@@tbirdparis What I'm pointing out is that many people expect all native English speakers from a given region to sound the same with no variance. Given the existence of this video, this clearly exists in some manner. I was calling this out through a joke
@@codenamepyro2350 (generally) prescriptivism doesn't exclude the existence of regional differences, it just considers that as separate languages then and each of them must have an unavoidable, perfect standard, and no word can have multiple pronounciations or writings
@@abarette_ I'm aware that distinction could be made, but I was commenting on the people talked about in the video. And they weren't making the distinction you were
I saw durst when we were doing Shakespeare (Macbeth) in school and only later found out that it was an archaic conjugation of 'to dare' The sentence was "When you durst do it, then you were a man" (Lady Macbeth persuading Macbeth to kill the king). Also note that they use "were" for the conditional and use "when" like modern day "if" and German "wenn"
@@Someone.or.no-one and that’s why they are called irregular, because there are no proper conditions, although sometimes similarities that look like patterns
I'm a non-native speaker and I used to say "Pronounciation", but every single time I use that word, someone corrects me. So much so that eventually I started forcing myself to say "Pronunciation", even though I still say "Pronounciation" from time to time.
You know what's surprising? It's the fact that pron(o)unciation has a spelling that matches what's supposed to sound like. English has "south" and "southern" and nobody has bothered to update the spelling to "suthern". But if I check any dictionary it's clear I'd be wrong if I pronounced it as "south"-ern... (or country as "count"-ry etc.) /rolls-eyes
If the spelling was "pronounciation" and both pronunciations were valid, I guess you wouldn't get so many corrections... or we could have the reverse effect, with prescriptivists telling others that they should fully pronounce the "ou" (but I don't think they'd say the same for other day-to-day words)
Holy cow, English is not my native language and I've always pronounced and heard "southern" with the "south" diphthong. Orthography can be too powerful at times
@@SapphireScroll reminds me of an old Simpsons episode where Marge says "run like the wind!", pronouncing "wind" as you'd say to wind up a clock... And then after Lisa corrects her she says "oh I don't know, I only ever read it in books". :)
Another irregular pairing is "maintenance" and "maintain", which makes me wonder if anyone says "maintainance" and how many people that, in turn, annoys. (I know that second long vowel would make me twitch.) Unfortunately, users of rare or subjectively incorrect forms of speech are always going to have to handle a complaint at some point because the majority will necessarily have more people who take exception. You can state it's your idiolect till you're blue in the -screen- face, but still they'll come.
Now that you mention it, I have a coworker (non-native English-speaker at a non-English-speaking company) who says maintainance. He also pronounces the -able suffix at the end of words as if it were the standalone word "able", so he says "maintain-able" with heavy emphasis on the second and third syllable.
It's unstressed. "Imagination" is also a poor analogy for "pronounciation" since its stressed vowel is a historical short A EDIT A more proper comparison would be with the word "foundation": No one says it as "fundation". You also don't get arguments about the legitimacy of /ˌæŋ.glɪ.sɑjˈzej.ʃən/.
I spell it "correctly" now, but I remember oftentimes making the mistake of spelling it "maintainance" because that's what's more regular with every other spelling
I’m a native English speaker from suburban north Texas as well, and regular viewer of yours. I definitely use pronunciation and not pronunciation but also genuinely never noticed after all this time that you were saying it differently. So funny how my brain tuned that out as part of the normal variation in pronunciation one expects to hear rather than noticing it as odd 😂
@@PlatinumAltaria I speak with a drawl and use local words in Oregon and am occasionally seen as less educated because of it, it's a strange mindset to have. Do they think the language just hopped out of a pond and has remained stagnant these years over the entire country?
@@James-vw9yy They, like a small child, think they talk normally and everyone else talks funny. Clearly other people just didn't go to school and learn the "correct" way to speak.
I've never left a mean comment on your channel (in fact, I don't usually leave comments on UA-cam videos at all), but I must confess that I also get a bit annoyed when I hear "pronounciation" in lieu of "pronunciation". Part of the reason is that I, in my own life, have never heard anyone say it like that at all on the east coast of the US where I live, so to me it does sound a bit silly because it's unfamiliar to me. Another part of the reason is that "pronunciation" falls into a pattern of closely related cognates. For example, the nominalized form of the verb "renounce" is "renunciation," not "renounciation." Similarly we have "denunciation" from the verb "denounce" and "annunciation" from the verb "announce." There's also the noun "enunciation" which is from the same root and follows the same pattern but it doesn't have a corresponding verb form in English as far as I'm aware. "Pronunciation" falls neatly into this broad pattern of cognate words whereas, from my perspective, "pronounciation" seems to break the pattern for seemingly no reason? If all the cognate words that I mentioned were also reanalyzed in the same vein as "pronounciation" (e.g. if people said "renounciation" instead of "renunciation," or "denounciation" instead of "denunciation") then it would make more sense to me why some people would prefer to say "pronounciation." However, as far as I know, no one pronounces any of those other words like that, they only pronounce the word "pronounciation" in that specific way. If I am mistaken about this, feel free to correct me, but it does seem inconsistent in my mind. I never felt the need to leave any kind of comments about this kind of thing because ultimately it is a small thing and it would be petty and unproductive to treat it like a serious issue that's worthy of shame and ridicule. At the same time, though, I simply don't like it, and I can try to rationalize my dislike in any number of ways, but at the end of the day it just sounds off to me, and I think it's OK to acknowledge that as long as you don't harass anyone about it like the kind of harassment that you receive. I am quite sorry that you receive this kind of bullying for something that is really quite insignificant in the grand scheme of things, but sadly this kind of thing has always been par for the course on UA-cam. I hope that you have a nice day and keep making your videos because I genuinely enjoy watching them and you do a great job.
In my brain, I can’t recall ever hearing “renunciation” or “denunciation”, and “enunciation” derives from “enunciate” so there is no pattern for “pronunciation” to fall into. I definitely said “pronounciation” as a kid, but either way sounds fine. These weak patterns of fairly obscure words that only worm their way into some of our heads is why language change happens, it’s interesting.
I feel the same way. It sounds weird and uncomfortable in my ears. I can't really help that. But after that, I have a descriptivist mindset about it, so I don't correct others unless necessary (someone asks me if it's standard, I'm tutoring a non-native speaker and they want to learn standard forms, etc etc). Especially since it's the kind of common "mistake" that is easily understood and makes essentially zero difference except sounding a little weird in some people's ears
This must be more common in the south because I have never heard anything but the STRUT vowel being used in that word as a Northerner. If it's regional it would explain why it sounds marked to so many of your commenters.
Pronouncing the STRUT vowel as distinct from a schwa is largely a Northern English thing from what I can tell. There are some British accents that have slight distinctions between them, but Northern English seems to have the largest distinction as far as I can remember. Most if not all North American speakers have no contrast between schwa and the STRUT vowel, but often feel the need to transcribe them as different for... reasons? As a result, they come up with weird "rules" to try (and fail) to explain where to transcribe a vowel as /ʌ/ vs as /ə/.
@@angeldude101 The vowel quality of STRUT and whether or not it's merged with the commA vowel really isn't relevant here, he's using the MOUTH vowel. And for the record, STRUT is still genuinely a back vowel in Northern dialects. In NYC english it merges with NURSE in open syllables, resulting in 'her' being pronounced as [hʌ]. And in dialects with the Northern Cities Shift (Chicago, Michigan, Cleveland, Wisconsin, Upstate NY, St Louis), the STRUT vowel is so far back that it rounds and becomes [ɔ]. Not sure about New England but I'd imagine they're conservative in this regard too.
@@TheSwordofStorms I think the quality of schwas has the potential to be relevant, but not because of specifically ʌ/ə merging. If someone has general weak vowel reduction (including other weak vowels, not just ʌ), and their schwas tend towards ɪ, then saying "pronunciation" could become uncomfortable, and the speaker might alter the vowels to make it less uncomfortable. If I try to make myself say "prih-nihn-see-AY-shihn", it feels like it wants to come out as "prihn-see-AY-shihn". If that was me, I can imagine myself starting to say "pronounciation" just to keep myself from dropping the first n.
"Prescriptivism, on the other hand, is expecting every single speaker of a language to speak the standard, pure form of the language at all times and continue to do so forever." I feel like this is attributing a rather extreme stance to people who, for the most part, probably have no such lofty goals in mind. You don't have to be a believer in The Perfect English Language to hear someone pronounce a word in a nonstandard way and think to yourself, "That sounds weird." If you use a language on a regular basis, you're bound to have your own ideas about what sounds good and what doesn't. And that second category, the things you dislike, doesn't just disappear when you step outside the classroom. This video seems to be suggesting that, outside of academic settings and incidents of actual confusion, just about any expression of disapproval toward someone's way of speaking is a Bad Thing that marks you as a Bad Linguist. I don't think it is. I think that's just an inevitable part of being human and using languages. No single English speaker has the right to unilaterally decide that a word, phrase, or pronunciation is "correct" or "incorrect". That's what gives you the freedom to choose to say "pronounciation". But by the same token, it also gives other people the freedom to tell you that they don't like "pronounciation" and would prefer for you to say "pronunciation". You can try to appeal to logical arguments that your way is better (as you do in this video), and your opponents can form their own arguments as to why their way is superior. But in the end, logical arguments don't make a language convention correct; they're just a way of trying to convince as many English speakers as possible to follow you in adhering to or disregarding the convention. And that collective approval or disapproval is what actually determines the legitimacy of the convention. Of course, I'm not saying that majority rule *objectively* determines whether or not an expression is "correct". Quite often, what's "correct" or "incorrect" varies depending on context, especially when it comes to regional- or community-specific expressions. That's why code-switching exists. But that does mean that if you insist on going against the preferences of a given set of listeners, you shouldn't be surprised when you draw negative reactions from them. You're a native English speaker, and you can speak how you want to, but that doesn't mean that other people have to like it. That's not necessarily them being Ignorant Prescriptivists--that's just fair play.
fun thing, in Dutch there is a past tense of want 'willen' to (past) 'wou', but in some regions it is regularised to 'wilde', they are both correct. But everyone I know says wou (even from other regions). So that is maybe an exception in the regularization.
Ngl, I think there's a non-zero chance I might've left the kind of comments you meant your video. I would've meant it as a joke, but there's also another non-zero chance I would've worded it poorly too. So, if I happened to have left one of those comments, I'm sorry. I don't actually care about the pronounciation but sometimes I make jokes that are either in bad taste or just worded poorly.
Language is performative. We all shift aspects of our diction -- tone, pronunciation, rhythm, vocabulary, and so forth -- based on our current social circumstances and goals. How we use language frequently serves to verify membership in an in-group, as in the Biblical story of "shibboleth" (Judges 12:5-6). I'm a native Californian, where the idiolect strongly flattens vowels. As a result, natives pronounce the name of my home town, Los Gatos, as something like "Lahss Gatuss". That's how i pronounced it while i was growing up there. Then i moved away and became moderately fluent in Spanish. Now i can't help but pronounce the name like "Lohss Gahtohss". And natives (including my family!) give me that "You're not from around here" look when I say the name while visiting home.
its so funny to realize the parallels to german in some of those obsolete past tenses, help - holp helfen - half; this has a similar vowel shift and f = p anyways
5:10 I'm so glad you mentioned the word "pokvpoijvdspiuwvfrhiuvwbouyihu", I use it on a daily basis with my friends and family. Thanks for raising awareness!
i don't think natives regulating use of language amongst themselves is necessarily categorically, uh, bad - even in cases where intelligibility / communication ability is *not* significantly hindered - but there's lots of nuance to consider here and it'd take me a while to flesh out a full argument/exploration of this 🤔 in short though, i think it's reasonable/fair for your pronunciation (and/or spelling) of a given word to be considered a "mistake" if it's mostly just a personal quirk in *your* speech specifically (along with any other isolated instances of it randomly spread across the population, all in all adding up to a clear minority), rather than a characteristic of some community you're a part of (i.e. if it's merely uniquely part of your [and a few other basically-random people's] idiolect, and not part of some sort of [sub-]dialect) i think nonstandard (as compared to the overall dominant form of language) forms get legitimised when they develop amongst a group of people with ties to each other who consistently communicate with each other - even if it's just a small minority - as that just means that said forms actually *are* standard in the context of *those* (more fringe, nongeneral) channels of communication but isolated, relatively uncommon errors shared by speakers with little to no relation to each other feel like just that: errors (i.e. there is no established context where they are the dominant [or, failing that, a nonetheless highly common alternative] form) so since "pronounciation" is apparently more broadly a texan or GenAm thing, then it's legitimate, but if it was just a you thing, then, less so granted, how appropriate it is for someone to *point such a mistake out* to you is a different (much more social) question entirely, and depends on time, place, the person, and the delivery of the correction (how relevant it is, what your relationship to the person is, etc. etc.; getting random comments about it by strangers on vids where it's painfully beside the point is, understandably, not so cool, even if they _were_ right, haha) (there's also the gravity of the error to take into account obviously, tho rn i'm only talking about cases where the other party basically immediately got what you were trying to say / there was no communication breakdown... then again, i guess you could say this factors into "relevance" anyway) (i also think it's completely fine for such corrections to be, tactfully and with good intent of course, made out of ignorance as well [i.e. the other party *thinks* something is a mistake only because they don't know any better]. in that case you can just correct their correction; surely _they_ would be fine with that :p)
It's a shame that this kind of view isn't more common. Lacking a standardised form of a language, especially written language, can be harmful. And whenever people don't follow that I may struggle to understand what they are trying to say. However, I also don't correct people unless they are open to it. I believe it's the sanest position.
The other issue is that I don't think it's a "southern" (at least not Texan) thing either. I generally don't hear pronounciation in any consistent manner, only in isolated instances among random people. Of course if there is some tiny region of Texas that consistently demonstrates "pronounciation" instead of pronunciation then it would be different but I don't think I've encountered that anywhere in the state. As for appropriateness of a correction, I think making videos *about language* necessitates that you are correct about that language. Of course this notion falls apart if "pronouncation" is actually a regional difference but I remain unconvinced that it is.
So loud and so wrong... there's been many cases where people who do not have a connection to each other started a trend with a certain way to pronounce or to spell. Take the word 'often' for example. The 't' used to regularly not be pronounced until lately, when a large portion of people from all sorts of backgrounds do pronounce it. This happens a lot, it just spreads from people networking, and it has started happening a lot more now that we have social media and communities within said media. Regulating and standardizing language is important but so is letting language change. So many things in the English language have changed over the centuries. This was not achieved by nitpicking everyone's "mistakes". These so-called mistakes are some people's ways of communicating, and therefore are legitimate lmao. Take your refusal to capitalize letters, your run-on sentences, or your usage of the term 'GenAm' for example. What happens to niche accents then? Let's take me for example. I'm Kurdish, went to an international school, and later moved to Sweden. I have a ridiculous accent with all sorts of pronunciations, but since my pronunciations are so personal, would you consider my entire English wrong? No, it's just the way I speak. If anything, the language I am most fluent in is English (just as much as Kurmanji) Correcting people makes sense in social whereabouts when the mistake causes inconsistent confusion, not when it's a quirk or a trait of a person's.
@@rojsaeed8724 sure, i'm open to being wrong. not sure what registered as "loud" in my comment, but to be clear: i'm not trying to be particularly assertive here, only to start a discussion on this by sharing my thoughts. don't have the time to fully respond to your reply rn but this is good input - thanks
I'm Spanish, non-native of English (just a diploma of C1) and never had I realized you pronounce as [aʊ̯] nor even do I care about it. If you pronounce it like that, go on! In fact, I didn't realize bc I'm used to a huge number of English dialects, therefore it is normal for me not to «hear» these little differences. If I can understand, there's no problem whatsoever
@@jordankay4754Most words were not words. Crazy how we make them up, and how they show up in our speech afterwards! You'll find that not punctuating a sentence is also illegitimate, but here you (and I) are, doing it right now in this comment section
@@jordankay4754no language is ever incorrect. if it is illegal, call it a different language that you’re speaking that has one word changed. language cannot be wrong because we don’t know what language even is
On the topic of ideolects, I have a lisp which i personally have no desire to change. It leads to a chain shift for my alveolar and dental fricatives. The alveolars become dental (not inter-dental, also usually sibilant though they sometimes lose sibilance in fast speech), and the original dentals then front to linguo-labial. Part of why I love this is that it feels incredibly unique since linguo-labials are so rare cross-linguistically.
I generally think just how it’s used matters most. But sometimes you have people who are attempting to speak “proper” English, maybe it’s not their first language and they’re learning, or maybe they are working class and are trying to mimic a middle class accent to help them get a job in a particular field. In those cases, I would at least try to inform them of the “proper” way of pronouncing something. But if they choose to continue as they are, so be it. Although I do remember being a teenager and having a conversation with a friend of mine from India who said, “When you cut your hairs…” and we had a big long conversation about me trying to explain to him that you are meant to say, “cut your hair” rather than “cut your hairs” and him being very confused since when you cut your hair you cut multiple hairs. I still understood him, but being a pedant, we did end up talking for maybe 20 minutes about that one particular sentence and how to say it one time when walking to school.
because "enounce" isn't in many people's vocabulary. i wouldn't use "enounce" when talking at all, because i don't need to. how many times have you heard "converse", compared to "conversation"? or "intuit" and "emote" compared to "intuition" and "emotion"?
@@notwithouttext I personally use "converse" as a handy synonym for "speak" or "talk" a bunch. You can only repeat words so many times in a row before they get repetative. The more synonyms the better, (but not ones that you don't understand the connotations of, that can send the wrong message). That may also just be a writing thing, since the advice to not use "said" for everything is pretty hardstuck. As to "intuit" & "emote", I have heard of the latter much more than the former; but that's probably because of internet & gaming. "Intuit" is a word that I have used as a synonym for "figure-out" or "understand". Intuition is also less common for my English usage. I think it's that I use verbs more often than nouns to describe things, (also infinitive form), which makes your specific example not quite applicable to me.
I'm not sure if the distinction between prescriptivism and descriptivism is that clear. I agree with you that "pronounciation" makes much more sense and I'd happily see it become the standard spelling/pron(o)unciation (☺) of this word, but I have logical reasons for that. At the same time, even if I found out that that 70% of English natives mixed up the words "their", "there" and "they're", I'd still be opposed to making them one word (or whatever solution could be to that problem), also for a valid reason (though I'm not native myself, so I guess that's just an opinion, not real opposition).
Well of course turning those three words into one is different, because that would be more confusing and less specific. However, changing the spelling and pronunciation of "pronunciation" wouldn't really be changing anything, and does no damage to communication
@@ardentspyI'm not saying that we change right now? Words don't usually change like that anyway, they change over time. I'm saying that if it is changed in the future, it wouldn't cause as much of a confusion as the merging of the other three words mentioned before.
I grew up thinking it was spelled pronounciation in writing, but with the controversial syllable pronounced nun, lmao (this was also in an incredibly popular TV ad in my country around 10-15 years ago, so it's kinda imprinted in my head ig)
Maybe it's just me not paying much attention since the difference is small, but I've also only ever said and heard it the way you say it (from California). At least until I went into the comments section of any video where someone says it "wrong" and gets corrected, which there's plenty of because it is in fact a common pronounciation in many regions.
I personally always say proNUNciation as a non-native speaker, but the same scenario happens all the time in my native language (dialect). In Cantonese 糾正 gau² zing³ -> dau² zing³ 蟶 cing¹ -> sing³ 滑稽 gwat⁷ kai¹ -> waat⁹ kai¹ etc. We always pronounce words in a 'wrong' but common way. That's our dialect. Not even an idiolect.
"pronounciation," the act of making something or someone "pronouncy," the assignment of pronouns to something or someone that was previously lacking them.
I feel like the prescriptivism vs. descriptivism here isn't quit that simple. From a pure scientific research perspective, descriptivism is scientific and prescriptivism is bunk, but for people who use it, educators, editors, and any other communicator, language is a also a standard for communication. From the "common standard" point of view, there is a positive value in everyone converging on the same rules and communicating with the least amounts of barriers. and there is a negative value to "any native-speaker usage of the language is correct", because there are many different ways to "regularized and simplify" language that are mutually exclusive, which practically guaranties drift. I think that a good example for that is the "linking R": A linguist writing a paper on "actualization of R in urban areas of the UK" will treat it as an obviously natural and valid analysis of how R behave in non-rhotic English, which regularize an otherwise confusing mess of inexplicable differences in pronounciations*, but a linguist on the Chinese board of English education will be negligent if they say "every school can decide to teach the linking-R or not, both are valid", because it will make whole sentences unintelligible between people who specifically learned a language to use as a standard. For regular people, who aren't passive observer or appointed decision makers, who just use the language, this is about "which standard should be used to communicate", which exclusively bubbles up on the most controversial cases, with the most inflammatory people, in the most rude and inconsiderate way possible. *your right its much more natural!
Descriptivism isn't a chaos, it still produces rulesets for a language. They are just not based on hypothetical and potentially pseudo-linguistic concepts, which happens with prescriptivism. There is also less room for dialectal variation with prescriptivism, which translates to real-world issues eg. linguistic discrimination.
Descriptivism is great, but it doesn't "produce" anything: it describes how people use language. People who talk are the ones who give language rules, but this is not a consistent system, and different people, or groups of people, will prefer different sets of rules. Standards exist and are needed despite the fact that there is nothing special about them. Mathematics and computer science are the kings of this: there's no moral reason the number 65 represents 'A', but it is a nightmare to communicate between computers who use different numbers for 'A'. Even if they wanted, people can't be expected to have encyclopedic knowledge of every linguistic difference in the world, so every speaking interaction has friction. Because we live in a world with differences, discrimination, and people making stuff up, that's what you get.
Prescriptivism is useful when you have a taxonomy. A square is a type of rectangle even if people stopped thinking it was because of the definition of rectangle. Cucumbers are melons so calling them vegetables would me you also have to think melons can be vegetables which is a contradiction and requires prescriptivism. Culinary vegetables don't exist. There are just categories of savory or sweet food otherwise you would have to call a sweet potato a fruit.
5:23 Actually, I believe the GA Schwa is usually lower than a true [ə], Closer to [ɐ̝], (At least that's how it is in my speach, and that of most people I know as far as I've noticed) and from what I've heard it's decently common for the STRUT vowel to be realised closer to [ɐ] than [ʌ] in dialects that do make the distinction, Such as British RP, which retains the distinction because I believe their schwa is higher, closer to a true [ə] or sometimes even [ɘ], So from a certain standpoints Americans are actually pronouncing the /ʌ/ correctly but not the /ə/.
It's hillarious how I just watched the whole video don't even understanding a point, because my native language doesn't have shwa sound as meaning one. To me, both variants sound the same.
It took me too many years to realise that "pronounce" had an O but "pronunciation" didn't. I've spent almost my entire life spelling "pronunciation" and I'm not ashamed lol. English makes no sense
Oh my god, "holp" as the past tense of help is so funny and ridiculous. I keep using it out loud in sentences and it sounds so dumb. I love it ❤ Also hell yea, I was like 22 when I realized pronunciation doesnt have 3 Os and it always struck me as weird
This channel is an academic setting, so standard language should apply. You’re also prescribing a linguistic change that hasn’t fully happened, while saying you’re advocating descriptivism. If you were being truly descriptive, you’d acknowledge that "pronunciation" is used far more than "durst" in the modern language. Also, spelling is inherently prescriptive. You’re just spelling it wrong.
@@jordankay4754 Yep. It's literally just a mistake and this video is a weird prescriptivist justification of it because of personal annoyance. If you use nonstandard English, own it. Don't assert that your English ought not to be (or already isn't) nonstandard. That's a fundamental misunderstanding of descriptivism.
1:46 I disagree with this statement. You can affect intelligibility without completely destroying it. If you write "your" in place of "you're," I'll initially parse the sentence incorrectly, but I'll be able to figure out what went wrong pretty quickly. It's like biking over a pothole. It's not debilitating, but it's definitely annoying.
Exactly. The "if you know what I meant, there's no problem" argument is completely false. A few layers of that, and mutual intelligibility goes out the window entirely. This video is wild. Asserting that common mistakes _aren't_ in fact nonstandard isn't descriptivism, it's _prescriptivism_ of the common mistakes, because most people don't make those mistakes and it's not a regional variation.
Thee argew mint taht “iph yew kan querecked mi, yew kan undur stanned mi” iz nat un icks queuece four chewzing knot two ed hear too cunvenshins taht pee pull icks pecked two here anned reed. Evvry thyme yew cee uh sbelling oar here uh prin nun see aishin yew doughnt wreck ag nighs, yore brane haz too canvurt itt two dhe won yew no anned yews. Come you nick acean iz uh to weigh streat, sew wee knead sum sourt uv agreamint aun hau wurds luk anned sauned.
For me I just always saw it as more of the ablaut English is so fond of. Vowels changing into other vowels happens all over English. Nature to natural, tone to tonic, analyse to analysis. My dialect just has a lot of vowels though.
I mean, linguistic evolution takes time and it requires the majority of native speakers to actually feel *free* to accept that gradual change. Nobody likes when a change is forced. The society has to be educated first and understand why the change is needed, and *then* finally begin the long and drawn out linguistic evolution process.
You can say it however you want. The arguments that pronounce is "regular" (with the implication that the noun should be) or that speakers are regularising to "pronounciation" are in fact pseudolinguistic prescriptivism, probably moreso than rude comments correcting you, since the latter seem to be based more on experience than any appeal to linguistic authority.
@@wareya A fair criticism. I don't think the statement itself is prescriptivist. If there is data implying a shift over time towards a, for want of a better word, non-standard pronunciation, then it makes a lot of sense to try to describe why that change has occurred. But in this case, there isn't data and we don't know whether a change in usage is occurring, so applying linguistics to describe it feels insincere. Whether that makes it prescriptivist is another thing, but I think the claim that regularisation makes communication "more efficient" applies a value judgement. I am not familiar with any literature which supports this.
@@jockcox I don't remember the exact wording from the video (I watched it a day ago), but I'm not sure it implies a troublesome value judgment either way. I would believe someone saying that increased efficiency can cause regularization. Phonetic changes are often influenced by a want for phonetic efficiency, and people tend to forget obscure alternative verb forms. This can cause regularization, even if we only assume that regularization only happens incidentally. I don't see room for value judgments in this version. I would not believe someone telling me that regularization is necessarily more efficient. For example, in Japanese, there are a few irregular slang word forms for a few specific words that come from reinterpreting nouns as verbs, like daijoubu (noun) -> daijoubanai (interpret as bu-rank verb, add negative form). Re-regularizing such word forms would make them less phonetically efficient (daijoubu janai). This example is slang, but I think it's still a valid example. I can imagine value judgments in this version if someone is praising efficiency, but they wouldn't pop out at me as prescriptive in the prescriptivists-vs-descriptivists sense.
Just because you're a native speaker doesn't that mean you pronounce things correctly. A lot of people say "nucular", but that is 100% categorically wrong, it is nuclear.
Indeed, descriptivism argues that metathesis that occurs in words such as nucular (nuclear), comfterble (comfortable) or interduce (introduce) is part of the normal evolution of a language, and not incorrect per se. After all, many common "regular" words were metathesized in the past (an example on top my head is horse which used to be hros)
nucular is wrong because it doesn't match with the spelling? do you say "iron" with the r before the o, or "hors d'oeuvres" with the v before the r? and anyway, one could argue that nucular is a different word from nuclear, and is actually nuke + -ular, just like tubular or valvular. this also fits with how people use it: some only use nucular for "nucular weapons" and the like
Another word that irks me in the same way: _camaraderie._ Merriam-Webster defines it as "a spirit of friendly good-fellowship". The definition and pron'nciation (there I omitted the disputed letters, now everyone is mad) shows that it is some form of the word _comrade,_ defined as "an intimate friend or associate", but the spelling is so very different. I'd heard the word in spoken form before I ever read it so I though it was spelled _comraderie._
But crucially, you didn’t use your UA-cam platform to trick your audience into thinking that’s how it’s spelled, all so that you don’t have to admit you were wrong.
@@jordankay4754 you do know that "how it's spelled" is literally about how people spell it, and so if someone spells it a certain way that's "how it's spelled", even if it might not be standard?
@@jordankay4754 yes but that's what the phrase literally means. maybe it isn't "how it's standardly spelled" or "how it's supposed to be spelled" but it is one way that it's spelled, by some people.
I never noticed that I say both pronounciation and pronunciation in different cases Pronunciation is for being possessed, example: Your pronunciation of Spanish words are great! Pronounciation is for stand alone descriptors, example: The pronounciation of “pronunciation” is simply stupid to StealthySceptile I wonder if this is the same for you, as we are from very similar regions
Is it just me who always forgets how to write this word when writing it? I swear I always write it with two n, as in pronnounciation.. don't ask me why but if there is any correllation please let me know cuz I'm kinda intrigued (ps. I'm not natively English, I'm Greek and fluent in English but gosh hate it's spelling) By the way- I pronnounce the word it exactly like that too, with a mixed american accent (slightly more british-afied)
Now me, a German who learned mostly the Southern and General American English, spelling it "pronounciation" while pronouncing it "pronunciation" with a strut vowel
@@ardentspy native American English speaker here - I have only ever heard people say "pronunciation", never "pronounciation", outside of vids like this.
it is _nonstandard,_ which you might consider close to "incorrect", but it is still common for some people. almost everyone has some nonstandard or dialectal usage of english. one dialectal pronunciation i have is "ash-fault" for asphalt, and two nonstandard pronunciations i have are "repartay" for repartee and "cat-eye-on" for cation.
@@notwithouttext is there ever a case for something to be considered a mistake then? How does learning a language (_any_ language) work if the mere concept of flagging errors is taboo?
I typically use "pronunciation" rather than "pronounciation" personally, not because that's what I was told to say, but rather just that's the form that I happen to use. I feel I use it now because pronunciation feels more like a vowel reduced form of pronounciation imo. I live in Arizona so it's not like it's because I'm Brittish or something, my guess is I just heard "pronunciation" first, rather than "pronounciation" and it stuck.
How about "pronouncation" without the i before the ation? I know it's not common in any particular dialect but I like saying it and it feels right to me. Maybe that's just my idiolect.
Ca would sound as kay tho... I think C sounds like S only before e, i, y. If there's an exception to that in English then I give up on this f*** language 😂
I'm not sure what answer you're looking for since it was already answered in the video, but the spelling itself would render the letter 'c' to be pronounced as /k/.
Maybe I shouldn't speak for him, but why did you reverse the order of Kwon Junhyuk's name at the end? It sounded like you were going for an accurate Korean pronunciation, but then switched his name into Western order.
@@KabalFromMK9 Could be, but that still doesn't answer the question of why one would write the names and say the names in opposite orders--either way, you'd expect consistency.
Oh wow, its so cool to know that you grew up in the same environment as I did! I also grew up in a northern Texas suburb, we have essentially the same (or at least very similar) dialect. I honestly never knew that saying 'pro-NUN-ciation' was considered "the correct way", I've always said pro-NOUN-ciation as you do. This would be like scolding someone over the "correct way" to say Pecan. I think pedantic is the right word to describe linguistic prescriptivists, lol
I legit always thought it was written as pronounciation but pronounced “pronunciation”. And that’s always how am gonna operate. But if someone says “proNOUNciation” I won’t judge em bruh
Huh, never thought about pronounce as pronoun-ce…so when I was younger and jokingly said “verbulate” meaning “the action of a verb” I wasent far off from real words
My favorite example of words keeping consistency is how I pronounce “kilometer” (KEY-low-mee-ter) and “chlorine” (klor-eye-n (the eye and the N are together one syllable).
Better not ask Chat GPT what it thinks about all this. Oh, alright then: is "pronounciation" a regional variant of the word "pronunciation" or is it just a misspelling? ChatGPT "Pronounciation" is a common misspelling of the correct word "pronunciation." The correct term, "pronunciation," is derived from the verb "pronounce." Here’s a bit more detail: Correct Term: Pronunciation: The way in which a word is spoken. It comes from the Latin word "pronuntiatio," and the correct spelling maintains this etymological origin. Common Misspelling: Pronounciation: This is often mistakenly used because it seems to follow the pattern of the verb "pronounce," which includes the "nounce" sequence. However, it is not a recognized variant in any regional dialect and is considered incorrect. Usage: The proper term "pronunciation" is used universally in English-speaking regions, and any deviation such as "pronounciation" should be corrected to maintain proper spelling standards. In summary, "pronounciation" is not a regional variant but rather a misspelling of the word "pronunciation."
I've heard both used often enough that I feel comfortable considering both valid forms of the word, albeit with "pronunciation" being the more formal standard form as opposed to a nonstandard dialectal form. Interestingly, I hear it more spoken than I see it written, likely due to people adhering to spellcheck. Because of that, I imagine it will become more accepted over time, but the spelling may change slower than the pronounciation.
1:30 I'd say "pedantic" sums the words you've used up nicely. Also, I only learned that "pronounciation" was nonstandard when I cracked open my dictionary's pronunciation guide and wondered why "pronunciation" was missing an O. So even native English teachers don't do a "good job" of teaching the difference, because it's very easy to think that it's actually _supposed_ to be "pronounciation" until you find a counterexample.
0:04 I'm from the Great Lakes region but most people I know pronounce these all roughly the same way you do (though I usually write the diphthongs as [e̞ɪ ɤ̞ʊ o̞ɪ], as they all feel to me like true mid vowels) - while I have heard [eɪ oʊ ɔɪ] from older speakers, I don't think they're necessarily the "canon" pronunciations of GA, just because the traditional IPA phonemes use those symbols. GA is a group of related dialects, after all, and just like American English spelling isn't standardized, neither is the pronunciation. That's how I view it at least ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Also, is the weak vowel merger (the /neɪʃən/ thing) not considered to be a feature of GA? I've always seen it included; moreover, while the cot-caught merger usually isn't included, it's so common that I feel like it's always mentioned as an asterisk. (Also I say "y'all" too, that's not common where I'm from but my idiolect can be whatever I want it to be.)
bro thats literally the worst take ever... like you could basically say that about any mispronunciation/misspelling "it's pointless to correct me", "you can understand me anyway", "i'm a native speaker", wtf?! okay so lets just completely disregard proper spelling as a whole? do you also think it's pointless to correct native speakers (Americans) when they confuse they're, their and there? obviously feel free to speak how u wish, but shooting back at ppl just pointing out the correct way to say sth is weird
I don't like how some people, who are strongly against "prescriptivism" in linguistics are trying to de facto prescribe a new allegedly superior made-up "gender neutral" form into a language that isn't quite ready for such a grammatical shift. It's especially apparent in my native language (Polish).
Yo thanks for the video! I feel like this topic, although it may seem random, occasionally pops up into my mind, so you making this video was nice. Peace out, LingoLizard!
Pronounce... Pronounciation? I don't know which way I'd actually spell it - or even which way I actually say it, and I'm surprised that I'm getting a red line under the second one. I'm a bit of a prescriptivist on a few issues (especially the whole "possessive its has no apostrophe" thing, it's a pronoun, they don't take possessive apostrophes), but this isn't one of them.
If you don't know which way to spell it, just take a third option as use "prononce"/"prononciation". The words were originally French, so you may as well spell them as such.
I have a similar problem in my native German: Officially, the nominalisation of "reflektieren" (to reflect) is "Reflexion", not "Reflektion". However, to me the former never made sense (where did the "t" go?), so I keep using the latter one (and I see it all over the place as well)
in fact english "connection" and "reflection" used to be "connexion" and "reflexion", but they were changed to connect (no pun intended) to "connect" and "reflect", by analogy of "correct" and "correction".
As a fellow native german I absolutly agree. I actually only found out about this like half a year ago when I was writing something for university and spellchecked. My limited research resulted in it being a remainder of the adoption of the latin 'reflectere' and 'reflexion'. Seeing how common the 'wrong' 'Reflektion' is I'm just waiting for Duden to yield, so that this becomes a situation where both versions are accepted. Similar to how Albtraum and Alptraum are both correct.
The reason why such things bother me (and, I presume, many others) sometimes is not because of an inherent flaw of the pronunciation itself, rather the fact that substandard pronunciations tend to be indicative of a lack of effort in appreciating the language in its traditional form. This is in no way a position against the changes naturally taking place in speech anyway, rather against the reasons *why* they take place in some instances. You, having made up your mind about why you speak the way you speak, don't fall into this category, because the 'mistake' ceases to be one when it is intentionally and consciously nonstandard.
I agree with this. Nonstandard speech is not a mistake, if it is done with intention & reason. Typos happen all of the time, & assuming things to be typos or similar enuf words that they still make sense when you read them aloud is a great way to handle things. (Words being similar enuf is also the basis of a lot of puns, and those are the best sort of jokes.)
Prescriptivists when they realize other native speakers don't sound the exact same as them 💀
That’s really not how this concept works in linguistics, at all.
@@tbirdparis What I'm pointing out is that many people expect all native English speakers from a given region to sound the same with no variance. Given the existence of this video, this clearly exists in some manner. I was calling this out through a joke
@@tbirdparis so explain prescriptivism if we're all so dumb
@@codenamepyro2350 (generally) prescriptivism doesn't exclude the existence of regional differences, it just considers that as separate languages then
and each of them must have an unavoidable, perfect standard, and no word can have multiple pronounciations or writings
@@abarette_ I'm aware that distinction could be made, but I was commenting on the people talked about in the video. And they weren't making the distinction you were
don't care about the drama nor agenda but just wanna say "kine" is rad asf
Убѣжалъ голодный въ лѣсъ.
seriously "kine" is freaking awesome
Its because its both an umlaut plural and a weak plural(-en)
Tolkien used kine in certain settings in The Lord of the Rings, and more often in the Silmarillion. That’s how I learned the word.
@@ADJHamstra what does that have to do with cows?
Durst sounds way better than dared
frfr he durst to call it irregular
I saw durst when we were doing Shakespeare (Macbeth) in school and only later found out that it was an archaic conjugation of 'to dare'
The sentence was "When you durst do it, then you were a man" (Lady Macbeth persuading Macbeth to kill the king). Also note that they use "were" for the conditional and use "when" like modern day "if" and German "wenn"
sounds cool but doesn't sound related to dare at all
Dore would be more logical. Bare -> bore, dare -> dore
@@Someone.or.no-one and that’s why they are called irregular,
because there are no proper conditions, although sometimes similarities that look like patterns
I'm a non-native speaker and I used to say "Pronounciation", but every single time I use that word, someone corrects me. So much so that eventually I started forcing myself to say "Pronunciation", even though I still say "Pronounciation" from time to time.
The reason people say it is because it's similar to another word in meaning and sound, enunciation. They rhyme, so they should go together
The descriptivism leaving my body when i hear someone say "could of"
I dont get this. Ppl dont say “could of” they say “could have” but just short. Whats wrong with that?
@@theoneandonly1833 i have seen people write could of and also very clearly say it. There is a clear difference between "could've" and "could of"
@@spedrun i spell words how i say them. that's why i often misspell a word as its homophone. maybe these people do it too.
@@Syuvinya i'm mostly joking i really don't care that much how people say it. I assume that you are right and this is why
as a kid, i used to spell kind of as kind’ve
You know what's surprising? It's the fact that pron(o)unciation has a spelling that matches what's supposed to sound like. English has "south" and "southern" and nobody has bothered to update the spelling to "suthern". But if I check any dictionary it's clear I'd be wrong if I pronounced it as "south"-ern... (or country as "count"-ry etc.) /rolls-eyes
If the spelling was "pronounciation" and both pronunciations were valid, I guess you wouldn't get so many corrections... or we could have the reverse effect, with prescriptivists telling others that they should fully pronounce the "ou" (but I don't think they'd say the same for other day-to-day words)
Holy cow, English is not my native language and I've always pronounced and heard "southern" with the "south" diphthong. Orthography can be too powerful at times
@@SapphireScroll reminds me of an old Simpsons episode where Marge says "run like the wind!", pronouncing "wind" as you'd say to wind up a clock... And then after Lisa corrects her she says "oh I don't know, I only ever read it in books". :)
I used to pronounce southern as saʊðɚn instead of sʌðɚn as a native speaker.
@@SapphireScroll It's probably fine, I pronounce southern the same way and I'm a native English speaker.
Another irregular pairing is "maintenance" and "maintain", which makes me wonder if anyone says "maintainance" and how many people that, in turn, annoys. (I know that second long vowel would make me twitch.)
Unfortunately, users of rare or subjectively incorrect forms of speech are always going to have to handle a complaint at some point because the majority will necessarily have more people who take exception. You can state it's your idiolect till you're blue in the -screen- face, but still they'll come.
Now that you mention it, I have a coworker (non-native English-speaker at a non-English-speaking company) who says maintainance. He also pronounces the -able suffix at the end of words as if it were the standalone word "able", so he says "maintain-able" with heavy emphasis on the second and third syllable.
It's unstressed. "Imagination" is also a poor analogy for "pronounciation" since its stressed vowel is a historical short A
EDIT A more proper comparison would be with the word "foundation": No one says it as "fundation".
You also don't get arguments about the legitimacy of /ˌæŋ.glɪ.sɑjˈzej.ʃən/.
I'm not a native and I usually go for "maintainance" and never understood why it's getting highlighted. But I think I'd pronounce it without the "ai"
If you said /mejn.ˈtejn.n̩s/, it would feel a little awkward, but I wouldn't say it sounds _wrong._
I spell it "correctly" now, but I remember oftentimes making the mistake of spelling it "maintainance" because that's what's more regular with every other spelling
I can't believe they durst correct you
I’m a native English speaker from suburban north Texas as well, and regular viewer of yours. I definitely use pronunciation and not pronunciation but also genuinely never noticed after all this time that you were saying it differently. So funny how my brain tuned that out as part of the normal variation in pronunciation one expects to hear rather than noticing it as odd 😂
Why are people argue about one letter in a word 😭
For some reason people get very upset when people have different accents to them.
actually they are arguing about one phoneme
because the french did it with oignon~onion 😭
@@PlatinumAltaria I speak with a drawl and use local words in Oregon and am occasionally seen as less educated because of it, it's a strange mindset to have. Do they think the language just hopped out of a pond and has remained stagnant these years over the entire country?
@@James-vw9yy They, like a small child, think they talk normally and everyone else talks funny. Clearly other people just didn't go to school and learn the "correct" way to speak.
*Adds them to the list of Americans I know that are from Texas*
Vaguely ominous vibe from this statement
Are you gonna hurt us?
@@Nehauon talking to me?
@@theorycowI just know a lot of people from that state *Says me who isn’t from the US*
I've never left a mean comment on your channel (in fact, I don't usually leave comments on UA-cam videos at all), but I must confess that I also get a bit annoyed when I hear "pronounciation" in lieu of "pronunciation".
Part of the reason is that I, in my own life, have never heard anyone say it like that at all on the east coast of the US where I live, so to me it does sound a bit silly because it's unfamiliar to me.
Another part of the reason is that "pronunciation" falls into a pattern of closely related cognates. For example, the nominalized form of the verb "renounce" is "renunciation," not "renounciation." Similarly we have "denunciation" from the verb "denounce" and "annunciation" from the verb "announce." There's also the noun "enunciation" which is from the same root and follows the same pattern but it doesn't have a corresponding verb form in English as far as I'm aware. "Pronunciation" falls neatly into this broad pattern of cognate words whereas, from my perspective, "pronounciation" seems to break the pattern for seemingly no reason? If all the cognate words that I mentioned were also reanalyzed in the same vein as "pronounciation" (e.g. if people said "renounciation" instead of "renunciation," or "denounciation" instead of "denunciation") then it would make more sense to me why some people would prefer to say "pronounciation." However, as far as I know, no one pronounces any of those other words like that, they only pronounce the word "pronounciation" in that specific way. If I am mistaken about this, feel free to correct me, but it does seem inconsistent in my mind.
I never felt the need to leave any kind of comments about this kind of thing because ultimately it is a small thing and it would be petty and unproductive to treat it like a serious issue that's worthy of shame and ridicule. At the same time, though, I simply don't like it, and I can try to rationalize my dislike in any number of ways, but at the end of the day it just sounds off to me, and I think it's OK to acknowledge that as long as you don't harass anyone about it like the kind of harassment that you receive. I am quite sorry that you receive this kind of bullying for something that is really quite insignificant in the grand scheme of things, but sadly this kind of thing has always been par for the course on UA-cam. I hope that you have a nice day and keep making your videos because I genuinely enjoy watching them and you do a great job.
There’s “enounce” for “enunciation”, but it’s rare.
In my brain, I can’t recall ever hearing “renunciation” or “denunciation”, and “enunciation” derives from “enunciate” so there is no pattern for “pronunciation” to fall into. I definitely said “pronounciation” as a kid, but either way sounds fine. These weak patterns of fairly obscure words that only worm their way into some of our heads is why language change happens, it’s interesting.
I feel the same way. It sounds weird and uncomfortable in my ears. I can't really help that. But after that, I have a descriptivist mindset about it, so I don't correct others unless necessary (someone asks me if it's standard, I'm tutoring a non-native speaker and they want to learn standard forms, etc etc). Especially since it's the kind of common "mistake" that is easily understood and makes essentially zero difference except sounding a little weird in some people's ears
I used to say pronunce as response to those corrections lmao.
Now say “denounce”
@@jordankay4754 what is your point??
@@MaxcarioThe point Is, he's a muppet for saying that.
i feel like ive unironically said "pronunced" before...
good idea...
This must be more common in the south because I have never heard anything but the STRUT vowel being used in that word as a Northerner. If it's regional it would explain why it sounds marked to so many of your commenters.
Pronouncing the STRUT vowel as distinct from a schwa is largely a Northern English thing from what I can tell. There are some British accents that have slight distinctions between them, but Northern English seems to have the largest distinction as far as I can remember. Most if not all North American speakers have no contrast between schwa and the STRUT vowel, but often feel the need to transcribe them as different for... reasons? As a result, they come up with weird "rules" to try (and fail) to explain where to transcribe a vowel as /ʌ/ vs as /ə/.
@@angeldude101 The vowel quality of STRUT and whether or not it's merged with the commA vowel really isn't relevant here, he's using the MOUTH vowel.
And for the record, STRUT is still genuinely a back vowel in Northern dialects. In NYC english it merges with NURSE in open syllables, resulting in 'her' being pronounced as [hʌ]. And in dialects with the Northern Cities Shift (Chicago, Michigan, Cleveland, Wisconsin, Upstate NY, St Louis), the STRUT vowel is so far back that it rounds and becomes [ɔ]. Not sure about New England but I'd imagine they're conservative in this regard too.
@@TheSwordofStorms I think the quality of schwas has the potential to be relevant, but not because of specifically ʌ/ə merging. If someone has general weak vowel reduction (including other weak vowels, not just ʌ), and their schwas tend towards ɪ, then saying "pronunciation" could become uncomfortable, and the speaker might alter the vowels to make it less uncomfortable. If I try to make myself say "prih-nihn-see-AY-shihn", it feels like it wants to come out as "prihn-see-AY-shihn". If that was me, I can imagine myself starting to say "pronounciation" just to keep myself from dropping the first n.
"Prescriptivism, on the other hand, is expecting every single speaker of a language to speak the standard, pure form of the language at all times and continue to do so forever."
I feel like this is attributing a rather extreme stance to people who, for the most part, probably have no such lofty goals in mind. You don't have to be a believer in The Perfect English Language to hear someone pronounce a word in a nonstandard way and think to yourself, "That sounds weird." If you use a language on a regular basis, you're bound to have your own ideas about what sounds good and what doesn't. And that second category, the things you dislike, doesn't just disappear when you step outside the classroom. This video seems to be suggesting that, outside of academic settings and incidents of actual confusion, just about any expression of disapproval toward someone's way of speaking is a Bad Thing that marks you as a Bad Linguist. I don't think it is. I think that's just an inevitable part of being human and using languages.
No single English speaker has the right to unilaterally decide that a word, phrase, or pronunciation is "correct" or "incorrect". That's what gives you the freedom to choose to say "pronounciation". But by the same token, it also gives other people the freedom to tell you that they don't like "pronounciation" and would prefer for you to say "pronunciation". You can try to appeal to logical arguments that your way is better (as you do in this video), and your opponents can form their own arguments as to why their way is superior. But in the end, logical arguments don't make a language convention correct; they're just a way of trying to convince as many English speakers as possible to follow you in adhering to or disregarding the convention. And that collective approval or disapproval is what actually determines the legitimacy of the convention.
Of course, I'm not saying that majority rule *objectively* determines whether or not an expression is "correct". Quite often, what's "correct" or "incorrect" varies depending on context, especially when it comes to regional- or community-specific expressions. That's why code-switching exists. But that does mean that if you insist on going against the preferences of a given set of listeners, you shouldn't be surprised when you draw negative reactions from them. You're a native English speaker, and you can speak how you want to, but that doesn't mean that other people have to like it. That's not necessarily them being Ignorant Prescriptivists--that's just fair play.
I never get bored of seeing English speakers pointing out their language's inconsistenies.
fun thing, in Dutch there is a past tense of want 'willen' to (past) 'wou', but in some regions it is regularised to 'wilde', they are both correct. But everyone I know says wou (even from other regions). So that is maybe an exception in the regularization.
im wildeing out
You're completely in the right. There's no "correct" way to speak. Dictionaries are a collection of observations not laws.
ai sink yu ar ryet
@@SylveonSimpwhat accent is that? That's the first time I've seen someone analyze "th" as "s"
@@superieur11407the th sound in thing is technically an s sound.
@@vpansf Not an "f"?
eyee finck yuo awre royte tuo
ive always spelt it with the o but said it as pronunciation 💀
Same, and I'm also an American who speaks a dialect that's very similar to General American
Same (British English speaker)
same
You’ve been spelling it wrong.
Same (Alberta)
Ngl, I think there's a non-zero chance I might've left the kind of comments you meant your video. I would've meant it as a joke, but there's also another non-zero chance I would've worded it poorly too. So, if I happened to have left one of those comments, I'm sorry. I don't actually care about the pronounciation but sometimes I make jokes that are either in bad taste or just worded poorly.
Language is performative. We all shift aspects of our diction -- tone, pronunciation, rhythm, vocabulary, and so forth -- based on our current social circumstances and goals. How we use language frequently serves to verify membership in an in-group, as in the Biblical story of "shibboleth" (Judges 12:5-6).
I'm a native Californian, where the idiolect strongly flattens vowels. As a result, natives pronounce the name of my home town, Los Gatos, as something like "Lahss Gatuss". That's how i pronounced it while i was growing up there. Then i moved away and became moderately fluent in Spanish. Now i can't help but pronounce the name like "Lohss Gahtohss". And natives (including my family!) give me that "You're not from around here" look when I say the name while visiting home.
its so funny to realize the parallels to german in some of those obsolete past tenses, help - holp helfen - half; this has a similar vowel shift and f = p anyways
5:10 I'm so glad you mentioned the word "pokvpoijvdspiuwvfrhiuvwbouyihu", I use it on a daily basis with my friends and family. Thanks for raising awareness!
i don't think natives regulating use of language amongst themselves is necessarily categorically, uh, bad - even in cases where intelligibility / communication ability is *not* significantly hindered - but there's lots of nuance to consider here and it'd take me a while to flesh out a full argument/exploration of this 🤔
in short though, i think it's reasonable/fair for your pronunciation (and/or spelling) of a given word to be considered a "mistake" if it's mostly just a personal quirk in *your* speech specifically (along with any other isolated instances of it randomly spread across the population, all in all adding up to a clear minority), rather than a characteristic of some community you're a part of (i.e. if it's merely uniquely part of your [and a few other basically-random people's] idiolect, and not part of some sort of [sub-]dialect)
i think nonstandard (as compared to the overall dominant form of language) forms get legitimised when they develop amongst a group of people with ties to each other who consistently communicate with each other - even if it's just a small minority - as that just means that said forms actually *are* standard in the context of *those* (more fringe, nongeneral) channels of communication
but isolated, relatively uncommon errors shared by speakers with little to no relation to each other feel like just that: errors (i.e. there is no established context where they are the dominant [or, failing that, a nonetheless highly common alternative] form)
so since "pronounciation" is apparently more broadly a texan or GenAm thing, then it's legitimate, but if it was just a you thing, then, less so
granted, how appropriate it is for someone to *point such a mistake out* to you is a different (much more social) question entirely, and depends on time, place, the person, and the delivery of the correction (how relevant it is, what your relationship to the person is, etc. etc.; getting random comments about it by strangers on vids where it's painfully beside the point is, understandably, not so cool, even if they _were_ right, haha) (there's also the gravity of the error to take into account obviously, tho rn i'm only talking about cases where the other party basically immediately got what you were trying to say / there was no communication breakdown... then again, i guess you could say this factors into "relevance" anyway)
(i also think it's completely fine for such corrections to be, tactfully and with good intent of course, made out of ignorance as well [i.e. the other party *thinks* something is a mistake only because they don't know any better]. in that case you can just correct their correction; surely _they_ would be fine with that :p)
It's a shame that this kind of view isn't more common. Lacking a standardised form of a language, especially written language, can be harmful. And whenever people don't follow that I may struggle to understand what they are trying to say.
However, I also don't correct people unless they are open to it. I believe it's the sanest position.
The other issue is that I don't think it's a "southern" (at least not Texan) thing either. I generally don't hear pronounciation in any consistent manner, only in isolated instances among random people. Of course if there is some tiny region of Texas that consistently demonstrates "pronounciation" instead of pronunciation then it would be different but I don't think I've encountered that anywhere in the state.
As for appropriateness of a correction, I think making videos *about language* necessitates that you are correct about that language. Of course this notion falls apart if "pronouncation" is actually a regional difference but I remain unconvinced that it is.
Exactly, I don't see a problem with regulating a language. The word "prescriptivist" is thrown around like a slur in the linguistics community.
So loud and so wrong... there's been many cases where people who do not have a connection to each other started a trend with a certain way to pronounce or to spell. Take the word 'often' for example. The 't' used to regularly not be pronounced until lately, when a large portion of people from all sorts of backgrounds do pronounce it.
This happens a lot, it just spreads from people networking, and it has started happening a lot more now that we have social media and communities within said media.
Regulating and standardizing language is important but so is letting language change. So many things in the English language have changed over the centuries. This was not achieved by nitpicking everyone's "mistakes". These so-called mistakes are some people's ways of communicating, and therefore are legitimate lmao. Take your refusal to capitalize letters, your run-on sentences, or your usage of the term 'GenAm' for example. What happens to niche accents then?
Let's take me for example. I'm Kurdish, went to an international school, and later moved to Sweden. I have a ridiculous accent with all sorts of pronunciations, but since my pronunciations are so personal, would you consider my entire English wrong? No, it's just the way I speak. If anything, the language I am most fluent in is English (just as much as Kurmanji) Correcting people makes sense in social whereabouts when the mistake causes inconsistent confusion, not when it's a quirk or a trait of a person's.
@@rojsaeed8724 sure, i'm open to being wrong. not sure what registered as "loud" in my comment, but to be clear: i'm not trying to be particularly assertive here, only to start a discussion on this by sharing my thoughts. don't have the time to fully respond to your reply rn but this is good input - thanks
Damn, Wiktionary quotes your video on the page for "pronounciation"
Got removed anonymously 6 minutes ago :(
@@scurly0792 not anymore
That was fast lol
That’s because he added that. Thankfully it was removed by moderators. “Pronounciation” is not a word
@@jordankay4754 did you even watch the video?
When I was younger (6-7), I used to pronounce pronunciation as /pəˈɹʌŋksi.eɪʃn̩/.
based
epic
lol i love metathesis
I'm Spanish, non-native of English (just a diploma of C1) and never had I realized you pronounce as [aʊ̯] nor even do I care about it. If you pronounce it like that, go on!
In fact, I didn't realize bc I'm used to a huge number of English dialects, therefore it is normal for me not to «hear» these little differences. If I can understand, there's no problem whatsoever
All English speakers pronounce “pronounce” with /aʊ/. The issue is specifically with the word “pronunciation.”
*confusion and panic attacks in L2 English speaker*
Please don’t listen to this creator. He is incorrect; “pronounciation” is not a word
@@jordankay4754Most words were not words. Crazy how we make them up, and how they show up in our speech afterwards!
You'll find that not punctuating a sentence is also illegitimate, but here you (and I) are, doing it right now in this comment section
@@jordankay4754no language is ever incorrect. if it is illegal, call it a different language that you’re speaking that has one word changed. language cannot be wrong because we don’t know what language even is
@@jordankay4754 please explain why they are incorect
On the topic of ideolects, I have a lisp which i personally have no desire to change. It leads to a chain shift for my alveolar and dental fricatives. The alveolars become dental (not inter-dental, also usually sibilant though they sometimes lose sibilance in fast speech), and the original dentals then front to linguo-labial. Part of why I love this is that it feels incredibly unique since linguo-labials are so rare cross-linguistically.
You should look at a language called Korku. It is the western most austroasiatic language. It's super cool!
I generally think just how it’s used matters most. But sometimes you have people who are attempting to speak “proper” English, maybe it’s not their first language and they’re learning, or maybe they are working class and are trying to mimic a middle class accent to help them get a job in a particular field. In those cases, I would at least try to inform them of the “proper” way of pronouncing something. But if they choose to continue as they are, so be it.
Although I do remember being a teenager and having a conversation with a friend of mine from India who said, “When you cut your hairs…” and we had a big long conversation about me trying to explain to him that you are meant to say, “cut your hair” rather than “cut your hairs” and him being very confused since when you cut your hair you cut multiple hairs. I still understood him, but being a pedant, we did end up talking for maybe 20 minutes about that one particular sentence and how to say it one time when walking to school.
I've realised that English speakers pronounce the [ns] cluster as an affricate [nt͡s].
Cantser
then why isn't enunciation "enounciation" idk
because "enounce" isn't in many people's vocabulary. i wouldn't use "enounce" when talking at all, because i don't need to. how many times have you heard "converse", compared to "conversation"? or "intuit" and "emote" compared to "intuition" and "emotion"?
@@notwithouttext I personally use "converse" as a handy synonym for "speak" or "talk" a bunch. You can only repeat words so many times in a row before they get repetative. The more synonyms the better, (but not ones that you don't understand the connotations of, that can send the wrong message). That may also just be a writing thing, since the advice to not use "said" for everything is pretty hardstuck.
As to "intuit" & "emote", I have heard of the latter much more than the former; but that's probably because of internet & gaming. "Intuit" is a word that I have used as a synonym for "figure-out" or "understand". Intuition is also less common for my English usage. I think it's that I use verbs more often than nouns to describe things, (also infinitive form), which makes your specific example not quite applicable to me.
I think pronunciation came from Latin directly, like "enunciate", instead of from Old French like "pronounce". Hence the confusion 😔
I'm not sure if the distinction between prescriptivism and descriptivism is that clear. I agree with you that "pronounciation" makes much more sense and I'd happily see it become the standard spelling/pron(o)unciation (☺) of this word, but I have logical reasons for that.
At the same time, even if I found out that that 70% of English natives mixed up the words "their", "there" and "they're", I'd still be opposed to making them one word (or whatever solution could be to that problem), also for a valid reason (though I'm not native myself, so I guess that's just an opinion, not real opposition).
Pronounciation makes no sense at all, given denunciation and annunciation.
@@ardentspy I'd say to fix those 2 too, for the same reasons
Well of course turning those three words into one is different, because that would be more confusing and less specific. However, changing the spelling and pronunciation of "pronunciation" wouldn't really be changing anything, and does no damage to communication
@@rojsaeed8724 Why on earth would we? It's a pattern in English that we'd just give up because one guy mispronunces pronunciation?
@@ardentspyI'm not saying that we change right now? Words don't usually change like that anyway, they change over time. I'm saying that if it is changed in the future, it wouldn't cause as much of a confusion as the merging of the other three words mentioned before.
Great, now no word for "pronunciation" in any Romance language sounds real.
I propose we replace it with pronanciation just to make it sound less real.
@@hexyellow9873 I'm talking about the phenomenum where if you repeat a word enough times it no longer sounds real
@@angelcaru semantic satiation
I grew up thinking it was spelled pronounciation in writing, but with the controversial syllable pronounced nun, lmao
(this was also in an incredibly popular TV ad in my country around 10-15 years ago, so it's kinda imprinted in my head ig)
"Dearest creature in creätion,
Studying English pron(o)unciation...."
i will teach you in my verse, sounds like corpse, corps, horse, and worse.
(why french)
Maybe it's just me not paying much attention since the difference is small, but I've also only ever said and heard it the way you say it (from California). At least until I went into the comments section of any video where someone says it "wrong" and gets corrected, which there's plenty of because it is in fact a common pronounciation in many regions.
I personally always say proNUNciation as a non-native speaker, but the same scenario happens all the time in my native language (dialect).
In Cantonese
糾正 gau² zing³ -> dau² zing³
蟶 cing¹ -> sing³
滑稽 gwat⁷ kai¹ -> waat⁹ kai¹
etc.
We always pronounce words in a 'wrong' but common way. That's our dialect. Not even an idiolect.
"pronounciation," the act of making something or someone "pronouncy," the assignment of pronouns to something or someone that was previously lacking them.
I feel like the prescriptivism vs. descriptivism here isn't quit that simple. From a pure scientific research perspective, descriptivism is scientific and prescriptivism is bunk, but for people who use it, educators, editors, and any other communicator, language is a also a standard for communication.
From the "common standard" point of view, there is a positive value in everyone converging on the same rules and communicating with the least amounts of barriers. and there is a negative value to "any native-speaker usage of the language is correct", because there are many different ways to "regularized and simplify" language that are mutually exclusive, which practically guaranties drift.
I think that a good example for that is the "linking R": A linguist writing a paper on "actualization of R in urban areas of the UK" will treat it as an obviously natural and valid analysis of how R behave in non-rhotic English, which regularize an otherwise confusing mess of inexplicable differences in pronounciations*, but a linguist on the Chinese board of English education will be negligent if they say "every school can decide to teach the linking-R or not, both are valid", because it will make whole sentences unintelligible between people who specifically learned a language to use as a standard.
For regular people, who aren't passive observer or appointed decision makers, who just use the language, this is about "which standard should be used to communicate", which exclusively bubbles up on the most controversial cases, with the most inflammatory people, in the most rude and inconsiderate way possible.
*your right its much more natural!
Descriptivism isn't a chaos, it still produces rulesets for a language. They are just not based on hypothetical and potentially pseudo-linguistic concepts, which happens with prescriptivism. There is also less room for dialectal variation with prescriptivism, which translates to real-world issues eg. linguistic discrimination.
Descriptivism is great, but it doesn't "produce" anything: it describes how people use language.
People who talk are the ones who give language rules, but this is not a consistent system, and different people, or groups of people, will prefer different sets of rules.
Standards exist and are needed despite the fact that there is nothing special about them. Mathematics and computer science are the kings of this: there's no moral reason the number 65 represents 'A', but it is a nightmare to communicate between computers who use different numbers for 'A'.
Even if they wanted, people can't be expected to have encyclopedic knowledge of every linguistic difference in the world, so every speaking interaction has friction. Because we live in a world with differences, discrimination, and people making stuff up, that's what you get.
Prescriptivism is useful when you have a taxonomy. A square is a type of rectangle even if people stopped thinking it was because of the definition of rectangle. Cucumbers are melons so calling them vegetables would me you also have to think melons can be vegetables which is a contradiction and requires prescriptivism. Culinary vegetables don't exist. There are just categories of savory or sweet food otherwise you would have to call a sweet potato a fruit.
5:23 Actually, I believe the GA Schwa is usually lower than a true [ə], Closer to [ɐ̝], (At least that's how it is in my speach, and that of most people I know as far as I've noticed) and from what I've heard it's decently common for the STRUT vowel to be realised closer to [ɐ] than [ʌ] in dialects that do make the distinction, Such as British RP, which retains the distinction because I believe their schwa is higher, closer to a true [ə] or sometimes even [ɘ], So from a certain standpoints Americans are actually pronouncing the /ʌ/ correctly but not the /ə/.
It's hillarious how I just watched the whole video don't even understanding a point, because my native language doesn't have shwa sound as meaning one. To me, both variants sound the same.
It took me too many years to realise that "pronounce" had an O but "pronunciation" didn't. I've spent almost my entire life spelling "pronunciation" and I'm not ashamed lol. English makes no sense
‘Holp’ was a regular past tense of a fourth-class strong verb. So making it ‘helped’ was just moving it from one grammatical group to another.
Oh my god, "holp" as the past tense of help is so funny and ridiculous. I keep using it out loud in sentences and it sounds so dumb. I love it ❤
Also hell yea, I was like 22 when I realized pronunciation doesnt have 3 Os and it always struck me as weird
This channel is an academic setting, so standard language should apply. You’re also prescribing a linguistic change that hasn’t fully happened, while saying you’re advocating descriptivism. If you were being truly descriptive, you’d acknowledge that "pronunciation" is used far more than "durst" in the modern language. Also, spelling is inherently prescriptive. You’re just spelling it wrong.
Also him bringing up regional variations (as if his misspelling is just one of those) is WILD
@@jordankay4754 100%
@@jordankay4754 Yep. It's literally just a mistake and this video is a weird prescriptivist justification of it because of personal annoyance. If you use nonstandard English, own it. Don't assert that your English ought not to be (or already isn't) nonstandard. That's a fundamental misunderstanding of descriptivism.
1:46 I disagree with this statement. You can affect intelligibility without completely destroying it. If you write "your" in place of "you're," I'll initially parse the sentence incorrectly, but I'll be able to figure out what went wrong pretty quickly. It's like biking over a pothole. It's not debilitating, but it's definitely annoying.
Exactly. The "if you know what I meant, there's no problem" argument is completely false. A few layers of that, and mutual intelligibility goes out the window entirely. This video is wild. Asserting that common mistakes _aren't_ in fact nonstandard isn't descriptivism, it's _prescriptivism_ of the common mistakes, because most people don't make those mistakes and it's not a regional variation.
what do you study in uni though
when you make the visuals, do you use powerpoint or do you use a video editing software?
I'd rather say "holpen" than "holp".
I think holp is the simple past, and holpen is the past participle. (e.g. "I holp him, I have holpen him").
As a non native speaker I had no idea these two words are not spelled "similarly"
Thee argew mint taht “iph yew kan querecked mi, yew kan undur stanned mi” iz nat un icks queuece four chewzing knot two ed hear too cunvenshins taht pee pull icks pecked two here anned reed. Evvry thyme yew cee uh sbelling oar here uh prin nun see aishin yew doughnt wreck ag nighs, yore brane haz too canvurt itt two dhe won yew no anned yews.
Come you nick acean iz uh to weigh streat, sew wee knead sum sourt uv agreamint aun hau wurds luk anned sauned.
Real
i think you meant to parenthesize the other vowel in the description?
or is the prononciation intentional?
For me I just always saw it as more of the ablaut English is so fond of. Vowels changing into other vowels happens all over English. Nature to natural, tone to tonic, analyse to analysis. My dialect just has a lot of vowels though.
People on the internet in a 'Don't Poinlessly Correct People on the Internet Over Minute Details Challenge' (IMPOSSIBLE)
letteraly an eye-opener
I mean, linguistic evolution takes time and it requires the majority of native speakers to actually feel *free* to accept that gradual change. Nobody likes when a change is forced. The society has to be educated first and understand why the change is needed, and *then* finally begin the long and drawn out linguistic evolution process.
You can say it however you want. The arguments that pronounce is "regular" (with the implication that the noun should be) or that speakers are regularising to "pronounciation" are in fact pseudolinguistic prescriptivism, probably moreso than rude comments correcting you, since the latter seem to be based more on experience than any appeal to linguistic authority.
Can you explain how saying that it can be considered regularization is prescriptivism?
@@wareya A fair criticism. I don't think the statement itself is prescriptivist. If there is data implying a shift over time towards a, for want of a better word, non-standard pronunciation, then it makes a lot of sense to try to describe why that change has occurred. But in this case, there isn't data and we don't know whether a change in usage is occurring, so applying linguistics to describe it feels insincere. Whether that makes it prescriptivist is another thing, but I think the claim that regularisation makes communication "more efficient" applies a value judgement. I am not familiar with any literature which supports this.
@@jockcox I don't remember the exact wording from the video (I watched it a day ago), but I'm not sure it implies a troublesome value judgment either way.
I would believe someone saying that increased efficiency can cause regularization. Phonetic changes are often influenced by a want for phonetic efficiency, and people tend to forget obscure alternative verb forms. This can cause regularization, even if we only assume that regularization only happens incidentally. I don't see room for value judgments in this version.
I would not believe someone telling me that regularization is necessarily more efficient. For example, in Japanese, there are a few irregular slang word forms for a few specific words that come from reinterpreting nouns as verbs, like daijoubu (noun) -> daijoubanai (interpret as bu-rank verb, add negative form). Re-regularizing such word forms would make them less phonetically efficient (daijoubu janai). This example is slang, but I think it's still a valid example. I can imagine value judgments in this version if someone is praising efficiency, but they wouldn't pop out at me as prescriptive in the prescriptivists-vs-descriptivists sense.
if prescriptivism has no haters then I'm no longer on this earth
Just because you're a native speaker doesn't that mean you pronounce things correctly. A lot of people say "nucular", but that is 100% categorically wrong, it is nuclear.
It's also wrong to say nostril and thirteen when you mean nose hole and three and ten.
Is karaoke pronounced incorrectly too?
Indeed, descriptivism argues that metathesis that occurs in words such as nucular (nuclear), comfterble (comfortable) or interduce (introduce) is part of the normal evolution of a language, and not incorrect per se. After all, many common "regular" words were metathesized in the past (an example on top my head is horse which used to be hros)
nucular is wrong because it doesn't match with the spelling? do you say "iron" with the r before the o, or "hors d'oeuvres" with the v before the r?
and anyway, one could argue that nucular is a different word from nuclear, and is actually nuke + -ular, just like tubular or valvular. this also fits with how people use it: some only use nucular for "nucular weapons" and the like
Another word that irks me in the same way: _camaraderie._ Merriam-Webster defines it as "a spirit of friendly good-fellowship". The definition and pron'nciation (there I omitted the disputed letters, now everyone is mad) shows that it is some form of the word _comrade,_ defined as "an intimate friend or associate", but the spelling is so very different. I'd heard the word in spoken form before I ever read it so I though it was spelled _comraderie._
But crucially, you didn’t use your UA-cam platform to trick your audience into thinking that’s how it’s spelled, all so that you don’t have to admit you were wrong.
@@jordankay4754 you do know that "how it's spelled" is literally about how people spell it, and so if someone spells it a certain way that's "how it's spelled", even if it might not be standard?
@@notwithouttext It takes a lot more than that
@@jordankay4754 yes but that's what the phrase literally means. maybe it isn't "how it's standardly spelled" or "how it's supposed to be spelled" but it is one way that it's spelled, by some people.
@@notwithouttext Do you believe misspellings exist? Is “flowner” a misspelling of “flower” because that’s how I spell it?
welp, it cant be holp
I never noticed that I say both pronounciation and pronunciation in different cases
Pronunciation is for being possessed, example: Your pronunciation of Spanish words are great!
Pronounciation is for stand alone descriptors, example: The pronounciation of “pronunciation” is simply stupid to StealthySceptile
I wonder if this is the same for you, as we are from very similar regions
Pronounciation is not a word.
@@jordankay4754 I was saying that is how I use it in my dialect of English, I don’t care if it isn’t in the dictionary
@@kyogre8192leave him alone, that guy is shitting his pants while commenting 😭😭
Is it just me who always forgets how to write this word when writing it? I swear I always write it with two n, as in pronnounciation.. don't ask me why but if there is any correllation please let me know cuz I'm kinda intrigued (ps. I'm not natively English, I'm Greek and fluent in English but gosh hate it's spelling)
By the way- I pronnounce the word it exactly like that too, with a mixed american accent (slightly more british-afied)
Just you
Now me, a German who learned mostly the Southern and General American English, spelling it "pronounciation" while pronouncing it "pronunciation" with a strut vowel
sOUthern
*watched the first three seconds
"sorry for your loss"
edit: as an ESL I always thought the "pronunciation" pronounciation was incorrect lol
It's entirely wrong. I doubt many people use that pronunciation.
It is incorrect
@@ardentspy native American English speaker here - I have only ever heard people say "pronunciation", never "pronounciation", outside of vids like this.
it is _nonstandard,_ which you might consider close to "incorrect", but it is still common for some people. almost everyone has some nonstandard or dialectal usage of english. one dialectal pronunciation i have is "ash-fault" for asphalt, and two nonstandard pronunciations i have are "repartay" for repartee and "cat-eye-on" for cation.
@@notwithouttext is there ever a case for something to be considered a mistake then? How does learning a language (_any_ language) work if the mere concept of flagging errors is taboo?
you know, it's just that.. the red mist tends to descend whenever we are confronted with ignorami
Don't worry LingoLizard one day everyone will be saying pokvpoijvdspiuwwfrhiuvwbouyihu and it will appear in dictionaries! :D
I typically use "pronunciation" rather than "pronounciation" personally, not because that's what I was told to say, but rather just that's the form that I happen to use. I feel I use it now because pronunciation feels more like a vowel reduced form of pronounciation imo. I live in Arizona so it's not like it's because I'm Brittish or something, my guess is I just heard "pronunciation" first, rather than "pronounciation" and it stuck.
How about "pronouncation" without the i before the ation? I know it's not common in any particular dialect but I like saying it and it feels right to me. Maybe that's just my idiolect.
Ca would sound as kay tho... I think C sounds like S only before e, i, y. If there's an exception to that in English then I give up on this f*** language 😂
I'm not sure what answer you're looking for since it was already answered in the video, but the spelling itself would render the letter 'c' to be pronounced as /k/.
@@rojsaeed8724 There are plenty of exceptions to this.
@@toa12th4 can you give some examples?
Maybe I shouldn't speak for him, but why did you reverse the order of Kwon Junhyuk's name at the end? It sounded like you were going for an accurate Korean pronunciation, but then switched his name into Western order.
Maybe, just maybe, that's how the username was originally written hmmmmmmm
@@KabalFromMK9 Could be, but that still doesn't answer the question of why one would write the names and say the names in opposite orders--either way, you'd expect consistency.
Oh wow, its so cool to know that you grew up in the same environment as I did! I also grew up in a northern Texas suburb, we have essentially the same (or at least very similar) dialect. I honestly never knew that saying 'pro-NUN-ciation' was considered "the correct way", I've always said pro-NOUN-ciation as you do. This would be like scolding someone over the "correct way" to say Pecan. I think pedantic is the right word to describe linguistic prescriptivists, lol
I legit always thought it was written as pronounciation but pronounced “pronunciation”.
And that’s always how am gonna operate. But if someone says “proNOUNciation” I won’t judge em bruh
Durst sounds cool
Man kine is such a nice word
ikr
As a non native, I pronounce it as
Pronãciation
I'm glad you get comments from people correcting you because you deserve it uWu
Huh, never thought about pronounce as pronoun-ce…so when I was younger and jokingly said “verbulate” meaning “the action of a verb” I wasent far off from real words
ACAB includes the language cop within ourselves ✌️
6:02 I don't even see why it would be harmful here
Damn...I always pronounce it like "pronounce"
I'm not a native speaker though...
My favorite example of words keeping consistency is how I pronounce “kilometer” (KEY-low-mee-ter) and “chlorine” (klor-eye-n (the eye and the N are together one syllable).
please please please learn ipa
@@clordtrundle Nobody can even read that.
@@darkblade4340 say that to ONE linguistic youtubers
Am I wrong for pronouncing "chlorine" as kloreen then?
@@darkblade4340 I'd recommend at least capitalizing whichever syllable you're stressing, e.g. "kə-LAW-mə-tər" and "klor-EEN."
Better not ask Chat GPT what it thinks about all this. Oh, alright then:
is "pronounciation" a regional variant of the word "pronunciation" or is it just a misspelling?
ChatGPT
"Pronounciation" is a common misspelling of the correct word "pronunciation." The correct term, "pronunciation," is derived from the verb "pronounce." Here’s a bit more detail:
Correct Term:
Pronunciation: The way in which a word is spoken. It comes from the Latin word "pronuntiatio," and the correct spelling maintains this etymological origin.
Common Misspelling:
Pronounciation: This is often mistakenly used because it seems to follow the pattern of the verb "pronounce," which includes the "nounce" sequence. However, it is not a recognized variant in any regional dialect and is considered incorrect.
Usage:
The proper term "pronunciation" is used universally in English-speaking regions, and any deviation such as "pronounciation" should be corrected to maintain proper spelling standards.
In summary, "pronounciation" is not a regional variant but rather a misspelling of the word "pronunciation."
Cannot believe the degree to which this creator is showing his entire ass in this video. Come! On!
I've heard both used often enough that I feel comfortable considering both valid forms of the word, albeit with "pronunciation" being the more formal standard form as opposed to a nonstandard dialectal form. Interestingly, I hear it more spoken than I see it written, likely due to people adhering to spellcheck. Because of that, I imagine it will become more accepted over time, but the spelling may change slower than the pronounciation.
Cot caught merger?
XIDNAF REFERENCE?!
Linguistics reference?!!?!
"kine(e)" Ahnung hehe 😂😂
1:30 I'd say "pedantic" sums the words you've used up nicely.
Also, I only learned that "pronounciation" was nonstandard when I cracked open my dictionary's pronunciation guide and wondered why "pronunciation" was missing an O. So even native English teachers don't do a "good job" of teaching the difference, because it's very easy to think that it's actually _supposed_ to be "pronounciation" until you find a counterexample.
So if a non-native says "pronounciation" it is a mistake, but if a native does that then it is an idiolect? Seems kinda unfair.
They’re both mistakes.
@@jordankay4754 it is.
0:04 I'm from the Great Lakes region but most people I know pronounce these all roughly the same way you do (though I usually write the diphthongs as [e̞ɪ ɤ̞ʊ o̞ɪ], as they all feel to me like true mid vowels) - while I have heard [eɪ oʊ ɔɪ] from older speakers, I don't think they're necessarily the "canon" pronunciations of GA, just because the traditional IPA phonemes use those symbols.
GA is a group of related dialects, after all, and just like American English spelling isn't standardized, neither is the pronunciation. That's how I view it at least ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Also, is the weak vowel merger (the /neɪʃən/ thing) not considered to be a feature of GA? I've always seen it included; moreover, while the cot-caught merger usually isn't included, it's so common that I feel like it's always mentioned as an asterisk.
(Also I say "y'all" too, that's not common where I'm from but my idiolect can be whatever I want it to be.)
ok nah this is a whole different regional accent dialecr
I said pronounciation until I was like 18
Why do i see you everywhere i go
At least you corrected yourself, unlike this creator.
I say pronouncement. I know I'm wrong, but I like that "word" more.
bro thats literally the worst take ever...
like you could basically say that about any mispronunciation/misspelling
"it's pointless to correct me", "you can understand me anyway", "i'm a native speaker", wtf?!
okay so lets just completely disregard proper spelling as a whole?
do you also think it's pointless to correct native speakers (Americans) when they confuse they're, their and there?
obviously feel free to speak how u wish, but shooting back at ppl just pointing out the correct way to say sth is weird
I don't like how some people, who are strongly against "prescriptivism" in linguistics are trying to de facto prescribe a new allegedly superior made-up "gender neutral" form into a language that isn't quite ready for such a grammatical shift. It's especially apparent in my native language (Polish).
Yo thanks for the video! I feel like this topic, although it may seem random, occasionally pops up into my mind, so you making this video was nice. Peace out, LingoLizard!
Pronounce... Pronounciation? I don't know which way I'd actually spell it - or even which way I actually say it, and I'm surprised that I'm getting a red line under the second one.
I'm a bit of a prescriptivist on a few issues (especially the whole "possessive its has no apostrophe" thing, it's a pronoun, they don't take possessive apostrophes), but this isn't one of them.
Well, one of those is a word and the other is a misspelled version of the word.
If you don't know which way to spell it, just take a third option as use "prononce"/"prononciation". The words were originally French, so you may as well spell them as such.
@@angeldude101 Do not do this.
@@jordankay4754 English is an unregulated language. You legally cannot stop me.
I have a similar problem in my native German: Officially, the nominalisation of "reflektieren" (to reflect) is "Reflexion", not "Reflektion". However, to me the former never made sense (where did the "t" go?), so I keep using the latter one (and I see it all over the place as well)
in fact english "connection" and "reflection" used to be "connexion" and "reflexion", but they were changed to connect (no pun intended) to "connect" and "reflect", by analogy of "correct" and "correction".
As a fellow native german I absolutly agree. I actually only found out about this like half a year ago when I was writing something for university and spellchecked. My limited research resulted in it being a remainder of the adoption of the latin 'reflectere' and 'reflexion'. Seeing how common the 'wrong' 'Reflektion' is I'm just waiting for Duden to yield, so that this becomes a situation where both versions are accepted. Similar to how Albtraum and Alptraum are both correct.
The reason why such things bother me (and, I presume, many others) sometimes is not because of an inherent flaw of the pronunciation itself, rather the fact that substandard pronunciations tend to be indicative of a lack of effort in appreciating the language in its traditional form. This is in no way a position against the changes naturally taking place in speech anyway, rather against the reasons *why* they take place in some instances. You, having made up your mind about why you speak the way you speak, don't fall into this category, because the 'mistake' ceases to be one when it is intentionally and consciously nonstandard.
I agree with this. Nonstandard speech is not a mistake, if it is done with intention & reason. Typos happen all of the time, & assuming things to be typos or similar enuf words that they still make sense when you read them aloud is a great way to handle things. (Words being similar enuf is also the basis of a lot of puns, and those are the best sort of jokes.)
Default to nun but that's because I learned it through reading and not spoken
It’s spoken with “nun” too