Talk:Spelling pronunciation

Where are these pronounciations heard?

Are the examples of English words intended to be Commonwealth (British) English, American English, or both? I'm probably not the best person to ask about this, but I have never heard "weskit" or the alternate pronunciation of "forehead" (silent h, or some such?) in American speech, and often use/hear "off-ten" and "callm" (like saying "call" and closing your lips at the end of "call") in daily life, especially when the speaker is trying to be "careful" or articulate.

Any ideas whether this is a) a product of modern times (ie, older pronunciations are less common, so are not heard much), b) a difference between England and America, c) a difference in dialects inside America (or perhaps England),

Hi Jacius, Probably, a mixture of all of the above. Weskit is (I believe) British; Americans use the word "vest" instead. Indeed, "weskit" is probably almost extinct even in Britain--the Oxford English Dictionary calls the pronunciation "colloquial or vulgar".

I've heard "cahm", "offen", and "forrid" from Americans.

or am I just odd? --Jacius 19:44, 16 Oct 2004 (UTC)

No, you're just (as I see from your blog) young. Thus, it's likely you've talked with a narrower range of people than a typical older person has. Also, your life experience goes less far back in time, and thus you're less likely to have heard the non-spelling pronunciations, which are in many cases dying out. Cheers, Opus33 21:36, 16 Oct 2004 (UTC)

One place where otherwise non-"forrid" Americans might have heard that pronunciation of the word is from the nursery rhyme/song:

There was a little girl

Who had a little curl

Right in the middle of her forehead

And when she was good

She was very very good

And when she was bad she was horrid

... which I have explicitly heard in our cartoons at least once (I think it might have been Bugs Bunny). (Apparently it's by Longfellow ?!) In other contexts 'forrid' sounds incorrigibly British to me (whether or not it actually be). —Muke Tever 13:57, 1 Jun 2005 (UTC)

"forrid" is used by my grandparents and others with fairly strong Southern accents in North Carolina. Not all that surprising, since Southern dialect is very conservative in a lot of ways; like some other traditional pronunciations, it probably sounds uneducated to many people.

"Forrid" is also favoured by Ogden Nash: in his poem about "Genteel Janet", describing a ludicrously over-refined lower middle class type, he says "Her speech is new-minted, freshly quarried/ She has a fore-head, you have a forehead". Sir Myles na Gopaleen (the da) 09:03, 9 June 2006 (UTC)

Lowering the POV level

The definition we had before:

A spelling pronunciation is a pronunciation based on spelling that differs from the accepted pronunciation standard

is not, I believe, the usual definition of this term. I've replaced it with this:

a pronunciation that, instead of reflecting the way the word was pronounced by previous generations of speakers, is a rendering in sound of the word's spelling

The former definition, in addition to being non-standard, has the further defect of getting us into endless debates about what is "the accepted pronunciation standard". NRicardo has weighed in with his opinion about "forrid"--"hick"--which doubtless will offend many speakers of British dialect, where (at least according to the Oxford English Dictionary) "forrid" is actually the preferred alternative. It's not our job to put our own tastes and opinions about pronunciation into the Wikipedia; we should just report the facts.Opus33 16:38, 30 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Historical examples

One further point: the definition I've inserted permits us to include examples where the spelling pronunciation has actually won out over time, which in my opinion include some of the most interesting examples. Opus33 16:38, 30 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Yes, those are the most interesting. For example, the late Kingsley Amis (in "The King's English") inveighs against spelling pronunciations, but regards traditional pronunciations such as "goff" (for golf) and "gel" (for girl) as insufferable affectations, and I have something of the same feeling about the pronunciation of "nephew" as "nevew". However, "nevew" was undoubtedly the older pronunciation: in the Middle Ages it was even spelled that way, and the spelling "nephew" was introduced by Elizabethan purists who wanted to show off the derivation from Latin nepos. ((I think you mean "pedants" Alsihler 18:44, 17 December 2006 (UTC))) Had Amis lived fifty years earlier he would certainly have attacked "neffyou" as a flagrant spelling pronunciation. As with all linguistic changes, the only safe advice is to stick to the old version for as long as it conveys your meaning and remains socially acceptable, and abandon it when you begin to get funny looks.

I agree with previous contributors that, in the case of "waistcoat"->"weskit", that point has arrived, even in conservative British circles. On the other hand I still have a residual feeling (like Amis and Fowler) that it is schoolmarmy over-enunciation to pronounce the first "t" in "waistcoat" (or "chestnut" or "Christmas"), and therefore hover between "waiscote" and "waiscot". --Sir Myles na Gopaleen (the da) 15:50, 17 May 2006 (UTC)

Thackeray, in "The History of Henry Esmond", records several 17th-18th century pronunciations which are now completely superseded by spelling pronunciations. Examples are "chainey" for "China" (meaning porcelain), "goold" for "gold" and "Candish" for the name "Cavendish". Other examples, such as "Pumfret" for "Pontefract", have become obsolete more recently.--Sir Myles na Gopaleen (the da) 12:54, 19 May 2006 (UTC)

Another example is the word "falcon", in the Middle Ages spelled, and until fairly recently pronounced, "fawcon". Here again I think the spelling pronunciation has won out completely.Sir Myles na Gopaleen (the da) 15:15, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

I've tinkered with the examples a bit, but in general the whole discussion seemed to me to take rather too much for granted. Why should spelling pronunciations even be an issue in English, for example; why are such phenomena more or less unknown in foreign languages? To correct this perceived defect, I added a discussion of how and why English orthography is a bit unusual in the world's lanuages, and why those unusual features result in spelling pronunciations.

Alsihler 22:42, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

I still pronounce "falcon" as "fallcon" (another conservative pronunciation, though not as conservative as "fawcon," apparently). (All three are recognized in the dictionaries I've seen.)

Kostaki mou 05:53, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

Willys

The more I read this article, the more it gives me the willys. It is a prescriptivist argument wrapped in a descriptivist cloak. At the moment the article ignores variation in pronunciation in different parts of the English-speaking world. In my opinion, the vast majority of examples should be words where the spelling pronunciation has won out over any earlier pronunciations or when the issue is actually spelling pronunciation and not regional variation. It seems language bias has snuck up on this page. -Acjelen 06:09, 23 Apr 2005 (UTC)

This doesn't make any sense to me. Almost all cases of spelling pronunciation are subject to regional variation. There is an obvious reason for this: it takes a long time--perhaps centuries--for an innovating pronunciation to spread to all of the dialects of a language.

It would be nice if we could add information about which dialects use which variants. But this information is rather hard to come by. Opus33 16:06, 24 Apr 2005 (UTC)

My point is that while much of the article is about spelling pronunciation, some of the examples illustate variation in regional forms of English. I do not pronounce forehead with an H because it is spelled that way, but because intelligent, educated people spoke the word that way in my hearing all of my life. The same is true of often and palm. Saying waistcoat other than "weskit" is a spelling variation. Other examples of words often pronounced as they are spelled include the article ye, forte, and tortilla. -Acjelen 18:10, 26 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I don't understand the above point. Something which starts as a spelling pronounciation easily becomes variation in regional forms of English. Why is, in your opinion, forehead a regional variation but waistcoat not? (If I read you correctly.)

A spelling pronunciation assumes spelling (that is, writing), while most regional variations of English are verbal and not literate. Moreover, spelling pronunciations are almost always incorrect while regional variations never are. If I went to England and attempted to explain to the average Londoner that RP was "incorrect", I would have a very hard time, yet this article once suggested that common American pronunciations were incorrect because they were pronounced as spelled. In American English, waistcoat is archaic. Americans use vest instead. Generally, Americans should pronounce British English words with the British pronunciation (but not with an accent): thus, "weskit", "Lester Square", and so on. Words shared in both varieties should be pronounced in the accepted regional fashion, such as "forehead". -Acjelen 03:48, 6 September 2005 (UTC)

I don't think you're getting it here. The problem is when spelling pronunciations become so widespread that they become synonymous with the pronunciation of a certain region. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 114.181.53.183 (talk) 11:09, 29 July 2010 (UTC)

Popular Etymology

According to my dictionary, forehead comes from 'fore' and 'head' and waistcoat comes from 'waist' and 'coat' so using them as examples of popular etymology seems to be misleading and incorrect. -Acjelen 06:19, 23 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I agree that we have a problem, in that the Wikipedia article on popular etymology specifically requires that a popular etymology must be historically wrong in order to count as one. I've substituted "analogical pronunciation" to avoid confusion on this count. Opus33 16:06, 24 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Note. The pronunciation of "forte" (noun) as "fortay" is not a spelling pronunciation but a hyperforeignism, arrived at by mistaking a fencing term derived from French (the forte of the blade is the thick part) for a musical term derived from Italian. I have therefore removed this example (but added it to the "Hypercorrection" article). --Sir Myles na Gopaleen (the da) 15:58, 17 May 2006 (UTC)

Trait

Could /treIt/ for "trait" be a spelling pronunciation. I always use /treIt/ but this article on Languagehat tells me that others use /treI/. — Hippietrail 10:44, 31 May 2005 (UTC)

No more than any other Anglicization of a foreign word, for example "Paris". Sir Myles na Gopaleen (the da) 12:48, 19 May 2006 (UTC)

I think the English way of saying "Paris" is actually more or less the old pronunciation. It's the French who have ceased pronouncing the "s". Eric Kvaalen (talk) 15:02, 27 May 2015 (UTC)

My (monoglot) father (b1929, Wiltshire) says /treI/, also have heard it on the BBC. Spelling pron. seems more likely than a differential Anglicization process extending over centuries. [Ben Jago] — Preceding unsigned comment added by 94.172.24.113 (talk) 01:40, 17 September 2011 (UTC)

re Paris: The French have dropped the s, but the English have replaced /a/ with /æ/ and replaced the stress to the first syllable (the Latin tribe name it derives from is Parisii with stress on the first i; that the French have kept).--2001:A61:20CD:AA01:7475:E186:91DA:5478 (talk) 12:18, 29 November 2017 (UTC)

Ate

We are told that the traditional British pronunciation of "ate" is "ett", and that to pronounce it in the same way as "eight" is either an Americanism or a spelling pronunciation. However, any reader of Jane Austen or Trollope will notice that there was an alternative past tense "he eat", which presumably really was pronounced "ett"; so "ate" was probably pronounced as spelled all along. Today I regard "ett" as a British provincialism, and non-standard.--Sir Myles na Gopaleen (the da) 13:11, 22 May 2006 (UTC)

I think this is something else. Old English had five classes of "strong" verbs in which there were two stems (for the price of one) in the preterite, one for the 1st and 3rd persons singular, and the other for everything else. This was all shaken out, except for was/were, in the course of Middle English. Different verbs generalized different stems, but usually the spelling agrees with the chosen stem (including divided usage like rung preferred in Britain but rang in the US and Canada) but there were some exceptions. Sate as the past tense of sit persisted as the spelling long after /seyt/ (Dryden rimes it with state) had been ousted by /sæt/. To this day, though the verb is edging toward obsolescence, the preterite of bid (in the sense "request") is spelled bade but pronounced /bæd/. I haven't researched the eat/et/ate business specifically but I'm assuming it's the same thing. (And it's an interesting footnote that not uncommonly consevative forms are disparaged as ignorant while innovations, blunders, and whatever become standard and approved: thus catched vs caught, "figger" vs /figyur/.) Alsihler 19:00, 17 December 2006 (UTC)

If anything, ring-rang-rung preferred in Britain but ring-rung-rung in the US and Canada jnestorius^(talk) 21:50, 17 December 2006 (UTC)

Poor example. Sorry. According to my authorities, pret rung seems to be old-fashioned everywhere that it still occurs (certainly not in my own Simon-pure American) but apparently enjoyed a certain currency in 19th cent. British usage, if the handbook are anything to go by. Maybe a better ex. would be the pret. of drink, which was quite commonly drunk from the the 17th - 19th cents. but receding for some reason in the 20th. Alsihler 22:14, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

Alsihler, in Old English, the 1st and 3rd person singular was æt, while the plural was ǣton. Would these have developed into different vowels in Modern English? By the way, I discovered recently that in an 1844 translation of the books of the Maccabees, the translator used "shrank" when the subject was singular and "shrunk" when the subject was plural! (See wiktionary:shrunk.) Eric Kvaalen (talk) 15:02, 27 May 2015 (UTC)

As a matter of fact, Tolkien writes et in oral speech within the Lord of the Rings. I don't know whether that is an actual English writing or he is just making sure that noone pronounces Sam in a wrong manner.--2001:A61:20CD:AA01:7475:E186:91DA:5478 (talk) 12:20, 29 November 2017 (UTC)

Pronunciations

Should the pronunciations given in the article (ie: pronounced "kondit" or "kundit", is now nearly always "conndewit" or Wednesday, historically "Wensday" or "Wendsday" ) be changed over to use IPA pronunciation guides?

Yes, I suppose in theory we should. However on some browsers (e.g. mine) IPA symbols appear as rectangles, making the article much less accessible. If necessary, use both (IPA first, then the current version in inverted commas or brackets or both). --Sir Myles na Gopaleen (the da) 12:29, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

Recent edits by anon. IP user ??

Somebody with expertise in this subject needs to take a look at the recent edits by anon. user 82.57.95.229 which I came across only because I was reverting a series of nonsense edits by another anon. IP user (on this & other articles). User 82.57.95.229 added a sort of mini-essay along with a shorter edit, which I nearly reverted. But I thought it would be better for somebody else who edits this particular article to exercise their judgement on this. Cgingold 20:43, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

Welcome to the spelling reform round table

What's this opinionated essay on English orthography doing in an encyclopedia article on spelling pronunciation? It reads like "wacky factoids I've heard about spelling idiocies". It should de-POVed and moved to a different article. Or even better, given extra POV and moved to a not-Wikipedia web site. Anyway, I'm removing the bit about the w in whole and whore being meaningless, since those are not pronounced with an [h] in my (American) dialect. Which seems to be about the level of sourcing used on this page. And they're not spelling pronunciations either, though if they were, they'd actually belong on this page. I'll come back later and see if anybody has a good reason not to make further cuts. Brock 03:03, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

The 'w' in 'whole' and 'whore' is in fact non-etymological, and silent - so I reverted that part. They are indeed pronounced with 'h', as if spelled 'hole' and 'hore' (or 'hoor', the historically correct spelling!) respectively.

However, I agree that this article is a little confused. The way, the truth, and the light 00:42, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

I pronounce "whole" with [ʍ], the voiceless labial-velar fricative/approximant. As does my mother and also the title character of Joan of Arcadia. So obviously it doesn't "represent literally nothing at all, not now, not ever". But whatever. Brock 04:12, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

I've never heard "whole" pronounced that way! Maybe it's idiosyncratic. I knew a boy who would pronounce "well" as "whell" until he grew out of it. Eric Kvaalen (talk) 15:02, 27 May 2015 (UTC)

Whell... you have to admit that while I as a foreigner have no idea what [ʍ] is, I can make a reasonable estimate of what the often seen [hw] is, and when you start a sentence with "well..." to give you time to think, it is a rather natural development to pronounce it as "whell" even if it was not such originally.

That said, I cannot imagine an Englishman to say "wole" and "wore" for whole and whore. After all, the latter is Hure, not *Wure as it otherwise would have to be, in my native German (we have no direct cognate for "whole" I'm aware of).--2001:A61:20A9:2B01:5132:D49B:5C64:2C47 (talk) 13:30, 18 November 2017 (UTC)

Falcon

The article says:

falcon /fælkən/ is now standard; the old pronunciation was 'fawkin' cf. the family name Faulkner and a long history of variant spellings without -l-

There are two issues here. It is quite true that the "l" was formerly not pronounced, but is almost invariable now. However I do not agree that the "a" has universally become æ. In England, the standard pronunciation of the first syllable rhymes with "all", as if the word were "faulcon". I have never heard /fælkən/, though I am not aware of the position in the United States. --Sir Myles na Gopaleen (the da) (talk) 12:53, 24 January 2008 (UTC)t

It is pronounced /fælkən/ in the United States. Funnyhat (talk) 04:12, 25 July 2008 (UTC)

Wrath

Could someone who knows what they're doing cover the pronunciation of wrath (roth/rath)? (I can't IPA.)--87.159.100.173 (talk) 17:47, 8 October 2008 (UTC)

It's pronounced "rath" in America and "roth" in England. But I don't know whether "rath" is a spelling pronunciation. I doubt it. Eric Kvaalen (talk) 15:02, 27 May 2015 (UTC)

It's definitely not pronounced "Roth" in England, but "rawth". — Preceding unsigned comment added by 142.254.1.132 (talk) 01:36, 9 December 2015 (UTC)

a social phenomenon, but perhaps not linguistic

I have just added a bit of additional material to the main page; some background info thereto can also be found on the talk page belonging to "history of English vowels before r" or whatever it's called. The main point I'd like to make about spelling pronunciations is that, at least in the initial stages of formation, they are not really "linguistic behavior" per se. Grammar -- that is to say, all linguistic behavior such as using certain sounds, certain syntactic structures, etc. -- is a set of subconscious behavior which develops in the brain of each human living in any society. If we consciously decide to give a certain word a certain pronunciation (I used to have some friends who thought it was clever to say jape instead off gape, jamble instead of gamble etc.), that is just fooling around, but if it becomes a part of the internalized grammar sometime later (perhaps with some naive, younger speaker), then it is language --at least as far as their idiolect goes. The point worthy of study -- and this is really sociolinguistics -- is how these transitions and innovations occur. E.g. why, when I was a kid (60s) did most people say jigga (giga-) and selt (Celt), but now practically all younger people (and elders who want to be hip) say gigga and Kelt? Is this sort of change related to spelling pronunciation?Jakob37 (talk) 07:57, 13 May 2009 (UTC)

Obviously pronouncing Celt as "kelt" is not spelling pronunciation! It's the opposite. Eric Kvaalen (talk) 15:02, 27 May 2015 (UTC)

Let's pare this down to sourced material

There is an enormous amount of unsourced personal-opinion tripe in this article, some of if completely hare-brained, especially assertions of "American" pronunciation, as if there were only one US dialect. I think this article could very safely be pared down by about 80%, into a sourced stub, and then built upon from there, with sources. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 13:11, 14 May 2009 (UTC)

It might be good to have sources for pronunciation, but I don't think we need a source to say that something is a spelling pronunciation so long as it is known that the word was formerly pronounced not as spelled. Eric Kvaalen (talk) 15:02, 27 May 2015 (UTC)

More examples

"Forehead" is a good example of the phenomenon, and can be sourced, too. "Pumpkin" is another, although not so easily sourced.

221.222.122.100 (talk) 01:32, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

Was "pumpkin" ever universally pronounced "punkin"? Perhaps not, since the word used to be "pumpion" or "pompon". The "mp" is etymological. Eric Kvaalen (talk) 15:02, 27 May 2015 (UTC)

"Examples of English words with common spelling pronunciations"

Just what is a "common spelling pronunciation" ? I suggest the title of this section be revised to: "Examples of commonly found English words with spelling pronunciations" Jakob37 (talk) 06:10, 17 August 2010 (UTC)

singing pronunciation

When singing for performance (choirs, etc.) people often are trained to use unusual, supposedly "clearer" pronunciations. This fact might be mentioned as a minor category of spelling pronunciations. For example, I was once able to convince my choir director that singing "cruel" as "crew-elle" just made the word sound strange, not really clearer. This is very widespread in German-speaking countries, where the unstressed schwa sound is often performed as an "eh" sound, with a result that sounds rather artificial, but that's their habit. Jakob37 (talk) 12:04, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

Yes. There are a lot of these. My choir director wants us to, when drawing a syllable out, pronounce the unvoiced final consonant as voiced, so "peace" becomes "peas". Similarly, we can't use American pronunciations and must fully pronounce the letter T and D, even though that is not the dialect we are used to. Also, we must replace the sound "er" with "uh" (so "winter" becomes "wintuh" and "fear" becomes "fee-uh") because she believes that rhotic vowels sounds "stupid". Additionally, we must pronoounce the "ow!" dipthong in "brown" as ah-oo (say grandpa udon) rather than the regular pronunciation because she believes it sounds more "Grown-up" than "aa-uu" which is the pronunciation used by most people. And then there is the pronunciation of "uel" as "oo-ell" rather than the ordinary "oo-ull" or "ool". I find the "gathering winter's fyoo-elllllllll" of Good King Wenceslas to sound strange. In my opinion, if you pronounce "cruel" and "fuel" that way, you might as well do the same for "school" and "rule". "I go to schoo-el and broke the roo-ells" sounds equally as silly. Ticklewickleukulele (talk) 19:06, 2 February 2013 (UTC)

There are distinctions to be made here between singing pronunciation, archaic/dialectal pronunciation preserved in song and specific use of pronunciation so as to maintain/force it a song to rhyme and maintain the tune. Good King Wenceslas is probably an example of one or both of the latter two. It was written in England in the 1850s using the tune of a Finnish 13th century spring carol, so would likely reflect the pronunciation of the words in Victorian London, and would probably also have had to be forced slightly to fit the tune. The "fyoo-elllllllll" as you put it isn't far off the modern British pronunciation of fuel (i.e. /'fjuːəl/), although it is fairly exaggerated to fit the tune. If it were switched to the American pronunciation (/fjuːl/) it wouldn't have enough syllables to fit the tune. The same applies to cruel. In English received pronunciation neither fuel or cruel rhymes with school or rule. Conversely, in some regional accents (e.g. some forms of Brummie and I think some Welsh accents), school is pronounced with an added /ə/. Alphathon /'æɫ.fə.θɒn/ ^(talk) 19:52, 7 February 2013 (UTC)

Seems your choir director opts for a rather German pronunciation. We pronounce "winter" as "wintuh" simply because it's natural to us.

(In your pronunciation: Seems yau'uh kwyuh dyrectuh opts forr uh rathuh Germann prownunssiyaeshunn. Wee prownounss "wintuh" ass "wintuh" simplie beecaus' it's natshoorall too uss - where au is the sound in because, ow is the sound in own, and ou is the sound in sound.--2001:A61:20A9:2B01:5132:D49B:5C64:2C47 (talk) 13:43, 18 November 2017 (UTC)

Hebrew example

The example of גבוה (m.) being pronounced as 'gavoha' instead of 'gavoah' due to patach ganuv isn't very accurate. It's actually pronounced neither *[gäˈvo̞hä] nor *[gäˈvo̞äh], but simply [gäˈvo̞.ä]. Maybe if someone is trying to speak "proper" Hebrew they would say *[gäˈvo̞ɦä], but I highly doubt it has anything to do with the Niqqud (which is almost never encountered). Since Modern Hebrew doesn't allow /h/ syllable-finally, *[gäˈvo̞ɦä], although very unnatural, is simply the only way to pronounce it.

Taliandr (talk) 18:10, 6 February 2015 (UTC)

Since I can't find any example of spelling pronunciations caused by patach ganuv, I suggest removing this example, or replacing it with חטא ([χe̞t], meaning 'sin'), which is sometimes pronounced [ˈχe̞tä] (as suggested by its spelling), especially by kids. This is probably since it's rarely encountered in speech. Taliandr (talk) 18:15, 6 February 2015 (UTC)

I rewrote it but then decided to remove it completely. As to "Eloah" - it is not the Modern Hebrew word for god. That would be either אל (/el/) for the concept itself or just any god, or אלוהים (/eloˈhim/) for the Jewish/specific god. I would say /(ʔ)eˈloha/ is the established pronunciation of אֱלוֹהַּ. However it is used very rarely since it doesn't exist in Modern Hebrew, and it's also very rare in the Bible, where it appears only 47 times. For comparison, אֱלֹהִים appears more than 600 times and יהוה appears 2000 times. Of course you could call the modern pronunciation a biblical word that is no longer used a spelling pronunciation, but then you would have to say almost all Hebrew words are, since the language was dead for almost 2000 years.

The part I rewrote and removed:

a patach (vowel mark denoting /a/) placed underneath a final guttural is pronounced before it. This is sometimes called 'patach ganuv' (lit. 'stolen patach'). An example is רוח (ruach, meaning 'spirit'), which looks like *rucha. Where the final consonant is historically a sounded he (h), many speakers do indeed place the vowel after it, mistakenly pronouncing Eloah (meaning God) as "Eloha" and gavoah (meaning high) as "gavoha".

Taliandr (talk) 01:14, 8 February 2015 (UTC)

Spelling pronunciations hardly exist in Hebrew because it's almost always correct to pronounce words as written. People often mispronounce words though. One example which might be called spelling pronunciation is pronouncing a word like חָקְרֵ֣נִי as ħakreni instead of ħokreni. The trouble is that qamatz can be either "a" or "o", and in this case it should be "o". Eric Kvaalen (talk) 15:02, 27 May 2015 (UTC)

The example was meant to be about the synagogal pronunciation of Biblical and prayer book Hebrew, not modern Israeli Hebrew. There, technically, a he with mappiq ought to be pronounced, though it very rarely is. But on either view, "gavoha" is wrong, though it is very often heard in modern Hebrew too. Admittedly "Eloah" is not used in modern Hebrew, but one very often hears the mistaken pronunciation "Eloha" in synagogue (for example in that Yom Kippur hymn where the refrain contains the words "Eloah selichot"). --Sir Myles na Gopaleen (the da) (talk) 13:09, 10 June 2015 (UTC)

Zoology and hecatomb

I recently added the examples of "zoology" and "hecatomb", but this was reverted because I had no source (as though certain authorities have the right to say that a pronunciation is a spelling pronunciation and we simple people don't). What do you folks think about these two words? What I wrote was:

• zoology, which is often pronounced "zoo-ology". This is not quite "spelling pronunciation" because it is never pronounced "zoo-logy". It is probably influenced by the word zoo (derived from zoological garden), which rhymes with goo. A similar case might be the pronunciation (not in the US) of hecatomb as rhyming with "deck a tomb".

Eric Kvaalen (talk) 15:02, 27 May 2015 (UTC)

Sorry to leave you hanging Eric—I wasn't so concerned about making sure there is a clear citation, but I couldn't make heads or tails of the pronunciation you were trying to convey with your hyphenation. I thought a source would help me understand what sounds you were intending. You'll note that the rest of the examples use IPA to convey pronuciations because it so greatly reduces ambiguity. If we can get zoology and hecatomb into IPA (and I'm happy to assist), then let's do it! Cheers! —jameslucas (" " /  ) 12:35, 2 June 2015 (UTC)

Thanks James. By "zoo-ology" I meant /zuˈɑlədʒi/, and by "zoo-logy" I meant /ˈzulədʒi/. And when I said that people pronounce "hecatomb" as though it rhymes with "deck a tomb", I meant that they say /ˈhɛ.kə.tuːm/. As though they think the -tomb at the end of the word should be pronounced like "tomb". These two examples, unlike cases where the spelling reflects an older standard pronunciation, are probably examples where the only justification for the pronunciation in question is that the spelling looks like that (if one doesn't understand the derivation from Greek). Eric Kvaalen (talk) 18:25, 2 June 2015 (UTC)

Valet

There should be a section (#Hypercorrection? #Foreign terms?) for English appropriation of foreign terms and the (mis)use of their usual conventions. Valet and chalet are examples of English words brought over with Norman French that separately maintained their original pronunciations (shifting to /-ɪt/ from being unstressed) while French French went on to mangle them into /-eɪ/. Their upper-class British (i.e., Norman Frenchy) pronunciation matches standard English pretty well but were imagined to be "spelling pronunciations" and (hyper)corrected using a French-based spelling pronunciation to rhyme with Malay. All the same, it's not "wrong". It's a reborrowing of the term from the original language that eventually becomes standard.

There must be other examples where English follows the general rule in a foreign language but misses a pronunciation exception (or original language) in the manner that octopi muffs the grammar. Maybe bolognese? — LlywelynII 04:41, 10 June 2015 (UTC)

Actually, in modern French valet is /vale/, not /valeɪ/. Eric Kvaalen (talk) 10:23, 11 June 2015 (UTC)

Ridiculously pejorative

I know we go where the RS lead us, but there has to be a less biased term. There's nothing wrong with pronouncing the ⟨t⟩ in often and many of this page's examples are no longer "nonstandard" within their dialect of English. There should be some way of talking about this (that we should use) that simply talks about the fact that spelling is influential on pronunciation and sometimes pulls words back or shifts the pronunciation from what it would have been otherwise. — LlywelynII 04:41, 10 June 2015 (UTC)

Montaigne

In French, the modern pronunciation of the 16th-century French author Montaigne as [mɔ̃tɛɲ], rather than the contemporary [mɔ̃taɲ], is a spelling pronunciation.

Contemporary (literally 'of the same time') is ambiguous; does it mean of Montaigne's time, or of the present? The modern word /mɔ̃taɲ/ is written sans «i». Is it known how Michel de Montaigne pronounced his name? —Tamfang (talk) 19:31, 25 March 2024 (UTC)