English becoming more phonetic?

Is English becoming more phonetic? It seems there are a lot of situations where young people, since the spelling will never be changed, have taken to adapting pronunciation to spelling.

For example, lots of people pronounce 'says' exactly how it is written rather than 'sehs'. There are some other examples but I can't recall them at the moment.

Do you think this would be a good thing?

I think this process has been going on for a long time. There is an interaction between the way the word is spelt and the way that it is pronounced. I even came across people who pronounced the 'K' in 'knife', in a very deliberate way. It sounds silly, but they were taught this pronunciation in order to spell the word, and they then continued to pronounce it that way.

The sort of thing that is working in the opposite direction are all the various nationalisms and dialects. These are like secret languages shared between 'ingroups' who alone are able to pronounce these words correctly. A linguistic trick that Academics have used for years.

When poems like Tam O'Shanter are taught in Scottish schools, it reintroduces into the language, words that might otherwise have died out, like 'scunner'. Also common words like 'chap' are given a new lease of life, with a different meaning.

I would not exactly agree. At least in the dialect here, many words are pronounced in ways by very many younger people in ways not obviously predictable from the spelling, such as [ˈpʰʁɑːɯ̯i(ː)] or [ˈpʰʁɑːi̯] for "probably" and [ˈaːõnːo(ː)] for "I don't know", while older people in contrast tend towards significantly more conservative pronunciations which tend more towards what one would expect from the spellings of the words in question.

There are words like 'envelope' where it is becoming increasingly pretentious to go all out with that French nonsense. I long for the day when 'bourgeois' will either be spelled like it's pronounced, or pronounced "bore-jee-ois". ALso, hopefully we can stop with that annoying French 'sh' for 'ch' in words like charlatan and nonchalance.

I am not anti-french words. In fact, I think that it is a form of ignorance to insist on pronouncing loan words i.e. words from another language, incorrectly. I think that they should be pronounced as if they were in the language that they come from.

I know that if I started saying Paree, instead of Paris, that people would start to think I was a pretentious idiot. But I think that 'bourgeoisie' is a good example of a word that should be pronounced with a French accent.

Close to where I live is Marquis Rd Aberdeen. I can assure you that the local population manage to mangle the pronunciation. All I can say is it is a shame, all that culture and learning lost to a few drug addicts.

"Material" is another word worth playing around with. I always used to have difficulty spelling it.

Materiel (from the French "matériel" for equipment or hardware, related to the word material).

Of course, you could just give up, and refer to 'stuff'. It is much easier to spell too.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Materiel



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bourgeoisie

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marquess

Travis wrote: “such as [ˈpʰʁɑːɯ̯i(ː)] or [ˈpʰʁɑːi̯] for "probably"”

Guttural R in English? Where are you from?

>>Travis wrote: “such as [ˈpʰʁɑːɯ̯i(ː)] or [ˈpʰʁɑːi̯] for "probably"”

Guttural R in English? Where are you from?<<

Milwaukee, Wisconsin. This is a feature that seems to show up in Upper Midwestern dialects, at least these days. (It seems not too uncommon for people to have a coarticulated alveolar or postalveolar and uvular approximant rhotic, and some such as people here and in limited environments in some other dialects pure uvular rhotics show up.)

Sorry, but I've never heard anyone pronounce "says" as ['sez]. I have heard knife as [k_h@'n@If] but only in jest.

I guess we'll know that English is really phonetic when we start pronouncing "of" and "off" the same. One advantage of being super-phonetic (pronounced with a real "p", BTW) is that E2Lers wuill stop calling for spelling reform.

Maybe they should start teaching "Conversational English" like they have for Chinese, for people that don't want to learn how to write it.

<<For example, lots of people pronounce 'says' exactly how it is written rather than 'sehs'. There are some other examples but I can't recall them at the moment.
>>

When I lived in Jacksonville Fl, folks there had a tendency to say 'says' like "sayze" (riming with 'plays'), but this was deemed incorrect at work and they had to change their pronunciation when dealing with customers via telephone.

Sometimes though you are correct: some words in English shift to a pronunciation based on spelling rather than how it is spoken.

An example is 'nephew' with an 'F' sound. It originally was pronounced "nevew" but people altered the pronunciation due to the spelling with 'ph'

Another is 'often' with the 'T'. It had long disappeared (as attested by dictionary pronunciation guides) but was revived again due to the spelling so that people now frequently say "off-ten" alongside the more common "off'n"

Others are 'falcon' where the "L" has been voiced, 'Ye' for "The" (as in Ye olde shoppe) with a "Y" sound, etc...

>> When I lived in Jacksonville Fl, folks there had a tendency to say 'says' like "sayze(riming with 'plays'), but this was deemed incorrect at work and they had to change their pronunciation when dealing with customers via telephone <<

What you're hearing is the Southern vowel shift, not a deliberate attempt to pronounce "says" with a different vowel. It is still the same /E/ vowel phonologically speaking, but is realized phonetically with a vowel that sounds close to your /eI/ vowel.

<<What you're hearing is the Southern vowel shift, not a deliberate attempt to pronounce "says" with a different vowel. It is still the same /E/ vowel phonologically speaking, but is realized phonetically with a vowel that sounds close to your /eI/ vowel. >>

hmmm, I don't think so. It was not the same quality as other words containing /E/, like 'bed', 'step'; and it was not typical vowel shift of the South, where I am from myself. And I have never heard it anywhere else in the South in this manner. Nor was it the classic breaking, like /jE jIs/ for 'yes'

It was an analogization made by adding -s to "say" with full quality being given to 'say' (eg. /hi seiz, hi seis/), funny, but I do not remember it being carried over to 'said' in the same manner. One other point, it was often from specific ethic groups (African Americans) who were from the city of Jacksonville, and not from out in the country areas.

I also recall hearing "maiten" for 'maiden', as in "what is your maiten name?"

Since when does anyone say falcon without the L?