A spelling pronunciation is the

pronunciation Pronunciation is the way in which a word or a language is spoken. To This may refer to generally agreed-upon sequences of sounds used in speaking a given word or all language in a specific dialect—"correct" or "standard" pronunciation—or si ...

of a word according to its spelling when this differs from a longstanding standard or traditional pronunciation. Words that are spelled with letters that were never pronounced or that were not pronounced for many generations or even hundreds of years have increasingly been pronounced as written, especially since the arrival of mandatory schooling and universal literacy. Examples of words with silent letters that have begun to be often or sometimes pronounced include ''often'', ''Wednesday'', ''island'', and ''knife''. In addition, words traditionally pronounced with reduced vowels or omitted consonants (e.g. ''cupboard'', ''Worcester''), may be subject to a spelling pronunciation. If a word's spelling was standardized prior to sound changes that produced its traditional pronunciation, a spelling pronunciation may reflect an even older pronunciation. This is often the case with compound words (e.g., ''waistcoat'', ''cupboard'', ''forehead''). It is also the case for many words with silent letters (e.g. ''often''''often''
in the American Heritage Dictionary), though not all—silent letters are sometimes added for etymological reasons, to reflect a word's spelling in its language of origin (e.g. ''victual'', rhyming with ''little''''victual'' in ''Oxford Dictionaries''
/ref> but derived from

Late Latin Late Latin is the scholarly name for the form of Literary Latin of late antiquity.Roberts (1996), p. 537. English dictionary definitions of Late Latin date this period from the 3rd to 6th centuries CE, and continuing into the 7th century in ...

''victualia''). Some silent letters were added on the basis of erroneous etymologies, as in the cases of the words ''island''''island''
in the American Heritage Dictionary and ''scythe''. Spelling pronunciations are often prescriptively discouraged and perceived as incorrect next to the traditionally accepted, and usually more widespread, pronunciation. If a spelling pronunciation persists and becomes more common, it may eventually join the existing form as a standard variant (for example ''waistcoat'' and ''often''), or even become the dominant pronunciation (as with ''forehead'' and ''falcon'').

Prevalence and causes

A large number of easily noticeable spelling pronunciations occurs only in languages such as French and English in which spelling tends to not indicate the current pronunciation. Because all languages have at least some words which are not spelled as pronounced, spelling pronunciations can arise in all languages. This is of course especially true for people who are only taught to read and write and who are not taught when the spelling indicates an outdated (or etymologically incorrect) pronunciation. In other words, when many people do not clearly understand where spelling came from and what it is (a tool for recording speech, not the other way around), spelling pronunciations are common. On the other hand, spelling pronunciations are also evidence of the reciprocal effects of spoken and written language on each other.Michael Stubbs, Language and Literacy: the Sociolinguistics of Reading and Writing. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul
pp. 31-32. Many spellings represent older forms and corresponding older pronunciations. Some spellings, however, are not etymologically correct. Speakers of a language often privilege the spelling of words over common pronunciation, leading to a preference for, or prestige of, spelling pronunciation, with the written language affecting and changing the spoken language. Pronunciations can then arise that are similar to older pronunciations or that can even be completely new pronunciations that are suggested by the spelling but never occurred before.

Examples of English words with common spelling pronunciations

* ''kiln'' with a fully pronounced n, instead of a silent n. Kiln was originally pronounced kil with the n silent, as is referenced in Webster's Dictionary of 1828. From ''English Words as Spoken and Written for Upper Grades'' by James A. Bowen 1900: "The digraph ln, n silent, occurs in kiln. A fall down the kiln can kill you." * ''often'', pronounced with . This is actually a reversion to the 15th-century pronunciation, but the pronunciation without is still preferred by 73% of British speakers and 78% of American speakers. Older dictionaries do not list the pronunciation with although the 2nd edition of the OED does (and the first edition notes the pronunciation with the comment that it is prevalent in the south of

England England is a Countries of the United Kingdom, country that is part of the United Kingdom. It is located on the island of Great Britain, of which it covers about 62%, and List of islands of England, more than 100 smaller adjacent islands. It ...

and often used in singing; see the ''

Dictionary of American Regional English The ''Dictionary of American Regional English'' (''DARE'') is a record of regional variations within American English, published in five volumes from 1985 to 2012 and based on data mostly collected in the 1960s. It differs from other dictionarie ...

'' for contemporaneous citations that discuss the status of the competing pronunciations). The sporadic nature of such shifts is apparent upon examination of examples such as ''whistle'', ''listen'' and ''soften'' in which the ''t'' remains usually silent. * ''forehead'' once rhymed with ''horrid'' but is now pronounced with the second syllable as by 85% of American speakers and 65% of British speakers. This is actually a reversion to the original pronunciation. * ''clothes'' was historically pronounced the same way as the verb ''close'' ("Whenas in silks my Julia goes/.../The liquefaction of her clothes"— Herrick), but many speakers now insert a , a voiced ''th''. This is actually a reversion to the 15th-century pronunciation. * ''salmon'' is pronounced by a minority of English speakers with , due to the letter l being reintroduced, despite being neither written nor pronounced in the original Anglo-French pronunciation. * ''falcon'' is now nearly always pronounced with , and only 3% of speakers have no . The was silent in the old pronunciation: compare French and the older English spellings ''faucon'' and ''fawcon''. That may suggest either analogical change or the reborrowing of the original Latin. * ''alms'', ''balm'', ''calm'', ''psalm'', etc. are now often pronounced with in some parts of the

United States The United States of America (USA), also known as the United States (U.S.) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It is a federal republic of 50 U.S. state, states and a federal capital district, Washington, D.C. The 48 ...

. In most of the

United Kingdom The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Northwestern Europe, off the coast of European mainland, the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotlan ...

, the traditional pronunciation continues to prevail. * ''comptroller'' is often pronounced with ; the accepted pronunciation is controller (the ''mp'' spelling is based on the mistaken idea that the word is related to ''comp''(''u'')''tare'' "count, compute," but it comes from ''contre-roll'' "file copy"). * ''ye'' (actually, ''yͤ'' or ''Þe''), the

definite article In grammar, an article is any member of a class of dedicated words that are used with noun phrases to mark the identifiability of the referents of the noun phrases. The category of articles constitutes a part of speech. In English, both "the" ...

, as in '' Ye Olde Coffee Shoppe'', is often pronounced like the archaic English pronoun ''ye'' instead of as the word ''the'', based on the misleading use of the symbol ''y'' to substitute for the archaic printer's mark '' Þ'': the letter thorn. (On the other hand, the beginning of the pronoun ''ye'' in Middle and

Early Modern The early modern period is a Periodization, historical period that is defined either as part of or as immediately preceding the modern period, with divisions based primarily on the history of Europe and the broader concept of modernity. There i ...

English is correctly pronounced like the beginning of ''you''.) * ''Mackenzie, Menzies, Dalziel'' now include the sound in place of the original , due to the insular flat-topped ''g'' of Gaelic scripts being commonly transcribed into English as the similar-looking letter ''z''. * ''armadillo'' and other words from Spanish with the double-L pronounced instead of (the latter being the closest approximation to the sound in Latin American Spanish); similarly, the Italian-sourced ''maraschino'' (cherry) and ''bruschetta'' with the associated with that consonant cluster in German instead of the of Italian. * ''victuals'', pronounced (rhyming with ''skittles''), whose ''c'' (for a consonant that had been lost long before the word was borrowed from French) was re-introduced on etymological grounds, and the word is sometimes pronounced with . The original pronunciation is reflected in, for example, the brand name "Tender Vittles". * The pronunciation of ''waistcoat'' as ''waist-coat'' is now more common than the previous pronunciation . * ''conduit'', historically pronounced or , is now nearly always pronounced in most of the United States. * ''covert'', historically pronounced (reflecting its link with the verb ''cover'') is now usually pronounced , by analogy to ''overt''. * ''medicine'', historically pronounced with two syllables but now quite often with three (some speakers use two when they mean medicaments and three when they mean medical knowledge; the pronunciation with three syllables is standard in the

). * ''Bartholomew'', formerly pronounced or , is now . * ''Anthony'' (from Latin ), now (in Anglophone countries outside the UK) is typically rather than . * Numerous placenames with traditional pronunciations have been displaced by ones influenced by the spelling: '' St. Louis'', formerly now (in the US) , '' Papillion'' (

Nebraska Nebraska ( ) is a landlocked U.S. state, state in the Midwestern United States, Midwestern region of the United States. It borders South Dakota to the north; Iowa to the east and Missouri to the southeast, both across the Missouri River; Ka ...

), formerly now . Montpelier, the capital of

Vermont Vermont () is a U.S. state, state in the New England region of the Northeastern United States. It borders Massachusetts to the south, New Hampshire to the east, New York (state), New York to the west, and the Provinces and territories of Ca ...

, is now pronounced , instead of the French . * Sir George Everest's

surname In many societies, a surname, family name, or last name is the mostly hereditary portion of one's personal name that indicates one's family. It is typically combined with a given name to form the full name of a person, although several give ...

is pronounced . The mountain named after him – ''

Mount Everest Mount Everest (), known locally as Sagarmatha in Nepal and Qomolangma in Tibet, is Earth's highest mountain above sea level. It lies in the Mahalangur Himal sub-range of the Himalayas and marks part of the China–Nepal border at it ...

'' – is generally pronounced . * Interjections such as ''tsk tsk!'' or ''tut tut!'' (a pair of dental clicks), now commonly and . * The words ''Arctic'', ''Antarctic'' and ''Antarctica'' were originally pronounced without the first , but the spelling pronunciation has become very common. The first c was originally added to the spelling for etymological reasons and was then misunderstood as not being silent. * ''hotel'', originally pronounced because of the pronunciation of the French , is now usually pronounced with an audible ''h''. Nevertheless, ''maître d'hôtel'' is pronounced . * ''herb'', a word with origins in

Old French Old French (, , ; ) was the language spoken in most of the northern half of France approximately between the late 8th nevew'' and originally loaned from Old French '' neveu,'' a spelling which remains unchanged into modern French. But the ''v'' was later changed to ''ph'' where the ''p'' hints at its Latin root ''wikt:nepos">nepot,'' which can be found in more recent Latin loanwords like ''nepotism.'' Today, spelling pronunciation has shifted the word's pronunciation predominantly to .

Opinions

Spelling pronunciations give rise to varied opinions. Often, those who retain the old pronunciation consider the spelling pronunciation to be a mark of ignorance or insecurity. Those who use a spelling pronunciation may not be aware that it is one and consider the earlier version to be slovenly since it slurs over a letter. Conversely, the users of some innovative pronunciations such as (for ''February'') may regard another, earlier version as a pedantic spelling pronunciation. Henry Watson Fowler (1858–1933) reported that in his day, there was a conscious movement among schoolteachers and others encouraging people to abandon anomalous traditional pronunciations and to speak as is spelled. According to major scholars of early modern English (Dobson, Wyld et al.), in the 17th century, there was already beginning an intellectual trend in England to pronounce as is spelled. That presupposes a standard spelling system, which was only beginning to form at the time. Similarly, quite a large number of corrections slowly spread from scholars to the general public in France, starting several centuries ago. A different variety of spelling pronunciations are phonetic adaptations, pronunciations of the written form of foreign words within the frame of the phonemic system of the language that accepts them. An example of that process is the final silent consonant in French ''croissant'' sometimes being pronounced in English.

Children and foreigners

Children who read frequently often have spelling pronunciations because, if they do not consult a dictionary, they have only the spelling to indicate the pronunciation of words that are uncommon in the spoken language. Well-read

second language A second language (L2) is a language spoken in addition to one's first language (L1). A second language may be a neighbouring language, another language of the speaker's home country, or a foreign language. A speaker's dominant language, which ...

learners may also have spelling pronunciations. In some instances, a population in a formerly non-English-speaking area may retain such second language markers in the now native-English speaking population. For example, Scottish Standard English is replete with second language marks from when Scots started to be subsumed by English in the 17th century. However, since there are many words that one reads far more often than one hears, adult native-language speakers also succumb. In such circumstances, the spelling pronunciation may well become more comprehensible than the other. That, in turn, leads to the language evolution mentioned above. What is a spelling pronunciation in one generation can become the standard pronunciation in the next.

In other languages

In French, the modern pronunciation of the 16th-century French author Montaigne’s name as , rather than the contemporary , is a spelling pronunciation. When English ''club'' was first borrowed into French, the approved pronunciation was , as being a reasonable approximation of the English. The standard then became on the basis of the spelling, and later, in Europe, , deemed closer to the English original. The standard pronunciation in

Quebec French Quebec French ( ), also known as Québécois French, is the predominant variety (linguistics), variety of the French language spoken in Canada. It is the dominant language of the province of Quebec, used in everyday communication, in education, ...

remains . Similarly, ''shampooing'' "shampoo; product for washing the hair" at the time of borrowing was but it is now . Old Italian had a pair of post-alveolar affricates and (as in and , written ''pace'' and ''privilegio''), and one of post-alveolar fricatives and (as in and , written ''bascio/bacio'' and ''presgio/pregio''), which could only occur between vowels. During the 13th century, the afore mentioned affricates became allophonically fricatives if singleton and intervocalic (the modern Tuscan pronunciation of ''pace'' and ''privilegio'' being and ), essentially merging - and - into positional allophones and rendering obsolete and useless the -s- spellings. After the Italian Unification, the Tuscan pronunciation of ''pace'' and ''privilegio'' was deemed too vulgar and dialectal for the standard language, and the original pronunciation was indirectly restored; in the modern Standard Italian accent, they're always realized as and . Since the spelling did not distinguish between the original pairs of post-alveolar affricates and fricatives, ''bacio'' and ''pregio'' started being unetymologically pronounced and as well. In present-day Italian, a few early English

loanword A loanword (also a loan word, loan-word) is a word at least partly assimilated from one language (the donor language) into another language (the recipient or target language), through the process of borrowing. Borrowing is a metaphorical term t ...

s are pronounced according to Italian spelling rules such as ''water'' ("toilet bowl," from English '' water (closet)''), pronounced , and '' tramway'', pronounced . The Italian word ''ovest'' ("west") comes from a spelling pronunciation of French ''ouest'' (which, in turn, is a phonetic transcription of English ''west''); that particular instance of spelling pronunciation must have occurred before the 16th century, when the letters u and v were still indistinct. A few foreign proper names are normally pronounced according to the pronunciation of the original language (or a close approximation of it), but they retain an older spelling pronunciation when they are used as parts of Italian

street name A street name is an identifying name given to a street or road. In toponymic terminology, names of streets and roads are referred to as odonyms or hodonyms (from Ancient Greek 'road', and 'name', i.e., the Doric Greek, Doric and Aeolic Gre ...

s. For example, the name of

Edward Jenner Edward Jenner (17 May 1749 – 26 January 1823) was an English physician and scientist who pioneered the concept of vaccines and created the smallpox vaccine, the world's first vaccine. The terms ''vaccine'' and ''vaccination'' are derived f ...

retains its usual English pronunciation in most contexts, but ''Viale Edoardo Jenner'' (a main street in

Milan Milan ( , , ; ) is a city in northern Italy, regional capital of Lombardy, the largest city in Italy by urban area and the List of cities in Italy, second-most-populous city proper in Italy after Rome. The city proper has a population of nea ...

) is pronounced . The use of such old-fashioned spelling pronunciations was probably encouraged by the custom of translating

given name A given name (also known as a forename or first name) is the part of a personal name quoted in that identifies a person, potentially with a middle name as well, and differentiates that person from the other members of a group (typically a f ...

s when streets were named after foreign people: ''Edoardo'' for ''Edward'', or ''Giorgio'' for ''George'' for ''Via Giorgio Washington.'' In Spanish, the ch in some German words is pronounced or , instead of .

Bach Johann Sebastian Bach (German: �joːhan zeˈbasti̯an baχ ( – 28 July 1750) was a German composer and musician of the late Baroque period. He is known for his prolific output across a variety of instruments and forms, including the or ...

is pronounced , and Kuchen is , but Rorschach is , rather than ,

Mach The Mach number (M or Ma), often only Mach, (; ) is a dimensionless quantity in fluid dynamics representing the ratio of flow velocity past a Boundary (thermodynamic), boundary to the local speed of sound. It is named after the Austrian physi ...

is or , and Kirchner is or . Other spelling pronunciations are club pronounced ,

iceberg An iceberg is a piece of fresh water ice more than long that has broken off a glacier or an ice shelf and is floating freely in open water. Smaller chunks of floating glacially derived ice are called "growlers" or "bergy bits". Much of an i ...

pronounced in Spain (in

the Americas The Americas, sometimes collectively called America, are a landmass comprising the totality of North America and South America.'' Webster's New World College Dictionary'', 2010 by Wiley Publishing, Inc., Cleveland, Ohio. When viewed as a sin ...

, it is pronounced ), and ''folclor'' and ''folclore'' as translations of

folklore Folklore is the body of expressive culture shared by a particular group of people, culture or subculture. This includes oral traditions such as Narrative, tales, myths, legends, proverbs, Poetry, poems, jokes, and other oral traditions. This also ...

, pronounced and . Also in Spanish, the acute accent in the French word ''élite'' is taken as a Spanish stress mark, and the word is pronounced . When Slavic languages like Polish or

Czech Czech may refer to: * Anything from or related to the Czech Republic, a country in Europe ** Czech language ** Czechs, the people of the area ** Czech culture ** Czech cuisine * One of three mythical brothers, Lech, Czech, and Rus *Czech (surnam ...

borrow words from English with their spelling preserved, the pronunciation tends to follow the rules of the receiving language. Words such as ''marketing'' are pronounced as spelled, instead of the more phonetically faithful . In standard Finnish, the sound /d/ developed as a spelling pronunciation for the letter ''d'', though it originally represented a /ð/ sound. Similarly, /ts/ in words like ''metsä'' (forest) is a pronunciation spelling of ''tz'' used in pre-1770s orthography, which originally represented a long /θ/ sound. The dental fricatives had become rare by the 1700s, when the standard pronunciations started to develop into their current forms, which became official in the 1800s. The /d/ sound, however, is not present in most dialects and is generally replaced by a /r/, /l/ or simply dropped (e.g. ''lähde'' "water spring" may be pronounced as ''lähre'', ''lähle'' or ''lähe''). Standard ''ts'' is often replaced with ''tt'' or ''ht'' (''mettä'', ''mehtä''). In Vietnamese, initial v is often pronounced like a y () in the central and southern varieties. However, in formal speech, speakers often revert to the spelling pronunciation, which is increasingly being used in casual speech as well. Chinese has a similar phenomenon called '' youbian dubian'' where unfamiliar characters may be read with the pronunciation of similar characters that feature the same phonetic component. For instance, the character is rarely used in Chinese but is often used in Japanese place names (where it is pronounced ''chō''). When read in

Mandarin Chinese Mandarin ( ; zh, s=, t=, p=Guānhuà, l=Mandarin (bureaucrat), officials' speech) is the largest branch of the Sinitic languages. Mandarin varieties are spoken by 70 percent of all Chinese speakers over a large geographical area that stretch ...

, it came to be pronounced ''dīng'' (such as in Ximending, a district in

Taipei , nickname = The City of Azaleas , image_map = , map_caption = , pushpin_map = Taiwan#Asia#Pacific Ocean#Earth , coordinates = , subdivision_type = Country ...

that was named during Japanese occupation) in analogy with the character (also pronounced ''dīng''), even though its expected etymological reflex is ''tǐng''. In Welsh the word is traditionally pronounced with either a or , depending on dialect, in the final syllable – i.e. . The pronunciation is a spelling pronunciation, the spelling was settled on so as not to give preference to any particular dialect. A similar situation occurred with the word which is usually pronounced or but many younger and second-language learners pronounce it as spelt: .

References

Citations

Sources

* See the index entries under "spelling pronunciation" from Leonard Bloomfield, ''Language'' (originally published 1933; current edition 1984, University of Chicago Press, Chicago; ). * Most of the etymologies and spelling histories above are taken from the

Oxford English Dictionary The ''Oxford English Dictionary'' (''OED'') is the principal historical dictionary of the English language, published by Oxford University Press (OUP), a University of Oxford publishing house. The dictionary, which published its first editio ...

. * Neuman, Yishai
L'influence de l'écriture sur la langue
PhD dissertation, Paris: Sorbonne Nouvelle, 2009. * --
"Graphophonemic Assignment"
G. Khan (ed.), Encyclopedia of Hebrew Language and Linguistics, Volume 2,

Leiden Leiden ( ; ; in English language, English and Archaism, archaic Dutch language, Dutch also Leyden) is a List of cities in the Netherlands by province, city and List of municipalities of the Netherlands, municipality in the Provinces of the Nethe ...

South Holland South Holland ( ) is a province of the Netherlands with a population of over 3.8 million as of January 2023 and a population density of about , making it the country's most populous province and one of the world's most densely populated areas. ...

: Brill, pp. 135–145. {{DEFAULTSORT:Spelling Pronunciation Phonetics Sociolinguistics Spelling Linguistic purism Linguistic error