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When did the pronunciation of "mature" change?
- Thread starter ProfessorLobo
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dreadfulwater
aka morbidesque
Minsc said:
yeah, and while we are at it, how about "Baby bump" disgusting.perpetuated in the news and whore media shows.
also. when people say "like". I want to kick an elderly person for no reason. Awful filler word, just awful.
Dark Octave said:
THIS. The only thing that bugs me more than "ma-tour" is putting the wrong emphasis on "harassment". Like "HAIR-iss-ment" instead of "ha-RASS-ment". It sounds just... awful.
(edit) Okay, before anybody even says it, I looked it up and apparently the first one (the annoying-sounding one) is the original/British way to say it, but my opinion still stands, especially if you're not British.
Freedom = $1.05
Banned
Dark Octave
Banned
What about when people say "POlice" instead of "police". That cracks me up.takotchi said:
The british are messed up too though. It's spelled "bird" so why do they pronounce it "bud"?
His name is "Dave" so why do they pronounce it "Dive"? That one actually may be an Australian thing.
Phobophile
A scientist and gentleman in the manner of Batman.
Dark Octave said:
Or brit instead of Bret in Flight of the Conchords.
arts&crafts
Member
At the end of video game commercials, the girl says "rated M for matoor." perhaps that is why.
Escape Goat
Member
Schedule is now "Shed-yule"
dreadfulwater
aka morbidesque
man, just reading through this thread makes me realize that I hate everybody.
MalevolentPanda
Member
The original pronunciation stresses the first syllable. Placing the stress on the second syllable is a US corruption.MoxManiac said:
JzeroT1437
Member
xsarien said:
It really doesn't. It's a variant on the "standard" form, which isn't actually concrete but merely a social construct you've learned in school, and which you associate with the "Prestige" dialect of your area. Because your prestige dialect is malleable and may change or completely be replaced, so can the standard dialect. Thus, nothing is sacrosanct in the world of language, and anyone who says a different pronunciation is wrong is an idiot putting too much stock in the so-called standard form.
Further, it's the internet dood.
Dark Octave
Banned
Yeah, what's up with that?? You've GOTTA be an uptight, BMW driving, ass hole if you say it like that. There's no way around it.Teh Hamburglar said:
MalevolentPanda
Member
It's "arsehole". Unless you're talking about donkeys.Dark Octave said:
gdt5016 said:
It's sort of played out by now, but this is a tongue-in-cheek joke dating back to when Target first came around. It refers to the "discount" nature of the store by people who know that it's really just a slightly fancier version of Walmart, despite Dayton-Hudson's efforts to the contrary.
The fact that people say "Tar-jay" now without irony is kind of irritating.
Dark Octave
Banned
:lol Oh that's right, my bad!MalevolentPanda said:It's "arsehole". Unless you're talking about donkeys.
MalevolentPanda
Member
Hang on, are you complaining about the lack of a hard 'c'? Like you would say 'skedule'? Because that's a US change to the original pronunciation as well.Teh Hamburglar said:
cyclonekruse
Member
Dark Octave said:
Because the words used to be spoken that way. Think along the lines of the Frenchman's pronunciation of 'knight' in Monty Python and the Holy Grail.
/kn-/ used to be a perfectly acceptable consonant cluster in days gone by. As was /-gt/, or something close to that. We've kept the same spelling but changed our phonotactics. That's probably why it seems strange.
The real question is why do we need a "k." "C" was in the Latin alphabet first and always was given a "hard" pronunciation, originally (according to my Latin professor). I was told to say 'KICK-uh-,ROE for "Cicero" and KAI-zer for "Caeser."
This I'm not sure of. As a guess, the Q+U thing comes from Latin. "Qui" is pronounced differently than "cui." "Qui" is one syllable, /kwi/ (KWEE). "Cui" is two syllables, /kui/ (KOO-ee). It may very well be that "Q" is worthless on its own. The only thing it seems to do is to signal that you should treat the "u" that follows it as a consonant more like a "w."
Dark Octave
Banned
Now it makes sense. Thanks for the in depth explanations. These are questions I have always wondered about that even my teachers didn't have an answer for.cyclonekruse said:
cyclonekruse
Member
Dark Octave said:
No problem. At least you did the smart thing and asked on a message board. I was an idiot and had to become a linguistics major to find this stuff out. :lol
@Cyclonekruse or any Brits
If arse = ass, what's the etymology of "can't be arsed [to do something]". Just using context clues when people use it here, it means can't be bothered or maybe can't be asked, but arse means butt/ass so how did arsed come to mean bothered (assuming my interpretation of this is correct).
If arse = ass, what's the etymology of "can't be arsed [to do something]". Just using context clues when people use it here, it means can't be bothered or maybe can't be asked, but arse means butt/ass so how did arsed come to mean bothered (assuming my interpretation of this is correct).
Desperado said:
No disagreement there, but who the hell pronounces "historic" as "istoric"? I heard that shit on NPR the other day -- except they pronounced "historic" as it should be pronounced and still preceded it with "an."
But, I will add, there's never any use for omitting the serial comma (ever). It can only reduce or eliminate ambiguity if it does anything at all in a series.
cyclonekruse
Member
Dali said:
The Oxford English Dictionary says that particular usage of "arse" means can't be bothered.
OED said:
You might not be able to look that up yourself unless your school has a subscription to it, I don't know.
If you want my flat-out guess as to how "arse" came to mean that, I'd imagine it's something along the lines of "I can't be bothered enough to get off my arse to actually do something about it." "I can't be arsed..." is just way shorter. If language can find a way to express an idea using fewer words, it will tend to do that. It's a damn near cross-cultural universal.
MalevolentPanda
Member
Yep, 'arse' means 'butt' and 'can't be arsed' means 'can't be bothered'. I don't know the derivation of the phrase but it's common to say 'get off your arse' to mean 'stop procrastinating', so I would suspect it's a contraction of 'can't be bothered to get off my arse'.Dali said:
Is the etymology of the US use of 'ass' known? I presume it was just a confusion of the two words when used as an insult (ass used to be a common insult here but the world always meant donkey).
EDIT: Haha, I was very slow there, but we agree!
MalevolentPanda
Member
Neither of those are British pronunciations.Salmonax said:
Count Dookkake
Member
I like natoor walks.
MalevolentPanda said:
As an insult it probably came from its usage as a synonym for donkey. "Stubborn as an ass" was just shortened to "You ass" and ass/jackass became a catchall for jerkoffs, spazes, hard-headed and stubborn people. As a synonym for butt, I dunno. It's probably a corruption of arse. That's just my guess.
ProfessorLobo
Banned
All this word talk makes me wanna go watch HotforWords on youtube.
I_D
Member
There are few words that really bug me, but some really stand out.
What ticks me off is that most of the words are said incorrectly by teachers, or professors.
Library = "lie-brair-ee," but NOT "lie-bare-ee"
Arthur (as in King Arthur) = "Are-thur," but NOT "aw-thur"
Herb = "erb," (in the US) but NOT "herb"
Mischievous = "mis-chee-vus," but NOT "mis-chee-vee-us"
What ticks me off is that most of the words are said incorrectly by teachers, or professors.
Library = "lie-brair-ee," but NOT "lie-bare-ee"
Arthur (as in King Arthur) = "Are-thur," but NOT "aw-thur"
Herb = "erb," (in the US) but NOT "herb"
Mischievous = "mis-chee-vus," but NOT "mis-chee-vee-us"
Shalashaska
Member
Biff Tannen reference?MisterAnderson said:
cyclonekruse
Member
Dali said:
You're right. The OED says "ass" meaning "butt" comes from "arse." Makes sense to me. When some British people say "arse" it sounds exactly like their pronunciation of "ass" to me. (For instance, when Vesper makes a comment about Bond's derrière in Casino Royale, I can't tell if she's saying "perfectly-formed ass" or "perfectly-formed arse." I assume the latter because she's British but I can't hear it. I think there's a subtle difference in pronunciation but since I wasn't raised with a non-rhotic accent I have a hard time picking up on it. We pronounce our r's here in the Midwest, damnit.) Back to the original point, if some people couldn't hear a difference between "arse" and "ass" then it shouldn't be surprising that they just figured them to mean the same thing.
Oh, and just as addition to what my answer before, Dali, I was mulling over it during class and I think that your confusion over whether "can't be arsed" was "can't be asked" or "can't be bothered" is no accident. I imagine one of the reasons "arsed" developed that particular usage is precisely because sounds quite similar to "asked." And since there's some semantic (or maybe it's pragmatic) overlap there (both are denials to a request), it was easier for people to pick up.
Anyway, since I'm bored, I figure I'll go back through this topic and see if I can't add some insights into other comments/questions people had...and because I don't get to use my linguistics knowledge much. This way I feel like my degree is a little less worthless.
Ahriman said:
"strenGth" is probably closest to how most people say it, in my experience. Though technically it's more like "strengKth." (The "G" that you hear loses at least some of its voicing as you prepare to articulate the unvoiced "th.")
The "correct" pronunciation of 6th is "siksth." But "ksth" as a consonant cluster is hard to produce. First, your tongue touches toward the back of your mouth for the 'k' sound and then has to reposition itself so that it touches the alveolar ridge (right behind where your teeth enter your gums). And then it still has to reposition itself again to end up between your teeth. All of this in rapid succession so it's heard as a cluster. Not an easy thing to do. A lot of people just reduce the consonant cluster somehow. Same type of thing going on when people reduce "strength" down to "strenth."
aoi tsuki said:
People using an "f" instead of a "th" is an ongoing trend. Mostly notably in some parts of Britain ("finking" for "thinking") and also in African American English Vernacular, to use the politically correct term (at least some versions). I prefer Ebonics because it's just a lot simpler to type out.
PantherLotus said:
I don't see why it should be upsetting. "Ma-chur" is easier to say. It follows the same pattern of saying "gotcha" for "got ya." It's harder to actually pronounce the palatal glide ('y') as a separate entity than to just palatalize the 't' sound and blend it all together. The result is the 'ch' sound, which is actually 't' + 'sh' (the 'sh' being palatal just like the 'y').
Can you tell that I got to take a semester-long class devoted to phonetics and phonology?
tnw said:
I'm not sure how the addition of r's came about. Do you know if upper-class Britons do that or is it just lower-class people?
I might know why Spanish speakers tend to add a little vowel before s-words, though. Part of their phonotactic system might be that 's' cannot be in word-initial position. Or maybe it's that 's' can't begin a consonant cluster. If either is the case, then it would be kind of like us English speakers not being about to use 'ng' in word-initial position. Vietnamese people can, though. Look at poker where you see Scotty Nguyen. The announcers sound like they're saying "win" or "when" when they say his last name. When he says it himself, though, I can hear the "ng."
Phobophile said:
That's pretty common in (parts of) Iowa as well. IIRC, my professor said that the 'r' makes the transition from the vowel to the 'sh' easier. Not really sure why that is, specifically.
Dark Octave said:
Don't know about the 'police' thing.
The 'bird' thing is likely due to the speaker having a non-rhotic dialect. Like Bostonians. Fun fact about the word 'bird': it used to be 'brid.' 'Third' used to be 'thrid' and I think 'horse' used to be 'hras' too.
The "Dave" thing is simply a different accent. Their vowel for a long 'a' is closer to our vowel for a long 'i'. English vowels have gone through some changes over the years. The biggest being aptly name the "Great Vowel Shift." The closest equivalent to what English used to sound like can be heard in Scotland. Currently, there's are vowel shifts going on in the South and in the Scandinavian-influenced parts of the North (Minnesota, especially). The thing is, the vowels are going in pretty much opposite directions. My professors say it will be interesting to see if the trends continue and whether Southerners will be able to communicate with Minnesotans in 50 years or so.
«þ» said:
Not all Americans would. For instance, in some regions, "marry," "Mary," and "merry" are all pronounced the same way. In other regions, they are all pronounced differently. In still other regions, one has a different pronunciation than the other two.
Why would some though? The vowel in "Craig" is a tense vowel while the vowel in 'creg' is a lax vowel. Lax vowels are generally thought to be easier to articulate than tense vowels. Like I said before, if there's a way to make language easier, it'll almost invariably happen eventually.
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