Ar(c)ticulation

[undyingking]

Yow! I just came about an inch away from a deeply unpleasant experience, namely: walking my face right into a spider's web full of struggling winged ants.

To take me away from the thought of that, how do you pronounce the name of the area around the North Pole, and (perhaps as importantly) how do you think it should correctly be pronounced?

[Poll #1228169]

This was prompted by this interesting article in languagelog , but please fill out the poll before reading it...

Comments

[bateleur.livejournal.com]

Closest available answer given, but actually I pronounce it uck-tick (unless concentrating on not doing so).

Also, regarding other words mentioned in the article: my February is Feb-ree.

(Edit: replaced BBCode with HTML)

[floralaetifica.livejournal.com]

You don't have a radio button for me. Clearly it used to be ark-tik, but ar-tik is now so common as to have reached acceptability, in the same way that we presumbably used to pronounce the b in subtle but don't any more (Damian was just ranting about that the other day), only that change was a longer time ago and so is no longer questionable.

And now I've read the article. How interesting.

My February is Feb-you-ree, though I appreciate that ought to annoy me as much as nuke-you-lar, which makes me want to tear my hair out.

[secondhand-rick.livejournal.com]

Arctic is correnct, but I was trying to work out whether I say arktik or artik, since both seem 'normal'. Then I realised I definitely say ant-arktic, so that swung it for the pole (hah, hah, poll, pole, see what I did there?).

February is Feb_rurree.

[karohemd.livejournal.com]

I don't think I've ever heard someone pronounce it "artic".

[wimble.livejournal.com]

Arctic is correct, but I think my pronounciation varies.

Oxford-shire or Oxford-shur? (substitute for whichever county you prefer :)

[simont]

(Here via a link posted by karohemd in compilerbitch's journal.)

I would certainly say that ark-tik is correct, with the k distinctly pronounced. In practice, though, I often (particularly if in a hurry) swallow the first k until it becomes an unreleased stop, which is audibly distinct from both the fully pronounced form of /arktik/ and from /artik/ with no stop at all.

Arktick

[compilerbitch.livejournal.com]

And I should know, because I'm in the arctic right now, at the Haughton Mars Project site on Devon Island, working for NASA on the DAME (Drilling Automation for Mars Exploration) project. :-)

[karohemd.livejournal.com]

Oh, my personal pronunciation is slightly different but that's not because I don't know how to pronounce it but because my consonants are generally very soft (Ts generally become Ds, Ps Bs and many Ks become Gs) because of my regional heritage (for which even my German colleagues sometimes ridicule me).

[fractalgeek.livejournal.com]

You've got a duff +1 on the second poll question, as I read the question initially as for "articulation", not "arctic" - the former artik, the latter arctik, for how I pronounce. Sorry...

[cardinalsin.livejournal.com]

Oh my god, WTF? Why wouldn't you pronounce the first c? Am I even going to be able to understand people by the time I reach pensionable age? *worries*