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 us where his body was to lie after the ceremony. I put the confusion down to poor proof-reading in the hurry to produce the sheet in time, so I was very much taken aback to hear the priest in charge (this was a very high Anglican funeral, complete with request for God to bless the Pope – Henry VIII would not have been amused), having told us that the body would be interred in the parish burial ground, go on to invite all members of the congregation to attend the “internment”. The order of service was clearly deliberately spelled in that way.

Ironically, in her eulogy, the widow told us that one of the things her late husband had always hated, and pointed out in books and newspapers, was misspelling.

inter = bury

intern = imprison without trial

interment = burial

internment = imprisonment without trial

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 in the Press. It seems a strange mispronunciation to make, as the word clear is so common. What I think is happening is that the speaker – whether Paul Wood or ‘Dubya’ – is likening the word to those words which do end in -cular: e.g. jocular, vernacular, funicular, and also creating an assimilation of the vowel in the first syllable [ju:] to a second, non-orthographic, syllable, aided by the [l] which is darkened also by assimilation to the previous vowel.

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 time, and in the same way, so that C before AE, E, I, OE or Y came to be pronounced [s] – Caesar, Cicero, coeliac, Cymbeline. I don’t imagine for a second that Philip is suggesting we should go back to the Classical Latin pronunciations of these words. I’m sure that at no point did the English think they were moving away from the Latin pronunciation – just as they did not realise that their pronunciation of English words was changing at the same time.

Scientific terms – particularly the specific names of plants and animals – have generally been pronounced according to the traditional English development of Latin pronunciation – V as [v] rather than [w], AE as [i:], not [aɪ], and C as [s] or [k] depending on the following vowel (even /ʃ/ in some cases – prima facie /ˈpraɪmə ˈfeɪʃi/ comes to mind). Therefore, the Latin word DIFFICILE becomes [di’fɪsɪli], just as facsimile is pronounced [fæk’sɪmɪli].

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 to alleviate its deteriorating situation in Iraq.”

Putting to one side whether “seeks” or “seek” would be better here, the sentence opens with a phrase that means the opposite of what the writer intends to say.

If we under-estimate something, we do not pay as much attention to it as it deserves. Here the writer wants to say that the breaking of the taboo is such an important step that no matter how important we think it, it is actually even more important.

Two ways in which he could have expressed himself better are “It is difficult to over-estimate …” or “It is easy to under-estimate …”

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, before gathering them together in a series of booklets called Broadcast English. The first of these dealt with “words of doubtful pronunciation”, and subsequent volumes covered English, Scottish, Welsh, and Northern Irish Place Names, British Family Names and Titles, and lastly, Foreign Place Names. The proposed final volume, on Foreign Personal Names, was never completed because of the outbreak of the Second World War.

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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, and some question marks, mark the intonation pattern, which we do hear, most other punctuation marks, and all apostrophes and capital letters, are as silent as the initial “w” in “wrong”. To go even further, most word divisions can’t be heard either. We put them in to make it easier for the reader to understand quickly what he or she is reading. Try this:

Thissentenceisquitehardtoreadbecauseihaventincludedanybreaksatall.

Not easy. Imagine whole paragraphs written like that. Early writing didn’t make the divisions, but at some stage writers decided that it was convenient to put a space between words. Later still, punctuation marks were gradually introduced. The apostrophe was quite a recent innovation, again because writers felt the need for it. Now it is a question of courtesy to the reader to use it according to the accepted rules, so that it takes less time to scan the passage and get the maximum amount of meaning out of it.