BBC Radio4 'Today' programme about the election of John Bercow as the new Speaker of the House of Commons, the MP Nadine Dorries (Conservative, Mid Bedfordshire) claimed that this was a vindictive act on behalf of the Labour Party. I wonder who committed it, then. I think she meant to say - [Weak form loss](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/weak-form-loss) - John Wells has been talking (here and here) about the loss of weak forms from English. Two more that have disappeared for an understandable reason are the weak forms of penny and pence. Before decimalization of the British currency in 1971, any amount of money ending in -pence was pronounced /... p(ə)ns/: twopence (usually spelt - [Loss of anglicizations](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/loss-of-anglicizations) - T Morris, in a comment to this post, asks why there are no English 'translations' of French place names, such as there are in other languages (Parigi in Italian) or as there are for English names in other languages (Rome rather than Roma). In fact, there are English spellings of French place names that differ - [Descriptive or prescriptive?](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/52) - syz takes me to task for wanting people to follow the BBC (and John Wells') recommendation for Beijing, and implies that as linguists should describe language, I am guilty of prescriptivism. Linguists are in a bind here: we all pay lip service to the need for the objective description of language, but as soon as - [L'Aquila](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/laquila) - John Wells' blog of 13 April deals with the inability of many BBC reporters to pronounce the unfortunate earthquake-stricken Italian town. As he says, the Guardian's Alexander Chancellor takes the Pronunciation Unit to task for not doing its job properly. Later in the week, on 16 April, John quotes Jo Kim's reply: that the Unit - [Blaenau Gwent](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/blaenau-gwent) - Mark Easton, the BBC's Home Editor, reported on the employment situation in this constituency on Wednesday, 22 April, Budget Day here in Britain. However, he did not do his homework properly, for he made the classic mistake of non-Welsh speakers by pronouncing the first word of the place /ˈblaɪnaʊ/ instead of /ˈblaɪnaɪ/. Yet again, 2 - [Colombia ~ Columbia ~ Colombo](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/colombia-columbia-colombo) - Colombia is a country in the extreme north of South America, pronounced with the second syllable like the surname of the actor Herbert Lom. British Columbia is a province of Canada, and the District of Columbia is where the US capital city is to be found. These are both pronounced with the second syllable like - [Heavenly Peace](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/heavenly-peace) - Throughout the Chinese Cultural Revolution, and for some years afterwards, the Square of the Gate of Heavenly Peace was frequently mentioned in the news. Then at the time of the student democracy protests in 1989, with no explanation that I can remember, we were told that they were concentrated in Tiananmen Square (which most people - [Gender and Sex](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/gender-and-sex) - In a comment on my post Gender in French, Pat Franczyk shows the danger of confusing the meanings of these two words. It has often been said that "language has gender, but animals and plants have sex". The ambiguity of the second half of this aphorism shows why gender is often used to mean 'sex'. - [New words or old?](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/new-words-or-old) - I've recently come across two words I'd never seen before. The immediate reaction is to think that the writer has either mis-remembered another word, or simply made it up on the hoof: "To cut this delay, the control unit briefly richens the fuel/air mixture fed to the engine and at the same time causes air - [More on the case of in case](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/more-on-the-case-of-in-case) - I'm sorry I've been 'absent' for a couple of weeks, but pressure of other work has meant that this blog had to take second place. However, ... As John Wells says in his comment to my last post, we are dealing with two constructions here: in case, and in case of. In case, followed by - [In case ...](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/in-case) - Wherever I go in Europe, I seem to see signs outside lifts that say "Do not use the lift in case of fire". Inevitably, one of the British people standing waiting for the lift to arrive then says "We shouldn't use this lift, because it might catch fire". Knowing smiles are exchanged, meaning "Foreigners can't - [Crossword puzzle](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/crossword-puzzle) - Jack Windsor Lewis' blog 151 mentions the fact that 'ch' is counted as a single letter when alphabetising Welsh, Spanish (but not Portuguese) and Czech. Double 'll' is likewise a single 'letter' in both Welsh and Spanish (as an example, lomo comes before llegar in a list of Spanish words), and 'aa' (increasingly old-fashioned alternative - [Vanishing r](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/vanishing-r) - It's well known that "Febuary" is a common pronunciation (and spelling - 706 million hits on Google, but with multiple warnings about "Did you mean to search for February?"), but it's by no means the only English word that tends to lose an r or /r/. Usually it occurs when two /r/ phonemes start consecutive - [Language, Variety, Dialect](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/language-variety-dialect) - In a comment on last week's post about 'snow terms', John Cowan takes me to task for comparing apples with lemons (a 'malo-citrine' comment is how he puts it) when I wrote that 'lie', 'settle', 'stick' and 'pitch' were alternative terms in use in various dialects of English. He maintains that while 'pitch' is a - [Snow terms](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/snow-terms) - England has had far more snow this winter than for many a long year - 18 according to the Meteorological Office. When snow falls and does not immediately melt, what is it doing? In Scotland, it is said to be lying. In many parts of England it settles, but in the North West of England - [Apostrophes](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/apostrophes-2) - Last week, Birmingham City Council announced that it was no longer going to put apostrophes in its street names. This caused an outcry in the press. I can only assume the council needs the publicity, because the placing of apostrophes in place names has been inconsistent in many places and for many years, and without - [Today's "Today"](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/todays-today) - The Today Programme on Radio 4 has this morning once again demonstrated the ignorance of journalists about the nature of language - the main tool of their trade. This was particularly deplorable this morning (Thursday 29 January) as both its presenters claim some expertise in the subject: Edward Stourton has proclaimed himself a linguist, as - [English Polish](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/english-polish) - Philip Taylor has asked about the anglicisation of Łódż. I have mentioned this place before, here, but only in passing, so perhaps it is time to give a bit more background. Until about 1980, the BBC recommendations for Polish took no account of the barred l, partly because it had such an apparently strange pronunciation, - [Where do you shop?](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/where-do-you-shop) - In Britain the answer might be at ASDA, Tesco, Waitrose, Sainsbury's, Morrison's, Marks & Spencer's, Debenham's, Harrod's ... But some would say "Tesco's", and I've also heard "Waitrose's". The 'regular' treatment of shop names is to add the genitive to a family name (i.e. 'Mr Sainsbury's shop, Mr Morrison's shop' etc.), but not to a - [r-deletion](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/r-deletion) - There have been a few comments about my post on 'vanishing r', including one from Jack Windsor Lewis (his blog 145 on 29 December 2008). He suspects that the lack of complaints from the public about the 'mispronunciation' of veterinary/veterinarian was due to its relative rarity as a word. However, what I did not write - [lure, allure](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/lure-allure) - Following on from my last post, with /jʊ/ words being fronted and confused with /ɪ/ words, I'm reminded that a few years ago, a TV programme included a demonstration of falconry, and the expert said she used a /lɜː/. The interviewer was clearly puzzled by this, and asked for an explanation. It turned out that - [Diocese](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/diocese) - 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: - [Rumbustious nuptials](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/rumbustious-nuptials) - In his post of 27 November 2008, John Wells mentions the substitution of '-uous', '-ual' for '-ious' and '-ial' in the pronunciation of these two words. There is a more widespread confusion in the minds of English speakers about words ending in -ious, -ial, -iary, -uous, -ual and -uary (and probably -iate and -uate, although - [Confusion of constructions](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/confusion-of-constructions) - An article in The Independent on 22 November 2008 includes this sentence: "The US is in a sitting duck administration until Barack Obama can take office in January." Yesterday I heard a broadcaster say that someone would have to "pay the sacrifice". These are examples of the confusion of two constructions,which it is easy to - [More on BBC Pronunciation](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/more-on-bbc-pronunciation) - It's been very noticeable over the past week or so that almost all BBC broadcasters, from whatever department, are now saying 'bay-jing' for the Chinese capital. It's been confirmed today by "a BBC employee" that a directive has been sent out by senior management that everyone must toe this line. At least this is telling - [Spanish historical phonology/phonetics](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/spanish-historical-phonologyphonetics) - Athel Cornish-Bowden asks, in a comment under the post on English spelling reform, if Spanish spelling has remained constant over hundreds of years, as his Spanish host claimed a few weeks ago. Well, up to a point, Lord Copper. We have to distinguish between changes in the spelling, and changes in the pronunciation which may - [English spelling reform](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/english-spelling-reform) - This year has seen the centenary of the Spelling Society, formerly the Simplified Spelling Society, and inevitably there has been a lot of comment in the press, mostly uninformed criticism of anyone (particularly John Wells, as its President) who supports even a modicum of reform as an abandonment of "standards". Proposals for reforming English spelling - [Boulogne, Gdansk and Spain](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/boulogne-gdansk-and-spain) - A post on Languagehat (18 September) about the variant spellings of Boleyn (as in Anne Boleyn), and its origin in the place name Boulogne reminds me that I've been thinking about the anglicization of this name and others for some time. Going back to the early 1980s and the rise of Solidarity in Poland, the - [Two squibs in reply to other blogs](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/two-squibs-in-reply-to-other-blogs) - First, in yesterday's blog entry, John Wells claims of "agrément": "You read it here first". Perhaps you did, but John has not read Word for Word, pictured in the column to the right of this, which Stewart Clark and I published in 2003: agrément, borrowed from French, is found on a product's label to show - [False Friends](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/false-friends) - Anyone learning a foreign language soon becomes aware of false friends - those words that look alike in both the languages. One of the most obvious false friends in English for anyone learning it is actual. Most European languages seem to have a word that looks very much like it, but which means something different, - [Spanish spelling](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/spanish-spelling) - The Spelling Society is to hold its centenary conference at Coventry University, and ahead of this, an article in Tuesday's Guardian quotes the Society's Secretary, Dr John Gledhill, as saying "In other languages, like Italian and Spanish, if you learn the alphabet, you know how to spell". No one can doubt that learning to spell - [Beijing vs Peking](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/beijing-vs-peking) - A letter in the Independent newspaper last week (Wednesday 21 November), from Shirin Tata of London, explained the spelling and pronunciation of Peking as 'a close approximation to the Cantonese name for the city ("puck-ing" with a hard "p")'. This came about, the writer says, because early contacts between Europe and China were with traders - [More on Beijing, Peking and name changes](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/more-on-beijing-peking-and-name-changes) - Lilli Lee asks if we can still order Peking Duck, or whether we now have to ask for Beijing Duck. Some names are fixed, and regardless of other changes in the language, they remain. Strangely, this has happened three times with phrases containing the word duck: we can still order Peking Duck and Bombay Duck - [Back to Beijing](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/back-to-beijing) - John Wells' blog today mentions the pronunciation of Beijing, and the BBC Pronunciation Unit's recommendation to pronounce the -j- in the same way as in the English word 'jingle'. He wonders how many people will heed the advice (and it's what he gives in the Longman English Pronunciation Dictionary as well). From my experience, not - [French names - stress](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/french-names-stress) - In fact, French names cause all sorts of problems for English speakers, not least of where to put the stress. French, of course, has no lexical stress, but it would be impossible for an English speaker to avoid stressing at least one syllable in a name. Where should that stress go? The names of Presidents - [More on French names](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/more-on-french-names) - Athel Cornish-Bowden in Marseille asks about the final -s in some French place names, and French versions of non-French place names (e.g. Douvres, Londres, Cornouailles). The final -s in these names is often the final remnant of the Old French masculine nominative singular case, which in turn is the left over of Latin final -us - [French linguistic politics](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/french-linguistic-politics) - Language Log today has an example of amazing French official duplicity, arrogance, ignorance and dishonesty. A representative of the Académie Française claims that the minority languages of France are nothing more than debased dialects, unworthy of being recognised as languages at all, having failed to produce writers of the calibre of Balzac, Montesquieu, etc. On - [Anglicizing Spanish names](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/anglicizing-spanish-names) - It ought to be easy to establish anglicized versions of Spanish names - stress is as important in Spanish as in English, and there are far fewer phonemes in Spanish than in English, so we should be able to find equivalents without too much trouble. A major difficulty is the assumption that many British people - [Anglicizing Spanish (2)](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/anglicizing-spanish-2) - Now we come to the consonants. Castilian Spanish is one of the few European languages to include a voiceless dental fricative /θ/ in its phoneme inventory. As this is a very common sound in English, it should present no problems whatsoever for the English speaker. Unfortunately, orthographically, it is either or . This leads - [Anglicizing Spanish (3)](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/anglicizing-spanish-3) - And finally, the vowels. Conveniently, the traditional five vowel letters, correspond to the five Castilian Spanish vowel phonemes, /a, e, i, o, u/. can also represent /i/. The two mid vowels, /e/ and /o/, have two positionally determined allophones: [e, ɛ] and [o, ɔ]. /e/ is [ɛ] adjacent to - [Ejectives in English](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/ejectives-in-english) - I suppose I first became properly aware of ejectives being used in English about twenty years ago, when I noticed a couple of my colleagues at work (non-linguists both) using them. I don't know of any systematic study of their use, although a poster paper was given at BAAP in 2006, here, dealing with their - [A French "success" story](https://www.linguism.co.uk/general/a-french-success-story) - Now for something completely different. In April, a French luxury yacht, the Ponant, with thirty crew members on board, was hijacked by pirates in the Gulf. The French government decided to pull out all the stops to mount a rescue. The BBC reported the affair rather sketchily, here, here, here, and here, but now the - [Radovan Karadžić](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/radovan-karadzic) - With this man's arrest at the weekend, broadcasters are once more having to struggle with the pronunciation of his name. The BBC recommendation, which corresponds to that given in most if not all manuals of pronunciation for Serbian, is to treat the 'dž', written with the single letter 'џ' in Cyrillic, as the straightforward English - [Another family name](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/another-family-name) - My paternal grandmother's maiden name was Winkle. Don't laugh - this is a relatively common name in the Potteries, and presumably originates in the place name Wincle, which is a village in Cheshire. The Oxford Names Companion gives two possible etymologies of the place name: "Hill of a man called *Wineca", or "Hill by a - [More on 'one of the only'](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/more-on-one-of-the-only) - Definitions of adjectival "only" from recent dictionaries: "alone of its or their kind; single or solitary" (Compact Oxford English Dictionary for Students) "used to say that there is one person, thing or group in a particular situation and no others" (Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English) "single in number; without others of the kind; without others - [One of the only](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/one-of-the-only) - "We offer a fast, reliable, honestly priced connection, plus we're one of the only internet providers in the UK to donate all our profits to charity." This is the claim of Waitrose.com. It's amazing how anyone can really think that "one of" and "only" can come together in the same sentence. A moment's thought must - [However, ...](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/however) - I was always taught that the word however is either surrounded by commas, in a sentence like If you do this, however, you will get into trouble, or else it must be either the first or last word in the sentence, and whatever its position, it is an adverb. Now, even on government websites, it - [Respelling](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/respelling) - I don't often disagree with John Wells, but I have to make an exception in the case of his blog entry for yesterday (St George's Day 2008 - 23 April). He says: "In the respelling systems I designed first for the Reader’s Digest Great Illustrated Dictionary (1984) and then later for the Encarta World English - [Linguistic Rhythm](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/linguistic-rhythm) - Traditionally, since the days of Arthur Lloyd James and Kenneth Lee Pike, languages have been divided into two broad types: syllable-timed and stress-timed. French was considered the archetypal syllable-timed language (Lloyd James called this 'machine gun rhythm'), in which each syllable had a similar duration, and English, probably the language whose rhythm has been studied - [Afghanistan again](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/afghanistan-again) - Angshu, in a comment on my 'Afghanistan' post, has been critical of my reasoning for recommending the English pronunciation of Afghanistan even to Mishal Husain, who uses a variant that may or may not be an Afghan (whether Dari or Pushtu) pronunciation. Angshu appears to be saying that a bilingual French and English speaker should - [Marcel Berlins and the BBC Pronunciation Unit](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/marcel-berlins-and-the-bbc-pronunciation-unit) - The debate over the pronunciation of Pres. Sarkozy's name rumbles on. John Wells today seems to be advocating middle syllable stress as the obvious one for English speakers, but he is ignoring the predecents of Mitterrand and Pompidou. He suggests that only an out-of-touch pedant would advise the Hungarian stress, but neither Mitterrand nor Pompidou - [Foreign place names (2)](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/foreign-place-names-2) - Now we get to the difficult ones. The fourth way of turning a foreign name into your own language is to look at it, and think, well it's spelt Łódż, so I'll call it /lɒdz/. This makes no attempt to imitate the original language, but simply takes the basic letter shapes and gives them their - [Foreign place names (1)](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/foreign-place-names-1) - The discussion about Beijing and/or Peking rumbles on, and leads to the more general question of how we can decide what to call geographical locations in foreign countries. This doesn't just apply to English, but to any language. So far as I can see, there are only five ways of naming, and this post will - [Gender in French](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/gender-in-french) - I am very grateful to JJM who has answered my plea for information about what the French do with feminine nouns referring to masculine creatures (e.g. sentinelle, recrue) (see his note to "(s)he vs they"), and says that the French have less difficulty separating gender from sex than English speakers do. Now comes the worrying - [Essential?](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/essential) - The first dictionary definitions of essential are 'vital', 'absolutely necessary'. However there is one place where we see the word every day when this is not its meaning, even if the users of the word would like us to think it is. Manufacturers of soaps, shower gels, shampoos and the like are keen to tell - [Afghanistan](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/afghanistan) - A number of broadcasting journalists are of Asian origin. Most - if not all - of them speak English without any trace of a "foreign" or non-native accent - until it comes to names from their parents' part of the world. A case in point is Afghanistan, which Mishal Husain pronounces with a very un-English - [Salman Rushdie](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/salman-rushdie) - The knighthood conferred on this author has brought him back into the spotlight. Unfortunately, many people still find it difficult to pronounce his name correctly, including some BBC newsreaders (Natasha Kaplinsky on 18 June, for instance). The man in the street can be excused - not everyone know Sir Salman personally, nor speaks Urdu, but - [French place names in English](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/french-place-names-in-english) - In the days before most people were literate, there were only two ways to pronounce a foreign place name - you either pronounced it more or less how the locals pronounced it, or you ignored their name and gave the place/river/mountain/whatever a name of your own. This meant we said Paris as 'parriss' and Lyon - [Spanish sportsmen](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/spanish-sportsmen) - What is it about Spanish names that sports commentators can never get them right? For the past four days, not a single BBC sports reporter or commentator has pronounced Sergio García's first name correctly (let's leave aside for the moment whether the second name 'should be' garssee-a or garthee-a). They seem to have no problem - [Kofi Annan and Edward Stourton](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/kofi-annan-and-edward-stourton) - When Mr Annan was appointed as Secretary General of the United Nations, we in the BBC's Pronunciation Research Unit were sent a tape of his inauguration, in the course of which he had to pronounce his own name. He clearly said "I, KOHfi ANNann" (re-spelt to show where he placed the stresses: -oh as in - [Kofi Annan](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/kofi-annan) - Abdul is right in his comment on "Kofi Annan and Edward Stourton": the news readers can't deal with the sounds and phonotactics of other languages - and the Pronunciation Research Unit doesn't expect them to. As he points out, the syllable-final -h of the name Fahmi can have two solutions: ignore it, and say /fa:mi/, - [The Really Terrible Orchestra](https://www.linguism.co.uk/music/the-really-terrible-orchestra) - Yesterday evening, the Really Terrible Orchestra, founded in Edinburgh by Alexander McCall Smith and his wife, gave a concert in London, and, according to the press reports, received a standing ovation at the end. How often are children told that "If a thing's worth doing, it's worth doing well"? The RTO goes to the other - [Ps and Qs](https://www.linguism.co.uk/names/ps-and-qs) - 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 - [Fricative or Affricate?](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/fricative-or-affricate) - Jack Windsor Lewis has brought up the subject of the letter 'j' and its interpretation by English speakers when it comes in non-English words. It is a problem: in the Germanic languages, plus Polish, Czech and Italian it is regularly pronounced [j] (i.e. like the English consonantal 'y'), but in Spanish it is a voiceless - [(s)he vs they](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/she-vs-they) - 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 - [Dictionary writers](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/dictionary-writers) - Samuel Johnson famously defined a lexicographer as "a harmless drudge", and there were a few other semi-humorous comments in his dictionary, including the non-definition of 'trolmydames': "Of this word I know not the meaning". Chambers (or, as it used to be called, Chambers's) Dictionary is well worth reading like any other book, or at least - [orthographic Z in foreign words](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/orthographic-z-in-foreign-words) - 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 - [Am I being sexist?](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/am-i-being-sexist) - 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 - [uu vs. oo](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/uu-vs-oo) - 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 - [The BBC and its Pronunciation Unit](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/the-bbc-and-its-pronunciation-unit) - 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 - [Urdu in English](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/urdu-in-english) - 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 - [As Time Goes By](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/as-time-goes-by) - 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 - [Doh!](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/doh) - 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 - [Malapropisms](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/malapropisms) - 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. - [Daniel Defoe and English grammar](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/daniel-defoe-and-english-grammar) - I've been reading some Defoe novels recently, and it's surprising how many 'mistakes' in grammar he makes that are frequently seen these days and attributed to the poor teaching of English over the last half century: confusion of who and whom; using I in contexts that clearly demand me; and these sort of ... are - [BBC Language Advisor](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/bbc-language-advisor) - An open letter to the BBC suggests that it needs a Language Advisor, not (according to the interview Ian Bruton-Simmonds, one of the authors, gave to the Today programme this morning) to shame broadcasters publicly about their poor English, but to have a quiet word with them, so that they don't do it again. In - ["Foreign" sounds in English](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/foreign-sounds-in-english) - I quite agree with Abdul (writing in response to my post on Afghanistan, 18 June 2007) that no one can be expected to know the "correct" pronunciation of every name. That is why the BBC has its Pronunciation Research Unit, which is dedicated to finding out the native pronunciation of any name (or indeed any - [Clostridium difficile - again](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/clostridium-difficile-again) - With this "superbug" back in the news, it seems time to revisit the subject of its pronunciation. The name contains two Latin words, and as Latin, the second word should be pronounced with four syllables, and stressed on the second. The official BBC line however is to pronounce the second word as if it was - [languagehat](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/languagehat) - I've been very flattered by the review of my piece on the Oxford BBC Guide to Pronunciation in languagehat. It's started a lot of reaction as well, several points being raised about other things I've mentioned. I'll take them up one at a time. First, in my piece on the Dictionary, I used the same - [diffuse - defuse](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/diffuse-defuse) - According to BBC News 24, two car bombs have been successfully diffused in London. I don't think that is what they are intending to say, but every TV anchor and reporter on the spot is saying this. If it were true, it would mean that the car bombs had been spread out across the capital. - [Nuclear](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/nuclear) - In reports sent from Baghdad on 28 May 2007, in which Paul Wood commented on the talks between US and Iranian representatives, he clearly pronounced the word nuclear as ['nju:kyul@] (-@ representing the neutral vowel, schwa). This is very close to the pronunciation Pres. George W Bush uses, and for which he has been pilloried - [inter, intern, interment, internment](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/inter-intern-interment-internment) - Yesterday I had to go to a funeral. There was a complete order of service, as is normal these days, and I was rather surprised to see, not once, but three times, reference to the deceased's "internment". This had nothing to do with service in the IRA during the Northern Irish Troubles, but was telling - [Under-estimate vs over-estimate](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/under-estimate-vs-over-estimate) - An article in the Independent on Sunday (10 December 2006), headed "Why should the Iranians help? Here's why" starts with the sentence "It is difficult to under-estimate the taboo which has been broken by the Iraq Study Group's suggestion that the United States seeks a diplomatic engagement with Syria and more particularly Iran, in order - [The Oxford BBC Guide to Pronunciation](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/the-oxford-bbc-guide-to-pronunciation) - This is the latest in a succession of publications dating back to the 1920s to put before the public the BBC's recommendations on pronunciation. The Advisory Committee on Spoken English, which functioned from 1926 to the outbreak of the Second World War, first published the results of its deliberations in short articles in Radio Times, - [Apostrophes](https://www.linguism.co.uk/language/apostrophes) - There's been some correspondence in the British press recently about punctuation, and in particular the apostrophe, with one writer at least saying that as you don't hear the apostrophe when you speak, you don't really need to write it - what purpose does it serve? Well, most punctuation isn't heard. While full stops and commas, - [My first post](https://www.linguism.co.uk/general/my-first-post) - This blog will be about language - mainly - with some references to genealogy and music. Maybe all three at once sometimes. ## Pages - [About](https://www.linguism.co.uk/about) - What gives me the qualifications to write about language? After taking degrees that included the study of French, Spanish, Linguistics and Phonetics, I lectured on English phonetics for half a dozen years, and was then the BBC's Pronunciation Adviser for over twenty years. I was the editor of the 2nd edition of the BBC Pronouncing ## Categories - [Language](https://www.linguism.co.uk/category/language) - My thoughts on language and linguistics and the use of language in the media - [General](https://www.linguism.co.uk/category/general) - A general category with posts about all sorts of things - [Names](https://www.linguism.co.uk/category/names) - History, pronunciation of individual names, whether place or personal. - [Genealogy](https://www.linguism.co.uk/category/genealogy) - My own family history, family names and genealogy in general - [Music](https://www.linguism.co.uk/category/music) - Anything about music - [Spanish](https://www.linguism.co.uk/category/language/spanish) - Spanish language articles - [French](https://www.linguism.co.uk/category/language/french) - French language articles - [Chinese](https://www.linguism.co.uk/category/language/chinese) - Chinese language articles - [Latin](https://www.linguism.co.uk/category/language/latin) - [Russian](https://www.linguism.co.uk/category/language/russian) - [Norwegian](https://www.linguism.co.uk/category/language/norwegian) - [Greek](https://www.linguism.co.uk/category/language/greek) ## Tags - [bbc](https://www.linguism.co.uk/tag/bbc) - [radio 4](https://www.linguism.co.uk/tag/radio-4) - [cognitive](https://www.linguism.co.uk/tag/cognitive) - [john humphrys](https://www.linguism.co.uk/tag/john-humphrys) - [english](https://www.linguism.co.uk/tag/english) - [reporters](https://www.linguism.co.uk/tag/reporters) - [journalists](https://www.linguism.co.uk/tag/journalists) - [david crystal](https://www.linguism.co.uk/tag/david-crystal) - [moshtarak](https://www.linguism.co.uk/tag/moshtarak) - [dari](https://www.linguism.co.uk/tag/dari) - [afghanistan](https://www.linguism.co.uk/tag/afghanistan) - [wymondham](https://www.linguism.co.uk/tag/wymondham) - [norfolk](https://www.linguism.co.uk/tag/norfolk) - [wymondley](https://www.linguism.co.uk/tag/wymondley) - [hertfordshire](https://www.linguism.co.uk/tag/hertfordshire) - [place names](https://www.linguism.co.uk/tag/place-names) - [england](https://www.linguism.co.uk/tag/england) - [uttoxeter](https://www.linguism.co.uk/tag/uttoxeter) - [dialect](https://www.linguism.co.uk/tag/dialect) - [john wells](https://www.linguism.co.uk/tag/john-wells) - [jack windsor](https://www.linguism.co.uk/tag/jack-windsor) - [hospital](https://www.linguism.co.uk/tag/hospital) - [orbital](https://www.linguism.co.uk/tag/orbital) - [digital](https://www.linguism.co.uk/tag/digital) - [pronunciation](https://www.linguism.co.uk/tag/pronunciation) - [port-au-prince](https://www.linguism.co.uk/tag/port-au-prince) - [haiti](https://www.linguism.co.uk/tag/haiti) - [culture](https://www.linguism.co.uk/tag/culture) - [scottish](https://www.linguism.co.uk/tag/scottish) - [edinburgh](https://www.linguism.co.uk/tag/edinburgh) - [rhythm](https://www.linguism.co.uk/tag/rhythm) - [speech](https://www.linguism.co.uk/tag/speech) - [family name](https://www.linguism.co.uk/tag/family-name) - [spelling](https://www.linguism.co.uk/tag/spelling) - [meaning](https://www.linguism.co.uk/tag/meaning) - [intonation](https://www.linguism.co.uk/tag/intonation) - [punctuation](https://www.linguism.co.uk/tag/punctuation) - [music](https://www.linguism.co.uk/tag/music-2) - [Latin](https://www.linguism.co.uk/tag/latin) - [German](https://www.linguism.co.uk/tag/german) - [Italian](https://www.linguism.co.uk/tag/italian) - [French](https://www.linguism.co.uk/tag/french) - [accent](https://www.linguism.co.uk/tag/accent) - [social standing](https://www.linguism.co.uk/tag/social-standing) - [broadcasting](https://www.linguism.co.uk/tag/broadcasting) - [words](https://www.linguism.co.uk/tag/words) - [language](https://www.linguism.co.uk/tag/language) - [usage](https://www.linguism.co.uk/tag/usage) - [Greek](https://www.linguism.co.uk/tag/greek)