It has been a while since our last pronunciation column, so here’s 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\u00a0r<\/em>\u00a0in February, the first\u00a0c\u00a0<\/em>in this word is often carelessly dropped: it’s ant-ARC-tica, not ant-AR-tica.<\/p>\n Err \u00a0<\/strong>Since to\u00a0err<\/em>\u00a0is to make an error, it seems logical to say “air”\u2014but who said English is logical? The traditionally correct way to say\u00a0err<\/em>\u00a0is to rhyme it with\u00a0her.<\/em><\/p>\n Inherent \u00a0<\/strong>Properly, in-HEER-ent. Most people say in-HAIR-ent, but that’s wrong and we can prove it: How do you say\u00a0adherent<\/em>? (As with err<\/em>, in-HAIR-ent has gained ground in recent years and is now considered an acceptable variant.)<\/p>\n Covert \u00a0<\/strong>Most say CO-vert, rhymes with\u00a0overt.\u00a0<\/em>But it’s traditionally pronounced CUV-ert, as in “cover” plus a\u00a0t<\/em>. You may not hear CUV-ert much these days, but it is still listed in the\u00a0American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language<\/em>, Merriam-Webster<\/em>, <\/em>and others.<\/p>\n Nuptial \u00a0<\/strong>It’s two syllables: NUP-shul. A lot of people, including many in the media, say NUP-shu-ul. How do they get “shu-ul” from\u00a0tial<\/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\u00a0Webster’s New World<\/em>\u00a0dictionary lists only the three-syllable pronunciation, but the 2014\u00a0Webster’s New World<\/em>\u00a0(and others) has caved, giving the four-syllable alternatives unwarranted legitimacy. Charles Harrington Elster, in his\u00a0Big Book of Beastly Mispronunciations,<\/em>\u00a0calls the four-syllable variants “illogical.” Elster’s point:\u00a0naive<\/em>\u00a0is two syllables, and\u00a0t\u00e9<\/em>\u00a0is one syllable. Since when does two plus one equal four?<\/p>\n Margarine \u00a0<\/strong>Relax, you’re saying it right. But when it was coined by the French in the 1870s,\u00a0margarine<\/em>\u00a0had the same first two syllables as\u00a0Margaret<\/em>\u00a0and the third syllable rhymed with\u00a0clean<\/em>. Yes, believe it or not, people used to say MARG-a-reen\u2014hard\u00a0g<\/em>, plus “een” on the end.<\/p>\n Our 1941\u00a0Webster’s New International Dictionary\u00a0<\/em>lists but two possible pronunciations for\u00a0margarine<\/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 “in” rather than “een.”<\/p>\n Twenty-seven years later, the 1968 edition of Random House’s\u00a0American College Dictionary\u00a0<\/em>listed “marj” and “marg,” and said the final syllable could be pronounced either “in” or “een.” And as recently as 1980, the\u00a0American Heritage Dictionary<\/em>\u00a0listed “marj” and “marg,” but by then “een” was gone.<\/p>\n Standard pronunciations evolve, and\u00a0margarine<\/em>\u00a0has done more than its share of evolving over the last 140 years. But today “MARJ-a-rin” has won out.<\/p>\n Today’s article was adapted and updated from our late writer-editor Tom Stern’s original, first posted on June 16, 2015.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" It has been a while since our last pronunciation column, so here’s another group of familiar words whose traditional pronunciations may surprise you. (Note: capital letters denote a stressed syllable.) Antarctica \u00a0Like the elusive first\u00a0r\u00a0in February, the first\u00a0c\u00a0in this word is often carelessly dropped: it’s ant-ARC-tica, not ant-AR-tica. Err \u00a0Since to\u00a0err\u00a0is to make an error, […]<\/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":[10,12,49,37],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3297","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-definitions","category-effective-writing","category-pronunciation","category-spelling"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3297"}],"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=3297"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3297\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3297"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3297"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3297"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}