Latest news with #language
Telegraph
2 days ago
- General
- Telegraph
‘Despite the headlines, 'mischeevious' is not considered standard English'
'Mischievous'. It's a word that has come to define my week in quite unexpected ways, ever since I happened to answer a question from an audience member at the wonderful Hay Festival about changes to English that I find annoying. I explained that one bugbear I have recently overcome was the increasing use of the pronunciation 'mischeevious', since I have come to see the rationale for the change and to acknowledge its place in a long history of sound shifts that, for a lexicographer at least, are interesting to observe. The result was a right linguistic foofaraw, thanks to many a mischievous headline claiming I now consider 'mischeevious' to be entirely acceptable. I'm hoping I can set the record a little straighter now. The first thing to say is that a lexicographer's job is to chart the trajectory of words as they evolve. We are describers, not prescribers, of language, despite the understandable desire of many for some form of linguistic government. English has no equivalent to L'Académie française, a body that attempts to preside over the French language. English has always been an entirely democratic affair, subject to the will of the people, and it is inevitable that some of the changes it undergoes will prove irksome along the way. The fact that many of us are messing with the sound of 'mischievous' is clearly one. Despite the headlines, it is most definitely not considered standard English: in fact Oxford's dictionary of contemporary English offers unusually firm guidelines as to its usage: 'Mischievous is a three-syllable word. It should not be pronounced with four syllables with the stress on the second syllable, as if it were spelled mischievious'. Why, then, are we changing it? Is there any method to our madness? The answer involves a process that has informed linguistic evolution for centuries. In the case of 'mischievous', which comes from the Old French meschever, 'to come to an unfortunate end', the '-ievous' ending of the adjective is coming under the influence of such words as 'devious'. In the same way, it is becoming rare these days to hear reports of 'grievous bodily harm': I have heard 'grievious bodily harm' at least three times on news reports just this weekend. This is far from the only example of changing pronunciation, as readers will know all too well. 'Pacifically' and 'nucular' are two other repeat offenders. In the case of the former, 'pacifically' (already in the dictionary meaning 'peacefully'; the Pacific Ocean is the 'Peaceful Ocean') is judged by some to be easier to say, while the shift to 'nucular' brings it closer to such words as 'molecular' and 'secular' – there are fewer common words in current English ending with '-lear', with the exception perhaps of 'cochlear'. In each of these cases, familiarity seems to the catalyst. Similarly, it seems most people feel on 'tenderhooks' these days, rather than 'tenterhooks'. The latter were once a common feature in cloth-manufacturing districts, for they were wooden frames erected in rows in the open air on 'tenter-fields'. Wet cloth would be hooked onto them to be stretched after milling, allowing it dry evenly without shrinkage. Metaphorically, to be on tenterhooks is to be as taut, tense, and in suspense as the wool itself. Today, tenters are no longer a feature of our countryside, resulting in 'tenderhooks' being chosen for the job instead. I of course regret the loss of the story behind such words, but the joy of etymology is digging beneath the surface to discover these treasures of the past. Lest you feel your blood pressure rising already, there is some reassurance in the fact that such shifts are nothing new. If you've ever wondered what a Jerusalem artichoke has to do with Jerusalem, the answer is absolutely nothing: the name arose because English speakers in the 16th century struggled with the Italian word 'girasole', which means 'sunflower' (the Jerusalem artichoke is a heliotrope). It sounded a little like 'Jerusalem', so they plumped for that instead. At the same time, 'asparagus' must have proved equally challenging, for English speakers some 400 years ago decided to call it 'sparrowgrass' instead. The expression a 'forlorn hope' is a mangling of the Dutch 'verloren hoop', or 'lost troop', describing the vanguard of an army that fell in battle. It's hard to deny that there is poetry in our substitution. Slips of the tongue and ear are more common than you might think. Such words as 'umpire', 'apron', 'adder', and 'nickname' are the direct result of mistaken assumptions, for they began respectively as a 'noumpere', a 'napron', and a 'nadder'. In each case the 'n' drifted over to the 'a', since when spoken out loud it was hard to tell which word the letter belonged to. There are dozens more examples. 'Teeny' is an alteration of 'tiny', 'innards' is a take on 'inwards', 'manhandle' is a semi-logical riff on 'mangle', and 'tootsie' represents a child's delivery of 'footsie'. Other words that once wore their hearts on their sleeves have changed their sounds completely: a cupboard was pronounced with 'cup' and 'board' fully intact; only later did we decide it was a 'cubbard'. A 'ward-robe', or 'keeper of robes', is now more usually a 'war-drobe2. And let's not even start with a process known as 'haplology', where a word's syllable is swallowed entirely: who pronounces 'February' with the middle 'r' these days? You're more likely to hear 'probably' as 'probly', too, and a 'library' as a 'libry'. Even our idioms have taken a strange turn over the centuries. Why does 'head over heels' describe being upended by love when this is our regular bodily position? The answer is that the original was 'heels over head', meaning to turn a somersault, but at some point in the phrase's history the idiom was mistakenly (and fittingly) turned upside down. None of these changes mean we should no longer care. The opposite, in fact, for having bugbears means we are passionate about our words and wish to protect their beauty and clarity. What's more, when we mangle them, we run the risk of distracting our audience, and losing our meaning in the process. But it also feels important to know that language – and English in particular – has always been unpredictable and occasionally erratic, changing as its users wish it to, even if that is occasionally by mistake. I'll finish with one request: please don't shoot the messenger. I'm beginning to realise that there is a reason why I am occasionally called a 'minefield' of information.
RNZ News
2 days ago
- General
- RNZ News
Proto: an ancient language, mother to many tongues
Photo: HarperCollins Thousands of miles apart, people who speak English, Icelandic or Iranic use more or less the same words: star, stjarna, stare. All three of these languages - and hundreds more - share a single ancient ancestor, spread by ancient peoples far and wide. Today, nearly half of humanity speaks an Indo-European language. But, Proto Indo European is a language that has been dead for thousands of years and was never written down. British science journalist Laura Spinney's epic tale Proto - How One Ancient Language Went Global retraces its steps. Spinney has written for the New Scientist, The Guardian and The Daily Telegraph. She speaks with Susie.
Telegraph
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- Telegraph
‘It's shed-ule, not sked-ule': The mispronunciations that annoy us the most
When Susie Dent, Countdown 's etymology guru, declared on Wednesday that the common mispronunciation of 'mischievous' as 'mischiev-i-ous' should now be considered acceptable, she caused a stir not just at the Hay Festival but among traditionalists across the country. The reaction to her intervention highlights the extraordinary capacity of mispronounced words to irritate the listener – and how everyone has their own particular bugbears. Here, Telegraph writers and editors identify the pronunciations that grate the most – and confess to some of their own errors. 'Haitch' – Christopher Howse, assistant editor In The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne, the heroine is obliged by American Puritans to wear a big red A to show she has been caught in adultery. I'd like to see a capital H worn by anyone caught pronouncing it 'haitch'. Admittedly 'aitch' is a funny name for a letter. Q and R are funny too, but you don't hear people saying 'rar' instead of 'ar'. 'Haitch', though, is a case of hypercorrection and genteelism. It's like saying 'to my wife and I' because it sounds more polite than 'to my wife and me'. Children used to be told not to drop their aitches. The mistake is to think an aitch belongs at the beginning of 'aitch'. Last year I was impressed by the bravery of Amol Rajan, the Today presenter, who, after 40 years alive and a Cambridge degree in English, announced he was now going to start pronouncing 'aitch' correctly. Bravo. In 1862, Punch, in its class-conscious way, mocked the aspiration of 'aitch': 'She could not bear hoysters until there was a haitch in the month.' But I'm afraid it's a class-marker still, and we condemn our children to a life of social degradation if we let them say 'haitch'. Jeremy Butterfield, the editor of Fowler's Dictionary of Modern English Usage, thinks 'haitch' will prevail, 'unspeakably uncouth though it may appear'. Against this final assault by Chaos and Old Night, Amol and I will die in the last ditch, in which we may find room for you too. 'Wrath' – , royal editor The royal world is full of words ready to trip you up, from the lord lieutenants ('left-tenants', of course, rather than 'lew-tenants') to equerries. Even Princess Eugenie has to explain she is a 'YOO-jenny' with the handy comparison to 'use-your-knees'. That's before you even get to the aristocratic titles, names and homes. Cholmondeley pronounced 'chumley'; Belvoir Castle pronounced 'beaver'; Buckingham Palace without stressing the 'ham'. Earl Spencer has largely given up the struggle for the traditional pronunciation of Princess Diana's childhood home Althorp. The old 'áwltrop' has now been overtaken by 'all-thorp', the version commonly (and understandably) used by visitors. If you haven't grown up in that world, you haven't got a hope. So I try not to be snooty about people getting things wrong, as I've done quite a few times myself. There is only really one word that I notice every time: wrath. In 2004, when I was a bright-eyed young fresher, a clearly better educated young man at university corrected my misuse of 'wrath' in the middle of a story I was telling. I had said the American version, rhyming with 'Cath' or the northern UK pronunciation of 'bath', rather than the correct British version, 'roth'. It has annoyed me ever since – mostly because he was right. I always notice it in others and have been known to gently, privately point it out to spare others the same social embarrassment. It's a good job I changed my ways. That fresher who corrected me? Reader, I married him. 'Harassment' – Lisa Markwell, head of long reads My mother has always had a lot to say about pronunciation – or rather, mispronunciations. It's definitely rubbed off on me. In my youth, a boyfriend was quickly dispatched (by me, I should add, not her) because he said 'hyperbowl' rather than 'hi-per-bol-ee'; it was his second offence after 'epy-tome' rather than 'ep-it-o-mee'. In adulthood, what I have trained myself to do is never to correct, but to try and use the word with the correct pronunciation as soon as possible in the conversation. It's kinder that way. It comes from an annoying waiter sneering at me ordering scallops. 'Do you mean scoll -ops?', he intoned, snootily. But the creeping Americanisation of words really grinds my gears. The changing from noun to verb is now, appallingly, well established – but that's a rant for another day. The way in which words become their most base selves in the way they are spoken just feels wrong. Yes, British English (if we can call it that), is full of idiosyncrasies, but it's always been like that. Take lieutenant: who knows why it is pronounced 'left-tenant' but it very much is not 'lew-tenant'. See also, 'har-ass-ment' when it should be 'harass-ment' – that's one of the words my mother still gets exercised about to this day. Then there's 'schedule' which, for the avoidance of any doubt, is 'shed-ule', not 'sked-ule'. Any number of YouTube videos and US dramas will not change my mind. But if I'm honest, 'privacy' is the one that catches me out and I am furious that it turns out I've been getting it wrong all this time. It's 'prih-vacy', not 'pry-vacy'. Please respect my 'prih-vacy' at this difficult time. 'Espresso' – Kamal Ahmed, The Daily T presenter and director of audio An admission. I am a self-hating mispronouncer. And my big one is ' espresso ' – which I pronounce 'expresso'. Just like most other people. When it should of course be 'e-spresso', as there is no 'x' in the word – literally (a word I insert into sentences for no apparent reason, another bugbear). But if you do actually say 'espresso' with an Italian flare you sound a bit ridiculous. Like saying 'panino' in an Italian deli when you want one sandwich with prosciutto (try pronouncing that properly) and buffalo mozzarella. And no-one says Paris like they are French, do they? Unless they are, literally, French. 'Twenny' – Poppy Coburn, acting deputy comment editor The resurgence of the regional accent has a lot to answer for when it comes to linguistic bastardisation. Familiarity breeds contempt, and so I reserve my deepest distaste for the Essex drawl. Born in Southend and raised in Braintree, I experienced the full breadth of the cockney-ish interpretation of the English language, from 'shut uppp' to 'innit' to (oh God) 'reem'. Words would become needlessly elongated by a refusal to vocalise 'er', and so 'proper' became 'propaaa' and 'water' turned to 'wor-arrrrr'. But by far the most objectionable trend was the dropping of consonants, with 'twenty' morphing into 'twenny'. I once made the mistake of saying 'twenny' to my grandmother, a Norfolk-born ex-headteacher who took great pride in her parents having arranged for her to take elocution lessons. I soon found myself an unwilling pupil in her pronunciation lessons. My sister and I now have completely diametric accents and articulate words so differently that we often seem to be speaking other languages. I may have been mercilessly teased at school for sounding like the Queen, but I've come to appreciate my slightly posh voice. It certainly helps when I'm trying to be understood over the phone or talking to a non-native speaker. 'Archipelago' – Mick Brown, features writer A friend of mine has a singular way of pronouncing the word that describes a group or chain of islands within a body of water. As we all know, the word is 'archipelago' – pronounced 'arki-pel-ago'. She pronounces it as 'archie pel-ago', as if she's talking about a 1930s music hall act. This is a result of pronouncing a word as you read it, not as you hear it said. I can understand that. Archipelago is not a word you hear in everyday speech. And who am I to correct her? For years I pronounced 'epitome' as 'epi-tome', rather than the correct pronunciation, 'e-pit-omee'. And I still struggle with the word hummus. Although I don't think there is consensus over the correct 'British' pronunciation, I do know that Delia Smith and I are both wrong. Delia was once caught on camera for a cookery show, standing at a supermarket shelf apparently buying something called 'who-moose', as if it were a subspecies of the large North American mammal. While, for some reason, I got it into my head a long time ago that it was pronounced 'hommus', and I still can't stop. That's the problem with mispronunciations, they're like earworms. Once they're lodged in the brain it's almost impossible to get them out. I don't think I'm alone in stumbling over the word 'mispronunciation' itself. A common complaint is that American pronunciations have infiltrated the English language. To hear Americans talking about 'erbs', with a silent 'h', is like fingernails screeching on a blackboard. And who is this famous artist they are constantly referring to as Van Go? A friend in America recently sent me a list of the three hardest things for an American to say: 'I'm wrong', 'I need help' and 'Worcestershire'. Just keep them guessing. What mispronunciations annoy you the most – and which are you guilty of? Let us know in the comments.
CBS News
3 days ago
- General
- CBS News
Why do we struggle to spell certain words?
Why do we sometimes struggle to spell words? Why do we sometimes struggle to spell words? Why do we sometimes struggle to spell words? Some of the brightest young minds just finished showcasing their knowledge of the English language. The 2025 Scripps National Spelling Bee wrapped up this week with participants navigating words the average person likely never heard of, let alone could spell. While most might never reach their level of expertise, we wanted to know: Why do we struggle to spell certain words and does it get worse as we age? Telling stories for a living requires a thorough understanding of the English language, but that expertise has exceptions. When asked if she was good a spelling, Susan-Elizabeth Littlefield said no. "I would say a shaky C," for the grade she gave of her spelling ability. "I feel generally good but I feel like over time, I lose a little bit of it," said reporter Derek James who was quick to add that he did win a spelling bee sixth grade. Cole Premo, WCCO's digital manager, proofreads reporter's stories before they hit WCCO's website. "I'm always conscientious about looking at how I'm spelling. Conscientious, that's a tough one to spell," he said. Ask anyone if they have a word they struggle to spell and they'll typically have an answer ready to go. For Littlefield, it's "cemetery" and "exercise." "One word that comes to mind that I always look at multiple times is 'occasion'," said Derek James. Words with double consonants give him trouble. Ariel James is an assistant psychology professor at Macalester College. Her struggle word is "license." Why do we struggle to spell certain words? "One thing is just that English in particular is very tricky. It has what people call an opaque orthography," said Ariel James. Opaque orthography means there isn't a clear connection between how a word sounds and how it is spelled. Other languages tend to have a more transparent connection between the two. "In English there's just so many options for how to spell different sounds and so I think that's a lot of the issue so you have to memorize certain things," she said. Another phenomon that's hard to explain is called "wordnesia." You've likely experienced it. You write or type out a simple word correctly, but on a second look it appears to be misspelled. You're left sitting there confused as to why the word is spelled in such a way. "February, tomorrow is another one, restaurant," said Premo as he listed the words that leave him perplexed by their correct spelling. Wordnesia is described as a brain glitch for something that should be familiar. Ariel James says our brains are often on autopilot when typing or writing until a word makes us acutely aware. "If you look at something too long, I think it lets you step out of this sort of automatic, 'I just know things, it's implicit,' and then you think too much and things become strange," she said. Others have theorized that fatigue is another factor that can lead to wordnesia when writing. In those moments, you might lean on spellcheck to verify your spelling. Autocorrect is another tool helping people avoid typos. Is technology hurting our helping our ability to spell words? Derek James and Littlefield both feel that people have become too reliant on things like spellcheck, furthering their slow loss of how to spell words correctly. Ariel James sees the technology as both helpful and hurtful depending on how its used. She said spellcheck gives users instant feedback, otherwise they'd continue typing a word incorrectly without ever learning the true spelling. On the flip side, Ariel James said we learn information better when our brains do the work. "If you're typing and things just get automatically corrected as you're typing, you don't really have to put in the same kind of effort that it would take to generate [spelling words] yourself," she said. Putting in that mental effort could include memorizing a word's spelling or creating a mnemonic device to guide you. "One tip that really helped me was someone told me cemetery has no A's," said Littlefield. Studies have shown that while our vocabulary improves as we age, our ability to recall words or spell them correctly can diminish.
Daily Mail
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- Daily Mail
TOM UTLEY: Susie, the serene goddess of Countdown, has thrown in the towel - but I'm still manning the barricades against the language louts!
Et tu, Susie? Just as Julius Caesar thought his friend Brutus was the last man on Earth who would betray him, so I imagined Susie Dent would defend to her final breath the correct pronunciation of common English words. But no. This week, the serene goddess of Countdown's Dictionary Corner appeared to throw in the towel over the widespread mispronunciation of the word mischievous. So many people get it wrong, she declared, that it no longer bothers her to hear it pronounced 'mischievious', to rhyme with 'devious', as if it were spelt with a third 'i' after the 'v'. True, she was not saying the mispronunciation had now become standard English. Nor was she endorsing it as 'acceptable', as one or two mischievous headline-writers have suggested. But she did seem to regard the mistake with a certain detached, academic resignation, as if it were merely an interesting illustration of the way language evolves. My own instinct, by contrast, is to man the barricades against assaults on our language and 'rage, rage against the dying of the light'. Speaking at the Hay Festival, where she was promoting her new murder mystery, Guilty By Definition, Dent said: 'Something which used to rile me was people pronouncing mischievous as mischie-vi-ous. But now it's everywhere and there is a very good reason why people do. 'It's the way English people have always pushed out a pronunciation that is no longer familiar to them. We don't have any 'ievous' words any more, and they're pushing it to something that they do know, and that's 'evious'. 'So I have now decided it's a fascinating snapshot of how language works and it doesn't really bother me – not any more.' Well, all I can say is that it bothers me a lot. Indeed, far from becoming more tolerant as the years go by, I find that the older I get, the more such petty crimes against our language irritate me. Oh, I know that in this vale of tears, with wars raging in Ukraine, the Middle East and elsewhere, and our own country plunging headlong into bankruptcy, there are far more important things to worry about than the mispronunciation of a common English word. I know, too, that Dent, who is a far more distinguished student of words than I will ever be, is quite right to say that living languages evolve with the passage of time. After all, it's not only pronunciations that change, but spellings and even the meanings of words. To take one frequently cited example, the word 'silly' went through a whole range of meanings – including happy, holy, rustic, weak and lowly – before it settled on its modern definition as a synonym for daft. Meanwhile, I'd hate to think I'm becoming as pedantic as my late grandfather, a classics scholar, who insisted on pronouncing 'margarine' with a hard g (apparently it comes from the Greek word for a pearl, which is spelt with a gamma) and cinema as 'Kye-knee-ma', because its ancient Greek root begins with a kappa. As I may have mentioned before, he was also such a stickler for correct grammar that when my mother asked him if he'd like more spaghetti, he replied: 'Well, perhaps just a few'. (The word spaghetti, you understand, is the plural of spaghetto; strictly speaking, it's therefore wrong to speak of 'just a little spaghetti'.) But there must be at least some trace of my grandfather in me, since I constantly find myself wincing over common mispronunciations and grammatical mistakes. It sets my teeth on edge, for example, when I ask almost anyone under the age of about 35 'How are you?', and the answer comes back: 'I'm good'. Indeed, I have to bite my lip to stop myself from saying: 'I wasn't asking about your morals. I just wanted to know if you were well!' In the same way, it irritates me like anything when people ask at the bar: 'Can I get...', when the traditional form, on my side of the Atlantic at least, is 'May I have...' And why do so many of the young insist on starting every other sentence with the word 'so'? (Ask them what they do for a living, and the chances are they will give some incomprehensible answer, such as: 'So, I'm a local government project outreach manager.') Won't somebody teach BBC reporters, meanwhile, that singular subjects take singular verbs? I've lost count of the number of times I've switched on the news to hear sentences such as: 'The collapse in shares are sending shock-waves through the financial world.' Are it really? Or take the way in which many who are confused or ambiguous about their sexual identity like to be referred to by the plural pronouns 'they' and 'them'. What bugs me quite as much as any other consideration is the way this mangles English grammar. As for quirks of pronunciation, I suppose I should admit that some of my objections are merely snobbish. For example, nobody on BBC London seems able to say the word 'hospital' in the way I was brought up to pronounce it. Asad Ahmad and most of his colleagues give it three equally stressed syllables ('hosp-it-tool'), instead of rhyming it with little or skittle. (Mind you, some of them say 'littool' and 'skittool' as well.) It annoys me, too, that Sir Keir Starmer seems to have trouble pronouncing his own job title, rendering it more often than not as 'Pry-Mister'. And don't get me started on the Chancellor's hideous, grating pronunciation of the name of the kingdom she's bringing to ruin, which she insists on calling the 'Yew-Kye'. But some common pronunciations are just plain wrong. I'm thinking in particular of words we get from the French, such as restaurateur and lingerie. Again and again, you will hear the former pronounced as if it had an 'n' in it, and the latter as if it ended in -ay. Mind you, my late father regarded it almost as his patriotic duty to mispronounce French words. I'll never forget his rebuking me once for pronouncing Marseilles the French way, as 'Mar-say.' 'Mar-say, boy? Mar-say?' he spluttered. 'The word is Mar-sails! You don't pronounce Paris 'Paree', do you?' Other examples of common mispronunciations that are just plain wrong include 'Joo-le-ree' for jewellery, 'Feb-you-airy' for February and 'amen-o-knee' for that admittedly tricky tongue-twister, anemone. Meanwhile, Dent herself cites the widespread mispronunciation of nuclear as 'nucular', saying it understandably irks a lot of people, while observing with her lexicographer's detachment that she thinks this is influenced by such words as molecular and secular. She tells me: 'I'm certainly not saying 'anything goes'. Language needs to be fluent and articulate (and wherever possible, beautiful!) in order to be effective, and when we deviate from the standard it can affect the quality and comprehensibility of our writing or speech.' All she is pointing out, she says, is that pronunciations have evolved for centuries, as we have adjusted sounds that no longer seem familiar to those that are. 'It can be irritating of course, and many will believe it is a degradation of English, all of which I understand,' she says. 'But there is perhaps reassurance in the fact that this is nothing new.' Ah, well, I'm sure she's right on every count. But may not an old man rant?
