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I can't recall having heard the word 'vestige' pronounced with second-syllable stress and the long vowel [i:], until a couple of months ago when I heard it used in a podcast. I immediately wondered whether it was a dialectal variant or an 'eye-dialect' related to the more common prestige, which has these features, and which is the only other English word to end in -tige. I quickly realized, though, that prestige has two variant pronunciations, and I needed to ask about both words together. A strong majority of you (around three-quarters) pronounce vestige as ['vɛstɪdʒ] 'VES-tidge', and this is the variant I've always heard, but over 20% of you say either ves-TEEDGE [vɛs'tidʒ] or ves-TEEZH [vɛs'tiʒ]. In contrast, second-syllable stressed pronunciations of prestige, pres-TEEDGE [pɹɛs'tidʒ] or pres-TEEZH [pɹɛs'tiʒ], are nearly universal. So what is going on? Prestige entered English in the seventeenth century as a borrowing from French. It is first attested in Thomas Blount's Glossographia of 1656, from which my academic blog takes its name. It originally referred to a magician's illusion or trick (as in the book by Christopher Priest and its film adaptation), and only became a general term meaning influence or reputation in the mid-nineteenth century. Curiously, pronunciations of the word with first-syllable stress and the 'short' i in the second syllable were once common, and the OED notes that this may have been the earliest pronunciation, and that most nineteenth-century dictionaries listed both options. Yet the word was quite rare in this period, and used mostly to refer to magician's tricks. Today, no dictionary provides these first-syllable stressed pronunciations. Vestige is similarly a seventeenth-century borrowing from French (ultimately from Latin vestigium 'footprint'), although an earlier form vestigy was around a century earlier. All my dictionaries provide only the commonest variant VES-tidge, even though the popularity of the second-syllable stressed variants is high enough that one might expect them to show up somewhere. The likeliest explanation is that prestige is now substantially more common than vestige (Google: 61.4 million vs. 2.01 million; Wordcount ranking: 7102 vs. 30112) and so some people are using the visual similarity of the two words to choose a second-syllable stressed variant for vestige. The fact that the words look French (and in fact are of French origin) encourages these variants, despite their lack of official acceptance. It is worth noting the difference between the variants ending in [dʒ] 'J' and those ending in [ʒ] 'zh'. [ʒ] on its own is quite rare in English, only occurring in French loanwords, whereas [dʒ] is relatively common, and is phonemic in English - i.e., it is basically heard and understood as one sound by English speakers, even though technically one is starting with the tongue in a [d] position and then moving towards [ʒ] (similarly, 'ch' is phonetically [tʃ]). The most interesting aspect of this variability is the near-absence of VES-tizh ['vɛstɪʒ] in the poll, despite the use of ves-TEEZH. This gap confirms that ves-TEEZH and ves-TEEDGE are derived by analogy from pres-TEEZH and pres-TEEDGE, rather than by reanalyzing the stress of the first-syllable VES-tidge / VES-tizh. Last 10 pronunciation polls | All previous polls | Pronunciation polls with analytical essays | Dialect surveyTags: language, wp
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I've been a fan of Neil Gaiman for a long while now, and particularly so since we met him in 2005 during his Anansi Boys book tour, when he was nice to Arthur and even nicer to us by letting us and other kid-enabled fans to go first in the lineup which otherwise would have had us waiting for several hours, infant in tow. And so now Arthur has some nice signed books that he can enjoy when he is older (but not too much older, because I'm jonesing to read them to him). Honestly from his blog Gaiman just seems like an average guy - an average guy who has tens of thousands of goth girls screaming to jump his bones, but even so. I think I've read most of what he's written (certainly all of his non-comics work) but lately I haven't had the time to do as much reading as I would like, so I only now got around to reading Fragile Things, his 2006 collection of short fiction. I had already read a few of these stories during awards nomination seasons in years past, such as his Cthulhu-Sherlock Holmes masterpiece, 'A Study in Emerald', or 'The Problem with Susan', his fictional critique of the dreadful wrap-up to Narnia. But some of the finer stories are ones that had escaped my attention entirely, such as the short and Borgesian 'Other People', the poignantly disturbing 'Pages from a Journal ...', or the dark romantic horror of 'How do you think it feels?'. A personal favourite, and also I suspect for every coffee-addicted anthropologist who has ever felt like a total fraud at a conference, is 'Bitter Grounds'. In my opinion, Gaiman's novels are good but not fantastic and his poetry is all right (I admit I'm not much for poetry), but he excels at shorter pieces and is every bit the equal of, say, Harlan Ellison or Ray Bradbury, to both of whose work his writing owes a debt. I thought the novella-length 'Monarch of the Glen', set in the world of American Gods, was one of the weaker pieces and doesn't live up to the novel (which isn't his best novel anyway, despite winning all those fancy awards). But this is just a quibble - it's a fine book and I look forward to re-reading it one day when I have copious spare time. Tags: geekery
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The verb err 'to make a mistake' is rather uncommon today, which is quite striking, given that it has a long history in English (back to the 14th century) and has no obvious synonym; 'mistake' as a verb always means 'to misunderstand or misapprehend'. Probably most commonly encountered today in the phrase from Alexander Pope, 'To err is human, to forgive divine', it nonetheless is a word that is probably familiar to the vast majority of native English speakers. The poll results show that over 70% of you pronounce err as /er/, to rhyme with hair, rather than /ɜr/ to rhyme with fur; however, 17% of you pronounce it the latter way and another 8% use both. This was unsurprising to me, as I have always considered /ɜr/ to be characteristic of British dialects only. However, the results are somewhat more complex, as a fair number of Canadians and Americans chose the less popular option also. Of course, by this point in this series of polls, you will be unsurprised to learn that the less popular /ɜr/ is actually the older pronunciation - or so says the American Heritage Dictionary, whose linguistically conservative Usage Panel voted 56% in favour of it, with 34% choosing /er/ and 10% both. Many dictionaries list both options, although several British dictionaries list /ɜr/ only. Chambers lists /ɜr/ only for err but curiously erring is listed with both pronunciations, even though it's just the present participle form. Several rhyming dictionaries list both sets of rhymes, to no end of potential confusion. The AHD points out, and I agree in general, that the pronunciation /er/ might be due to influence from words like error and errant, which are both related words that entered English in the 14th century, like err, and yet are always pronounced with initial /e/. But I also think it's worth noting that err not only begins with -err, it ends with -err, and there you have both the surname Kerr /kɜr/ and the German Herr (in English, /her/), not to mention the interjection errrrr ... /ɜr/. But I think it's also worth considering an alternate hypothesis: that there has been variation in the pronunciaton of err going back several centuries. It's worth a brief digression to talk about how we know how words were formerly pronounced, and the best way is through poetic rhyme. Let's set aside the 14th and 15th centuries and focus on the early modern period. In Ben Jonson's Poetaster (1601), we have: "O, in no labyrinth can I safelier err / Than when I lose myself in praising her." And similarly, in Shakespeare's All's well that Ends Well of (II, 3): Expecting absent friends. As thou lovest her, Thy love's to me religious; else, does err. But just to confuse matters, in Edmund Waller's Poetic Works (1645): "The Muses' friend, unto himself severe, With silent pity looks on all that err;" And severe was pronounced with final /er/ or /ir/ in the seventeenth century, as in Shakespeare's Measure for Measure of 1603 (III,2): "He who the sword of heaven will bear Should be as holy as severe" So what I think is that there is actually more flexibility in the pronunciation than the AHD's pronouncement that err is traditionally /ɜr/. Why couldn't Waller and Shakespeare have differed? The 'traditional' pronunciation may have been more typical at that point, but then, according to the Usage Panel, it still is more common and more acceptable! My own usage panel - that is to say, you, my readers and respondents - clearly disagree by a four to one margin. One remaining question is why a few North Americans use this pronunciation. Is it because some North American dialects have always done so? Or is it because there has been interference from British pronunciations that leads some (anglophiles, intellectuals, fans of British comedy, etc.) to adopt it? Or some other explanation altogether? I've been unable to discern any pattern in the North American respondents' data, and would be glad to entertain suggestions. And so I think we have the final word: The savants of the AHD have erred. But think not that this small mistake is glaring; A lexicographer is always erring. Last 10 pronunciation polls | All previous polls | Pronunciation polls with analytical essays | Dialect surveyTags: language, wp
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One of the things that will strike anyone with any ear for accents in the Windsor/Detroit area is that the international boundary is also a linguistic boundary. Even though it is only 25 minutes door to door from my house to work (less than 20 km on the road), the accent difference among English speakers is quite striking. This is a result of the Northern Cities Vowel Shift, a striking change in several vowels found primarily in certain areas of the US around the Great Lakes, but which is almost absent entirely in Canadian Great Lakes (i.e. southern Ontario) speech, even in a city like Windsor that is basically a suburb of Detroit. I find it striking particularly because I do find myself accommodating to the NCVS, particularly in the pronunciation of words like borrow and got. So, for any of you who are interested in American dialectology, or are just nosy and want to hear what I sound like, I've recorded a couple of short voice samples using the nifty voice recorder I ordered from work: Me, in my ordinary (southern-Ontario-born-and-bred) accentMe, assimilating to the Northern Cities Vowel ShiftI don't expect that these vowels will become standard in my pronunciation, but it will be interesting to see how much of the NCVS I use while talking to Michigan natives as opposed to at home. Tags: language
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58 (80.6%)