Spelling pronunciation

From Citizendium
Revision as of 13:34, 25 October 2007 by imported>Hayford Peirce (made it clear that the first two examples are mispronunciations)
Jump to navigation Jump to search

Spelling pronunciation occurs in English when people display their literacy by using a pronunciation that more closely reflects the spelling, whether it is correct or not to do so. It is an ongoing phenomenon and can be put down to the increase in literacy over the last half century. Two common examples are mispronouncing the l in "salmon' and the f in "often". Two counter-examples would be correctly pronouncing "February" and "library", words that frequently are pronounced without the first r in each word.