Victuals and other odd words

[marcusmarcusrc]

Stimulated by a discussion at chenoameg's WordGames, I wanted to ask people to list words whose spellings are ridiculously different than their pronunciations:

eg.
vict.ual \'vit-*l\
col.o.nel \'k*rn-*l\
Worcestershire sauce (IPA [ˈwʊstə(ɹ)ʃ(ɪ)ə(r)])

EDIT: And how could I forget
boat.swain \'bo-s-*n\
(I learned this one when I was in the Tempest)

I still can't believe that until last week I thought that "victual" and "vittle" were two different words with different pronunciations that just happened to have the same meaning. Like the years I spent assuming that there were two military ranks, colonel and kernel. Only that misconception I corrected in middle school...

Comments

[chenoameg.livejournal.com]

Yeah I'm with you. I totally would spell victual "vittle".

How long did it take you to put the IPA codes in the LJ? Should we stop enabling your procrastination this afternoon?

[marcusmarcusrc.livejournal.com]

I copied the IPA codes from Wikipedia. I don't actually _know_ IPA, much less how to summon the characters out of my keyboard. Maybe I'll get Becca to teach me someday, after I finish learning the Arabic alphabet.

[marcusmarcusrc.livejournal.com]

athena% webster vittle
vit.tle n : VICTUAL

So "vittle" is also a word of its own, fortunately. Unlike "Kernel". Well, I mean, Kernel is a word, it just isn't a military rank.

[ilai]

Really, living in New England should present plenty of challenging names whose pronunciation don't match their spelling :-)

If you look up "waistcoat" and "forehead", you'll discover the that first pronunciations listed sound like "weskit" and "forrid".

[desireearmfeldt]

Even with the evidence you keep presenting, I refuse to believe that "victual" isn't "usually" (i.e. by people with middle-class British or New England accents) pronounced like it's spelled. :) I never particularly thought they were different but coincidentally similar words; I always assumed "vittle" was a dialect-spinoff version.

Yes, "waistcoat" is pronounced "weskit" (at least, in England, where it's more likely they'd say it at all), and "blackguard" (which no one says any more except on stage) is pronounced "blaggard." I've never heard anyone except possibly certain sub-categories of British accent say "forrid"; on the other hand, there's this verse:

There was a little girl
Who had a little curl
Right in the middle of her forehead
And when she was good
She was very very good
And when she was bad she was horrid.

(The problem with trying to figure out how words are pronounced by looking at what other words they're rhymed with in rhyming verse is that people don't always make rhymes that their own accent would render as perfect rhymes. But it's always entertaining to listen to someone like Noel Coward, whose rhymes often take serious advantage of his particular accent, rhyming things that totally don't rhyme in mine (e.g. "boa" and "more"). Or to listen to someone reciting verse/song whose author's accent clearly doesn't match the performer's.)

[desireearmfeldt]

(One of fredrickegerman's English uncles once asked me whether I would pronounce "porn" and "pawn" differently. Since he pronounced them identically, it took me forever to figure out what words he wanted me to pronounce. :) )

[marcusmarcusrc.livejournal.com]

If you look at the OED, variations of the "vittel" spelling came first, and sometime around the 1520s it looks like the "victual" spelling crept in. (With lots of vitayles and victuayles thrown around for fun). But all the dictionaries list "vittle" as the only pronunciation...


Yeah, rhyming words are often very confusing/amusing. For example, in "you are old father William" I always pronounce "again" to match "I feared it might injure the brain", even though I normally pronounce it closer to "a-gen".

[fredrickegerman.livejournal.com]

El Reg uses "blagger" all the time. In part because of its delightful resemblance to "blogger" I suspect.

[astra-nomer.livejournal.com]

wait, victual isn't pronounced "vik-chew-ell"?

Don't forget "sergeant."

I spent the longest time thinking escapade was pronounced "escape-aid" (rather than esca-PAID)- until as late as college, I think.

[desireearmfeldt]

I don't remember ever being confused about the pronounciation of "escapade," but it was only quite recently that it clicked in my brain that "Ice Capades" is a pun on "escapades." I never thought too much about what a "capade" might be, :)

[kirisutogomen.livejournal.com]

It was quite recently for me as well. Less than sixty seconds ago, in fact.

Oh, and "lieutenant" pronounced with an "f" sound.

[desireearmfeldt]

But only in England, surely. :)

[kirisutogomen.livejournal.com]

Close. Only people from England. Which includes my mum, so I grew up not being sure about several words. (In particular, I can never remember which is the American pronunciation and which is English for "garage.")

[desireearmfeldt]

In the one linguistics class I took at MIT, my TA was Australian. When we were going over phonemes, we got to zh and he said "I don't understand why the book says this is the sound at the end of garage" and we had this long back and forth before we could get through everyone's tendancy to hear the meaning of the word rather than the sound (I say ga-RAZH, the classic English is GAH-ridge, and I think his version might have been ga-RADGE.)

[marcusmarcusrc.livejournal.com]

Nope. At least, not a single dictionary I've looked at (including the OED) lists "vik-chew-ell" as an acceptable pronunciation. Weird, huh?

Heh. "Escape-aid". I remember I once got laughed at for saying "ling-er-eye" for lingerie (well, "linger" is a word, and you are just adding an ending, right?)

[chenoameg.livejournal.com]

Yeah, my mom thought my pronunciation of lingerie was fun, so she didn't correct me.

[fanw.livejournal.com]

Well, I was gonna add "waistcoat" but it's there already, so I'll pitch in "forecastle" pronounced "foc'sle". "Wednesday" is not quite so far off, but still isn't spelled "Wendsday".

[marcusmarcusrc.livejournal.com]

Ah, naval terms. (You reminded me of "boatswain"). Heh. And Wednesday is so ingrained in my head that I forget that once upon a time it was non-intuitive. =)

[astra-nomer.livejournal.com]

How about February? Or is it a regional thing where you don't pronounce the first 'r'?

[desireearmfeldt]

I think there are those that pronounce that first R. I'm not one of them. ;)

[fredrickegerman.livejournal.com]

I don't.

Ditto library => lie-berry. Or really, in my case, lie-brie.

[aerynne.livejournal.com]

For a long time (ending some years ago, but I don't recall exactly when) I thought subtle and suttle were two different words meaning almost the same thing with subtly different connotations.

Also, you beat me on victual by a whole week.

[goes-placidly.livejournal.com]

Weskit? I'm English and I have never come across that one before... Place names are always good though (try Gloucester, Leicester, Norwich, anywhere ending in 'ham'). And there's always George Bernard Shaw's famous poem, Hints on Pronunciation for Foreigners. The first verse (there are several) follows...

I take it you already know
of tough and bough and cough and dough.
Others may stumble, but not you,
On hiccough, thorough, laugh and through.
Well done! And now you wish, perhaps,
To learn of less familiar traps.

[astra-nomer.livejournal.com]

You've reminded me of the incident in the car last week, when DS1 read the logo on a rental truck as "Bud get" and I had to tell him something along the lines of: good try, but English is complicated.

[goes-placidly.livejournal.com]

Similarly - it took me ages to work the huge numbers of companies in the US called EZ something. Because where I come from it just doesn't work...

[justom.livejournal.com]

Demesne is a good one, although also rarely used.
I can't recall any others offhand, although I'm sure I'll run into plenty when reading Shakespeare. =)

(Oh, there's "nuclear", of course, which is written nothing like "nukular". ;)