A recent blogspot discovered by fortunate accident has sounded the rams-horn again to address the Problems With English Other Than the Fact That Not Enough People in America Are Speaking It. Which is, Too Many People Who Think They Are Speaking English Need to Try Harder. The discussion boards on the site include many non-US English speakers and the issue here is not to take them to task. Their Englishes have their own rules and their countries have their own problems, so let them have at it. But, as before we noted here problems with word usage and with pronunciation are not improving between our oceans! So, with the conviction that the often pushed idea that English is “chaotic” and has no rules is blithering blather and that people are simply too lazy and impudent to learn the rules of pronunciation that would head off the most atrocious and nauseous manglings, and that there is by the way nothing wrong with long and multiple subject sentences, here we go.
-ILE: In American English, the suffix –ile is unstressed. It is pronounced ‘L. It is not stressed and not pronounced –ILE, like the word aisle or the contraction I’ll. So think of the word missile. Americans always pronounce this, correctly, as MISS’L. We don’t say MISS-ILE, like “miss I’ll”. The British do, and we know that, but it doesn’t throw us. But for some reason only known to sociolinguapsychologists—and I’m not sure there is any such thing—after the missile test Americans just fall apart. So here is an inanely repetitive list that is probably futile (see below)
Agile: Say AJ’L DON’T Say AJ-ILE
Futile: Say FYOOT’L (like feudal, but with a T) DON’T Say FYOO—TILE
Fragile: Say FRAJ’L DON’T Say FRAJ-ILE
Hostile: Say HOST’L (like hostel) DON’T Say HOS-TILE
Juvenile: Say JOOVEN’L DON’T Say JOOVEN-ILE
Mercantile: Say MERKENT’L DON’T Say MERKEN-TILE (that’s an upHILE battle)
Textile: Say TEKST’L DON”T Say TEKS-TILE (that will be upHILE and FYOOT’L)
CIA, CIE, CEA, TIO, TIA: when a C or a T is followed by a multiple vowel combination, an SH sound is usually produced. Now, to make it harder, there is disagreement over whether the SH sound is made by the C or T, or made by combination of the C or T with the subsequent vowel. So, keeping it local, everyone knows the train is at the station that is a STAY-SH’N. The question decocts to, Does the second T in station make an SH sound, and the I is silent? Or does the TI in station make an SH sound? In many to most cases it doesn’t matter, and in most cases people seem to naturally get this. They say official UH-FI-SH’L they say special SPE-SH’L, they say ocean OH-SH’N, they say martial MAR-SH’L (though they probably think it’s spelled that way, too). they say facial FAYSH’L, they say most all –tions SHUNS. The word they fall down on more often than not is species, which suddenly and for no apparent reason has started being SPEE-SEEZ rhymes with feces, most of the time, and SPEE-SHEEZ little of the time. It should be, and used to be SPEE-SHEEZ, as the rule dictates, all of the time. Then somewhere someone decided it was a SPES-EE-AL case and it’s been far more contagious than bird flu ever since. If you’ve been saying this, stop it. It is not an EKS-EPS-E-AN to the rule.
This same over-prissiness comes across from media talking heads who suddenly NE-GOH-SEE-ATE things that are CON-TRA-VER-SEE-AL.—in the latter case even adding an extra unwanted and unwarranted fifth syllable.
Now there is murkiness here. The preference is for a judiciary to be JOO-DISH-EE-AIR-EE, with five syllabic flags flying, and not a JOO-DISH-ER-EE with only four. But its issues are JOO-DI-SH’L, not JOO-DISH-EE-AL (or, god forbid, JOO-DIS-EE-AL). So what gives? Does the C make an SH sound all by itself leaving the following “I” to make an EE sound for the judiciary, but then need the “I” to go SH for judicial? The alternative is that CI makes the SH sound in which case there is an “I” missing in the accepted spelling of judiciiary [sic].
-TAIN: In words that end with this combination the syllable is unstressed. A captain is a CAPT’N, not a CAP-TAYN, a mountain is not a MOUN-TAYN and of these we are all certainly SERT’N. So, the starchy vegetable, exotic though it may seem, is a PLANT’N, not a PLANT-AYN. The exception to this is verbs: maintain, ascertain,etc,.which typically are not stressed on the first syllable
AE: Actually, there are two different issues here. In modern English the old diphthong (DIF-THONG) this represented is gone. In American English, it makes a long E (EE) sound. This is also true of Latin wordsl where the singular ending in A is pluralized by adding an E (as in antenna, antennae). So an aegis is an EEJIS, Aesop’s fables are EESOP’s. So far, relatively good. But the Latin endings trip people up. They just can’t leave an A alone. So, we get one vertebra and more VERT-A-BRAY, even from back doctors who should know better. Two or more are VERT-A-BREE. Likewise supernovae (SOOP-ER-NOH-VEE) and arrays of radio AN-TEN-EE. Of course this could be remedied most easily by recognizing the separate but even more useful rule that words that have been adopted into English can be anglicized. You probably can’t get away with vertabras, but antennas, supernovas and mathematical formulas are fine.
LM : This one will rile people all the time, though why is a mystery. It rarely goes unrealized or unsaid that Ls before Fs and Ks in many cases, are not pronounced but simply modify the vowel in front of them. Folks usually know they are FOHKS, not FOHLKS. And eggs have YOHKS that sound just like yokes, and all this has to do with how people TAWK, not TAWLK (that kind chokes you), A walk is a WAWK, a half is a HAF, a calf is a KAF, etc. Generally, the rule with LK is that after an E or an I, the L is pronounced, (ELK, MILK) after an A or an O it is not (WALK, FOLK). With an LF combo, after anything but an A it is pronounced (ELF, GOLF, GULF, but HAF).
The problem comes with LM. Generally, after an A, the L in an LM combination is not supposed to be pronounced. The L just modifies the A sound, like it does between an A and a K in walk, talk, stalk and balk (yes, BAWK—no L). So, you put a BOM, made from O-MOND oil on your POM to KOM yourself down. It might act as a SAV, although that is by extension due to the relationship of F’s and V’s, not to the LM-ents at hand here.
OV: This one comes from early spelling and printing conventions that conspired to muck-up what would have otherwise been fine. It seems that early on, some handwriters had a predilection for over-rounding and over-closing their U’s, making them look like O’s, particularly when writing a U followed by V. This is because the early distinction between U and V as separate letters was late in coming and UV looked like VV or even W, if some distinction were not attempted. This caused Julius Caesar’s brother, Ivlivs Caesar, to get all kinds of undeserved credit. The unfortunate result was that many printers—who were surprisingly illiterate—used O’s for the intended U’s so that many words that were spelled kind of like they were pronounced—luve, abuve, uven,-- got printed as love, above, and oven. The legacy of this that generally speaking, to this day, in most words with an OV combination, the O is pronounced like the short U in under. This is so true, most don’t even notice: oven, above, love, shove, coven, dove (the bird), shovel, glove, So, just like one would SHUV’L with a shovel, one would GRUV’L by their HUV’L and not HUV-ER needlessly over a shoulder. Cases where the O is actually pronounced like an O of some kind, like grove, clove, move over; are actually the exception to the rule.