In honor of both our present month as well as the birthday of our late writer Tom Stern, today we repeat his classic pronunciation article first published on February 3, 2016.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Feb-yoo-ary. Febber-ary. Feb-wary. Can’t anyone around here say “feb-roo-ary”?<\/p>\n
It’s time to revisit\u00a0dissimilation<\/em>, the labored linguistic theory that purports to explain why so many of us don’t say\u00a0February<\/em>‘s two\u00a0r<\/em>‘s. The online American Heritage dictionary has the following usage note at “February”: “The loss of the first\u00a0r<\/em>\u00a0in this pronunciation can be accounted for by the phonological process known as\u00a0dissimilation<\/em>, by which similar sounds in a word tend to become less similar.”<\/p>\n Translation: the second\u00a0r<\/em>\u00a0in\u00a0February\u00a0<\/em>makes people mispronounce the first\u00a0r<\/em>.<\/p>\n My first reaction was that some intellectuals with too much time on their hands had come up with a fancy term for slovenly speech. Isn’t\u00a0dissimilation<\/em>\u00a0merely an erudite synonym for\u00a0tongue-twister<\/em>? I’m not quite ready to buy all this “phonological process” business; the simple truth is that people generally are hurried speakers, and saying words like\u00a0February<\/em>\u00a0takes a little extra care.<\/p>\n Here are some other hard-to-enunciate dissimilation words:<\/p>\n Asterisk\u00a0<\/strong>\u00a0The second\u00a0s\u00a0<\/em>gets dropped, and we are left with the icky “aster-ick.”<\/p>\n Candidate\u00a0<\/strong>\u00a0People say the first two syllables as if they were saying “Canada.”<\/p>\n Hierarchy\u00a0<\/strong>\u00a0You often hear “high-arky,” with the\u00a0er\u00a0<\/em>slurred. We should aim “higher.”<\/p>\n Prerogative\u00a0<\/strong>\u00a0I bet most people think this word is spelled “perogative,” because that’s typically what you hear. Only careful speakers say the first\u00a0r<\/em>: pre-rahg-ative.<\/p>\n Minutiae\u00a0<\/strong>\u00a0Here’s a word no one says right. The traditional pronunciation, believe it or not, is min-OO-she-ee or min-YOO-she-ee. Good luck with that. I’ve never heard anything but “min-oo-sha,” because “sha” is a whole lot easier than saying two long-e<\/em>\u00a0syllables, one right after the other<\/p>\n * \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0* \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0 * \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0* \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0*<\/p>\n I’ve put in enough time on this odd little topic to observe that dissimilation has a flip side. I’m calling it “impulsive echoing”: the tendency to irrationally add similar sounds within words, despite their spelling. Check these out:<\/p>\n Ouija board\u00a0<\/strong>\u00a0If you are American, either you or someone you know says “wee-jee.” The standard pronunciation is WEE-ja. How does\u00a0ja\u00a0<\/em>become “jee” unless impulsive echoing is real?<\/p>\n Cummerbund\u00a0<\/strong>\u00a0Look at that spelling and then tell me why so many speakers add a phantom\u00a0b<\/em>: “cumber-bund.”<\/p>\n Pundit\u00a0<\/strong>\u00a0I’ve heard seasoned public figures\u2014hello, Hillary Clinton\u2014say “pundint.”<\/p>\n Whirlwind\u00a0<\/strong>\u00a0I’ve also heard veteran TV journalists\u2014hello, Wolf Blitzer\u2014say “world wind.”<\/p>\n Sherbet\u00a0<\/strong>\u00a0That’s how you spell it, all right. What happens when the people who add a second\u00a0r\u00a0<\/em>and say “sher-bert” meet the people who drop the first\u00a0r\u00a0<\/em>in\u00a0February<\/em>?<\/p>\n \u2014Tom Stern<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In honor of both our present month as well as the birthday of our late writer Tom Stern, today we repeat his classic pronunciation article first published on February 3, 2016. Feb-yoo-ary. Febber-ary. Feb-wary. Can’t anyone around here say “feb-roo-ary”? It’s time to revisit\u00a0dissimilation, the labored linguistic theory that purports to explain why so […]<\/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":[10,49,37,51],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2678","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-definitions","category-pronunciation","category-spelling","category-vocabulary"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2678"}],"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=2678"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2678\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2678"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2678"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2678"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}