Pronunciation watch

[mangerton]

I believe that one reason that educated speakers of British English - think Stephen Fry, Tony Blair or the actor Simon Callow - are venerated in the US is that they speak in concisely phrased whole sentences,
BW, kb

Tony Blair may speak in whole sentences, but his diction, unlike Messrs Callow and Fry, is appalling.

[vinteuil]

(note anglicised s not z),

we've been here before - but just to remind people the use of z is also standard English practice - Oxford University Press, and hence OED, uses -ize consistently...

[Bryn]

we've been here before - but just to remind people the use of z is also standard English practice - Oxford University Press, and hence OED, uses -ize consistently...

And good old Fowler argues that which is used in each case should depend depend on its etymology.

In the vast majority of cased this mean the -ize ending, rather than the French derived -ise, is both etymologically and phonetically the more apposite form in English.

[mikerotheatrenestr0y]

But I prefer the look of -ise - so there! Now, if he'd proposed a difference between realise "to understand, often suddenly" and realiZe "to turn into cash" I'd have seen the point, just as we distinguish verbs and nouns with practise and practice, prophesy and prophecy. Besides which, kernel was only quoting Steve Reich's It's Gonna Rain - or is it John Adams?

BTW kilOMetre may be by analogy [incorrect, because the analogy should be with all the other kilo words, like kilogram, kilowatt etc.] with barOMeter, anemOMeter, thermOMeter - and, as in these examples, Greek is always making etymology unrecognisable by restressing component words to make them unrecogniSable. [Who knows that it's a helico-pter, or spiral wing?]

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

I really don't care what Fowler says. The fact it that in English usage, -ise is almost universal. It's very odd that many book publishers resist general usage.

And if we're going to discuss Greek origins, there should never have been quadraphonic sound. Either quadrasonic or tetraphonic would have been consistent, rather than mixing Latin with Greek.

The letter "z" is not common in Western European languages. (It was almost absent in Latin.) But in Eastern Europe, the situation is very different - look at Polish, for example.

[vinteuil]

There is no such thing as a kilOMMetre! !

I know what ferretfancy means, but the forces moving people to shift the accent from first to second syllable are strong indeed. As Fowler says in his section analysing the five possible pronunciations of "contumely" -

"A stressed syllable followed by three unstressed ones is very unpopular except with professors and the like if there is an alternative handy."

Which is why CONtroversy (which is the earlier form, which I cling to) is largely supplanted by conTROVersy.

In my 1926 copy of Fowler, in the section 'Recessive Accent', he uses language that I suspect would be politically impossible now -
"... a repugnance to strings of obscure syllables; with the uneducated this is rather inability than mere dislike; their tongues cannot frame a rapid succession of light syllables hardly differing from each other; and the educated, who can manage it if they will, have the English objection to fussy precision and often do not choose to, except where academic surroundings constrain them to academic elocution... "

[kernelbogey]

.... There's nothing like a good old mile. ...

Smiley noted, Herr Muesli-Strauss, but I do find the attachment in (what David Cameron insists on calling 'Our Country') to the mile, pounds, pints, rods, poles, perches and cricket pitches completely incomprehensible. To my certain knowledge SI units have been taught in British schools for over forty years. That supermarkets actually market two pint bottles of milk designated '1.136 litres' is...

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

Smiley noted, Herr Muesli-Strauss, but I do find the attachment in (what David Cameron insists on calling 'Our Country') to the mile, pounds, pints, rods, poles, perches and cricket pitches completely incomprehensible. To my certain knowledge SI units have been taught in British schools for over forty years. That supermarkets actually market two pint bottles of milk designated '1.136 litres' is...

Come, now, you can't alter the length of a cricket pitch. You can hardly say it's 20.1168 metres.
P.S. Rods, poles and perches are all the same thing.
And I can still do long multiplication of pounds, shillings, pence and farthings, and of tons (not tonnes), hundredweight, stone, pounds and ounces.

[kernelbogey]

And I can still do long multiplication of pounds, shillings, pence and farthings, and of tons (not tonnes), hundredweight, stone, pounds and ounces.

OK then!!! A groundsman purchases a gross of cricket balls for £9.17s.6d. As he is crossing the field he decides to pace out the pitch to check that it is in fact exactly the right length. However a small hole in the bag allows one ball to escape for each of his paces. What is the value of his balls when he reaches the other end?

Oh, never mind.

[mangerton]

That's easy peasy. £5.8s.4½d.

I did all these things at school, so I'm bilingual in the imperial and metric systems, not that it's done me any good. Did anybody else get "bills" at school, where you had to evaluate and write out neatly (that was the hard bit for me)

3½ lbs of potatoes @ 1s.2d per stone
6 oz cheese @ 2s.8d per pound

and so on...

[Ferretfancy]

vinteuil

In the case of kilometre, the meaning of the word is surely "One thousand metres" whereas the incorrect stress suggests aurally a device for measuring kilos, which is not all the same thing. As for the incorrect pronunciation of dissect, this seems to have arisen from a mistaken analogy with bisect, to cut in two. Dissect, of course, comes from the roots 'dis' and 'sectare', to cut apart, and is thus an accurate verb for a clinical process.

[Mary Chambers]

As for the incorrect pronunciation of dissect, this seems to have arisen from a mistaken analogy with bisect, to cut in two. Dissect, of course, comes from the roots 'dis' and 'sectare', to cut apart, and is thus an accurate verb for a clinical process.

All his life my father raged about the mispronunciation of 'dissect'. Another favourite of his was 'Degas'. There is NO acute accent (the name being originally de Gas, I believe) and it certainly shouldn't be pronounced 'Dayga', as it usually is. In both cases he seems to have been fighting a losing battle. 'Dye-sect' and 'Dayga' they remain to the vast majority.

[french frank]

'Dye-sect' and 'Dayga' they remain to the vast majority.

Not only 'Dayga' but 'DAY-ga' with the stress on the first syllable. And I have to confess myself completely intimidated from pronouncing it correctly for fear of being called every name under the sun ... .

[vinteuil]

Not only 'Dayga' but 'DAY-ga' with the stress on the first syllable. And I have to confess myself completely intimidated from pronouncing it correctly for fear of being called every name under the sun ... .

I believe the family name = spelled de Gas by his parents - was, even earlier, pronounced by them as " de Gass" with the s pronounced - and so that is - of course - how I choose to pronounce it, mainly to annoy and baffle my interlocutors.

Like Ferretfancy and Mary Chambers's father, I wage unrelenting war against "die-sect"...

[marthe]

La particule throws 'em every time. I've had some experience with that because most folks in the US don't know what to make of a "de " before a name...never mind computerized stuff. Spelling my surname became a way of life until I got married. No wonder de Gass became Degas. As for kilometre, we always said KILOmetreh in our house, never kiLOMetre.