It's time for a new edition of grammar/pronunciation/English language stuuuuffff! Why do I love weird English grammar type rules... it weirds me out sometimes. How do you like the crazy font in the subject... it looks slightly artistic on this bland site- I'm leaving it.
- What's the deal with various pronunciation notation methods? The schwa, ə, vs. the not schwa "uh" thing.
- Example: The word "what" written as (wut) or (wət).
- Example with caps vs. the single apostrophe accent on what syllable thing
- m-w.com has pə-ˈlēs and that is what I learned back in school, but it is missing parentheses. Although it is inconvenient to type a schwa (I google copy paste it) or the long vowel thing that is a bar over the vowel... (I also duckduckgo search it and copy paste it).
- dictionary.com has the opposite type, [ puh-lees ]. Wow, they even use bold. Maybe I made up the uppercase version.
- Oh check this out, IPA is close to the version I learned in school but different.
- / pəˈlis /
- While they call this new fangled (pretty easy) version PHONETIC RESPELLING.
- [ puh-lees ]
Seems to me, the general idea is leaning towards, oh-MAJ = French pronunciation for movie specific type stuff. The AH-muj version is more related to some fealty or honor thing to ancient people to people swearing allegiance for protection, etc.
- Why is it spelled pronunciation instead of pronOUnciation?
This sounds right, from https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/217014/why-did-the-letter-o-disappear-in-the-word-pronunciation
The direct answer to your immediate question is because it never had one — and so of course it couldn’t possibly lose something it never had.
The problem is that you’ve asked a bit of a backwards question; the frontwards question is:
Why did pronunciation, annunciation, enunciation, renunciation all change their vowel for the verbs pronounce, announce, enounce, renounce?
The answer lies in how we acquired them from Old French, where the verbs already had Latin’s u changed to o and which we later diphthonged, but where the differently stressed nouns did not.
More recent exports — well, or envoys — from Rome that didn’t pass through France suffered no such frobnication; just ask your nearest papal nuncio.
Here are the OED’s etymology entries for these:
pronounce
ME. pronunce, pronounce, a. OFr. pronuncier (1277 in Godef. Compl.), for earlier purnuncier (mod.Fr. prononcer) :– late L. prōnunciāre for orig. prōnuntiāre to proclaim, announce, rehearse, narrate, pronounce, f. prō, PRO1 + nunti-āre to announce: cf. ANNOUNCE, ENOUNCE.
announce
a. OFr. anonce-r, earlier anoncier, anuncier :– L. adnuntiā-re, f. ad to + nuntiāre to bear a message, f. nunti-us bringing news. See AN- pref. 6.
enounce
ad. Fr. énoncer, ad. L. ēnuntiā-re (see ENUNCIATE), after the analogy of ANNOUNCE.
renounce
ad. Fr. renoncer (OFr. also renuncer) :– L. renuntiāre (-ciāre) to announce, proclaim, also to disclaim, protest against, f. re- re- + nuntiāre to make known, report: cf. ANNOUNCE, DENOUNCE, etc.
nuncio
a. earlier Ital. nuncio, nuntio (now nunzio), = Sp. and Pg. nuncio :– L. nuncius, nuntius messenger.
Understand that this is the same thing that happened to Latin uncia meaning one-twelfth part of something, which coming to us by way of Old French eventually gave us an ounce, twelve of which make a troy pound.
However, the more direct borrowing from the Latin uncia into Old English itself was ynch, a different vowel that ultimately became inch, twelve of which make a foot.
There is also the ounce that means lynx, but that word traces a slightly different route between Latin and English, having confused the leading l- for an article and therefore losing it, much as a napron became an apron over a confusion about articles, just as occurred with an orange which originally had a leading n- in the noun.
- Why do words get a new way to be pronounced when they get an extra couple of syllables? Is it some snobbery nonsense (feels like it sometimes) or is it just easier to say (yeah, sometimes).
- https://ecampusontario.pressbooks.pub/essentialsoflinguistics2/chapter/14-3-phonological-change/
- This detailed page also says that it was "SK" in ask first in Old English, then "X" or "KS", then back to "SK". So is that Word lady on youtube PBS wrong?
- https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/281611/root-pronunciation-change-when-adding-suffix
- Gives some examples, less explanations why we think it happens.
- The funny southern US new pronunciation on purpose. POH-lees, etc.
- Examples:
- Police as POH-lees instead of puh-LEES (I would never say this myself, but I can understand it, and it kind of makes me crack a smile, b/c the sayer (made up that word I hope?) is saying it "wrong" on purpose most of the time.
- Umbrella as UM-brella instead of um-BREL-la
- ??
- I know that youtube accent coach for celebrity people talks about it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H1KP4ztKK0A
- I think he just sums it up as "Sometimes in Southern American English, people change it up and put a long vowel sound on the first syllable" or just the stress on the first syllable instead of the 2nd or something.
- Hard to find it written down, but maybe here somewhere: https://mrenwick.franklinresearch.uga.edu/southern_speech/linguistic_features
- Rules for underlining, italicizing, etc. book titles, movies, newspapers, magazines, etc. So much print stuff is going extinct, I wonder what the hell is used now. Kids seem to just have website references for literally all their research. Libraries still exist but are they used for research now?
- According to https://www.grammarly.com/blog/quotation-marks-in-titles/
- I notice they aren't saying to underline ANYTHING anymore
- Personally, it seems pretty stupid to use quotes for some and italics for others. It would be more clear to just use italics for all of it. Why the hell not? I'm especially being anti-grammar-ruley here b/c they have two different versions based on... a single city's rules? That just seems silly if that is the case.
- The general rule is to use quotation marks for titles of short works such as articles, poems, songs, essays, or short stories. By contrast, use italics for larger works such as books, movies, and the names of periodicals. We provide a complete list below.
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