So, I’ve been teaching phonetics for a few years now, and each semester, I experience the joys of scrambling to find a word (or word-word pair) which exhibits a certain phonological trait or change. Because the examples you come up with on the spot are completely absurd, this brings me considerable joy.

For example, English has a phonological process called “Dental Assimilation”. In this process, an alveolar sound (like /t/, /n/ or /l/) becomes dentalized (made with the tongue behind the teeth) before dental sounds (/ð/ or /θ/). In order to demonstrate this (or better still, to test students), you need to come up with sets of words in which one word ends with an alveolar sound and the next starts with a dental sound.

Of course, there are a few common cases (“that thing”), but inevitably, in front of 66 people (or when asked to give an example on an exam), you can’t think of something reasonable like “can’t think”. So, you come up with something on the spot, and end up with something like “stupid thyroid” or “bell thief”.

To get these wonderful word pairs the recognition they deserve, I propose a neologism (a new word for an existing concept). I recommend that henceforth and forever more, a word combination which would be completely absurd in any context other than demonstrating phonology should be called a pine thug, in honor of the best/worst pair I’ve ever come up with in front of a classroom.

I know, I know, it’s tough to get a good neologism going. Most are gone within a few months (cf. “linsanity”), and barring political necessity (as has propelled “santorum“, a neologism created explicitly to mock Rick Santorum’s anti-gay stances), making a neologism stick is very difficult. However, I’ve known enough phonetics instructors (and students!) who acknowledge the agonies and ecstasies of pine thugs that maybe, just maybe, this one will take root.

Tagged with Language Change, Language Humor, Phonetics and Phonology, Words, Phrases, and Idioms | Leave a Comment


This morning, Consumerist linked to an article in Primer Magazine (for some reason), titled “10 Words You Mispronounce That Make People Think You’re an Idiot”.

With a name like that, it couldn’t be anything but judgmental pedantry, but even in an otherwise eyeroll-worthy article, I found that several of these words are actually completely reasonable pronunciations, and several of them demonstrate interesting phonological processes. So, I’m going to discuss them a little bit.

Athlete (pronounced with a schwa in the middle, “Ath-uh-leet” /æθəlit/)

This is a very reasonable and common pronunciation, which I noticed extensively in the speech of even experts on the subject (Michael Lewis, the author of Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game is a notable /æθəlit/ speaker. Here, the change likely comes from our dislike of having an interdental sound (/θ/) right next to a lateral (/l/). If you attempt to make the “correct” pronunciation, you’ll notice that your tongue is, in a sense, trapped between your front teeth, and to make a smooth gesture, you end up having to attempt to curve the sides of the middle and back of your tongue down. Which is unpleasant. So, it’s not shocking at all that speakers who use the word often may add the schwa.

(It’s also worth noting that there is no ‘H’ in Athlete, despite the author’s smug assertions that “there is no vowel between the ‘H’ and the ‘L’ in any of these words”. The English “TH” in this word is actually a single sound, a voiceless interdental fricative, which is nothing resembling an /h/. Once again, pedantry is seldom done well enough to be immune to further pedantry.)

Utmost (pronounced as “upmost”, /ʌpmowst/)

This is an awesome example of assimilation, two sounds becoming more like one another to make the speaker’s life easier, a phenomenon I’ve discussed before. Here, in the “correct” pronunciation, /ʌtmowst/, we have a /t/ sound, created at the alveolar ridge (just behind the teeth, try it) followed immediately by /m/, a bilabial sound created by pressing the two lips together.

When speakers are “mispronouncing” the word as /ʌpmowst/, they’re actually being more efficient, substituting in a /p/, also a bilabial sound, which allows them to simply close their lips (creating the /p/), then lower the velum (allowing nasal airflow) and start voicing to begin making the /m/. Going from /p/ to /m/ requires no additional tongue or lip movement, whereas going from /t/ to /m/ requires reconfiguration of the tongue and lips. Efficiency. Not quite the idiot pronunciation he’s claiming.

Sherbet (pronounced as “sher-bert”, /ʃɜɹbəɹt/)

Why does Primer Magazine hate assimilation? The first syllable has an “err” (/ɜɹ/) sound, why not the second syllable too? If we can keep the whole word vaguely “r-sounding” (“rhotic”, in phonetic terms), all the better. Speakers love regularity. Primer Magazine doesn’t.

“For all intensive Purposes”

This is really a horsed zebra. For further discussion of this, see a post I made last week.

Often (pronounced as “offen”, /ɑfɪn/)

How many Americans say “often” with the /t/, ever? This is textbook deletion of an unpleasant sound to simplify a cluster, and it’s one carried out by many, many people. Why bother with a /ft/ cluster when there’s no need to keep it around? It’s not like there’s another word, “Offen”, which this form of “often” could be confused with, and frankly, for speed, fluidity, and social reasons (in the US), the “offen” pronunciation is really a better choice.

Edit: OK, I misread this one completely in my anti-pedant rage. The author of the quoted article is actually _in favor_ of “offen” as the “proper” form, and I responded assuming that he, like so many others have, was arguing that “often” (with a /t/) is the only proper form. So, I’ve culled some of the anger from the post, and kept the phonology. Thanks, commenter!

Awry (pronounced as “aw-ree”, /’ɑɹi/ instead of “uh-rye” /ə’ɹaj/)

This word is a textbook example of why our writing system needs to be taken out behind the barn and dispatched as humanely as possible. Although “wry” is used for the proper /ɹaj/ pronunciation in the word “wry” (and only there), usually the “aw” digraph represents /ɑ/ (as in “claw”, “maw”, “awful”, “awkward”) and the “ry” represents /ɹi/ (as in “fury”, “worry”, “scurry”). I can understand the author feeling the need to state the proper pronunciation of the word, but his indignation at the thought that anybody could EVER think “awry” is pronounced “aw-ree” is just silly.

So, there’s a bit of phonological goodness wrung out of an otherwise dry and pedantic bit of prescriptivism. Which I am going to pronounce as “per-scriptivism” for the remainder of the day. Just to anger Justin Brown.

Tagged with Conventional Linguistics, Language Change, Phonetics and Phonology, Tirades, Words, Phrases, and Idioms | 3 Comments


One of my favorite expressions (stolen from House MD many years back) is “When you hear hoofbeats, think horses, not Zebras”. The general idea here is that if you see something, and you’re not sure what it is, don’t anticipate something odd or rare when there’s a more common explanation. Well, I was reminded of that this afternoon when I stumbled upon this quote in a forum I frequent:

“Without further a due, you can get the latest nightly builds [at this website]“

This is a form of phonological re-analysis. When we re-analyze a word or phrase, we’re usually replacing an uncommon or non-transparent word with something that’s phonologically similar (that sounds alike), but is much more common or makes more sense. These are also referred to as “eggcorns”, a term coined by Geoff Pullum.

So, the speaker stumbles with “Ado” is a Middle English word, according the New Oxford American Dictionary, “from northern Middle English at do ‘to do,’ from Old Norse at (used to mark an infinitive) and do”). Rather than using “further ado”, the speaker (typer?) replaces it with a phonologically identical pair of words (“ado” /ədu/ “a dye” /ə du/) which are much more common in the English language. In short, the speaker replaces the word “ado”, a certified Zebra, with a common set of English words, “a due”, and thus, thinks horses.

A whole herd of Zebras, all horsed

We really like, as speakers of language, to turn zerbras into This happens relatively frequently, with varying degrees of phonological similarity. I’ve seen “do process” for “due process” (homophones like above), “play it by year” instead of “play it by ear” (/plej ɪt baj iɹ/ vs. /plej ɪt baj jiɹ/), where word segmentation makes the difference. Google gives 216 hits for “Torn ass under”, a (creative!) re-analysis of “torn asunder” (/tɔɹn əsʌndəɹ/ vs the original /tɔɹn æs ʔʌndəɹ/) to get around the ambiguity of “asunder”, meaning “into various pieces”. Entertainingly, this same “sunder” root causes yet another Zebra reanalysis. Not infrequently, you’ll hear people talking about “various insundry goods” in case of “Various and Sundry Goods” (/vɛɹiəs ɪnsʌndɹi ɡʊds/ vs. /vɛɹiəs ən sʌndɹi ɡʊds/). “Sundry” is definitely a zebra if you’re not familiar with “sundries”, items of various kinds, although interestingly, here, it’s replaced with another zebra, “insundry”.

With a bit more phonological difference, we get the reanalysis that many love to hate: “all intensive purposes” can be swapped for “all intents and purposes” (/ɑl ɪntɛnsɪv pəɹpəsɪz/ vs. /ɑl ɪntɛns ən pəɹpəsɪz/). And if we do this at a whole-phrase level while listening to music, we can get Mondegreens, a term for misheard song lyrics (hearing Jimi Hendrix’ “‘Scuse me while I kiss the sky” as “‘Scuse me while I kiss this guy”).

So, this is a relatively common phenomenon, and gives us great information about how speakers are coping with the amount of homophony in our language. In closing, thanks for reading Lingua Stick Miss Tick, and more importantly, thanks for not spelling it that way.

Tagged with Conventional Linguistics, Etymology, Language Change, Language Usage, Phonetics and Phonology, Speech and Grammar Errors | 1 Comment

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