PRONUNCIATION AND SPELLING

New Zealand Listener, Volume 4, Issue 103, 13 June 1941, Page 4

PRONUNCIATION AND SPELLING

Sir,-It is possible to give thousands of examples that are not surnames or place names, that we spell one way and pronounce another. These are a few taken at random from a small pocket dictionary, all beginning with A. Apostle (sl), Accept (aks), acknowledge (ij), Almanac (awl), Almond (ahm), Almost (awl), Among (mu), Ankle (ang-kl), Another (u), Answer (ser), Any (en-i), Appreciate (shi), Area (ér), Assuage (sw), Attorney (ter), Aunt (ant). Professor Wall has been telling us about the diphthong AW, but there is also a host of words with OU, such as Mouth, Mouse, House, Louse, etc., etc. Why not replace the U with a W (Mowth, Mowse, Howse, Lowse) and so avoid spelling a word as "Hoose" and calling it "Howse." Actually we are told this should be " Hows," but if we listen carefully we can always catch the "eh" at the end. On the shortwave we often hear about Buckingham Palace and usually it is pronounced as " Beckingham Palace." The AU sound in Maori is really not ow but " ah-ooo," Ra-u-paér-a-ha, Hau is a Maori surname pronounced Hah-oo, but not How. Let me quote the following: "The spelling of modern English was largely conventionalised by the

scribes of the late 14th Century, and their habits, made more rigid, were followed by the first English printers of the late 15th Century. It is unfortunate that the printer’s spelling ignored the large number of vowel changes which had taken place in the early 15th Century, since this fact has thrown Modern English Spelling out of gear with all the other European Countries which use any form of the Latin alphabet." Not many people really say "Oh-revoir" or "frow"; the great majority say Aw-revoir and Fraw, and " vaudeville" not " vohdeville." When it comes to fraulein, even the Germans say froilin and not frowlin. John Doe says: "It is sheer ignorance of the correct pronunciation. They don’t know, I do." I also know what is called the Scotsman’s prayer, "Oh Lord, gae us a guid conceit o’ oorsels." Let us not be pedantic.

LAPSUS LINGUAE

(Te Awamutu).