Pronunciations you had to unlearn

[Salmoneus]

There is no [k] in victuals????? (Tbh I didn't know what the word meant, although I must've seen it once or twice.)


JAL

And no /j/, and no /u/. So that "victualler" misses out the second syllable altogether. It's one of those words like forecastle, boatswain, gunwhale, and suchlike, where at some point we've looked at the word and just decided to totally half-arse it.

[Ryusenshi]

It's one of those words like forecastle, boatswain, gunwhale, and suchlike, where at some point we've looked at the word and just decided to totally half-arse it.

(I thought you meant that suchlike had a non-obvious pronunciation, and was very confused.)

The same applies to many placenames, such as Southwark, Greenwich to name but two (I visited the Royal Observatory, I visited the Village, and I still thought it was */ˈɡriːnwɪtʃ/). Featherstonehaugh and halfpennyworth are just trolling.

[Linguoboy]

There is no [k] in victuals????? (Tbh I didn't know what the word meant, although I must've seen it once or twice.)

And no /j/, and no /u/. So that "victualler" misses out the second syllable altogether. It's one of those words like forecastle, boatswain, gunwhale, and suchlike, where at some point we've looked at the word and just decided to totally half-arse it.

Here in the States, we actually use the spelling "vittles". ("Tender Vittles" was a brand of cat food produced by Ralston Purina before being purchased by Nestlé.) I think that makes people more likely to give "victuals" a spelling pronunciation.

So besides "victual" and "indict" (and placenames like "Connecticut" and "Mackinac"), what other English words are there with silent <c>?

[Pabappa]

Cnidocyst and a bunch of others with that root, but I dunno if scientific animal names should count, since everyone just says "stinger" , "jellyfish", etc.

[Salmoneus]

It's one of those words like forecastle, boatswain, gunwhale, and suchlike, where at some point we've looked at the word and just decided to totally half-arse it.

(I thought you meant that suchlike had a non-obvious pronunciation, and was very confused.)

The same applies to many placenames, such as Southwark, Greenwich to name but two (I visited the Royal Observatory, I visited the Village, and I still thought it was */ˈɡriːnwɪtʃ/). Featherstonehaugh and halfpennyworth are just trolling.

The weird thing is that most of these words are "regular", in that if you know they're hyper-reduced you could generally guess the spelling. That's particularly true of placenames, which are in many cases a lot less weird than they first look. The big rules are that -ham and -wick/-wich lose their initial consonant, /@/ before /s/ is dropped (resulting in s@s>s simplifications), and first syllable vowels often undergo trisyllabic laxing even if they don't look like they should. Additionally, -CC codas before another consonant (including the dropped -w- and -h-) often lose their first consonant, particularly if they're sonorants. And even elements that look like they may be from compounds fail to receive secondary stress (hence have reduced vowels). This explains things like Leicester, Worcester, Alnwick and so forth:
Alnwick: CC>C (Anwick); -w- dropped (Annick)
Leicester: s@s > s (Leister); laxing (Lester)
Worcester: orthographic adjustment* (wurcester); s@s > s (wurster); CC>C (wuster)

The same processes also seem to apply to a lot of the other 'weird' words. "Gunwhale" and "boatswain", for instance, both show the same post-consonantal loss of /-w-/ in the second syllable, and "boatswain" also has the CC>C shift. Even a monstrosity like "forecastle" is "regular" in this sense:
lack of secondary stress (forc@sle)
@ drops before s (forcsle)
CC>C (focsle)

It's almost as though there is/was some weird second dialect of English, perhaps a low-prestige common-man form, that's contributed placenames and some specialised terms from industries where the Common Man was unusually influential, but that's otherwise disappeared.


But you're still left with the Featherstonehaughs, the Cholmondesleys (though that SORT of makes some sense) and the Trottiscliffes.



*the usual medieval orthographic shift of wu> wo seems to have taken place here, due to the illegibility of <wu> clusters in mediaeval handwriting; c.f. 'woman'.


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Pabappa: do you not have /k/ in cnido- and the like?

[jal]

(I thought you meant that suchlike had a non-obvious pronunciation, and was very confused.)

For a moment I thought the same :).

It's one of those words like forecastle, boatswain, gunwhale

Didn't know any of those, though I might've seen them once or twice in print. Those sailors sure like there reductions!

The same applies to many placenames

Yeah, but at least with British placenames you expect reduction, even if you don't know exactly what to expect...

But you're still left with the Featherstonehaughs, the Cholmondesleys

Funny, according to Wikpedia, they were both dancing companies founded by the same person.


JAL

[Moose-tache]

Friends, because of this thread I have just learned this day that "victuals" is the spelling of "viddles." I don't even know what to believe in anymore.

[mèþru]

On British placenames:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mOd3lwluQIw

[anteallach]

But you're still left with the Featherstonehaughs, the Cholmondesleys (though that SORT of makes some sense) and the Trottiscliffes.

Cholmondeley being /ˈtʃʌməndlɪ/ wouldn't be that surprising, and if you say that quickly enough the loss of the middle syllable doesn't seem that implausible a development either. But Featherstonehaugh /ˈfanʃɔː/ makes no sense whatsoever; I just don't see how it develops that /ʃ/. My suspicion is that there was some confusion between the names Featherstonehaugh (perhaps with some more plausible reduced pronunciation) and Fanshawe such that some people ended up with the spelling of one and the pronunciation of the other.

[Salmoneus]

My generous guess would be that the initial /x/ of old 'haugh' (this being in Northumberland!) got fronted due to the influence of the /n/.

However, I've found a Victorian reference saying that in the 19th century the Featherstonehaughs pronounced their name "freestonhay". Of course, there may be more than one origin. I met a Featherstone-Haugh once, and they pronounced it as spelled and got annoyed if anyone didn't - so it may be that some fanshaws 'corrected' themselves back to featherstonehaugh, and then degraded into freestonhays... or vice versa.

[the same source says that Urquhart, modern /3k@t/, should be pronounced "urest".]

[Travis B.]

All these pronunciations didn't manage to make their way across the Atlantic, aside from the pronunciations of Worcester and Worcestershire; aside from those even the more basic of these pronunciations are completely alien to me to the point that I'd normally use a spelling pronunciation were I to ever have the need to utter them.

[Pabappa]

I saw Colquhoun or some other name with the <quh> cluster on a mailbox in Vermont. So those names appear here occasionally. It was in Caledonia County, so perhaps a high proportion of the population was of Scottish descent, but I never really noticed. Regarding "Fanshaw", the syncretism theory sounds nice to me but h>š is possible.

also New England, at least, has more british-like pronunciations than just Worcester, though some may be dying out, and others are not really more distinctive than names that got their odd pronunciations within America. e.g. the two Boises, one in Idaho and the other in Oklahoma, which differ from each other and neither resembles the French pronunciation that much.

There's a whole art form based on limericks where a surname/placename like this is spelled normally and the other lines follow the pattern. i linked to a page of them a few months ago, even ... but instead i'll post one that was not on the list and is of a slightly different style:

There was a young farmer from Slough
Who said, "I've a terrible cough.
Do you think I should get
Both the doc and the vet,
Or would one be enough for now?"

[Ryusenshi]

I was about to post a link to another page of limericks.

[Vijay]

I just learned that 可汗 'khagan, khan' in Mandarin is kèhán (it comes from a Mongolic or Turkic language). Outside of this particular word, neither character has the tone assigned to it in this word. (In other words, 可 is pronounced with a falling tone and 汗 is pronounced with a rising tone only in this word. Zhongwen.com apparently forgot to mention this even after posting the entire Ballad of Mulan, which uses the word 可汗 twice).

[zompist]

I just learned that 可汗 'khagan, khan' in Mandarin is kèhán (it comes from a Mongolic or Turkic language). Outside of this particular word, neither character has the tone assigned to it in this word. (In other words, 可 is pronounced with a falling tone and 汗 is pronounced with a rising tone only in this word. Zhongwen.com apparently forgot to mention this even after posting the entire Ballad of Mulan, which uses the word 可汗 twice).

The reconstructed Táng form is *kʰɑ̂ɣɑ̂n, which isn't a bad representation of khagan.

[Vijay]

I just learned that 可汗 'khagan, khan' in Mandarin is kèhán (it comes from a Mongolic or Turkic language). Outside of this particular word, neither character has the tone assigned to it in this word. (In other words, 可 is pronounced with a falling tone and 汗 is pronounced with a rising tone only in this word. Zhongwen.com apparently forgot to mention this even after posting the entire Ballad of Mulan, which uses the word 可汗 twice).

The reconstructed Táng form is *kʰɑ̂ɣɑ̂n, which isn't a bad representation of khagan.

Huh. I guess I have to learn more about how Middle Chinese (Táng dynasty Chinese, Chang'an variety?) assigned tones to loanwords. Wiktionary says the Middle Chinese form was /kʰɑ^X ɦɑn/?

[jal]

Just learned the pronunciation of "fascia" is [ˈfeɪʃə]. Would've guessed an [æ].


JAL

[Tropylium]

So besides "victual" and "indict" (and placenames like "Connecticut" and "Mackinac"), what other English words are there with silent <c>?

Yacht.

It's almost as though there is/was some weird second dialect of English, perhaps a low-prestige common-man form, that's contributed placenames and some specialised terms from industries where the Common Man was unusually influential, but that's otherwise disappeared.

Allegro register, maybe? Those can often go through sound changes that don't apply elsewhere.

One other reason it may look like this variety only contributed placenames and "some specialized terms" is because words like /lɔrd/ are no longer spelled etymologically as loafward etc.

[alynnidalar]

Just learned the pronunciation of "fascia" is [ˈfeɪʃə]. Would've guessed an [æ].


JAL

TIL that's how you spell fascia. My parents ran a small construction/contracting business when I was a child, so I've known the term for years, but never wrote it down or paid any attention to how it was spelled!

[Estav]

Just learned the pronunciation of "fascia" is [ˈfeɪʃə]. Would've guessed an [æ].


JAL

Both pronunciations exist. (Also, the "i" can optionally be syllabified, as the "happy" vowel). Merriam-Webster suggests a possible distinction in meaning, with "short a" used for the anatomical sense and "long a" used for the other senses. Other words with a vowel of variable "length" (in the "phonics", not the phonetic sense) before <sc> are prescient, nascent, Pisces, piscine. Your guess was as good as it could have been, since a short vowel is what would be regular in this orthographic context. For "Pisces" and "piscine", I have the impression that the pronunciations with "long i" are related to taboo avoidance of the syllable "piss". The OED entry for "piscine" records another irregular pronunciation with [k].