The
phonological history of the English language includes various changes in the
phonology of
consonant clusters.
H-cluster reductions
The H-cluster reductions are various
consonant reductions that have occurred in the history of English, involving consonant clusters beginning with that have lost the (or become reduced to ) in some or all dialects.
Reductions of /hw/
The cluster (spelled ⟨wh⟩ since
Middle English) has been subject to two kinds of reduction:
* Reduction to before
rounded vowel
In phonetics, vowel roundedness is the amount of rounding in the lips during the articulation of a vowel. It is labialization of a vowel. When a ''rounded'' vowel is pronounced, the lips form a circular opening, and ''unrounded'' vowels are pr ...
s (due to being perceived as a with the
labialization characteristic of that environment). This occurred with the word ''how'' in the
Old English period, and with ''who'', ''whom'' and ''whose'' in
Middle English (the latter words having had an unrounded vowel in Old English).
* Reduction to , a development that has affected the speech of the great majority of English speakers, causing them to pronounce ⟨wh-⟩ the same as ⟨w-⟩ (sometimes called the ''wine–whine merger'' or ''
glide cluster reduction''). The distinction is maintained, however, in
Scotland, most of
Ireland, and some
Southern American English.
Reduction of /hl/, /hr/ and /hn/
The Old English consonant clusters , and were reduced to , , and in Middle English. For example, Old English , and become ''loaf'', ''ring'' and ''nut'' in Modern English.
Reduction of /hj/
In some dialects of English the cluster is reduced to , leading to pronunciations like for ''huge'' and for ''human'', and making ''hew'' a
homophone of ''ewe'' and ''you''. This is sometimes considered a type of
glide cluster reduction, but it is much less widespread than wh-reduction, and is generally
stigmatized
Social stigma is the disapproval of, or discrimination against, an individual or group based on perceived characteristics that serve to distinguish them from other members of a society. Social stigmas are commonly related to culture, gender, ra ...
where it is found. Aside from accents with general
H-dropping, in the
United States this reduction is mostly found in accents of
Philadelphia and
New York City; it also occurs in
Cork
Cork or CORK may refer to:
Materials
* Cork (material), an impermeable buoyant plant product
** Cork (plug), a cylindrical or conical object used to seal a container
***Wine cork
Places Ireland
* Cork (city)
** Metropolitan Cork, also known as G ...
accents of
Irish English
Hiberno-English (from Latin ''Hibernia'': "Ireland"), and in ga, Béarla na hÉireann. or Irish English, also formerly Anglo-Irish, is the set of English dialects native to the island of Ireland (including both the Republic of Ireland a ...
. In other dialects of English, ''hew'' and ''yew'' remain distinct; however, the cluster of ''hew'', ''human'', etc. is often reduced from to just (a
voiceless palatal fricative
The voiceless palatal fricative is a type of consonantal sound used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is , and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is C. It is the non-sibilant equiv ...
).
Y-cluster reductions
Y-cluster reductions are reductions of clusters ending with the
palatal approximant , which is the sound of in ''yes'', and is sometimes referred to as "yod", from the
Hebrew
Hebrew (; ; ) is a Northwest Semitic language of the Afroasiatic language family. Historically, it is one of the spoken languages of the Israelites and their longest-surviving descendants, the Jews and Samaritans. It was largely preserved ...
letter
yod(h), which has the sound . Many such clusters arose in dialects in which the falling diphthong (the product of the merger of several Middle English vowel sequences) became the rising diphthong . (For more information, see
Phonological history of English high back vowels.) They were thus often found before the vowel , as in ''cube'' – which was in some cases
modified to or before (historical) , as in ''cure'', or weakened to or as in ''argument''. They also occurred in words ending in ''-ion'' and ''-ious'', such as ''nation'' and ''precious''.
This change from to , which had occurred in London by the end of the 17th century, did not take place in all dialects. A few dialects, notably in
Wales, as well as in some parts of northern England,
New England, and the
American South
The Southern United States (sometimes Dixie, also referred to as the Southern States, the American South, the Southland, or simply the South) is a geographic and cultural region of the United States of America. It is between the Atlantic Ocean ...
, still retain a (
falling
Falling or fallin' may refer to:
*Falling (physics), movement due to gravity
*Falling (accident)
* Falling (execution)
* Falling (sensation)
People
* Christine Falling (born 1963), American serial killer who murdered six children
Books
* ''Fa ...
) diphthong where standard English has – these dialects therefore lack the clusters with and have not been subject to the reductions described here.
The diphthongs or are most commonly indicated by the spellings ''eu'', ''ew'', ''uCV'' (where ''C'' is any consonant and ''V'' is any vowel), ''ue'' and ''ui'', as in ''feud'', ''few'', ''mute'', ''cue'' and ''suit'', while the historical monophthong is commonly indicated by the spellings ''oo'' and ''ou'', as in ''moon'' and ''soup''.
Yod-dropping
Yod-dropping is the
elision of the from certain syllable-initial clusters of the type described above. Particular cases of yod-dropping may affect all or some of the dialects that have the relevant clusters.
The change of to in these positions (as described above) produced some clusters which would have been difficult or impossible to pronounce, which led to what
John Wells calls Early Yod Dropping in which the was elided in the following environments:
*After , for example ''chute'' , ''chew'' , ''juice''
*After , for example ''yew'' (compare in some conservative dialects)
*After , for example ''rude''
*After stop+ clusters, for example ''blue''
The previously mentioned accents that did not have the → change were not subject to this process. Thus, for example, in much
Welsh English pairs like ''chews''/''choose'', ''yew''/''you'' and ''threw''/''through'' remain distinct: the first member of each pair has the diphthong , while the second member has :
*''chews'' , ''choose''
* ''yew'' , ''you''
* ''threw'' , ''through''
Conversely, an initial does not appear in Welsh English before in words such as ''yeast'' and ''yield''.
Many varieties of English have extended yod-dropping to the following environments if the is in the same syllable as the preceding consonant:
*After , for example ''suit''
*After , for example ''lute''
*After , for example ''Zeus''
*After , for example ''enthuse''
Yod-dropping in the above environments used to be considered nonstandard in England but now also occurs by educated
RP-speakers. (The after is not normally dropped in RP in medial positions, however: compare ''pursuit'' .) In
General American, yod-dropping is found not only in the above environments but also after , and , for example ''tune'' , ''dew'' , ''new''
The lack of yod-dropping in those contexts has occasionally been held to be a
shibboleth distinguishing Canadians from Americans. However, in a survey conducted in the
Golden Horseshoe area of Southern Ontario in 1994, over 80% of respondents under the age of 40 pronounced ''student'' and ''news'' without yod.
General American thus undergoes yod-dropping after all
alveolar consonant
Alveolar (; UK also ) consonants are articulated with the tongue against or close to the superior alveolar ridge, which is called that because it contains the alveoli (the sockets) of the upper teeth. Alveolar consonants may be articulated wit ...
s. A few accents of
American English
American English, sometimes called United States English or U.S. English, is the set of varieties of the English language native to the United States. English is the most widely spoken language in the United States and in most circumstances ...
, such as working-class
Southern American English, however, preserve the distinction in pairs like ''
do''/''
dew'' because like in the Welsh English dialects discussed above, they retain a diphthong in words in which RP has : , , etc.
However, in words like ''annual'', ''menu'', ''volume'', ''Matthew'', ''continue'', etc., with a syllable break before the , there is no yod-dropping. The same applies accordingly to British and other accents; the yod is often dropped after initial , for example, but it is not dropped in words like ''volume'' or ''value''. (British speakers omit the in ''figure'', but most Americans retain it.)
Uniquely, in
New Zealand and to some extent
Australian English
Australian English (AusE, AusEng, AuE, AuEng, en-AU) is the set of varieties of the English language native to Australia. It is the country's common language and ''de facto'' national language; while Australia has no official language, Eng ...
, ''debut'' is mainly pronounced without the yod as .
Yod-dropping after , , and was also a traditional feature of
Cockney
Cockney is an accent and dialect of English, mainly spoken in London and its environs, particularly by working-class and lower middle-class Londoners. The term "Cockney" has traditionally been used to describe a person from the East End, or b ...
speech, which continues to be the case after , but now, after and ,
yod-coalescence
The phonological history of the English language includes various changes in the phonology of consonant clusters.
H-cluster reductions
The H-cluster reductions are various consonant reductions that have occurred in the history of English, inv ...
is now more common.
Some
East Anglian
East Anglia is an area in the East of England, often defined as including the counties of Norfolk, Suffolk and Cambridgeshire. The name derives from the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of the East Angles, a people whose name originated in Anglia, in wh ...
accents such as
Norfolk dialect
East Anglian English is a dialect of English spoken in East Anglia, primarily in or before the mid-20th century. East Anglian English has had a very considerable input into modern Estuary English, which has largely replaced it. However, it has r ...
extend yod-dropping not only to the position after , or but also to the position after nonalveolar consonants as well: pairs like ''beauty''/''booty'', ''mute''/''moot'', ''cute''/''coot'' can then be homophonous. A well-known series of British television advertisements beginning in the 1980s featured
Bernard Matthews, who was from Norfolk and described his turkeys as "bootiful" (for ''beautiful''). Such accents pronounce a in words like "use", "unit", etc. only if there is no consonant before the .
Yod-coalescence
Yod-coalescence is a process that
fuses the clusters into the
sibilants respectively (for the meanings of those symbols, see
English phonology). The first two are examples of
affrication.
Unlike yod-dropping, yod-coalescence frequently occurs with clusters that would be considered to span a syllable boundary and so commonly occurs before unstressed syllables. For example, in ''educate'', the cluster would not usually be subject to yod-dropping in General American, as the is assigned to the previous syllable, but it commonly coalesces to . Here are a few examples of yod-coalescence universal in all English dialects:
* in most words ending ''-ture'', such as ''nature''
* in ''soldier''
* in words ending with ''-ssure'' such as ''pressure'' (also in words ending with consonant+''sure'', consonant+''sion'', ''-tion'')
* in words ending vowel+''sure'' such as ''measure'' (also vowel+''sion'')
In some other words, the coalesced pronunciation is common in English dialects around the world, but an older non-coalesced form still exists among some speakers of standard British English:
* ''educate'' (also in standard
RP: )
* ''azure'' (also in RP )
* ''issue'' (also in RP ), the intermediate form being also common
Coalescence can even occur across word boundaries, as in the colloquial "
gotcha
Gotcha, a colloquial contraction for "got you" (got ya), may refer to:
Film and TV
* ''Gotcha!'' (film), a 1985 film starring Anthony Edwards and Linda Fiorentino
* "Gotcha!" (''Adventure Time''), an episode of ''Adventure Time''
* "Gotcha" ...
" (for ''got you'' ) and "whatcha" (for ''what're you'' ).
In certain English accents, yod-coalescence also occurs in stressed syllables, as in ''tune'' and ''dune''. That occurs only in
Australian
Australian(s) may refer to:
Australia
* Australia, a country
* Australians, citizens of the Commonwealth of Australia
** European Australians
** Anglo-Celtic Australians, Australians descended principally from British colonists
** Aboriginal Au ...
,
Cockney
Cockney is an accent and dialect of English, mainly spoken in London and its environs, particularly by working-class and lower middle-class Londoners. The term "Cockney" has traditionally been used to describe a person from the East End, or b ...
,
Estuary English
Estuary English is an English accent associated with the area along the River Thames and its estuary, including London. Phonetician John C. Wells proposed a definition of Estuary English as "Standard English spoken with the accent of the southe ...
,
Zimbabwean English, some speakers of
Hiberno-English,
Newfoundland English
Newfoundland English is a term referring to any of several accents and dialects of Atlantic Canadian English found in the province of Newfoundland and Labrador. Most of these differ substantially from the English commonly spoken elsewhere in C ...
,
South African English
South African English (SAfrE, SAfrEng, SAE, en-ZA) is the set of English language dialects native to South Africans.
History
British settlers first arrived in the South African region in 1795, when they established a military holding op ...
, and to a certain extent
in
New Zealand English
New is an adjective referring to something recently made, discovered, or created.
New or NEW may refer to:
Music
* New, singer of K-pop group The Boyz
Albums and EPs
* ''New'' (album), by Paul McCartney, 2013
* ''New'' (EP), by Regurgitator, ...
, many speakers in
Scottish English, and even some varieties of English in Asia, like
Philippine English
Philippine English (similar and related to American English) is any variety of English native to the Philippines, including those used by the media and the vast majority of educated Filipinos and English learners in the Philippines from adja ...
(many speakers because of the influence by the phonology of their mother languages). That results in pronunciations such as the following:
* ''dew/due'' (RP: )
* ''tune'' (RP: )
In certain varieties such as Australian and Ugandan English, stressed can also coalesce:
* ''resume'' (RP: )
* ''assume'' (RP: )
That can lead to additional homophony; for instance, ''dew'' and ''due'' come to be pronounced the same as ''Jew''.
Yod-coalescence has traditionally been resisted in
Received Pronunciation. It has certainly become established in words of the first group listed above (''nature'', ''soldier'', ''pressure'' etc.), but it is not yet universal in those of the second group (''educate'' etc.), and it does not generally occur in those of the third group (''dew'', ''tune'' etc.).
See also
*
List of yod-dropping and coalescence homophones on
Wiktionary.
Other initial cluster reductions
Reduction of /wr/ and /wl/
Old and Middle English had an initial cluster (note that /r/ does not denote here), hence the spelling of words like ''write'' and ''wrong''. This was reduced to just , apparently during the 17th century. An intermediate stage may have been an with
lip rounding.
As a result of this reduction, pairs of words like ''rap'' and ''wrap'', ''rite'' and ''write'', etc. are
homophones
A homophone () is a word that is pronounced the same (to varying extent) as another word but differs in meaning. A ''homophone'' may also differ in spelling. The two words may be spelled the same, for example ''rose'' (flower) and ''rose'' (p ...
in practically all varieties of Modern English. They remain distinct in the
Doric dialect of
Scots, where the ''wr-'' cluster is pronounced .
Alexander John Ellis
Alexander John Ellis, (14 June 1814 – 28 October 1890), was an English mathematician, philologist and early phonetician who also influenced the field of musicology. He changed his name from his father's name, Sharpe, to his mother's maiden na ...
reported distinctions between ''w'' and ''wr'' in
Cumbria and in several varieties of Scots in the nineteenth century.
Old English also had a cluster , which reduced to during Middle English. For example, the word ''lisp'' derives from Old English ''wlisp(ian)''.
Reduction of
Middle English initial is reduced in modern English to , making pairs like ''knot/not'' and ''knight/night'' homophones.
The cluster was spelled ''cn-'' in Old English; this changed to ''kn-'' in Middle English, and this spelling survives in Modern English, despite the loss of the sound. Cognates in other
Germanic languages usually still sound the initial . For example, the Old English ancestor of ''knee'' was ''cnēo'', pronounced , and the cognate word in Modern German is ''Knie'', pronounced .
Most dialects of English reduced the initial cluster to relatively recently; the change seems to have taken place in educated English during the 17th century. Several German-language grammars of English from the late 17th and early 18th centuries transcribed English ''kn-'' as ''tn-'', ''dn-'', implying that a stage of assimilation (or perhaps
debuccalization
Debuccalization or deoralization is a sound change or alternation in which an oral consonant loses its original place of articulation and moves it to the glottis (usually , , or ). The pronunciation of a consonant as is sometimes called aspir ...
to ) preceded that of complete reduction.
The cluster is preserved in some
Scots dialects,
and
Alexander John Ellis
Alexander John Ellis, (14 June 1814 – 28 October 1890), was an English mathematician, philologist and early phonetician who also influenced the field of musicology. He changed his name from his father's name, Sharpe, to his mother's maiden na ...
recorded it in parts of the Northern English counties of
Cumbria and
Northumberland in the late nineteenth century.
Reduction of /ɡn/
The Middle English initial cluster is reduced to in Modern English. Like the reduction of , this seems to have taken place during the seventeenth century. The change affected words like ''gnat'', ''gnostic'', ''gnome'', etc., the spelling with ''gn-'' being retained despite the loss of the sound. The cluster is preserved in some
Scots dialects.
The song ''
The Gnu
"The Gnu" (sometimes known as "A Gnu", "I'm a Gnu" or "The Gnu Song") is a humorous song about a talking gnu by Flanders and Swann.
The word ''gnu'' is consistently pronounced in the song with two syllables as "g-noo", with the ''g'' clearly ...
'' jokes about this silent ''g'' and other silent letters in English. In fact the ''g'' in ''gnu'' may always have been silent in English, since this loanword did not enter the language until the late 18th century. The trumpeter
Kenny Wheeler
Kenneth Vincent John Wheeler, OC (14 January 1930 – 18 September 2014) was a Canadian composer and trumpet and flugelhorn player, based in the U.K. from the 1950s onwards.
Most of his performances were rooted in jazz, but he was also active i ...
wrote a composition titled ''
Gnu High'', a pun on "new high".
S-cluster reductions
In some types of
Caribbean English
Caribbean English (CE, CarE) is a set of dialects of the English language which are spoken in the Caribbean and Liberia, most countries on the Caribbean coast of Central America, and Guyana and Suriname on the coast of South America. Caribbean ...
, the initial clusters , , and are reduced by the loss of . The following
stop is then subject to regular
aspiration (or devoicing of the following approximant) in its new word-initial environment. Some examples of such pronunciations are:
According to
Wells, these reductions occur only in the broadest
creole.
Final cluster reductions
NG-coalescence
NG-coalescence is a historical sound change by which the final cluster , pronounced (the being realized as a
velar nasal
The voiced velar nasal, also known as agma, from the Greek word for 'fragment', is a type of consonantal sound used in some spoken languages. It is the sound of ''ng'' in English ''sing'' as well as ''n'' before velar consonants as in ''Englis ...
by
assimilation with the velar ), came to be pronounced as just – that is, the final was dropped, but the velar quality of the nasal remained. The change took place in educated London speech around the end of the 16th century, and explains why there is no sound at the end of words like ''fang'', ''sing'', ''wrong'' and ''tongue'' in the standard varieties of Modern English.
The change in fact applies not only at the end of a word, but generally at the end of a
morpheme. If a word ending in ''-ng'' is followed by a
suffix or is compounded with another word, the pronunciation normally remains. For example, in the words ''fangs'', ''sings'', ''singing'', ''singer'', ''wronged'', ''wrongly'', ''hangman'', there is no sound. An exception is the
comparative and
superlative forms of adjectives: in the words ''longer/longest'', ''stronger/strongest'', ''younger/youngest'', the is pronounced in most accents. The pronunciation with is thus possible only before a vowel; before a consonant, the only possibility is a bare .
In other cases (when it is not morpheme-final), word-internal ''-ng-'' does not show the effects of coalescence, and the pronunciation is retained, as in ''finger'' and ''angle''. This means that the words ''finger'' and ''singer'' do not rhyme in most modern varieties of English, although they did in Middle English. The process of NG-coalescence might therefore be referred to as the ''singer–finger
split
Split(s) or The Split may refer to:
Places
* Split, Croatia, the largest coastal city in Croatia
* Split Island, Canada, an island in the Hudson Bay
* Split Island, Falkland Islands
* Split Island, Fiji, better known as Hạfliua
Arts, enterta ...
''.
Some accents, however, do not show the full effects of NG-coalescence as described above, and in these accents ''sing'' may be found with , the suffix ''-ing'' may be pronounced (though
G-dropping is another possibility), and ''singer'' may rhyme with ''finger''. This is particularly associated with
English English accents in an area of
Northern England (especially
Lancashire), the
West Midlands and
Derbyshire in the
East Midlands, and is also present in north-east varieties of
Welsh English. This includes the cities of
Birmingham
Birmingham ( ) is a city and metropolitan borough in the metropolitan county of West Midlands in England. It is the second-largest city in the United Kingdom with a population of 1.145 million in the city proper, 2.92 million in the West ...
(see
Brummie
The Brummie dialect, or more formally the Birmingham dialect, is spoken by many people in Birmingham, England, and some of its surrounding areas. "Brummie" is also a demonym for people from Birmingham. It is often erroneously used in referring to ...
),
Manchester,
Liverpool (see
Scouse),
Sheffield and
Stoke-on-Trent
Stoke-on-Trent (often abbreviated to Stoke) is a city and unitary authority area in Staffordshire, England, with an area of . In 2019, the city had an estimated population of 256,375. It is the largest settlement in Staffordshire and is surrou ...
. This also occurs in a small area of Kent. As this occurs around the mining area of Kent, it might be a result of large-scale migration by miners from other more northerly coalfields to Kent in the 1920s.
It is also associated with some
American English
American English, sometimes called United States English or U.S. English, is the set of varieties of the English language native to the United States. English is the most widely spoken language in the United States and in most circumstances ...
accents in the
New York City area.
On the other hand, in some accents of the west of
Scotland and
Ulster, NG-coalescence is extended to morpheme-internal position, so that ''finger'' is pronounced (cf.
Dutch ''vinger'' ), thus rhyming with ''singer'' (although the is not dropped before a stressed syllable, as in ''engage'').
It is because of NG-coalescence that is now normally regarded one of the
phonemes of standard English. In Middle English, the can be regarded as an
allophone
In phonology, an allophone (; from the Greek , , 'other' and , , 'voice, sound') is a set of multiple possible spoken soundsor '' phones''or signs used to pronounce a single phoneme in a particular language. For example, in English, (as in '' ...
of , occurring before
velar consonants, but in Modern English, in view of
minimal pairs such as ''pan–pang'' and ''sin–sing'', that analysis no longer appears to hold. Nevertheless, some linguists (particularly
generativists) do regard a word like ''sing'' as being
underlyingly , positing a rule that deletes after a nasal before a morpheme boundary, after the nasal has undergone assimilation. A problem with this view is that there are a few words in which is followed neither by a velar nor a morpheme boundary (such as ''gingham'', ''dinghy'', ''orangutan'' and ''
Singapore'' for those speakers who pronounce them without ), and some in which the is not deleted before a morpheme boundary (''longer'' etc., as noted above).
The above-mentioned accents which lack NG-coalescence may more easily be analyzed as lacking a phoneme . The same may apply to those where NG-coalescence is extended to morpheme-internal position, since here a more consistent -deletion rule can be formulated.
G-dropping
G-dropping is a popular name for the feature of speech whereby is used in place of the standard in
weak syllables. This applies especially to the ''
-ing
''-ing'' is a suffix used to make one of the inflected forms of English verbs. This verb form is used as a present participle, as a gerund, and sometimes as an independent noun or adjective. The suffix is also found in certain words like ''morn ...
'' ending of verbs, but also in other words such as ''morning'', ''nothing'', ''ceiling'', ''Buckingham'', etc. G-dropping speakers may pronounce this syllable as or (reducing to a
syllabic "> in some cases), while non-G-dropping speakers have ( with the
weak vowel merger) or .
Relative to the great majority of modern dialects, which have
NG-coalescence, G-dropping does not involve the dropping of any sound, simply the replacement of the
velar nasal
The voiced velar nasal, also known as agma, from the Greek word for 'fragment', is a type of consonantal sound used in some spoken languages. It is the sound of ''ng'' in English ''sing'' as well as ''n'' before velar consonants as in ''Englis ...
with the
alveolar nasal
The voiced alveolar nasal is a type of consonantal sound used in numerous spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents dental, alveolar, and postalveolar nasals is , and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is ...
. The name derives from the apparent
orthographic consequence of replacing the sound written with that normally written . The spelling ''-in' '' is sometimes used to indicate that a speaker uses the G-dropping pronunciation, as in ''makin' '' for ''making''.
The pronunciation with rather than is a long-established one. Old English verbs had a
present participle
In linguistics, a participle () (from Latin ' a "sharing, partaking") is a nonfinite verb form that has some of the characteristics and functions of both verbs and adjectives. More narrowly, ''participle'' has been defined as "a word derived fro ...
in ''-ende'' and a verbal noun (
gerund) form in ''-ing(e)''. These merged into a single form, written ''-ing'', but not necessarily spoken as such – the pronunciation may be inherited from the former distinct present participle form. The variant appears to have been fashionable generally during the 18th century, with the alternative being adopted in educated speech around the 1820s, possibly as a
spelling pronunciation.
Today, G-dropping is a feature of colloquial and non-standard speech of all regions, including stereotypically of
Cockney
Cockney is an accent and dialect of English, mainly spoken in London and its environs, particularly by working-class and lower middle-class Londoners. The term "Cockney" has traditionally been used to describe a person from the East End, or b ...
,
Southern American English and
African American Vernacular English
African-American Vernacular English (AAVE, ), also referred to as Black (Vernacular) English, Black English Vernacular, or occasionally Ebonics (a colloquial, controversial term), is the variety of English natively spoken, particularly in urban ...
. Its use is highly correlated with the
socioeconomic class of the speaker, with speakers of lower classes using with greater frequency. It has also been found to be more common among men than women, and less common in more formal styles of speech.
The fact that the pronunciation was formerly associated with certain upper-class speech is reflected in the phrase ''huntin’, shootin’ and fishin’'' (used in referring to country
gentry who frequently engaged in such
field sports
Field sports are outdoor sports that take place in the wilderness or sparsely populated rural areas, where there are vast areas of uninhabited greenfields. The term specifically refer to activities that mandate sufficiently large open spaces a ...
). Further evidence that this pronunciation was once standard comes from old rhymes, as in this couplet from
John Gay's 1732 pastoral ''
Acis and Galatea'', set to music by
Handel
George Frideric (or Frederick) Handel (; baptised , ; 23 February 1685 – 14 April 1759) was a German-British Baroque composer well known for his operas, oratorios, anthems, concerti grossi, and organ concertos. Handel received his training ...
:
:Shepherd, what art thou pursuing,
:Heedless running to thy ruin?
was presumably pronounced "shepherd, what art thou pursuin', heedless runnin' to thy ruin", although this would sound very odd in an opera today. Similarly, in the poetry of
Jonathan Swift (1667–1745), ''-ing'' forms consistently rhyme with words ending in , as in this verse of ''A Ballad on the Game of Traffic'', where "lining" rhymes with "fine in":
:But Weston has a new-cast gown
:On Sundays to be fine in,
:And, if she can but win a crown,
:'Twill just new dye the lining.
Reduction of /mb/ and /mn/
In later Middle English, the final cluster was reduced to just (the plum-plumb merger). This affects words such as ''lamb'' and ''plumb'', as well as derived forms with suffixes, such as ''lambs'', ''lambing'', ''plumbed'', ''plumber''.
By analogy with words like these, certain other words ending in , which had no historical sound, had a silent letter added to their spelling by way of
hypercorrection. Such words include ''limb'' and ''crumb''.
Where the final cluster occurred, this was reduced to (the him-hymn merger), as in ''column'', ''autumn'', ''damn'', ''solemn''. (Compare French , where the cluster has been reduced to .) Both sounds are nonetheless still pronounced before vowels in certain derivatives, such as ''autumnal'', ''damnation'', ''solemnity''.
Generalized final cluster reduction
General reduction of final consonant clusters occurs in
African American Vernacular English
African-American Vernacular English (AAVE, ), also referred to as Black (Vernacular) English, Black English Vernacular, or occasionally Ebonics (a colloquial, controversial term), is the variety of English natively spoken, particularly in urban ...
and
Caribbean English
Caribbean English (CE, CarE) is a set of dialects of the English language which are spoken in the Caribbean and Liberia, most countries on the Caribbean coast of Central America, and Guyana and Suriname on the coast of South America. Caribbean ...
. The new final consonant may be slightly lengthened as an effect.
Examples are:
The
plurals
The plural (sometimes abbreviated pl., pl, or ), in many languages, is one of the values of the grammatical category of number. The plural of a noun typically denotes a quantity greater than the default quantity represented by that noun. This de ...
of ''test'' and ''desk'' may become ''tesses'' and ''desses'' by the same rule that gives plural ''messes'' from singular ''mess''.
Medial cluster reductions
When a consonant cluster ending in a
stop is followed by another consonant or cluster in the next syllable, the final stop in the first syllable is often
elided
In linguistics, an elision or deletion is the omission of one or more sounds (such as a vowel, a consonant, or a whole syllable) in a word or phrase. However, these terms are also used to refer more narrowly to cases where two words are run toget ...
. This may happen within words or across word boundaries. Examples of stops that will often be elided in this way include the in ''postman'' and the in ''cold cuts'' or ''band saw''.
Historically, similar reductions have taken place before
syllabic consonants in certain words, leading to the silent in words like ''castle'' and ''listen''. This change took place around the 17th century. In the word ''often'', the sound later came to be re-inserted by some speakers as a
spelling pronunciation.
An earlier reduction that took place in early Middle English was the
change of to (the sent-cent merger). This led to the modern sound of
soft
Soft may refer to:
* Softness, or hardness, a property of physical materials
Arts and entertainment
* ''Soft!'', a 1988 novel by Rupert Thomson
* Soft (band), an American music group
* ''Soft'' (album), by Dan Bodan, 2014
* ''Softs'' (album), ...
.
Consonant insertions
Prince–prints merger
For many speakers, an
epenthetic is inserted in the final cluster , making it identical or very similar to the cluster . For example, the words ''prince'' and ''prints'' have come to be homophones or nearly so.
The epenthesis is a natural consequence of the transition from the
nasal to the
fricative ; if the raising of the soft palate (which converts a nasal to an oral sound) is completed before the release of the tongue tip (which enables a fricative sound), an intervening stop naturally results. The merger of and is not necessarily complete, however; the duration of the epenthetic in has been found to be often shorter (and the longer) than in the underlying cluster . Some speakers preserve a clearer distinction, with ''prince'' having , and ''prints'' having or . The epenthesis does not occur between syllables, in words like ''consider''.
Other insertions
The merger of and is also possible, making ''bans'' and ''pens'' sound like ''bands'' and ''pends''. However, this is less common than the merger of and described above, and in rapid speech may involve the
elision of the from rather than epenthesis in .
[Alan Cruttenden, ''Gimson's Pronunciation of English'', Routledge 2013, p. 99.]
Epenthesis of a stop between a nasal and a fricative can also occur in other environments, for example:
* may become (so ''pinscher'' is often pronounced like ''pincher'')
* may become (so ''Samson'' becomes "Sampson", ''hamster'' becomes "hampster")
* may become (so ''Kingston'' becomes "kinkston")
Epenthesis may also happen in the cluster , which then becomes , so ''else'' rhymes with ''belts''.
An epenthetic often intervenes in the cluster in the word ''dreamt'', making it rhyme with ''attempt''.
Some originally epenthetic consonants have become part of the established pronunciation of words. This applies, for instance, to the in words like ''thimble'', ''grumble'' and ''scramble''.
For the insertion of glottal stops before certain consonants, see
Glottalization
Glottalization is the complete or partial closure of the glottis during the articulation of another sound. Glottalization of vowels and other sonorants is most often realized as creaky voice (partial closure). Glottalization of obstruent consona ...
below.
Alterations of clusters
Assimilation
In English as in other languages,
assimilation of adjacent consonants is common, particularly of a
nasal with a following consonant. This can occur within or between words. For example, the in ''encase'' is often pronounced (becoming a
velar
Velars are consonants articulated with the back part of the tongue (the dorsum) against the soft palate, the back part of the roof of the mouth (known also as the velum).
Since the velar region of the roof of the mouth is relatively extensive a ...
nasal by way of assimilation with the following velar stop ), and the in ''ten men'' likely becomes , assimilating with the following
bilabial nasal
The voiced bilabial nasal is a type of consonantal sound used in almost all spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is , and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is m. The bilabial nasal occurs in ...
. Other cases of assimilation also occur, such as pronunciation of the in ''bad boy'' as . Voicing assimilation determines the sound of the endings ''-s'' (as in
plurals
The plural (sometimes abbreviated pl., pl, or ), in many languages, is one of the values of the grammatical category of number. The plural of a noun typically denotes a quantity greater than the default quantity represented by that noun. This de ...
,
possessives and
verb forms) and ''-ed'' (in verb forms): these are voiced (, ) following a
voiced consonant (or vowel), but voiceless (, ) after a voiceless consonant, as in ''gets'', ''knocked''.
Glottalization
While there are many accents (such as
Cockney
Cockney is an accent and dialect of English, mainly spoken in London and its environs, particularly by working-class and lower middle-class Londoners. The term "Cockney" has traditionally been used to describe a person from the East End, or b ...
) in which syllable-final is frequently
glottalized
Glottalization is the complete or partial closure of the glottis during the articulation of another sound. Glottalization of vowels and other sonorants is most often realized as creaky voice (partial closure). Glottalization of obstruent consonan ...
(realized as a
glottal stop, ) regardless of what follows it, the glottaling of in clusters is a feature even of standard accents, such as RP. There, may be heard for in such words and phrases as ''quite good'', ''quite nice'', ''nights''. More precisely, it occurs in RP when appears in the
syllable coda
A syllable is a unit of organization for a sequence of speech sounds typically made up of a syllable nucleus (most often a vowel) with optional initial and final margins (typically, consonants). Syllables are often considered the phonological "b ...
, is preceded by a vowel,
liquid or
nasal, and it is followed by another consonant except (normally) a liquid or
semivowel
In phonetics and phonology, a semivowel, glide or semiconsonant is a sound that is phonetically similar to a vowel sound but functions as the syllable boundary, rather than as the nucleus of a syllable. Examples of semivowels in English are the ...
in the same word, as in ''mattress''.
[Wells (1982), p. 261.]
Another possibility is pre-glottalization (or glottal reinforcement), where a glottal stop is inserted before a syllable-final stop, rather than replacing it. That can happen before , and or also before the
affricate
An affricate is a consonant that begins as a stop and releases as a fricative, generally with the same place of articulation (most often coronal). It is often difficult to decide if a stop and fricative form a single phoneme or a consonant pair ...
. It can occur in RP in the same environments as those mentioned above, without the final restriction so a glottal stop may appear before the , as in ''mattress''. It can also occur before a pause as in ''quite!'' spoken alone but not in ''quite easy''. In the case of , pre-glottalization is common even before a vowel, as in ''teacher''.
According to Wells, this pre-glottalization originated in the 20th century (at least, it was not recorded until then). Glottalization of spread rapidly during the 20th century.
S-cluster metathesis
Final consonant clusters starting with sometimes undergo
metathesis, meaning that the order of the consonants is switched. For example, the word ''ask'' may be pronounced like "ax", with the and the switched.
This example has a long history: the Old English verb ''áscian'' also appeared as ''acsian'', and both forms continued into Middle English, the latter, metathesizing to "ask". The form ''axe'' appears in Chaucer: "I axe, why the fyfte man Was nought housband to the Samaritan?" (''
Wife of Bath's Prologue'', 1386), and was considered acceptable in literary English until about 1600. It persists in some dialects of rural England as well as in
Ulster Scots as , and in
Jamaican English as , from where it has entered
London English as .
S-cluster metathesis has been observed in some forms of
African American Vernacular English
African-American Vernacular English (AAVE, ), also referred to as Black (Vernacular) English, Black English Vernacular, or occasionally Ebonics (a colloquial, controversial term), is the variety of English natively spoken, particularly in urban ...
, although it is not universal, one of the most stigmatized features of AAVE and often commented on by teachers.
Examples of possible AAVE pronunciations include:
Merger of /str/ and /skr/
For some speakers of
African American Vernacular English
African-American Vernacular English (AAVE, ), also referred to as Black (Vernacular) English, Black English Vernacular, or occasionally Ebonics (a colloquial, controversial term), is the variety of English natively spoken, particularly in urban ...
, the
consonant cluster
In linguistics, a consonant cluster, consonant sequence or consonant compound, is a group of consonants which have no intervening vowel. In English, for example, the groups and are consonant clusters in the word ''splits''. In the education fi ...
is pronounced as . For example, the word ''street'' may be pronounced as .
The form has been found to occur in
Gullah
The Gullah () are an African American ethnic group who predominantly live in the Lowcountry region of the U.S. states of Georgia, Florida, South Carolina, and North Carolina, within the coastal plain and the Sea Islands. Their language and cult ...
and in the speech of some young African Americans born in the Southern United States. It is reported to be a highly stigmatized feature, with children who use it often being referred to speech pathologists.
[Dandy, E.B., ''Black Communications: Breaking Down the Barriers'', African American Images, 1991, p. 44.]
Yod-rhotacization
Yod-rhotacization is a process that occurs for some
Memphis AAVE
African-American Vernacular English (AAVE, ), also referred to as Black (Vernacular) English, Black English Vernacular, or occasionally Ebonics (a colloquial, controversial term), is the variety of English natively spoken, particularly in urban ...
speakers, where is rhotacized to in consonant clusters, causing pronunciations like:
Compare
yod-dropping
The phonological history of the English language includes various changes in the phonology of consonant clusters.
H-cluster reductions
The H-cluster reductions are various consonant reductions that have occurred in the history of English, inv ...
and
yod-coalescence
The phonological history of the English language includes various changes in the phonology of consonant clusters.
H-cluster reductions
The H-cluster reductions are various consonant reductions that have occurred in the history of English, inv ...
, described above (and also the
coil–curl merger, which features the reverse process, → ).
See also
*
Phonological history of the English language
*
Phonological history of English consonants
*
Phonological history of English fricatives and affricates
*
H-dropping
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Phonological History Of English Consonant Clusters
Splits and mergers in English phonology
Scottish English
Phonotactics