linguistics-y musings

[fox]

so i was thinking this morning about people who pronounce words wrong (or, to use non-judgmental language, "people with non-standard pronunciations")([rolls eyes]). three examples that leaped to mind immediately were:

• theferrett pronounced row (argument) to rhyme with "whoa" rather than with "wow"
  
• a friend of mine in junior high once said something like "innudioes" when she meant innuendoes
  
• just the other day, i heard someone say "drawt" and it took a little sorting out before it became clear to me that she meant draught, which is pronounced "draft"

i wonder if this has anything to do with how much reading people do, or more precisely how much listening they may or may not do. it seems pretty clear that children who read a great deal acquire a lot of vocabulary that way -- but while they may know a word in context, they may never have (had occasion to) hear it used, so they're more likely than less-heavy readers to pronounce things wrong.

maybe. i mean, i was thinking about this in the shower this morning. i don't know if there's ever been any sort of study made of different groups, much-readers vs. not-so-much-readers; and if there hasn't been, i wouldn't know how to put one together. i'd have to consult with someone who had more knowledge of research methods. and then i wouldn't expect it'd be as useful a thing to know about too many languages other than english, since we're the ones with kooky unpredictable correlations between spelling and pronunciation.

ellen_fremedon? therealjae? others? any thoughts?

Comments

Re:

[darthfox.livejournal.com]

well, yeah, as a non-native speaker, forget it. :-)

there are rules to english pronunciations, really there are. just like there are arbitrary rules to pronouncing other languages -- just that their arbitrary rules are more consistent. in french, for instance, eau is always pronounced "oh", x is always silent, ll is pronounced "y" (or "j", if you prefer [g]) following i but "l" following any other vowel, etc. in english, spelling has been frozen at so many different stages of the language development -- including so many borrowings from so many other languages -- that there's no way in a lot of cases to know which of the many rules applies. which, in turn, looks like there are no rules at all.

this certainly contributes to the issue with native speakers' assumptions about pronunciation. if there were only one way to pronounce the sequence ea, there'd be no problem distinguishing between lead (verb) and lead (mineral), between read (present) and read (past), or knowing that neither of these options is correct for the vowel in break. but while making the wrong choice from among a variety of correct pronunciations can be a problem for english speakers reading things out loud and unaware of context, what i'm interested in is native speakers who see a word they ostensibly "know" and pronounce it in a way they've certainly never heard anyone who actually knows the word pronounce it. (failure to realize that someone else is pronouncing the word wrong can obviously complicate the whole thing.) which is why proper names are less interesting.

it's actually more likely a question of the social habits of kids learning language than anything else. maybe. [goes to think about it more]

Re:

[sileas.livejournal.com]

I can tell you studied languages. *g*

it's actually more likely a question of the social habits of kids learning language than anything else. maybe. [goes to think about it more]

Maybe that phenomenon will manifest itself more in children from underprivileged families who are nonetheless smart and read plenty. They wouldn't have heard the difficult words spoken out loud, but might have read them in books (and perhaps subsequently pronounce them wrong).