Occurrence of spelling pronunciations
Occurrence of spelling pronunciations
They seem to occur mostly in words which are often learned first in reading. For instance, "kiln" is a word that's commonly first encountered in reading and so commonly has a spelling pronunciation with a sounded "n". However that's not always the case. "often" and "clothes" have spelling pronunciations with a sounded "t" and sounded "th" for many speakers and those aren't words that people learn from reading.
- Salmoneus
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Re: Occurrence of spelling pronunciations
- "kiln" has always had /l/Fooge wrote:They seem to occur mostly in words which are often learned first in reading. For instance, "kiln" is a word that's commonly first encountered in reading and so commonly has a spelling pronunciation with a sounded "n". However that's not always the case. "often" and "clothes" have spelling pronunciations with a sounded "t" and sounded "th" for many speakers and those aren't words that people learn from reading.
- "clothes" may historically have had pronunciations where the /D/ was lost, but we've no way of knowing if those were universal. In any case, if the /D/ was restored it was probably by analogy with 'cloth' (and pairs like mouth/mouths, etc) and with "clothes" (the verb)
- "often", likewise, does have t-less variants, but there's no way to know that the t-dropped variants were ever universal, and restoration is surely at least in part by analogy, which can be a powerful restorative force in this sort of should-never-have-happened-anyway sporadic losses.
These aren't great examples of spelling pronunciation.
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But the river tripped on her by and by, lapping
as though her heart was brook: Why, why, why! Weh, O weh
I'se so silly to be flowing but I no canna stay!
But the river tripped on her by and by, lapping
as though her heart was brook: Why, why, why! Weh, O weh
I'se so silly to be flowing but I no canna stay!
Re: Occurrence of spelling pronunciations
It's the /n/ that's sometimes lost, not the /l/.Salmoneus wrote:I- "kiln" has always had /l/
By the time /ð/ was lost, cloth could have already had its vowel shortened.Salmoneus wrote:In any case, if the /D/ was restored it was probably by analogy with 'cloth'
Re: Occurrence of spelling pronunciations
I'm not sure that's necessarily true of kilns. Pottery-making is not exactly a dead art.Fooge wrote:They seem to occur mostly in words which are often learned first in reading. For instance, "kiln" is a word that's commonly first encountered in reading and so commonly has a spelling pronunciation with a sounded "n".
But that's cool, I didn't know about the loss of /n/ in much of England. This US pronunciation could be based on spelling or could also go back to dialects which preserved the /n/.
Re: Occurrence of spelling pronunciations
But contact may be lost with pottery-making, and with the use of kilns in general.linguoboy wrote: I'm not sure that's necessarily true of kilns. Pottery-making is not exactly a dead art.
Re: Occurrence of spelling pronunciations
This is a nitpick, isn't it? The contact is probably with clothing and the verb to clothe. Cloth and clothe have largely gone their separate semantic ways,Sol717 wrote:By the time /ð/ was lost, cloth could have already had its vowel shortened.Salmoneus wrote:In any case, if the /D/ was restored it was probably by analogy with 'cloth'
Re: Occurrence of spelling pronunciations
I don't understand what this means.Richard W wrote:But contact may be lost with pottery-making, and with the use of kilns in general.linguoboy wrote: I'm not sure that's necessarily true of kilns. Pottery-making is not exactly a dead art.
Re: Occurrence of spelling pronunciations
It means that 'kiln' is not part of my everyday vocabulary. It's an unusual technical term that I can vaguely remember learning.Vijay wrote:I don't understand what this means.Richard W wrote:But contact may be lost with pottery-making, and with the use of kilns in general.linguoboy wrote: I'm not sure that's necessarily true of kilns. Pottery-making is not exactly a dead art.
Re: Occurrence of spelling pronunciations
Pottery kilns are something I would probably be more likely to associate with my Indian heritage than with anything else.Richard W wrote:It means that 'kiln' is not part of my everyday vocabulary. It's an unusual technical term that I can vaguely remember learning.Vijay wrote:I don't understand what this means.Richard W wrote:But contact may be lost with pottery-making, and with the use of kilns in general.linguoboy wrote: I'm not sure that's necessarily true of kilns. Pottery-making is not exactly a dead art.
Re: Occurrence of spelling pronunciations
I associate them with urban hippies.Vijay wrote:Pottery kilns are something I would probably be more likely to associate with my Indian heritage than with anything else.Richard W wrote:It means that 'kiln' is not part of my everyday vocabulary. It's an unusual technical term that I can vaguely remember learning.
Now that I think of it, the same probably applies to a lot of things.
- alynnidalar
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Re: Occurrence of spelling pronunciations
I associate them with grade school art class...
I generally forget to say, so if it's relevant and I don't mention it--I'm from Southern Michigan and speak Inland North American English. Yes, I have the Northern Cities Vowel Shift; no, I don't have the cot-caught merger; and it is called pop.
Re: Occurrence of spelling pronunciations
What kind of hippy-ass grade school did you go to?
Re: Occurrence of spelling pronunciations
The grade schools I went to also had kilns.linguoboy wrote:What kind of hippy-ass grade school did you go to?
Dibotahamdn duthma jallni agaynni ra hgitn lakrhmi.
Amuhawr jalla vowa vta hlakrhi hdm duthmi xaja.
Irdro. Irdro. Irdro. Irdro. Irdro. Irdro. Irdro.
Amuhawr jalla vowa vta hlakrhi hdm duthmi xaja.
Irdro. Irdro. Irdro. Irdro. Irdro. Irdro. Irdro.
- alynnidalar
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Re: Occurrence of spelling pronunciations
lol, it was a very small conservative rural school in Michigan. Not a lot of hippies in sight! We did ceramics in both middle and high school art classes, it was a lot of fun.
I generally forget to say, so if it's relevant and I don't mention it--I'm from Southern Michigan and speak Inland North American English. Yes, I have the Northern Cities Vowel Shift; no, I don't have the cot-caught merger; and it is called pop.
Re: Occurrence of spelling pronunciations
My private primary school had a kiln. Clay was one of my favourite art thingies; my parents still have a couple mini sculptures of mine at their place. I don't know how normal that is here though. I never did art at secondary school but as far as I know there was no kiln there.
Re: Occurrence of spelling pronunciations
I associate kilns with the Terracotta Army. I just checked and it seems that kiln and mill rhymed in Middle English (kilne milne). The /n/ was lost in both cases but regained in kiln.
Wikipedia wrote:However, there are small bastions where the original pronunciation has endured. Kiln, Mississippi, a small town known for its wood drying kilns that once served the timber industry, is still referred to as "the Kill" by locals.
ìtsanso, God In The Mountain, may our names inspire the deepest feelings of fear in urkos and all his ilk, for we have saved another man from his lies! I welcome back to the feast hall kal, who will never gamble again! May the eleven gods bless him!
kårroť
kårroť
Re: Occurrence of spelling pronunciations
It seems odd to call what's obviously an innovation "the original pronunciation".mèþru wrote:I associate kilns with the Terracotta Army. I just checked and it seems that kiln and mill rhymed in Middle English (kilne milne). The /n/ was lost in both cases but regained in kiln.Wikipedia wrote:However, there are small bastions where the original pronunciation has endured. Kiln, Mississippi, a small town known for its wood drying kilns that once served the timber industry, is still referred to as "the Kill" by locals.
Re: Occurrence of spelling pronunciations
What Wikipedia says is that it wasn't an innovation. Instead, /n/ at the end of kiln is an innovation as it had already been elided previously.
ìtsanso, God In The Mountain, may our names inspire the deepest feelings of fear in urkos and all his ilk, for we have saved another man from his lies! I welcome back to the feast hall kal, who will never gamble again! May the eleven gods bless him!
kårroť
kårroť
Re: Occurrence of spelling pronunciations
I understand what Wikipedia said. It was (a) inaccurate and (b) could have been better phrased.mèþru wrote:What Wikipedia says is that it wasn't an innovation. Instead, /n/ at the end of kiln is an innovation as it had already been elided previously.
Quoth the OED: "In Middle English the final -n became silent (in most districts)" [my emphasis]
So the loss wasn't universal. Instead, you had two pronunciations coexisting: a conservative pronunciation with /n/, which was reflected in the (eventual) standard spelling, and an innovative pronunciation without it, which wasn't. At some point, /n/ seems to have been restored to varieties at the expensive of the previously innovative pronunciation. So "original" is bad phrasing, since it makes more sense to apply it to the pronunciation predating the loss of /n/ (i.e. the pronunciation closer to the origin of the word in time), but that's the opposite of what's intended.
As I say above, you'd have to know which areas of England preserved the earlier unelided pronunciation and for how long to know how much of the prevalence of /kiln/ in the USA is the result of that spelling-influenced restoration and how much is retention. (According to your preferred resource, Kiln, Mississippi wasn't settled until the 1840s and didn't receive its name until the 1880s.)
Re: Occurrence of spelling pronunciations
I stand corrected inside a kiln:
More: show
ìtsanso, God In The Mountain, may our names inspire the deepest feelings of fear in urkos and all his ilk, for we have saved another man from his lies! I welcome back to the feast hall kal, who will never gamble again! May the eleven gods bless him!
kårroť
kårroť
Re: Occurrence of spelling pronunciations
I remember learning the word kiln in primary school. The school didn't have one, but at some point we made clay thingies that got sent to a kiln to be kilned in the kiln. It was kind of dumb because even though we were told to avoid air bubbles or thick parts, we were kids, so of course some people's things exploded and because they were all in the kiln together, kilning together, the shrapnel destroyed even well-made stuff so we basically got a whole lot of clay shards back. My high school art department had a kiln too.
Anyway, the main thing I remember was that most of us had problems with the /ln/ cluster. When speaking English normally, I definitely vocalise that /l/... I think I do in "film" too, even though that isn't nearly as difficult. Anyway, now I speak German, so I have enough /ln/ to get good at it.
Does anyone know of another English word with /ln/ in a coda? I can only think of the name Milne.
Also, any idea why the t is so often pronounced in "often" but basically never in thistle, castle, listen, fasten, mustn't? Is it that the FRICATIVE /t/ SCHWA /l/n/ thingy didn't happen as widespreadly with /f/ as with /s/ and held on in some dialects to respread, or there some reason that makes "often" a better candidate to pick up a spelling pronunciation?
Off topic: And why the hell isn't widespreadly a commonly used word? I can't remember what I'm supposed to say prescriptively without resorting to a longer phrase.
Anyway, the main thing I remember was that most of us had problems with the /ln/ cluster. When speaking English normally, I definitely vocalise that /l/... I think I do in "film" too, even though that isn't nearly as difficult. Anyway, now I speak German, so I have enough /ln/ to get good at it.
Does anyone know of another English word with /ln/ in a coda? I can only think of the name Milne.
Also, any idea why the t is so often pronounced in "often" but basically never in thistle, castle, listen, fasten, mustn't? Is it that the FRICATIVE /t/ SCHWA /l/n/ thingy didn't happen as widespreadly with /f/ as with /s/ and held on in some dialects to respread, or there some reason that makes "often" a better candidate to pick up a spelling pronunciation?
Off topic: And why the hell isn't widespreadly a commonly used word? I can't remember what I'm supposed to say prescriptively without resorting to a longer phrase.
Glossing Abbreviations: COMP = comparative, C = complementiser, ACS / ICS = accessible / inaccessible, GDV = gerundive, SPEC / NSPC = specific / non-specific
________
MY MUSIC
________
MY MUSIC
Re: Occurrence of spelling pronunciations
Just saying "widely" is clear in context, I think.sorry can't comment on the rest of the post.
Sunàqʷa the Sea Lamprey says:
Re: Occurrence of spelling pronunciations
Ha, thanks! Sometimes my word-searching device in my head just gives up in overwhelmment ...Soap wrote:Just saying "widely" is clear in context, I think.sorry can't comment on the rest of the post.
Glossing Abbreviations: COMP = comparative, C = complementiser, ACS / ICS = accessible / inaccessible, GDV = gerundive, SPEC / NSPC = specific / non-specific
________
MY MUSIC
________
MY MUSIC
Re: Occurrence of spelling pronunciations
FWIW, Wikipedia gives no rhymes. I'm quite happy to delete shwas in allegro speech most of the time, but I can't think of a single instance where I elide it between /l/ and /n/.Imralu wrote:Does anyone know of another English word with /ln/ in a coda? I can only think of the name Milne.
One of my takeaways from this thread is that the surname "Milne", whose origins were long mysterious to me, is etymologically identical to "Mill".
Re: Occurrence of spelling pronunciations
They're pretty hard to come by, but gamers have come up with "invuln".Imralu wrote:Does anyone know of another English word with /ln/ in a coda? I can only think of the name Milne.