It has been a while since our last pronunciation column, so here\u2019s another group of familiar words whose traditional pronunciations may surprise you. (Note: capital letters denote a stressed syllable.)<\/p>\n
Antarctica \u00a0<\/strong>Like the elusive first r<\/em> in February, the first c <\/em>in this word is often carelessly dropped: it\u2019s ant-ARC-tica, not ant-AR-tica.<\/p>\n Err \u00a0<\/strong>Since to err<\/em> is to make an error, it seems logical to say \u201cair\u201d\u2014but who said English is logical? The correct way to say err<\/em> is to rhyme it with her.<\/em><\/p>\n Inherent \u00a0<\/strong>Properly, in-HEER-ent. Most people say in-HAIR-ent, but that\u2019s wrong and we can prove it: How do you say adherent<\/em>?<\/p>\n Covert \u00a0<\/strong>Most say CO-vert, rhymes with overt. <\/em>But it\u2019s traditionally pronounced CUV-ert, as in \u201ccover\u201d plus a t<\/em>. You may not hear CUV-ert much these days, but it is still listed in the 2011 American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language<\/em>.<\/p>\n Nuptial \u00a0<\/strong>It\u2019s two syllables: NUP-shul. A lot of people, including many in the media, say NUP-shu-ul. How do they get \u201cshu-ul\u201d from tial<\/em>?<\/p>\n Naivet\u00e9 \u00a0<\/strong>Should be nah-eve-TAY. More and more broadcasters are polluting the airwaves by pronouncing this as a four-syllable word: ny-EVE-it-tay, ny-EVE-itty, or ny-EV-itty. The 1999 Webster\u2019s New World<\/em> dictionary lists only the three-syllable pronunciation, but the 2014 Webster\u2019s New World<\/em> has caved, giving the four-syllable alternatives unwarranted legitimacy. Charles Harrington Elster, in his Big Book of Beastly Mispronunciations<\/em>,<\/em> calls the four-syllable variants \u201cillogical.\u201d Elster\u2019s point: naive<\/em> is two syllables, and t\u00e9<\/em> is one syllable. Since when does two plus one equal four?<\/p>\n Margarine \u00a0<\/strong>Relax, you\u2019re saying it right. But when it was coined by the French in the 1870s, margarine<\/em> had the same first two syllables as Margaret<\/em> and the third syllable rhymed with clean<\/em>. Yes, believe it or not, people used to say MARG-a-reen\u2014hard g<\/em>, plus \u201ceen\u201d on the end.<\/p>\n Our 1941 Webster\u2019s New International Dictionary <\/em>lists but two possible pronunciations for margarine<\/em>, preferring MARJ-a-reen over MARG-a-reen. So seventy-four years ago, it was not usual for the third syllable to be pronounced \u201cin\u201d rather than \u201ceen.\u201d<\/p>\n Twenty-seven years later, the 1968 edition of Random House\u2019s American College Dictionary <\/em>listed \u201cmarj\u201d and \u201cmarg,\u201d and said the final syllable could be pronounced either \u201cin\u201d or \u201ceen.\u201d And as recently as 1980, the American Heritage Dictionary<\/em> listed \u201cmarj\u201d and \u201cmarg,\u201d but by then \u201ceen\u201d was gone.<\/p>\n Standard pronunciations evolve, and margarine<\/em> has done more than its share of evolving over the last 140 years. But today \u201cMARJ-a-rin\u201d has won out.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" It has been a while since our last pronunciation column, so here\u2019s another group of familiar words whose traditional pronunciations may surprise you. (Note: capital letters denote a stressed syllable.) Antarctica \u00a0Like the elusive first r in February, the first c in this word is often carelessly dropped: it\u2019s ant-ARC-tica, not ant-AR-tica. Err \u00a0Since to […]<\/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":[49],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1950","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-pronunciation"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1950"}],"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=1950"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1950\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1950"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1950"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1950"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}