Pronunciation watch

[Serial_Apologist]

When I first went away to a boarding school at the age of 11, I had a Mancunian sort of accent, but it was modified somewhat by some of the posher speakers whom I met in the first term. When I returned home at Christmas, my old friends were amused by my vocal transformation, so I became something of a conversational chameleon. It was hard work in my first teaching job on the Isle of Wight - not for me, though to them I must have sounded like the yet-to-be-born Steph McGovern - but because the young people just could not pronounce the name Gluck; they thought it rhymed with "muck" rather than "book". Having lived in one both sides of the Pennines, the deep English South, North Wales, the Potteries and the East Midlands, I've always had an interest in regional accents, but it was a visit to a manor house that taught me the way to "talk posh" without difficulty.
The lord-of-the-manor, his wife and very young child spoke with accents that suggested very fine breeding, but after a few days, I realised how they did it: LAZINESS!

When speaking, they never opened their mouths wide enough to move their teeth more than 2 mm. apart.
Try saying the following words, keeping your lips as still as possible, and hardly moving your teeth:
bath
goat
fun
sad

The chances are, you will say barth, gioat, fern and sed.

Now say the same words in a northern accent, and it will be much more difficult to do so without moving your lips and teeth to a greater extent.

Now I understand why CB-H and others cannot say "you" and "book" without sounding affected.

My mum spoke with a "soft" Middlesbrough accent - later she lost it from too much socialising with Home Counties Tories in the Mother's Union - but while Dad spoke "Bertie Wooster" 1920s-style posh, without knowing it I picked up a London accent which had to be elocuted out of me once they discovered I had a nice boy soprano voice and pitch sufficiently perfect to sing the solos in anthems by Purcell & co by making me Pride in "Doctor Faustus", repeating the line "I am Pride" in the manner of Laurence Olivier: "Ay am Prayed". I slipped back into Cockney without (self)conscious effort once I started work at 18, but at 69 now find I slip between the two poles, depending on to whom I am speaking, though I do occasionally get picked up on it. It makes little difference, in any case, since the old working class London accents are rapidly giving way to "Jafaican", that strange urban Caribbean/Cockney blend with a TV soaps-inspired admixture of Strine which probably no one would have anticipated taking over among the generation born roughly after 1980. Iinterestingly this has hardly affected English regions roughly northwest of a line from Southampton to Kings Lynn at all: English cities such as Bristol, Birmingham, Leeds, Manchester, Liverpool and Newcastle hanging onto their strongly characterised speech patterns, though I have to say I do detect some infiltration of Geordie into the way people speak these days in Middlesbrough.

[jean]

Happened this morning for the first time on R4's Book of the week - it's all about recusants which Ian McDiarmid insists on pronouncing reCUSant instead of ˈrɛkjᵿz(ə)nt.

Matbe he's thinking of refusenik?

[french frank]

Maybe he's thinking of refusenik?

It does seem to be an anomalous form, though, compared with excuse, accuse. Why not reCUSer, I wonder? It looks like a French form but I don't think it was used commonly, and nothing earlier than the 16th c. in English, so presumably coined for the prevailing circumstances. (Sorry, not pronunciation but pedantry)

[jean]

Anomalous, yes - especially as accuser seems to predate it.

From the examples the OED gives, it was coined for the prevailing circumstances right enough - its use spread to other contexts, but has now narrowed to the orignal meaning again.

(The other day I was at a concert of music likely to have sung in the C16 and C17 in one of the great recusant Catholic houses in Lancashire, which preserves some very interesting musical settings among the commonplaces of a manuscript book known as the Great Hodge Podge.)

.

[subcontrabass]

It does seem to be an anomalous form, though, compared with excuse, accuse. Why not reCUSer, I wonder? It looks like a French form but I don't think it was used commonly, and nothing earlier than the 16th c. in English, so presumably coined for the prevailing circumstances. (Sorry, not pronunciation but pedantry)

Dictionaries indicate that it came directly from Latin.

[jean]

Because the verb itself wasn't used in English, I suppose - we only wanted the present participle.

The first spelling the OED gives is recusaunt, which looks a bit French.

[french frank]

Because the verb itself wasn't used in English, I suppose - we only wanted the present participle.

The first spelling the OED gives is recusaunt, which looks a bit French.

But the verb was used in English, in various contexts, between 1387 and 1997. It was the nouns recusance and recusancy (and recusant) which didn't occur until the 16th c.

On the pronunciation: Brit. /ˈrɛkjᵿz(ə)nt/ , U.S. /rəˈkjuznt/ ...

[decantor]

It was the nouns recusance and recusancy (and recusant) which didn't occur until the 16th c.

It had always been my belief - on no evidence whatsoever, of course - that RECUSANT was deliberately adopted (or even coined) as a calculated parallel to PROTESTANT. That would explain both the morphology and the historical timing of its appearance. (Just an idea!)

[french frank]

It had always been my belief - on no evidence whatsoever, of course - that RECUSANT was deliberately adopted (or even coined) as a calculated parallel to PROTESTANT. That would explain both the morphology and the historical timing of its appearance. (Just an idea!)

I'll buy that - the timing, yes, but I didn't think of the parallel with Protestant. Explains the -ant ending and the unusual stress.

[P. G. Tipps]

It had always been my belief - on no evidence whatsoever, of course -

'Belief' of course requires an element of faith alongside, hopefully, a significant degree of logical thinking.

Lord knows I'm no language scholar, but your belief regarding the correct pronunciation of 'recusant' certainly has a very simple and straightforward logic on its side!

[jean]

It had always been my belief...that RECUSANT was deliberately adopted (or even coined) as a calculated parallel to PROTESTANT.

I'd never thought of that, but it does seem likely - and coined rather than adopted, because its first OED citation is this:

1552–3 Act 7 Edw. VI c. 4 §2 The Certificate of Recusauntes made by any of the said Archebyshoppes.

The only problem is that though Protestant is earlier, it was first used only of Germany, and it is doubtful how protestant the English church thought itself to be as early as the reign of Edward VI.

The first citation that seems to refer to England rather than Germany is this:

1594 T. Nashe Vnfortunate Traveller sig. K2, I must say to the shame of vs Protestants, if good workes may merit heauen, they [sc. the Romans] do them, we talke of them.

(So much for those high Anglicans who think the English church never thought of itself as Protestant at all!)

I'd also never registered the use of recuse as a verb.

.

[jean]

Seems the word recusant has less ansd less currency; the journal Recusant History recently renamed itself British Catholic History..

Here's an interesting article I can't read unless I pay for it.

[decantor]

The only problem is that though Protestant is earlier, it was first used only of Germany, and it is doubtful how protestant the English church thought itself to be as early as the reign of Edward VI.

My thanks for your further thoughts, jean.

Even if PROTESTANT was used primarily of Lutherans, the objection above is not quite fatal to my hypothesis, I feel. The context for the neologism might be: "THEY have their Protestants, WE have our Recusants." And yes, I too was surprised to find that the verb RECUSE once had its place in our lexicon.

(My apologies for prolonging an off-topic theme)

[Lat-Literal]

1. The regional pronunciation of the word "says":

Is it ever right for this word to be pronounced in any way other than "sez"? Some people living north of Watford pronounce it as "sez" and some pronounce it as in "baize".

2. The use of inverted commas/quotation marks:

Historically, I have preferred to use double quotation marks for (a) quotations and (b) delineation of words or phrases from other parts of a sentence or clause even though instinct tells me in the case of (b) that single marks should be used. Here is a (double) example: "The pronunciation of the word "says"". But is there an absolute right or wrong here?

3. Choosing to be wrong as an individual "style":

If one prefers to have one or two aspects of writing that are in principle absolutely wrong, can this ever be acceptable on the grounds that it is an individual's chosen style? For example, can one ever really put forward convincingly the "I know that in strict terms it is wrong - but it never had an adverse impact on ee cummings etc" sort of argument?

[vinteuil]

2. The use of inverted commas/quotation marks:

Historically, I have preferred to use double quotation marks for (a) quotations and (b) delineation of words or phrases from other parts of a sentence or clause even though instinct tells me in the case of (b) that single marks should be used. Here is a (double) example: "The pronunciation of the word "says"". But is there an absolute right or wrong here?

... different editors / publishers will have different house style guides. Hart's Rules for Compositors and Readers at the University Press Oxford advises :

'Single marks are to be used for a first quotation; then double for a quotation within a quotation. If there should be yet another quotation within the second quotation it is necessary to revert to single quotation marks.'