Ah, this crazy language of ours

Oh, those tricky “cc” and “ch” combinations. In the past week I have had to look up the pronunciation of four words that are mispronounced so often by allegedly intelligent commentators that I thought perhaps I had been pronouncing them incorrectly all these years:

machination
chicanery
accede
flaccid

My pronunciations were all correct. People just use words that they don’t know how to pronounce. Those ch’s are really pesky.

they are a “k” in machination
they are an “sh” in chicanery
they are a typical “ch” in chicken

As for the cc’s in flaccid and accede, for centuries they have been pronounced as “k”

(ækˈsiːd)
(ˈflæksɪd)

But many American dictionaries, in the non-fascist spirit of favoring description over prescription, are now listing “a SEED” and “FLAH-sid” as alternate pronunciations because languages are living, evolving entities. If everyone pronounces a word a certain way, it becomes correct by default. In a classic example of linguistic evolution, if you pronounce the word “mauve” in the traditional correct form, almost every American will either misunderstand you or think you’ve messed up! (It should rhyme with “grove.”)

Here are OED’s phonetic representations of those two words:

məʊv
grəʊv

Frankly, I have given up on this one. I deliberately pronounce it “mawv” now so Americans will know which word I am saying. I would pronounce it the traditional way if I were in Canada or the UK, but I’ve never had a need to use that word in those countries, and I don’t expect that I ever will. It just doesn’t come up that often in conversation. Maybe it could pop up in trivia competitions: “Name all of Tom Wolfe’s books.”

16 thoughts on “Ah, this crazy language of ours

  1. Ditto. As in, you & I share some similar experiences & impressions. It’s hardly surprising our preferences line up. I also attribute my correct knowledge of pronunciation & spelling vs. misinformation of others to my good learning habits vs. their bad/stupid/mormonic & most of all, lazy ones. That said, I’m more resigned to our mutual disgruntlement by virtue of the linguistics take on change.

    Which is… 3 competing forces in tension: talking, hearing & learning. Illustrate the 1st 2 by French “hui” meaning “today”. But what they actually say is “aujourd’hui” or literally “au jour de hui” = “on the day of today”. “Hui” was the endpoint of a long process of increasing laziness. But then bc it’s too easy for hearers to confuse “hui” with “oui”, which had been shortened in similar manner, s.t. had to give. Our false faith in the importance of rules is due to our need to learn & the early age we experience that process at. What we learn & attitudes we form when young stick with us. In truth, we convert all our rule-based knowledge into simple, direct, case-by-case memory. AKA, memorization. We know by rote how to spell & pronounce every word & even phrases in our vocabulary.

    This memorization is far easier than our perception of its difficulty. Our impression that it’s hard is due to fear: We preferentially remember those times we failed & easily forget all the times we started getting words right almost immediately. Such lessons we learn about learning also stick with us. Repetition is a ridiculously ineffective way to memorize anything. But most people use that technique overwhelmingly even in old age.

    What I particularly hate about the changes is all the perfectly good words I used to lean on that have lost their usefulness to me bc they’ve been poisoned by widespread inaccurate usage. I must unlearn old habits & adapt. Both of these things I’m loathe to do & resent the ignorance of others that traps me in this predicament.

    An example of ignorance I don’t share is that I know how to say “Rehoboam” simply bc it’s just like “Jeroboam”. I knew them from familiarity with both the Bible & alcoholic beverage terms. When the former was used as a spy agency code word on a TV show, it was a familiar word to none of the cast & crew. They all knew how to pronounce it only on the authority of the script writer who came up with it: ruh-HOE-bome. OMG. I was stunned. I believe this was the same show that came up with the seriously brilliant black site location name of “Dono Terase” (DOE-noe tuh-RAH-suh). You’ll never guess how that was coined.

    As for “it’s me”, it can be understood best as an idiom. End of story.

    1. Heh! I meant “loath”. “Loathe” is the verb. A possible excuse is that it avoids the confusion over pronunciation. It’s either an extra choice to make, or perhaps one way’s right & the other wrong. I do prefer “th” as in thin, for the former; as in that, for the latter. But the former induces fear.

    2. Add: Also, it was humbling to hear that the variant “et” vs. “8” for “ate” is actually the dominant pronunciation across the English speaking world. (Source: Robert MacNeil’s The Story of English.) Since then, I’ve noticed many words that I’d learned & only ever heard in my home region pronounced differently elsewhere.

  2. Three quick points:
    -As a former Upstate New Yorker, Scoopy will no doubt remember places in and around Rochester named Chili, Charlotte, and Avon each with their own particular regional pronunciations. It’s good to have these quick and easy tests to tell if someone is “not from these parts.” The good people of Cholmondeley probably get a good laugh out of this virtually every day.
    -Spelling is, of course, often a good clue as to how a word used to be pronounced. Apparently, the way the French knights in Monty Python & the Holy Grail pronounced the word “knight” is in the ballpark of how the word actually was pronounced in Old English. When you come right down to it, there really aren’t very many words that are pronounced the same today as there were in, say, Chaucer’s day.
    -As for me, I really don’t care how “flaccid” is supposed to be pronounced, because I’m really hoping I never have to use it in a conversation.

    1. According to Rochester legend, a visiting Mark Twain was very distressed with our pronunciation of “Charlotte.” (shar-LOT)

      (We pronounce Chili “CHAI-lai” – rhymes with jai-alai.)

  3. Place names often have weird pronunciations that can quickly identify a local from an out of towner.

    There is a town in New York State called Monticello which is most famous for its race track. The town and racetrack are pronounced Mon-ti-sello. While I was in school in Lexington, VA, my girlfriend came to visit. We decided to drive to Charlottesville to visit Thomas Jefferson’s home, Monticello. I was very surprised to learn that Jefferson’s home is pronounced Mon-ti-chello.

    The next town over from Lexington, is Buena Vista. But instead of the normal Spanish was of pronouncing it, it is pronounced
    B-yoona Vista.

    Many people are aware that Houston Street in NYC is pronounced How-ston, but tourists often get it wrong.

  4. If you want a crazy word that the wrong pronunciation is universally used even by those that know the correct way then take a look at the word forte.

    1. Yes, that’s a good one. That’s probably even a better example than mauve or flaccid. I always say “not my for-TAY,” even though I know it is wrong, because everyone corrects you and it turns into a major discussion if you say it correctly!

      Slightly off topic, I always say “It’s me” or “It’s her,” even though I know they are solecisms. The justification in this case is to avoid sounding like a pompous ass. I had an English teacher in college who said, “While, ‘It is I’ is correct, it is probably better never to say it unless followed by ‘Don Quijote, Lord of La Mancha.'” I felt that was good advice.

  5. Flaccid surprised me. I have never heard it pronounced correctly.
    Hearing mauve pronounced by my American cousins makes me cringe every time. Same with ‘foyer’.

  6. I have never, ever heard “flaccid” pronounced as “flak-sid”, always “flas-sid”, as if it were “ss” instead of “cc”.

    But I think I”ve always heard “accede” as “ak-seed”.

    1. You’ve also probably never heard any American pronounce “mauve” or “Modigliani” in a manner that the cognoscenti would deem to be correct. (In all my life I have never heard those two words pronounced “correctly.” Of course, that means “mauve” now has a new pronunciation, but there’s nothing to be done about Signore Modigliani. His name is cast in stone, and will continue to be misspoken.)

      Way of the world!

      I have several dictionaries from the 1970s – unabridged Random House, unabridged Webster’s and OED edition 1. All of them list flak-sid as the ONLY pronunciation. Similarly, the 1926 first edition of A Dictionary of Modern English Usage, by Henry W. Fowler, lists only that traditional pronunciation. The Pronouncing Handbook of Words Often Mispronounced, by Richard Soule and Loomis J. Campbell says: “flaccid, flak’sid, not flas’id.”

      The acceptance of “flassid” is another one of those examples of the language changing. When everyone pronounces it wrong, it becomes “right” by definition. Fowler’s current edition of that same reference book I just cited says that they are both heard, but “flassid” is more commonly heard.

      On the other hand, the new edition of OED is stubborn, and will still accept only “flak-sid.”

      Garner’s Modern English Usage (4th ed.), still prefers the traditional pronunciation, but Bryan Garner, the author, warns readers about speaking the term at all, ala mauve. “In short, the word is a kind of skunked term: pronounce it in the traditional way, and you’ll take some flak for doing so; pronounce it in the new way, and the cognoscenti will probably infer that you couldn’t spell or say cognoscenti, either.”

      1. Would be interesting to dig up some movies from the 30s and 40s where people used the word, but I don’t know of any offhand.

        1. It’s difficult for me to imagine it could have been pronounced “flassid,” given that cc produces a k or ks sound in every other word in the English language except direct borrows from Italian, where cci=chee, so why would there be one lonely word where cc=s?

          Moreover, it is taken directly from the Latin flaccus (flah-kooce), so it had to have the k sound from the day it came into the English language.

          Here’s the Oxford entry in its entirety:

          flaccid, a.

          (ˈflæksɪd)

          Also 7 flaccide, (8 flacid).

          [L. flaccidus, f. flaccus flabby.]

          1.1 Wanting in stiffness, hanging or lying loose or in wrinkles; limber, limp; flabby. Chiefly of flesh and similar structures: rarely of a person.

             1620 Venner Via Recta v. 87 The one it maketh flaccide, and the other subiect to putrefaction.    1660 Boyle New Exp. Phys. Mech. iv. 46 The sides of the Bladder grew flaccid.    1704 F. Fuller Med. Gymn. (1711) 32 Yet are the Muscles not Flaccid, but Tense and Firm.    1751 Johnson Rambler No. 117 ⁋8 The flaccid sides of a football.    1848 Thackeray Bk. Snobs Wks. IX. 385 His double chin over his flaccid whitey-brown shirt collar.    1848 ― Van. Fair lxi, The flaccid children within.    1879 Froude Cæsar xv. 234 His hair moist, his eyes heavy, his cheeks flaccid.

          b.1.b Of vegetable organs and tissues: Bending without elasticity, also, relaxed from want of moisture; drooping.

             1626 Bacon Sylva §493 The part, against which the Sun beateth, waxeth more faint and flaccide in the Stalk, and thereby less able to support the Flower.    1776 Withering Brit. Plants (1796) II. 233 Stem flaccid, rough with strong hairs.    1875 Darwin Insectiv. Pl. ix. 226 The leaf being flaccid and apparently dead.    1882 Vines Sachs’ Bot. 675 The current of water also ceases as soon as the tissues which have become somewhat flaccid are again turgescent.

          2.2 Of immaterial things: Wanting vigour and nervous energy, limp, feeble.

             1647 H. More Song of Soul ii. i. ii. xli, What’s dull or flaccid, nought illustrative.    1855 Tennyson Maud i. i. 20 A scheme that had left us flaccid and drain’d.    1875 Farrar Silence & V. viii. 140 It is because his resolutions have been feeble, and his purposes flaccid.

          Hence ˈflaccidly adv., in a flaccid manner; ˈflaccidness, the state of being flaccid, flaccidity.

             1727 Bailey vol. II, Flaccidness.    1847 Craig, Flaccidly.    1876 tr. Wagner’s Gen. Pathol. 238 The flaccidness of the tissues.    1883 R. Broughton Belinda I. i. xii. 218 Belinda has thrown herself flaccidly into a chair.

          1. The only movie I can think of with the word flaccid in it is “Atlantic City” (1980), where I believe Kate Reid’s character hurls it at Burt Lancaster’s as a insult. That’s probably not old enough.

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