How Do You Say It?

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Author	Bryan A. Garner
Pages	24-24

24 || ABA JOURNAL OCTOBER 2018

ONE CONSTANT IN LANGUAGE, as in life, is change.

Over time, words can ch ange in spelling, meaning and

pronunciation. This month, we’ll explore cha nges in pro-

nunciation and ne xt month in meaning.

The main goal with pronunciat ion is to stay within

the mainstrea m of one’s linguistic communit y—which,

for lawyers, normally me ans educated professionals.

Even there, you’ll ﬁ nd regional di erences in terms such

as voir dire, which is /v wah DEER/ in most parts of

the country but /vohr DIRE/ in much of the South and

Southwest. A Texas judge might well look askance at a

lawyer usi ng the out-of-state pronunc iation.

Some pronunciations are in ﬂ ux as the result of repa-

triation: a word imported centu ries ago, and

thoroughly anglicized, is sometimes treated

as if it were foreign by those unaware t hat it

was long ago made English. Hence homage,

pronounced /HAH-mij/ for centuries, is now

often heard being pronounced /oh-MAHZ H/

by those who think they ’re using a French

word. Similarly, people forget the English

word ambience /AM-bee-uhnts/ and instead

use the French ambiance /a hm -b ee- AH NT S/.

Doubtless worst of all are t he mistaken

attempts at foreign pronunciations: concierge /k ahn-

see-ERZH/ (think garage) and coup de gra ce /koo duh

GRAHS/ are oft en pronounced as if there were no con-

sonant sound at the end. In other words, people attempt

the foreign pronunciation but get it utterly wrong. A term

like foie gras /f wah GRAH/ can mislead A nglophones

into mispronou ncing coup de grace.

Some people couldn’t care less about such matter s (and

they’re likely to say they could ca re less). But educated

professionals are likely to c are because of adverse infer-

ences that others might draw about their la ck of care.

Although pronu nciation is among the ste adier aspects

of language, we occa sionally see major shifts. In British

English, for example, there’s a strong tendency to lose

/th/ and to make it either /f/ or /v/: go wif you (go with

you) or my muvver (my mother), you’ll often hear.

The spread of a nonstandard spe ech pattern has been

remarkable. A few years ago, Br itish educational authori-

ties announced that te achers should stop insisting their

students master the /th/ sounds: In Briti sh English, /f/

and /v/ in place of /th/ should not be “fwarte d.”

In all typ es of English, there has always been a group

of words with sundr y pronunciations—not all of which

are considered equally goo d for standard spoken English.

True, you might well decide to depart from a

standard pronunciation to ﬁ t in with your own

linguistic commun ity just to avoid coming

across as booki sh, pedantic or supercilious. But

it’s always best to depart f rom a norm not inad-

vertently but knowledgeably. The question is

whether you ca n identify the tra ditional norm.

In the quiz that follows, choose the tr adition-

ally standar d pronunciation, by which I mean

the pronunciation overwhelmingly favore d by

American ma nuals printed in the late 19th cen-

tury through t he 20th. (Yes, there were dozens of books

on pronunciation published in the days when a lot of peo-

ple cared about such things.) Granted, the se words have

been undergoing some degree of shift , and you’ll occa-

sionally hea r them pronounced di erently. Your mission

is to try to identif y the traditional forms—even if perhaps

only the stodgiest spe aker would use every one of them.

For the most accurate result s, try saying the word ﬁ rst

and then choos e the pronunciation that mat ches your

own. In the pronunciations, /uh/ simply represents a

schwa: Don’t overpr onounce it. Q

PHOTO BY WINN FUQUA PHOTOGRAPHY

“SOME PEOPLE

COULDN’T CARE

LESS ABOUT SUCH

MATTERS (AND

THEY’RE LIKELY TO

SAY THEY

COULD

CARE LESS).”

—BRYAN GARNER

Bryan