With few exceptions, I hear people pronounce enmity emnity, Wednesday Wensday, and prerogative perogative.
Is there a proper term for this phenomenon?
asked Nov 19, 2015 at 0:05
-
Wednesday = "Wensday" is usually not considered a mispronunciation. More generally, how do you determine if something is a "mispronunciation" or not if it is "always" pronounced the wrong way? Just by looking at how it's spelled? Then what about words like hymn, debt, or island where some letters are standardly "silent"?– herissonCommented Nov 19, 2015 at 1:12
-
I would say a mispronunciation in this context is to not follow the printed letters with the spoken sounds. I'd be interested to know how Wensday isn't a mispronunciation of Wednesday. Wed-nes-day.– Daniel StowersCommented Nov 19, 2015 at 1:15
-
1But the pronunciation of island as "eye-land" does not follow the printed letters. So is it a mispronunciation? The OED online lists the following pronunciations for Wednesday: . /ˈwɛnzdeɪ/ , /ˈwɛnzdi/ , U.S. /ˈwɛnzˌdeɪ/ , /ˈwɛnzdi/. You'll notice none of them have a /d/ before the /z/.– herissonCommented Nov 19, 2015 at 1:17
-
That how-to-pronounce doesn't say how it got that way. I'd be interested to find that out. I mentioned this in another situation: a short drive from my home is a main road called Wellesley Street. Everyone here (NZ) calls it WELL es ley Street. But it's named for the first Duke Of Wellington, Arthur Wellesley, pronounced WELLES ley.No matter who I explain that to and how accepting they are of the information and how in agreement they are with it needing to have it's proper pronunciation restored, they simply cannot say it the right way because of the weight and momentum of tradition.– Daniel StowersCommented Nov 19, 2015 at 1:23
-
Sure, but you're confusing two things here: spelling and history. Historically, the word lady was at one point pronounced more like HLAV-dee-yeh. (The first part is related to the word loaf, loaves). But the "v" sound was lost, and it seems meaningless to say that it would be "correct" to pronounce it today. Historically, the word island never had an "s" sound: the "s" in the spelling was inserted because people thought it was related to the Latin word insula. It seems wrong to me to say that it would be "correct" to pronounce it today.– herissonCommented Nov 19, 2015 at 1:32
|
Show 6 more comments
3 Answers
Consider, metathesis
(phonetics, prosody) The transposition of letters, syllables or sounds within a word, such as in ask as /æks/. Wikipedia
nucular is a commonly used metathetic form of the word nuclear Wikipedia
-
Wow! Thanks for that. I think that works for most of what I was meaning. There might be a separate term for dropping a sound (like perogative for prerogative). But this was a pretty useful answer. Commented Nov 19, 2015 at 0:39
-
2
-
Metathesis seems right to describe the pronunciation Daniel listed for enmity, but not for the ones listed for the other two words. For Wednesday and prerogative, the relevant change seems to be elision (in prerogative, there may also be a morphological reanalysis of the prefix).– herissonCommented Nov 19, 2015 at 2:04
Just come across the word which describes the mumbling of Wednesday & prerogative.
Lenition (Oxford Dictionaries /US English) The process or result of weakened articulation of a consonant, causing the consonant to become voiced, spirantized, or lost.
In UK English a more limited definition is given.
Enmity and emnity are both correct pronunciations of two different words with different meanings. They are only mispronunciations if used in the wrong context (ie where the context implies the wrong meaning for the pronunciation used).
Enmity: a barrier ("...we should not create enmity between peoples")
Emnity: opposition to something ("there is emnity to the Taliban amongst many Afghans").
-
This would benefit from having the sources for your word definitions. Commented Sep 8, 2021 at 6:27
-
A search for 'emnity' produces no results in the Oxford English, Merriam-Webster, or Cambridge dictionary.– DW256Commented Sep 8, 2021 at 6:36
-
I have to believe this answer is a result of someone (@haughtonomous) hearing the common mispronunciation ("em-nity" should be "en-mity"), seeing the spelling, and deducing/intuiting (incorrectly) that there are actually two words with distinct definitions. But the clear evidence as that there is only one word ("enmity") with a common mispronunciation ("em-nity"). Source: en.wiktionary.org/wiki/emnity Commented Apr 29 at 20:32