Australian dialectology has a similar sort of weirdness with “a”. There would appear to be three values of “a”, and some of them vary by accent.
So you’ve got narrow /æ/ as in “cat”, and broad /ɑ/ as in “father”. And these are pretty consistent across Australia. But then there’s a mobile “a”, which tends toward one end or the other. (I have a feeling there’s also a length aspect going on) So in “castle”, in Victoria that’s /ɑ/: “Castlemain” /kɑːs.l̩.mɜin/, vs /æ/ in New South Wales: “Newcastle” /ˈnʲuˌkæsl̩/. So clearly the “a” in “castle” or “dance” is a different “a” from the “a” in “cat” (because there’s no accent where it’s !/kɑt/) and the “a” in “father” (because no-one says it !/fæðər/).
As usual, being irish in the USA I get teased about my pronunciation of the number 3, specifically because it sounds like “tree” to the USian ear. So every Christmas I get asked about whether I put up a Christmas tree, and the follow up joke is “why do you put up three of them – hahaha”
Anyway, it struck me today that a tree is “crann” (pronounced “kron”) , and so to describe something that comes from your tree would be “ó mo chrann” - which serves a useful pronunciation guide for “omicron”
I met an Irish-Australian mathematics teacher once, who told me he had to get elocution lessons because the Lebanese-Australian parents of his students were complaining to the school about the students coming home saying (with no mockery, that was just how they were learning the words) “terty-tree and a terd”.
If I read aloud a long sequence made up of “three” and “tree” I expect an Irish person could easily tell the difference (or at least one from Connacht)
Portuguese children change the way of speaking after watching too many hours of a famous brazilian Youtuber during the pandemic. A Portuguese newspaper points the finger at the Brazilian Luccas Neto, a Youtuber loved by the little Portuguese children and accuses him of making them lose their accent and vocabulary.
The same complaint has been made by American parents of the baleful influence on their children’s accents by Peppa Pig and Bluey.
That Australian parents have been trying to train our children out of saying “zee” instead of “zed” for decades thanks to Sesame Street is never no mind.
As someone who uses both “zee” and “zed,” I gotta ask…why?
(In transliterating the English alphabet, Japanese uses “zed” because otherwise “g” and “z” would sound exactly the same.)
ETA: Nothing against one way or the other, but it just seems like such a minor thing, like how there are two accepted ways of pronouncing “Caribbean.”
Because “zee” is like “a-lum-i-num” and “soddering”. That is, here, they’re wrong. The alphabet ends in “zed”, the metal is “a-lu-min-i-um”, and I learned to “solder”, dammit.
That’s fair enough. I just like to think that American, British and Australian (and Canadian, etc.) pronunciations are always correct no matter where they happen to be spoken, but I guess it is another matter when you are teaching your children their distinct native tongue.
the former probably is the result of the invention of its cheap production only well after independence.
at the start of the construction of the washington monument and its aluminum capstone: it was one of the rarest and most expensive metals; by the end of construction, the cheapest. ( oops. not so cool anymore america )
just like dictionaries only became commonplace after independence, and webster chose different colorful spellings because patriotism. ( or so i read )
My understanding of “color vs. colour” is that the Latin root was “color,” but the influence of French on the language brought about “colour,” which meant that both spellings were used in England long before American English was even a thing.
yeah, exactly. spelling only standardized after dictionaries became a thing and webster picked versions based on what the oxford didn’t ( or so ive read )
Oh, I’m sorry. I misread you. I thought you were saying that Webster created that spelling out of thin air, but now I see that you were saying that he chose from among existing spellings.
In short, there is no one “right” way to spell the word (and I wish that Microsoft word would stop telling me otherwise*).
*I’m just kidding; I know that you can always click “Add to dictionary.”
AIUI, it was a little more complicated than that. Yes, when he had a choice of options, he picked the simpler, and trimmed away some of the more extravagant spellings picked up from French: he went for “check” over “cheque” (in British spelling there’s still a distinction, even if a cheque is now a rarity in countries with modern banking systems), and “program” over “programme”. He made “-er” spellings the rule instead of “-re”. He championed “-e-” instead of “-ae-” (so “medieval” instead of “mediaeval”, “encyclopedia” instead of “encyclopaedia”). “-ize” instead of “-ise” when voiced. Many of these were normal variants where he picked a standard and stuck to it.
But he wasn’t content with finishing there. He wasn’t just tweaking the language, he was an active campaigner for a more thorough language reform. It’s just that some of his simplifications didn’t stick.
Simplified spellings like masheen, thum, ake, and iland.
