rcj (11/30/82)
(~= flame on!) danny's letter attempting to justify the pronunciation of height as "heighth" is ridiculous! His justification (in part) follows: wide - widTH broad - breadTH high - ?? 1) the corresponding entry is height. It is NOT heighth so why should you try to pronounce it that way? 2) if you are, (as i assume you are), trying to credit the English language with some form of consistency, I strongly suggest that you move to a country speaking Spanish or some other HALFWAY sane language. You will have to accept English primarily as it is, or you will be changing the whole thing to NEWSPEAK. Witness these pronunciations: (All with the root "ough") cough cof bough bow /* sorry that i don't have characters to rough ruf show pronunciation correctly, use your thorough therO imagination. */ through thrU (.= flame off) The MAD Programmer (alias Curtis Jackson) Western Electric - Burlington, NC (919) 228-3814 or Cornet 291
danny (12/01/82)
In pointing out the analogy between 'heighTH' and 'widTH'/'breadTH', I wasn't, as Curtis Jackson suggests, saying that one SHOULD use 'heighTH', merely that its origin is explainable. Furthermore, there is reason to believe that heighTH is the ORIGINAL form and that heighT was originally a "sloppy" pronunciation. Reason: we know that -th is a suffix used to form noun from adj's; now the gh in high was originally pronounced as a velar fricative (like ch in German 'Bach'); the difficulty of gh followed by th is likely to have led to heighT (at sometime before the other "sloppy" pronunciation, the dropping of 'gh', became standard. An aside to those of you who think there are absolute "right" and "wrong" pronunciations: 1. Very often what people call "wrong" is simply the standard pronunciation of a different region. Where heighTH is standard, heighT sounds "wrong", like pronouncing 'both' as 'boat'. Where there are regional differences, how do we know which one to choose? There is certainly no THEORETICAL basis on which to do this. The answer is clear: when YOU are speaking, use pronunciations which sound "correct" to your ear; when the other guy is speaking, accept his pronunciations as equally valid. 2. Do you have a silent k in knee and knight? A silent gh in high and though? Do you pronounce the final gh of cough and laugh as an f? All these were considered "wrong" "sloppy" or "uneducated" pronunciations at one time. One must accept the fact that it is in the nature of human language to change with time. And there is absolutely no evidence that change does any harm. Does this mean you have to use pronunciations you feel uncomfortable with, just because they seem to be becoming more popular? Of course not; at any point in time any given person will feel that certain usage is "right" or "wrong" for him. Just give the rest of us a break! Dan Kahn Bell Labs Murray Hill, NJ
dce (12/02/82)
Thank you, Dan. One thing I'd like to add to what you said (yes, here goes that radical relativist ... again) is that many language changes are actually neccessary. The English language had to undergo many changes due to the Norman invasion, like voicing some of the stops. I believe that the word 'wine' comes from French, and that there was a word in English that was spelled like it but had an f instead of v. The speakers had to add the v sound to the language. In addition, language change makes it possible to simplify spellings and for people to know more words (I think this comes from the theory that storage for a word in the brain depends on the length of the word). Also, I don't think what I said was indicative of being a radical linguist. I only meant that it more useful to a linguist to know what a speaker of a language actually says, and not what the speaker is supposed to say. In this way, we can find out how the language has changed and predict future changes. David
mmt (12/07/82)
In SE Scotland, we used the word - stepth - to indicat the joint quality of steepness and depth of a hillside (i.e. the trouble taken to walk up it). I suspect this was made up along the lines of heighth.
dee (12/10/82)
I wonder if when there are enough computerized systems with voice output, it will no longer be the nature of human languages to drift in pronunciation. Donald Eastlake (dee@cca)