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Pastimes : SI Grammar and Spelling Lab -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Wizzer who wrote (1356)	6/4/1998 1:02:00 AM
From: jbe	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 4711

Wisam, Let's face it, for the most part there is no "correct" pronunciation. Rather, we can speak of "correct" pronunciation in only a few, very limited cases. For example, it is incorrect to place the accent on, let's say, the second syllable of a word, if everyone else places it on the first. (I always used to mispronounce big words I had only encountered in reading.) BUT -- if that word is "laboratory", irreconcilable differences exist between British and American English, and so the lexicographers "permit" both the English and the American versions. The fact is that regional differences in pronunciation exist, and who, ultimately, is to say which is the "right" way and which is the "wrong" way? Brooklyn English, for example, breaks me up, but I am not enough of a linguistic snob to say it is "wrong." It's just -- well, funny. As for "foyer", half of the people in this country would not understand what you were talking about if you pronounced it the French way. The other half would think you impossibly affected. As for "roof", I come from a part of the country where we pronounce it "r-oo-f". Those other folks, by the way, don't pronounce it "ruff" (as in "ruff worn around the neck", or "the dog says ruff"). The vowel is a little different, if you'll listen carefully. It comes out something like "ruhf" (nope, too long). Incidentally, English has more vowel sounds than any other well-known language. We don't have enough vowel combinations in our alphabet to even begin to approximate them all. (It's a pity we shed some of our old Anglo-Saxon letters.) God help anyone who wants to institute purely phonetic spelling of English! jbe P.S. There is a language, believe it or not, where the words are pronounced exactly as they are written. That is Czech. As a matter of fact, you don't even have to know the language to read it aloud from the written page. First of all, there are only five vowel sounds -- a, e, i, o, and u --and they are always given full value. The consonants never vary. All syllables are pronounced clearly -- no slurring allowed. The stress is always on the first syllable. But what is important in Czech is not so much the stress, as the long and short syllables. So the long syllables are always marked. Nothing left to chance or to regional variation. A schoolteacher's dream. (But learning to pronounce that Czech "r" -- an "r" with a hacek, which looks like an upside-down circumflex -- can sprain your tongue.)