{"id":1769,"date":"2015-02-03T15:45:01","date_gmt":"2015-02-03T21:45:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/?p=1769"},"modified":"2020-11-25T10:55:51","modified_gmt":"2020-11-25T16:55:51","slug":"are-two-rs-one-too-many","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/definitions\/are-two-rs-one-too-many\/","title":{"rendered":"Are Two r<\/em>‘s One Too Many?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Here we are, in the month that\u2019s hard to spell and harder to pronounce. Every year I grit my teeth listening to the bizarre ways people mangle \u201cFebruary.\u201d The culprit is that first r<\/em>. Most people just ignore it and say \u201cFeb-yoo-ary.\u201d<\/p>\n

The 2006 American Heritage dictionary has a \u201cUsage Note\u201d at \u201cFebruary\u201d that made my brain squirm the first time I read it: \u201cthe variant pronunciation [Feb-yoo-ary] \u2026 is quite common in educated speech and is generally considered acceptable. The loss of the first r<\/em> in this pronunciation can be accounted for by the phonological process known as dissimilation<\/em>, by which similar sounds in a word tend to become less similar.\u201d<\/p>\n

Oh, I grumbled. Now I\u2019m expected to believe that a blatant mispronunciation is not simply
\nsloppy\u2014no, don\u2019t you see, it\u2019s a phonological process<\/em>, dear boy.<\/p>\n

This is the kind of thing that gives scholarship a bad name. At least that was my initial reaction. Don\u2019t get me wrong, I still believe \u201cFeb-roo-ary\u201d is the way to go, but there might be more to this dissimilation business than I originally recognized. Take a look at other instances \u2026<\/p>\n

Library<\/strong>\u00a0 Just about every schoolchild who ever lived has said \u201clie-berry,\u201d and some say it well into their teens. The similarity of this word to February<\/em> can\u2019t be overlooked.<\/p>\n

Roller coaster<\/strong>\u00a0 \u00a0I have heard sane adults say they went on the \u201crolly coaster.\u201d<\/p>\n

Kindergarten<\/strong>\u00a0 Come on, admit it, you or someone you know says \u201ckin-dee-garten.\u201d You\u2019re as likely to hear it from parents as from kin-dee-gartners themselves.<\/p>\n

Peripheral<\/strong>\u00a0 It\u2019s quite common to hear things like, \u201cWhen I was a young player, I learned to use my periph-ee-al vision.\u201d<\/p>\n

All four of the previous examples are words in which the r<\/em>\u2019s cause the difficulty. But other consonants can create similar problems \u2026<\/p>\n

Probably<\/strong>\u00a0 A lot of, uh, dissimilators pronounce it \u201cprob-lee.\u201d<\/p>\n

Et cetera (etc.)<\/strong>\u00a0 Many smart, educated people botch, er, dissimilate the first t<\/em>, and say \u201ceck<\/em> settera\u201d rather than \u201cet.\u201d<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t know if the next two examples count as \u201ctextbook\u201d dissimilation, but a curious thing happens with certain double-c<\/em>\u2019s:<\/p>\n

Succinct<\/strong>\u00a0 Everyone says \u201csuh-sinkt.\u201d When was the last time you heard someone correctly pronounce it \u201csuk-sinkt\u201d? Well, why else are there two c<\/em>\u2019s? You don\u2019t say \u201csecede\u201d when you mean succeed<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Flaccid<\/strong>\u00a0 Again, most people overlook one of those c<\/em>\u2019s. The widespread mispronunciation is \u201cflassid\u201d; the correct pronunciation is \u201cflaxid.\u201d<\/p>\n

But I\u2019ve been saving the best for last. Can anyone explain the silent c<\/em> in Connecticut<\/strong>? All I\u2019ve been able to dig up is that the state got its name from quinnitukqut<\/em>, a Mohican word meaning \u201cbeside the long tidal river.\u201d So where does the second c<\/em> in Connecticut<\/em> come from? Note that it\u2019s quinn<\/em>it<\/strong>ukqut<\/em>, not quinn<\/em>ict<\/strong>ukqut<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Maybe, when nobody was looking, some prankster, perhaps one of the ringleaders of Dissimilation Theory, sneaked in that middle c<\/em>, daring anyone to pronounce it.<\/p>\n

\u2014Tom Stern<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Here we are, in the month that\u2019s hard to spell and harder to pronounce. Every year I grit my teeth listening to the bizarre ways people mangle \u201cFebruary.\u201d The culprit is that first r. Most people just ignore it and say \u201cFeb-yoo-ary.\u201d The 2006 American Heritage dictionary has a \u201cUsage Note\u201d at \u201cFebruary\u201d that made […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,25,37],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1769","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-definitions","category-humor","category-spelling"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1769"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1769"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1769\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1769"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1769"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1769"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}