Timeline for In the word "Scent", is the S or the C silent?
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
21 events
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| Dec 26, 2014 at 3:31 | review | Suggested edits | |||
| Dec 26, 2014 at 5:32 | |||||
| Sep 17, 2014 at 15:29 | comment | added | Bob Jarvis - Слава Україні |
sceptic versus skeptic - despite being a native mumbler of the American language (such as it is :-}) even I shudder in horror at skeptic. That's Just SO Wrong!
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| Aug 29, 2014 at 8:21 | comment | added | Frank | @SevenSidedDie A schism? oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/schism | |
| Aug 28, 2014 at 16:30 | comment | added | SevenSidedDie | This appears to be a weird instance of dialect-warring? I realise the coda is probably typically-British humour, but, ah, we're not all Brits here and the joke is flat. | |
| Aug 28, 2014 at 6:17 | comment | added | Kris | Tim, There are no silent letters in science either :) english.stackexchange.com/questions/193548/… | |
| Aug 28, 2014 at 1:48 | comment | added | AmeliaBR | @Scott, I'm pretty sure Tim's reference to "the Queen's English" was an allusion to the differences between North American (skeptic) and British (sceptic) orthography; see for example Oxford Dictionaries Online, which also lists the k version as an archaic form. Your Google search, and Stack Exchange's own usage, reflect the American spelling. | |
| Aug 27, 2014 at 22:25 | comment | added | Janus Bahs Jacquet | @AmeliaBR I suspect that is your own weird affectation. I have never seen any description of or myself heard any dialect of English that distinguished more unvoiced sibilants than /s/ and /ʃ/, and in all the words we’re discussing here, plain old /s/ is used. No difference whatsoever. Their identical pronunciation is why some words can be spelt differently with no problems in different orthographies: offence/offense, defence/defense, etc. | |
| Aug 27, 2014 at 22:14 | comment | added | Scott - Слава Україні | @Tim: Your answer is a red herring. According to Google, "skeptic" is about 10 times as common as "sceptic"; even Stack Exchange spells it with a "k". Most words containing "sce" are pronounced "se" rather than "ske"; e.g., "scene" (and "obscene"), "abscess", "ascend"/"ascent"/"descend"/"descent", and "scepter". | |
| Aug 27, 2014 at 22:07 | comment | added | Pimgd | @Scott I don't know anymore TT_TT English is hard and I have no idea how and why my mouth produces words... at least my mouth knows. Or would that be my vocal chords? | |
| Aug 27, 2014 at 21:31 | comment | added | Scott - Слава Україні | @Pimgd: Why do you have a problem pronouncing "sience" the same as "science"? At the risk of opening a recursive self-referential vortex, how do you pronounce "silent"? "see-lent"? Or with the first syllable (si-) rhyming with "die", "lie", "pie", and "tie" (and like "bi-" in "biannual", "binary", "biology", and "bivalve")? | |
| Aug 27, 2014 at 15:01 | comment | added | AmeliaBR | @JanusBahsJacquet: I pronounce sent/scent/cent differently; the soft c is pronounced with the jaw still, lower jaw pulled in, pushing the air through the space between the teeth. The s is pronounced by sliding the lower jaw outwards while holding the tip of the tongue up towards the top of the mouth, resulting in a much softer sound. The sc in scent and science is a combination of the two (i.e., neither letter is silent). Now, maybe this is just my weird affectation, maybe it's a Canadianism, I don't know. | |
| Aug 27, 2014 at 13:53 | comment | added | Janus Bahs Jacquet | @Pimgd Science and sience (if it existed) would most likely both be pronounced the same: [ˈsɑɪəns]. ‹si› and ‹sci› and ‹ci› all default to representing /si/ or /siː/, depending on the word and the context, though it is true that only ‹si› would normally be used to represent /zi/ or /ziː/. | |
| Aug 27, 2014 at 13:51 | comment | added | Janus Bahs Jacquet | @AakashM No, no one. Scent, sent, and cent are all pronounced exactly the same in every single dialect of English that I have ever heard the words pronounced in. | |
| Aug 27, 2014 at 13:50 | comment | added | Janus Bahs Jacquet | Even accepting the notion of ‘silent letters’ (as Reg points out, all letters are really silent—there is no one-to-one correspondence between written letters and phonemes or phones in a word), this is just wrong. A c before a front vowel would not be expected to be pronounced /k/; this is only the case in a few words where the letter-to-sound correspondence is even lower than on average: sceptic, ceilidh. The default interpretion of ‹ce› is that it likely represents /se/. | |
| Aug 27, 2014 at 13:47 | comment | added | AakashM | "to all but Professor Higgins-level phoneticians" - oxforddictionaries.com has sɛnt for both scent and sent - is there anyone who would have these different?? | |
| Aug 27, 2014 at 13:28 | comment | added | Pimgd | Yeah but science is sci-ence right? There's a pretty clear difference between "si" and "sci", I'd say one would be like "see" and the other one like "sai". | |
| Aug 27, 2014 at 13:16 | comment | added | GalacticCowboy | @TimLymington So which letter in science is silent? :) | |
| Aug 27, 2014 at 13:13 | comment | added | Tim Lymington | @Kris: because science has a silent letter. That's rather the point. | |
| Aug 27, 2014 at 12:07 | comment | added | Pimgd | I know how to pronounce SCIENCE! and I know that removing the c leads to a weird pronunciation where it sounds more like "see-ense". For me the answer "it's like the word science" helps me to understand it better. | |
| Aug 27, 2014 at 12:03 | comment | added | Kris | ... would be pronounced like the beginning of "sceptic:" why not like science? | |
| Aug 27, 2014 at 11:49 | history | answered | Tim Lymington | CC BY-SA 3.0 |