More English Masochism

 

Dear faithful Wordlady readers! As you can see, even when I am washing my hands I am thinking of what nifty info about the language I can share with you.

So this week's topic is the plant called chamomile. Or is it camomile? And if the former, what the heck is that silent h doing in there?  You will notice there is no h in the French version.

Like so many names for herbs and other foodstuffs, this is a word we borrowed from French after the Norman Conquest. Old French camomille came from late Latin chamomilla, which came from Greek khamaimēlon (literally "earth apple" from khamai earth + mēlon apple, because of its low-growing habit and the apple-like smell of its flowers). Old French did not believe in inserting unpronounced letters just because they happened to be in the Latin word.

So, in English too, from the 1200s to the 1500s, "camomile" was spelled as it was pronounced. But, as we have seen before, starting in the 1500s English had a mania for inserting silent letters in words to represent Latin etymology. "Camomile", like "debt" and "receipt" and so many other words, was influenced by this trend, but did not completely succumb to it. 

Or not yet. Traditionally, dictionaries will tell you, the United States prefers "chamomile" while everyone else prefers "camomile". However, a survey I did this week of an international group of editors revealed that a whopping 191 opted for "chamomile" versus only 23 for "camomile".  This trend crossed geographical boundaries, and is supported by various corpus searches, which show "camomile" beating a retreat. And this, despite the fact that non-American dictionaries list "camomile" first. Shows you how little influence dictionaries have when the users of the language get the bit in their teeth.

But WHY, when we had the choice between an easier-to-spell, more intuitive variant and a harder-to-spell, less intuitive one, did we have to opt for the latter? I can only conclude that we English speakers really are masochistic when it comes to spelling.

Another question about this word is: How is it pronounced? Does the last syllable sound like "mile" or like "meal"?

Here we have a quite stark North America / Rest of the World divide. My survey revealed the following:

US: Overwhelmingly "meal"
UK, Ireland, Australia: Overwhelmingly, almost exclusively "mile"

This meant, of course, that Canadians had to do their usual thing and be split more or less down the middle, with a slight preference for "mile".

Interestingly, a couple of Texans and a smattering of others had a pronunciation not listed in dictionaries: "mill". 

This pronunciation difference may be a result of the Great Vowel Shift. Before the 1500s, "camomile" (and "mile") were pronounced like modern "meal". Then the shift happened, but perhaps it didn't affect "camomile" as quickly as it affected "mile" and so the earlier version came over to North America. I used to think "camomeel" was an affectation but I should stop being so judgemental.

For just a few of our many other silent letters in English, please see this post:
http://katherinebarber.blogspot.ca/2014/11/silent-letters-in-english-series.html

Safe as hice

Some nice hice in San Francisco.

Photo by Cosmic Timetraveler on Unsplash

Plurals seem to be the flavour of the month, with readers asking why many moose aren't meese, and this leads inevitably to the question, "If the plural of mouse is mice, why isn't the plural of house ... hice?"

"Mouse" was mus in Anglo-Saxon. Way back, when the Anglo-Saxons first arrived in England, its plural was musiz (pronounced moo-seez). Just as with "goose", the sound in the second syllable affected the first syllable (the phenomenon called "i-mutation"). Whereas gosiz became ges, musiz became mys (pronounced "meese"). With the Great Vowel Shift, this became the "mice" that we know today.

The Anglo-Saxon ancestor of "house" (hus), however, belonged to a category of noun, like the ancestor of "deer", where the form was the same in the singular and the plural. One hus, two hus. So there were no husiz to precipitate the i-mutation that would have led eventually to a plural "hice". 

Two house, two housen, two houses?
The unchanged plural "house" (one house, two house) actually survived into the 14th century, but it was ultimately defeated by two other possibilities. One was an irregular plural "housen", which still survives in some dialects.  Inevitably, though, the strength of the regular "add (e)s to make the plural" pattern in English gathered "house" to its ample bosom and "houses" was the ultimate winner.

But, just to make life difficult for ESL learners, we added a subtle pronunciation change to the plural. Whereas the "s" in "house" is pronounced with a hissing "SS" sound, without the vocal cords vibrating, that same "s" in "houses" is pronounced like a "z", with the vocal cords vibrating. (If you put your hand on your throat and hiss a "ss" followed by a "zz" you can feel the difference).

This phenomenon is caused by the fact that the consonant is between two vowels, and to utter a vowel, you HAVE to vibrate your vocal cords, so it's easier to keep vibrating them for the consonant in the middle as well.  This voicing of consonants between vowels (intervocalic consonants) has existed in English since the earliest times.

T becomes D, F becomes V, S becomes ...
We North Americans voice our intervocalic t's (e.g. "tutor" sounds like "Tudor"), and English has many words where an unvoiced "f" becomes a voiced "v" in the plural where the "e" following the "f" used to be pronounced: wife/wives, half/halves, leaf/leaves, life/lives, loaf/loaves, and so on.  With those, at least we indicate the change in sound by the spelling. But  "houses" is the only example in standard English of a plural where a voiceless intervocalic s becomes voiced. Think of words like "buses", "asses", "cases", "bases", "cabooses" (no, the plural is not "cabeese"!) and so on.

HOUZes or HOUSSes?
Being the sole example of a pronunciation phenomenon in the language is not good for phonetic job security. Inevitably the predominant regular pattern will start influencing the irregular one. And indeed, a reader from Michigan informs me that her children (in their fifties) pronounce "houses" with a voiceless ss sound, that is, "HOUSSez", although she herself says "HOUZes". I conducted a poll of my facebook friends, and of 73 who responded, only one, from Ohio, said "HOUSSez". Nonetheless, Merriam-Webster dictionaries include both pronunciations for the plural, and there is chatter on the Internet about the voiceless version (complaining about it, naturally). I cannot for the life of me understand why people get so upset about slight pronunciation differences. 

How do YOU pronounce "houses"?

For more information about mouse-related words (not to mention some titillating pictures), see this post: http://katherinebarber.blogspot.ca/2012/08/of-mice-and-men.html

For some more examples of voiced intervocalic consonants, see these posts:

Congratulations, Women's Hockey Team! (Now, how do I say that?)

Off with their heads!

P.S. If you find the English language fascinating, you might enjoy regular updates about English usage and word origins from Wordlady. Receive every new post delivered right to your inbox! If you are not already subscribed, you can either:

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12 Days of Wordlady: Geese a-laying

Six geese, possibly a-laying

It will come as a shock to some of you to know that "lay" has been used intransitively to mean "lie" since about 1300.  and for almost the first half-millennium of its use, no one objected to it. 

Like so many of our usage shibboleths, the attempt to create a  firewall between intransitive "lie, lay, lain" and transitive "lay, laid, laid" (which are ultimately of the same origin) was an artificial creation of the 18th century prescriptivists. Clearly, as with many of their prescriptions, this one is not working so well: intransitive "lay" is used very commonly, especially in speech and especially in North America. I hear more and more confusion of the past tenses of "lie" and "lay" as well, with people saying things like "I had lain it on the bed." 

Personally, although I observe the distinction because I was taught to do so, I don't think the world will come to an end if people say "She was laying on the bed", because, seriously, we know that humans don't lay eggs, and birds are not usually found on beds. This distinction is an unsustainable one. After all, we use "stand" both transitively and intransitively without endangering English-speaking civilization as we know it.

For those of you haven't harumphed off at the above display of heresy, let's look at the word "goose", which, surprisingly, manages to illustrate several important phenomena in the history of English.

In Old English, the word was gós, and back in the mists of time its plural would have been gósiz. By the phenomenon called "i-mutation", the vowel in the second syllable affected the vowel in the first syllable, so by Anglo-Saxon times, the plural had ceased to be gósiz and had become gés - our modern "geese". I-mutation is perhaps the most common cause of our irregular plurals.

Over time, the "o" in gós became lengthened, so that it was pronounced to rhyme with "dose". In the Middle Ages, they came up with the brilliant idea of representing lengthened vowel sounds by doubling the vowel letter, so we got the spelling "goose". All would have been well, but then the Great Vowel Shift came along, and every long "o" vowel sound shifted to become a long "u" sound. But we kept on spelling the word as if it was still pronounced to rhyme with dose. It's really quite crazy that we use a double letter "o" to represent a sound that has nothing to do with the sound "o".

A baby gós  was a "gosling". But while the "o" sound became longer in "gos", it got shorter in "gosling" (as was always the case when a vowel was followed by two consonants). As a result, it was not subject to the Great Vowel Shift, and we ended up with this oddity where the parent bird has one vowel and the baby a quite different one. (For another example of this, see The Fifth Day).

We're still not done with the role of "goose" in the English language. As you will recall, many English words acquired extraneous silent letters in the Renaissance to reflect their etymology. "Goose" narrowly missed this fate, as William Caxton tried to rewrite it as "ghoose" (as he succeeded in changing "gost" to "ghost").

OK, that's quite enough for "goose". The question why a male goose is called a gander will have to wait for another day.

For a different "lay", see this post. 
For why the plural of "moose" is not "meese", see this post.

For why we don't say "fiveth", "fiveteen", and "fivety", click here: 
http://katherinebarber.blogspot.ca/2014/12/12-days-of-wordlady-fifth-day.html  

For why it was OK to call the Virgin Mary a "bird", click here: 
http://katherinebarber.blogspot.ca/2014/12/12-days-of-wordlady-calling-birds.html

For what French hens have to do with syphilis, click here: 
http://katherinebarber.blogspot.ca/2014/12/12-days-of-wordlady-french-hens.html

For turtle-doves, click here: http://katherinebarber.blogspot.ca/2014/12/12-days-of-wordlady-turtle-doves.html

For what partridges have to do with farting, click here:
http://katherinebarber.blogspot.ca/2013/12/12-days-of-wordlady-partridge.html

P.S. If you find the English language fascinating, you might enjoy regular updates about English usage and word origins from Wordlady. Receive every new post delivered right to your inbox! You can either:

use the subscribe window at the top of this page

(if you are reading this on a mobile device): send me an email at wordlady.barber@gmail.com

Privacy policy: we will not sell, rent, or give your name or address to anyone. You can unsubscribe at any point.

Follow me on twitter: @thewordlady

 

12 Days of Wordlady: The Fifth Day

Five golden rings

Well, I have to tell you, "golden" and "ring" are pretty boring words, having meant the same things since, well, forever.

But "fifth", now THERE'S an interesting story.

The fift day of Christmas

If I said, "On the fift day of Christmas", you'd probably think, "Don't you know how to speak proper, Katherine? You sound like a gangster!" Even worse, can you imagine if I referred to that famous history play of Shakespeare's as "Henry the Fift"?

And yet....  

The first edition of Shakespeare's Henry V

 


















So, what gives?

"Fift" was indeed the original ordinal form of the number "five". The -th ending started to appear only in the 13th century, by analogy with "fourth" (which had always had a -th ending). But "fift" survived well into the 17th century, and in some dialects much longer.

The fith day of Christmas

A more recent development in the pronunciation of this word is the dropping of the second "f", so that it sounds like "fith". This naturally causes much gnashing of teeth in some quarters. But it is here to stay, the result of the phonetic difficulty of saying "f" followed by "th".

The fiveth day of Christmas
 
Another obvious question is: if the number is "five", why aren't its derivatives "fiveth", "fiveteen" and "fivety"?

First, let's look at the difference in the vowels. This is the result of the dastardly Great Vowel Shift, which messed with many English words between about 1400 and 1700. 

Back in Old English, all these words were much more closely related: fif, fift, fiftene, fiftig.  In all cases the first syllable would have originally sounded like "feef".  In the derivatives fift, fiftene, and fiftig, however, because the vowel was followed by two consonants, fif gradually shortened to sound like "fif".  Short vowels were not affected by the Great Vowel Shift, so these are still pronounced today as they were in the Middle Ages. Long stressed vowels, such as the long "ee" sound that still survived in "fif", however, moved to a different place in our English mouths, in this case to the diphthong we call a "long i".

The fifeth day of Christmas

And why is it "five" rather than "fife"? In Old English, fif  had various endings depending on the role it was playing in a sentence: fífe, fífa, fífum. Because there is a very old tendency in English to voice (i.e. to make the vocal cords vibrate when saying) consonants between two vowels, the second "f" became a "v", and voila, fif became "five".

Now you are no doubt wondering about "fife", the small flute. This came into the English language much later, in the 1500s, possibly from German pfeife, which already had what we would call a "long i", and which turned up too late for its final "f" to become voiced into a "v". 

For why it was OK to call the Virgin Mary a "bird", click here: 
http://katherinebarber.blogspot.ca/2014/12/12-days-of-wordlady-calling-birds.html

For what French hens have to do with syphilis, click here: 
http://katherinebarber.blogspot.ca/2014/12/12-days-of-wordlady-french-hens.html

For turtle-doves, click here: http://katherinebarber.blogspot.ca/2014/12/12-days-of-wordlady-turtle-doves.html

For what partridges have to do with farting, click here:
http://katherinebarber.blogspot.ca/2013/12/12-days-of-wordlady-partridge.html

P.S. If you find the English language fascinating, you might enjoy regular updates about English usage and word origins from Wordlady. Receive every new post delivered right to your inbox! You can either:

use the subscribe window at the top of this page

(if you are reading this on a mobile device): send me an email at wordlady.barber@gmail.com


Want to learn more fun facts about the language like this? I'm offering my Rollicking Story of the English Language course again in the New Year! You can sign up for the whole 8-week course or just drop in for the lecture(s) of your choice (so long as you book in advance). More info here:
http://katherinebarber.blogspot.ca/2017/12/rollicking-story-of-english-course.html

Privacy policy: we will not sell, rent, or give your name or address to anyone. You can unsubscribe at any point.

Follow me on twitter: @thewordlady