A spelling pronunciation is the pronunciation of a word according to its spelling rather than its standard or traditional pronunciation. Words that are spelled with letters that were never pronounced or that were not pronounced for many generations have increasingly been pronounced as written, especially since the arrival of mandatory schooling and universal literacy.
If a word's spelling was standardized prior to sound changes that produced its traditional pronunciation, a spelling pronunciation may reflect an older pronunciation. This is often the case with compound words (e.g., waistcoat, cupboard, forehead) and for many words with silent letters (e.g. oftenoften in the American Heritage Dictionary). Sometimes silent letters do not reflect older English pronunciations, but were added to reflect a word's spelling in its language of origin (e.g. victual, rhyming with littlevictuals in the Merriam-Webster Dictionaryvictual in Oxford Dictionaries but derived from Late Latin victualia) or on the basis of erroneous etymologies (island,island in the American Heritage Dictionary scythe).
Spelling pronunciations are often prescriptively discouraged and perceived as incorrect next to the traditionally accepted, and usually more widespread, pronunciation. If a spelling pronunciation persists and becomes more common, it may eventually join the existing form as a standard variant (for example waistcoat and often), or even become the dominant pronunciation (as with forehead and falcon).
Prevalence and causes Many spelling pronunciations occur in languages with historical orthography, such as French and English, although most languages have some non-phonemic spellings..Even Finnish, where spelling is largely phonemic, has exceptions, e.g. sydämen, ruoan, onko, konepaja, osta paljon, osta enemmän (phonemic spelling would be: sydämmen, ruuan, ongko, koneppaja, ostap paljon, osta 'enemmän), and many words borrowed from other languages. This is especially true for people who are only taught to read and write and who are not taught when the spelling indicates an outdated (or etymologically incorrect) pronunciation. In other words, when many people do not clearly understand where spelling came from and what it is (a tool for recording speech, not the other way around), spelling pronunciations are common.
On the other hand, spelling pronunciations are also evidence of the reciprocal effects of spoken and written language on each other.Michael Stubbs, Language and Literacy: the Sociolinguistics of Reading and Writing. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, pp. 31-32. Many spellings represent older forms and corresponding older pronunciations. Some spellings, however, are not etymologically correct.
Speakers often privilege spelling pronunciations. Pronunciations can then arise that are similar to older pronunciations or that can even be completely new pronunciations that are suggested by the spelling but never occurred before.
English examples kiln with a fully pronounced n, instead of a silent n. Kiln was originally pronounced kil with the n silent, as documented in Webster's Dictionary of 1828. From English Words as Spoken and Written for Upper Grades by James A. Bowen 1900: "The digraph ln, n silent, occurs in kiln. A fall down the kiln can kill you." often, pronounced with . This is a reversion to the 15th-century pronunciation, but the pronunciation without is still preferred by 73% of British speakers and 78% of American speakers.Wells, J. C. (2008). Longman Pronunciation Dictionary, 3rd edn, Harlow, UK: Longman, p. 560. Older dictionaries do not list the pronunciation with although the 2nd edition of the OED does (and the first edition notes the pronunciation with the comment that it is prevalent in the south of England and often used in singing; see the Dictionary of American Regional English for contemporaneous citations that discuss the status of the competing pronunciations). The sporadic nature of such shifts is apparent upon examination of examples such as whistle, listen and soften in which the t remains usually silent. forehead once rhymed with horrid but is now pronounced with the second syllable as by 85% of American speakers and 65% of British speakers. This is a reversion to the original pronunciation.Algeo, John (2010). The Origins and Development of the English Language, 6th edn, Boston, MA: Wadsworth, p. 46. clothes was historically pronounced the same way as the verb close ("Whenas in silks my Julia goes/.../The liquefaction of her clothes"—Herrick), but many speakers now insert a , a voiced th. This is a reversion to the 15th-century pronunciation. salmon is pronounced by a minority of English speakers with , due to the letter l being re-introduced, despite being neither written nor pronounced in the original Anglo-French pronunciation. The modern British pronunciation of solder is usually , but the North American pronunciation of solder is usually with a silent . The word solder is derived from the old French souder, and the was re-introduced in the 1500s on etymological grounds with the Latin solidāre. Even though the pronunciation without the was the traditional way to pronounce it in Britain, the spelling pronunciation with the eventually became the standard there. falcon is now nearly always pronounced with , and only 3% of speakers have no .Wells, J. C. (2008). Longman Pronunciation Dictionary, 3rd ed., Harlow, UK: Longman, p. 297. The was silent in the old pronunciation: compare French and the older English spellings faucon and fawcon. That may suggest either analogical change or the reborrowing of the original Latin. alms, balm, calm, psalm, etc. are now often pronounced with in some parts of the United States. In most of the United Kingdom, the traditional pronunciation continues to prevail. comptroller is often pronounced with ; the accepted pronunciation is controller (the mp spelling is based on the mistaken idea that the word is related to comp(u)tare "count, compute," but it comes from contre-roll "file copy"). ye (actually, yͤ or Þe), the definite article, as in Ye Olde Coffee Shoppe, is often pronounced like the archaic English pronoun ye instead of as the word the, based on the misleading use of the symbol y to substitute for the archaic printer's mark Þ: the letter thorn.Algeo, John (2010). The Origins and Development of the English Language, 6th edn, Boston, MA: Wadsworth, p. 142. (On the other hand, the beginning of the pronoun ye in Middle and Early Modern English is correctly pronounced like the beginning of you.) Mackenzie, Menzies, Dalziel now include the sound in place of the original , due to the insular flat-topped g of Gaelic scripts being commonly transcribed into English as the similar-looking letter z. victuals, pronounced (rhyming with skittles), whose c (for a consonant that had been lost long before the word was borrowed from French) was re-introduced on etymological grounds, is sometimes pronounced with . The original pronunciation is reflected in, for example, the cat food brand "Tender Vittles". The pronunciation of waistcoat as waist-coat is now more common than the previous pronunciation . conduit, historically pronounced or , is now nearly always pronounced in most of the United States. covert, historically pronounced (reflecting its link with the verb cover) is now usually pronounced , by analogy to overt. medicine, historically pronounced with two syllables but now quite often with three (some speakers use two when they mean medicaments and three when they mean medical knowledge; the pronunciation with three syllables is standard in the United States). Bartholomew, formerly pronounced or , is now . Anthony (from Latin ), now (in Anglophone countries outside the UK) is typically rather than . Sir George Everest's surname is pronounced . The mountain named after him – Mount Everest – is generally pronounced .Everest, Mount – Definitions from Dictionary.com (Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2006) Interjections such as tsk tsk! or tut tut! (a pair of dental clicks), now commonly and . The words Arctic, Antarctic and Antarctica were originally pronounced without the first , but the spelling pronunciation has become very common. The first c was originally added to the spelling for etymological reasons and was then misunderstood as not being silent.See "The Fight for English" by David Crystal (p. 172, Oxford University Press) and the entry for "antarctic" in the Online Etymology Dictionary. herb, a word with origins in Old French, is generally pronounced with a silent h in the United States. The same was true of the United Kingdom until the 19th century, when it adopted a spelling pronunciation, with an audible h. Ralph, originally pronounced or in the United Kingdom, is now often pronounced . nephew was, until recent generations, predominantly pronounced in Britain, descended from Middle English nevew and originally loaned from Old French neveu, a spelling which remains unchanged into modern French. But the v was later changed to ph where the p hints at its Latin root nepot-, which can be found in more recent Latin loanwords like nepotism. Today, spelling pronunciation has shifted the word's pronunciation predominantly to .
Borrowings When English borrows words from other languages, it usually keeps the original spelling, and they are often pronounced according to English conventions:
Italian maraschino, bruschetta pronounced with rather than ; Italian pistachio (Italian spelling pistacchio) pronounced with (or with , as if it were a French word) rather than ; French hotel (French spelling hôtel, with silent h) pronounced with . German spiel and stein pronounced with rather than . Spanish armadillo, llama pronounced ; Norwegian ski pronounced with rather than . Equip (French ) pronounced with rather than . In some cases, the original sounds simply do not exist in English: French champagne pronounced rather than . North American placenames of non-English origin often preserve the spelling and are almost always anglicized using a spelling pronunciation
French: St. Louis, Missouri ⇒ ; Montpelier, Vermont ⇒ ; New Orleans, Louisiana ⇒ ; Detroit, Michigan ⇒ ; Pierre, South Dakota ⇒ ; Versailles, Kentucky ⇒ ; Des Moines, Iowa ⇒ (the s's remain silent); Terre Haute, Indiana ⇒ . Mexico and Texas (from Native American languages through Spanish) are pronounced with in English, though in Spanish they were originally pronounced with , now with . Likewise, Don Quixote used to be pronounced or in English (hence quixotic, quixotism), but by now Spanish-styled pronunciation has become common.
Opinions
Spelling pronunciations give rise to varied opinions. Often, those who retain the old pronunciation consider the spelling pronunciation to be a mark of ignorance or insecurity. Those who use a spelling pronunciation may not be aware that it is one and consider the earlier version to be slovenly since it slurs over a letter. Conversely, the users of some innovative pronunciations such as (for February) may regard another, earlier version as a pedantic spelling pronunciation.
Henry Watson Fowler (1858–1933) reported that in his day, there was a conscious movement among schoolteachers and others encouraging people to abandon anomalous traditional pronunciations and to speak as is spelled. According to major scholars of early modern English (Dobson, Wyld et al.), in the 17th century, there was already beginning an intellectual trend in England to pronounce as is spelled. That presupposes a standard spelling system, which was only beginning to form at the time. Similarly, quite a large number of corrections slowly spread from scholars to the general public in France, starting several centuries ago.Peter Rickard, A History of the French Language (1989).