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)

[undyingking.livejournal.com]

Hmm, uck-tick is quite interesting. I'm sure I knew someone else who said that, but I can't think who.

[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.

[mr-malk.livejournal.com]

Acceptability for whom? I must admit, I wasn't even aware that the pronunciation of arctic was up for debate until I read this. I don't know if "ar-tik" started as a regional dialect (which is fair enough) or just sloppiness (which is not), but I (as a proud and unreconstructed linguistic pedant) have no truck with it.

(Artic... truck... no? Oh never mind)!

Oddly, I had a similar incident with a primary school teacher about the pronunciation of February as the anecdote in the article. I used to say Feb-yooery, but was so stung by her criticism that I mended my ways immediately and for good.

Mind you, where I grew up, Saturday was routinely pronounced "Sat-duh" (and even the "t" was only a glottal stop), so in some ways it's a wonder I can speak English at all.

[floralaetifica.livejournal.com]

My word - you're not an East Anglian, are you? We also had Sa'duh, or in fact more commonly Sa'dee.

[mr-malk.livejournal.com]

Nope. Appen ah were born in Cheshire, an' brung up in Yorkshire. Whitby to be precise.
I never had a trace of Yorkshire accent till I left though, and then got all patriotic about it and developed one. (Not that they speak with a proper Yorkshire accent in Whitby; being a port town, it very much has its own accent with traces of everything between Yorkshire and Scotland.

[undyingking.livejournal.com]

I say Feb-you-ree too, always have. And Wensday. No amount of telling-off by primary-school teachers worked.

[bateleur.livejournal.com]

And Wensday.

Wait... you mean that's not correct?!

Surely it can't be Wed-nez-day?

[undyingking.livejournal.com]

I was told to say Wed'ns-day.

[thecesspit.livejournal.com]

It's "Wensday", as sung by Sheffield Wednesday supporters all over the world.

[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.

[undyingking.livejournal.com]

Ah, now I might occasionally say ant-artik, but never artik.

[secondhand-rick.livejournal.com]

Well. Er. There you go then.

[karohemd.livejournal.com]

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

[triskellian]

Me neither. In fact, at a quick glance, I assumed undyingking was going to be talking about lorries ;-)

[undyingking.livejournal.com]

I'll have no truck with that suggestion!

[undyingking.livejournal.com]

Nor me. Interesting that so many in the US survey used that.

One word

[karohemd.livejournal.com]

aluminum

Re: One word

[mr-malk.livejournal.com]

I have heard (from an unsubstantiated source I admit, but he seemed quite convinced) that aluminum was the original (English) coinage of that word, and that it was changed to aluminium only later, to fit the pattern of other elements such as chromium, curium, thulium, thalium, and so on (although platinum remains unaltered I can't help but observe). Our colonial cousins apparently retained the original spelling. If I were a more generous person, I'd assume it was because of a lofty sense of linguistic purity and piety, but I'm not, so I'm going to assume that it was either laziness or because additional letters in words give them a migraine. ;-)

Re: One word

[karohemd.livejournal.com]

Heh.
Now that you mention it, I've read this, too and I think applies to a few other words as well. Just another example for the evolution of languages in different environments.

[karohemd.livejournal.com]

I think I'll ask compilerbitch who not only has been living in the US for quite a few years but happens to be in the Arctic as we speak. Do you mind if I point her at this post?

[undyingking.livejournal.com]

Please do, that'd be great. So far, we only have one American response (which is the same as all the European / Australian ones ;-)

[karohemd.livejournal.com]

Done.

[wimble.livejournal.com]

Arctic is correct, but I think my pronounciation varies.

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

[undyingking.livejournal.com]

-shur for me. But being from Essex, all vowels default to schwas where possible.

[secondhand-rick.livejournal.com]

What, like Cornwall?

[mr-malk.livejournal.com]

-shur, unless I'm putting on a posh accent.
I think the pronunciation of the vowel sound in that sort of case is largely dependent on the inflection, and I can't think of a shire county that puts stress on the last syllable, with the possible exception of Kirkcudbrightshire in Scotland, but I don't think that legally exists anymore.

[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.

[undyingking.livejournal.com]

Does the final k become an unreleased stop too, or is that pronounced? (Or does it depend on what follows?)

[simont]

I think it depends on what follows.

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. :-)

Re: Arktick

[undyingking.livejournal.com]

wow! -- excellent, thanks for dropping by, and hope it's going well.

[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*

[undyingking.livejournal.com]

That'll be pe(c)nsionable age by then.