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

[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.