There Is No Noun in Pronunciation

First, the word query. The noun query means a question or inquiry; the verb to query means to ask questions about, especially to resolve a doubt or obtain authoritative information. The noun and verb are now so often mispronounced KWAIR-ee (rhymes with hairy) that this variant has made its way into a few current dictionaries. Until quite recently, however, dictionaries gave only one pronunciation, which I recommend as preferable: KWEER-ee (rhymes with leery).

Now let’s look at consul and consulate. A consul (KAHN-sul) is a diplomat, a person appointed by a government to live in a foreign city and serve his country’s citizens and business interests there. Consulate (KAHN-suh-lit) refers either to the office or to the residence of a consul. These words are often mispronounced like counsel and counselate, as if the first syllable were coun- instead of con-. There is no counsel in consul and consulate, and these words have nothing to do with counseling. So the next time you journey abroad and need help from a representative of your government, go to the consulate and ask to see the consul.

When you want to borrow a book, do you go to the public library or the public liberry? Let’s hope you go to the public library (LY-brer-ee), because there is no such thing as a liberry. The beastly mispronunciation liberry is “heard from less educated and very young speakers, and is often criticized,” says the second, unabridged edition of The Random House Dictionary of the English Language (1987). Unless for some reason you wish to appear less educated or very young, remember there is no berry in library.

Now for something irrevelent about jewlery that may help you avoid several grievious errors of pronounciation. That egregious sentence contained no fewer than four grievous errors of pronunciation, all of which are signs of a sloppy speaker.

First, we have the problem of transposed letters and sounds. In the word irrelevant, be careful not to transpose the l and v and say irrevelent. I don’t think I’m being irreverent by averring that the proper pronunciation is i-REL-uh-vint. In the word jewelry, don’t transpose the l and the e in the second syllable and say JOO-luhree. There is no joola in JOO-wuul-ree. To get it right, just say the word jewel and then add -ree. By the way, in linguistics this transposition of letters and sounds in a word is called metathesis (muh-TATH-uh-sis).

Next, we have grievous, which is often mispronounced GREEvee-us, even by educated speakers. These speakers are also prone to misspell the word by interpolating a spurious i: grievious. The correct spelling has one i, grievous, and the proper pronunciation has two, not three, syllables: GREE-vus.

Now let’s talk about pronounciation, which of course should be pronunciation. I can’t tell you how many times I have been a guest on a radio talk show, fielding questions on language, when someone calls in to complain about some horrendous mispro-noun-ciation and rail about how people mispro-noun-ciate words. Alas, modern medicine has yet to discover a cure for Boeotian ears, which you may recall is an eponymous expression for “ears unable to appreciate poetry or music.” There is no noun in pronunciation, but there is a nun: pro-nun-ciation. And there are also no such verbs as pronounciate or mispronounciate. Either you pronounce a word properly, or you mispronounce it. When you pronounce words properly, you have good pronunciation; and when you mispronounce them, you are guilty of mispronunciation.

If you want to hear rampant mispronunciation, all you have to do is turn on your radio or television. Lately I have heard numerous broadcasters mispronounce the words siege, refuge, and refugee as SEEZH, REF-yoozh, and REF-yoo-ZHEE. Gee whiz! The problem here is the letter g, which should sound like the g in cage and regiment, not like the g in collage. Be careful to say SEEJ, REFyooj, and REF-yoo-JEE. (Also acceptable is REF-yoo-JEE, with the primary stress on the first syllable.)

How do you pronounce succinct? What about flaccid? If you say suh-SINGKT (as if the word were spelled sussinct) and FLAS-id (as if the word were spelled flassid) go directly to the liberry, do not pass “GO,” and learn how not to mispronounciate your words. If you said suhk-SINGKT and FLAK-sid, you have my eternal gratitude and respect. (Did you catch that hyperbolic use of eternal?)

Now, why are suhk-SINGKT and FLAK-sid correct, you ask? Because the rule for pronouncing double-c in a word says that the first c sounds k, the second like s; together they create the sound of k-s, as in the name Jackson. Thus for success we say suhk-SES, not suh-SES; for accident we say AK-si-dent, not AS-si-dent; for accept we say ak-SEPT, not uh-SEPT; for eccentric we say ek-SENtrik, not e-SEN-trik; and for accede, word 23 of Level 7, we say akSEED, not uh-SEED. The same rule holds for succinct (suhkSINGKT), brief, concise, and flaccid (FLAK-sid), soft and limp. And that goes for the word accessory, too—don’t let me catch you saying uh-SES-uh-ree. It’s ak-SES-uh-ree.

Considering that I’ve been laying down the law about saying it right, I shall conclude my expatiation on pronunciation by covering three words pertaining to the legal profession: juror, vendor, and defendant. In the courtroom, pompous lawyers and judges often pronounce these as JOOR-or, VEN-dor (or ven-DOR), and dee-FEN-dant (note the final syllable in each case), and many members of the laity are now imitating them. There ought to be a law against using these pretentious variants. What’s wrong with the common, everyday pronunciations JOOR-ur, VEN-dur, and diFEN-dint? They have been heard for centuries and are intelligible to everyone. There is no need to overpronounce these words.

Remember, I’m giving you all this good advice because proper pronunciation is my forte—a word that is traditionally and properly pronounced in one syllable, FORT, just like fort. Yup, that’s right. The popular two-syllable pronunciation FOR-tay—or worse, for-TAY—is erroneous.

The musical term forte comes from Italian and is pronounced in two syllables with the accent on the first syllable, like the Italian: FOR-tay. Forte is a musical direction meaning “loud,” as opposed to piano, which means “soft.” The English forte, one’s strong point, expertise, comes from the French fort, strong. This French fort entered English in the seventeenth century, and in the eighteenth century a final e was tacked on to the word by mistake. That spurious final e made the word identical to the Italian musical direction forte; hence, the eventual confusion in pronunciation. But most modern authorities continue to stand by the traditional distinction: FOR-tay for forte the musical term, FORT for forte meaning one’s expertise or strong point.

If you’d like to make cultivated pronunciation your forte and learn about more beastly mispronunciations you should avoid, I recommend my tome on the subject, The Big Book of Beastly Mispronunciations (Houghton Mifflin, 1999), which you should be able to find at your local bookstore or public library.

And with that flaccid bit of self-promotion, we come to the end of Level 8.

By now your head should be surfeited with importunate admonitions on usage and pronunciation and overflowing with brave new words. I also hope that your dictionary is beginning to show some signs of wear and tear. Before moving on to the most difficult words in the program, you may want to spend some extra time reviewing, just to make certain you have assimilated all the keywords and additional information and are well prepared for the erudite and abstruse vocabulary coming up in Levels 9 and 10.