Pronunciations you had to unlearn

[jal]

What do you mean “Google calls it archaic”?

It'll completely shock you, I'm sure, but if you google for "egad", this is what it says (sans the make-up):

egad
/ɪˈɡad/
exclamation ARCHAIC
expressing surprise, anger, or affirmation.

JAL

[KathTheDragon]

I didn't know that word; but I knew the variant egads. (Now, where did I read that one?)

The OED says it's rare.

This word belongs in Frequency Band 2. Band 2 contains words which occur fewer than 0.01 times per million words in typical modern English usage. These are almost exclusively terms which are not part of normal discourse and would be unknown to most people.

I suppose Sesame Street isn't in their corpus. (Their loss. If Sesame Street isn't typical modern English, then what is?)

It's funny how children's television (and books, and songs) are often harder, for non-natives, than more literary or technical material. (I remember back in 2007 when everyone puzzled over hallows.)

How do you know Sesame Street being included would change anything? It's not as if their corpus is just three classics and a Shakespeare.

[Ares Land]

Oh, you're right, it probably wouldn't change the frequency much. But it seems better known than we'd guess, judging on frequency alone?

[Rounin Ryuuji]

I think words that are now infrequent are likely to be known from texts in wide circulation. I might guess that the difficulty some non-native speakers have with children's literature is probably because it exploded during the late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries, and (at least about twenty or thirty years ago), Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865), The Tale of Peter Rabbit (1893), The Secret Garden (1911), Peter and Wendy (1911, from an earlier play, 1904), and The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1939) were all still commonly read, or known in some form (Peter Pan probably more likely through Disney; The Secret Garden, I recollect specifically having I think at least three different live-action adaptations, all of which tended towards period-appropriate language). Even if English doesn't have very extreme diglossia, the written language is probably still a few decades behind how people tend to speak, but written languages being somewhat more archaic than their spoken forms seems to be normal. The OED is probably right about how commonly used "egad" or "egads" is, but that doesn't really tell you how many people would know or recognise it (Linguoboy touches on this with thou, thee, thy, which nobody uses in unaffected speech, but most English-speakers know — in this case from Shakespeare and older Bible translations), which is probably mostly a function of how popular texts containing it remain. I don't know how easily that could be quantified, however.

On the subject of the thread, seeing doubt written, as a child, I instinctively pronounced it somewhat like [duwpʰt̚ʰ], and had to unlearn it as a reading pronunciation.

[Travis B.]

Someone forgot to tell me that egad(s) is archaic!

[Linguoboy]

As for the pronunciation, I think of it as having equal stress on both syllables, but that might just be because of the initial /i:/. IMD, that would normally be laxed in a pre-tonic syllable, but that doesn't happen here.

Two I thought of recently which I learned from reading are doughty, which I rhymed with naughty, and tow-headed, which I rhymed with cow-headed.

[Pabappa]

in theory, Canadian raising would distinguish that word from dowdy , but I think where I live Canadian raising breaks down when words are uncommon. I've never seen the word doughty before, although Im familiar with it as a last name, and it's pronounced the same... that is, without Canadian raising, thus being homophonous with dowdy rather than doubty.

[Travis B.]

in theory, Canadian raising would distinguish that word from dowdy , but I think where I live Canadian raising breaks down when words are uncommon. I've never seen the word doughty before, although Im familiar with it as a last name, and it's pronounced the same... that is, without Canadian raising, thus being homophonous with dowdy rather than doubty.

I notice that Canadian Raising and vowel length allophony do not always agree for me with what words "should" have if one goes by etymology, particularly for words with historical /t/ versus /d/. For instance both doughty and dowdy have [ɑːɔ̯] for me (and are homophones) even though doughty "should" have [ʌo̯].

[Travis B.]

I have a number of words with "wrong" Canadian Raising, e.g. I have [əːe̯] rather than the expected [aːe̯] in hydrangea and conversely I have [ɑʁˤ] rather than the expected [ʌʁˤ] in farce and Martha (but note that I have [ʌʁˤ] in marsh and hearth, and interestingly enough parse can go either way for me). Even stranger, I have [ʌːʁˤ] in target, the only word with this in my lect to my knowledge.

[Linguoboy]

What do you mean “Google calls it archaic”?

It'll completely shock you, I'm sure, but if you google for "egad", this is what it says (sans the make-up):

egad
/ɪˈɡad/
exclamation ARCHAIC
expressing surprise, anger, or affirmation.

I'm not shocked, just disappointed. Look right below what you've quoted and you'll see in a greyscale small font "Definitions from Oxford Dictionaries". That's all the information I needed and you could've provided it without being snarky.

[Imralu]

I have a number of words with "wrong" Canadian Raising, e.g. I have [əːe̯] rather than the expected [aːe̯] in hydrangea and conversely I have [ɑʁˤ] rather than the expected [ʌʁˤ] in farce and Martha (but note that I have [ʌʁˤ] in marsh and hearth, and interestingly enough parse can go either way for me). Even stranger, I have [ʌːʁˤ] in target, the only word with this in my lect to my knowledge.

Why would you expect [ʌʁˤ] in "farce" and "Martha"?

[Estav]

I have a number of words with "wrong" Canadian Raising, e.g. I have [əːe̯] rather than the expected [aːe̯] in hydrangea and conversely I have [ɑʁˤ] rather than the expected [ʌʁˤ] in farce and Martha (but note that I have [ʌʁˤ] in marsh and hearth, and interestingly enough parse can go either way for me). Even stranger, I have [ʌːʁˤ] in target, the only word with this in my lect to my knowledge.

Why would you expect [ʌʁˤ] in "farce" and "Martha"?

Because the “ar” is followed by a fortis consonant. Like Canadian raising in “ice”. Travis is saying he has a raised version of “ar” as well.

[Travis B.]

I have a number of words with "wrong" Canadian Raising, e.g. I have [əːe̯] rather than the expected [aːe̯] in hydrangea and conversely I have [ɑʁˤ] rather than the expected [ʌʁˤ] in farce and Martha (but note that I have [ʌʁˤ] in marsh and hearth, and interestingly enough parse can go either way for me). Even stranger, I have [ʌːʁˤ] in target, the only word with this in my lect to my knowledge.

Why would you expect [ʌʁˤ] in "farce" and "Martha"?

Because the “ar” is followed by a fortis consonant. Like Canadian raising in “ice”. Travis is saying he has a raised version of “ar” as well.

I have conditional raising of PRICE, MOUTH, and START, which oftentimes is similar to classic Canadian Raising but happens in some other cases as well and, for PRICE and START, is marginally phonemic.

[Raphael]

I just bought Highly Irregular - Why Tough, Through, and Dough Don't Rhyme And Other Oddities of the English Language by Arika Okrent (illustrated by Sean O'Neill). I mention that in this thread because now I know that tough and dough don't rhyme. Until today, I would have sworn that they do.

[Raphael]

I mention that in this thread because now I know that tough and dough don't rhyme. Until today, I would have sworn that they do.

OK, that's not quite accurate; seems like I mixed up tough and though.

[Raphael]

I just bought Highly Irregular - Why Tough, Through, and Dough Don't Rhyme And Other Oddities of the English Language by Arika Okrent (illustrated by Sean O'Neill).

I'm now at the point in the book where it tells me that the l in salmon is silent. Wut?

[Travis B.]

I just bought Highly Irregular - Why Tough, Through, and Dough Don't Rhyme And Other Oddities of the English Language by Arika Okrent (illustrated by Sean O'Neill).

I'm now at the point in the book where it tells me that the l in salmon is silent. Wut?

It was not that long ago that I learned that falcon didn't have an /l/ in it when it was originally borrowed into English from Old French, and that there still are native English-speakers which pronounce it without an /l/.

[Richard W]

I'm now at the point in the book where it tells me that the l in salmon is silent. Wut?

Well, salmon rhymes with gammon, so it may be taken to assimilate if you prefer.

[Linguoboy]

I just bought Highly Irregular - Why Tough, Through, and Dough Don't Rhyme And Other Oddities of the English Language by Arika Okrent (illustrated by Sean O'Neill).

I'm now at the point in the book where it tells me that the l in salmon is silent. Wut?

This varies idiolectally. Although hypercorrected pronunciation with /l/ doesn't appear in normative guides, it's common enough in the USA these days that I no longer consider it a speech error. (See also catalpa.)

[Rounin Ryuuji]

I still find pronouncing the l in salmon a bit jarring, though I've encountered it a few times.