random language factoid

[deird1]

Reading kids books has made me notice something about US English that otherwise wouldn’t have occurred to me.

Namely: you guys pronounce “squirrel” and “toward” as though they have one syllable, not two.

(The rhymes in kids books have a very weird scansion if I read them in my accent.)

Comments

[lyr]

Not universally - it differs regionally. In my region, we say "squirrel" with sort of one and a half syllables, but "toward" is definitely with two.

It's regional

[dialecticdreamer]

Also, the scansion in the majority of kids' books I tried with my kids were NOT very good. They had a LOT of 'almost works,' which really bothered the kid who had a great ear for poetry, meter, and music.

I pronounce squir-rel, two syllables, but it's spoken as quickly as 'girl,' and uses the schwa-plus-R as the dominant vowel sound. I pronounce 'toward' as though it is written tWaard, with the a of 'father.' That's ABSOLUTELY regional; I'm from North Carolina in the US, and after decades in California, THAT word hasn't changed, though I've smoothed out ninety percent of my original accent.

[vass]

I hadn't noticed "toward" before, but yeah, "squirrel" is always a surprise.

I listen to some US podcasts, and food words throw me a lot:
- pronouncing "herbs" without the H like it's a French word (which is presumably where they got it, but they don't say the vowel the French way.)
- pronouncing "almonds" as "all monds", not "ah monds"
- pronouncing "pecan" with the accent on the second syllable, "pe CAHN"

[conuly]

pronouncing "herbs" without the H like it's a French word (which is presumably where they got it, but they don't say the vowel the French way.)

That is the original English pronunciation of the word. It was pronounced "erb" since Chaucer's time, when we first brought it into the English language. We even spelled it that way until Shakespeare's time. We "got it" from the original colonists, who carried that pronunciation with them over the Atlantic. You guys didn't start using an audible h in that word until the 19th century - or, in keeping with my theme, Jane Austen's time.

I don't know how the French pronounced the word back in the 1300s, but at any rate, 700 years is more than enough time for the pronunciation of the vowel to have assimilated to English norms, even without taking the Great Vowel Shift into account.

I don't mind that Brits say it in a funny spelling pronunciation, but I really do mind that you all phrase it so judgmentally when English speakers have been saying it without the h since long before the New World was even discovered. It's not even the only word in English - in all parts of the Anglosphere! - to have a silent h.

[vass]

1. I'm not a Brit. But go ahead and assume that there are only two Anglophone countries in the world.
2. I wasn't judging you. All I said was that sometimes it throws me, not that it's bad or wrong. I assumed America got this from France because I know there's a history there where you get some spellings and other cultural artifacts from France, and I think that's interesting. Languages change, it happens.
3. I am not collectively and severally every other person who has judged you and will not answer for them.
4. Do you know how many times Americans have judged, mocked, marked as "wrong" or otherwise reacted negatively to people with my accent, spelling, slang, etc?
5. THREE edits? Really?
6. Why are seppos the most sensitive people on the goddamn planet?
7. Fuck off.

[tielan]

Namely: you guys pronounce “squirrel” and “toward” as though they have one syllable, not two.

*tries to do that in her head*

*breaks down a bit*

Then again, looking at our own country's use of language, I guess we can't throw, uh, syllables...

[deird1]

Oddly, I'd heard it before and didn't realise I had.

In Buffy, Spike is talking about "squirls" - and I didn't understand for YEARS that he's talking in a quasi-British accent but still doing the American one-syllable thing. I just thought he had some weird abbreviation for squirrel.

[tielan]

...now I want to know how they pronounce "Quirrell" as in "Professor Quirrell"...