Paul Schleifer

Orthoepy is the study of correct pronunciation, or of the received pronunciation. In English, it once meant specifically the study of Received Pronunciation, or RP, which was the proper language of the English upper classes, a pronunciation that acted as a kind of shibboleth against intrusion by the lower classes. It can also mean the “branch of linguistics which deals with pronunciation, phonology; spec. the study of the relationship between pronunciation and a system of writing or spelling” (OED).

If you go to www.etymonline.com to look up the word’s etymology, you won’t find anything. But it’s almost easy enough to break the word down into its component parts. Ortho, of course, is a Greek combination form indicating correctness or rightness or even uprightness (probably from a PIE base that also gave rise to “the same Indo-European base as Sanskrit ūrdhva erect, upraised” (OED). The –epy part comes from the stem ἐπ- of the Greek word είπεῖν “to say,” the same verb that gives rise to the word epic, a long poem which someone recites or says out loud.

In English, the word comes from post-classical Latin into English probably in the second half of the 17^th century, that period when English intellectuals were borrowing lots of words from Latin, sometimes even words that were not really Latin at all. In IPA, the word is pronounced /ɔrˈθoʊ ə pi/ or /ˈɔr θoʊˌɛp i/ (if you look carefully, you can that there are a couple of differences, most notably in stress; and honestly, I really struggle saying the second version). It may seem a bit funny, but two acceptable pronunciations for the same word is not uncommon.

Speaking of the pronunciation of words, there are a few in English that are regularly mispronounced, often enough to, well, drive one crazy. If you Google mispronounced words, you’ll find quite a few hits, but the one I looked at is called “Fun with Words” (http://www.rinkworks.com/words/mispronounced.shtml). So here are a few of the ones they list.

Espresso: while some people pronounce this word as if it begins with ex-, it actually begins with es-, so the pronunciation is /ɛˈsprɛs oʊ/.

Forte: I would say that most people would pronounce this as a two-syllable word, the correct historical pronunciation is just like fort, at least when we are talking about the English word that means a person’s strength or good quality. There is a musical term, forte, pronounced with two syllables, which is actually an Italian word, like so many musical terms (ritardando, allegro). However, more and more people are confusing the Italian musical term with the English word, and as a result of that, both pronunciations are now considered acceptable.

Lambaste: according to Fun with Words, people pronounce this word /læm ˈbæst/, with what we learned in primary grades to call a short a sound (though it is really an æ [ash, a letter dating back to the Anglo-Saxon]). But I have not heard that pronunciation; rather, I have heard it pronounced with the æ but with the stress on the first syllable instead of the second, which makes a lot more sense given the general pronunciation rules of English. But according to the website, the stress should be on the second syllable and the letter a in the second syllable should be pronounced eɪ (a long a sound).

Plenitude: according to Fun with Friends, people mispronounce this word as if it has a t sound at the end of the first syllable. And that would make sense. The word means “abundance,” “copiousness,” or “plenty.” Some people even spell the word as if it is plentitude, even as far back as 1610. But the word actually comes from the Old French plenitude, whereas plenty comes from the Old French plentee. Interestingly, both words come from the PIE root *pele– “to fill.”

One more.

Often: the mispronunciation includes a t sound, according to Fun with Words. Here is the pronunciation note from www.dictionary.com: “Often was pronounced with a t sound until the 17th century, when a pronunciation without the t came to predominate inthe speech of the educated, in both North America and Great Britain, and the earlier pronunciation fell into disfavor. Common use of a spelling pronunciation has since restored the t for many speakers.” But here’s the thing: the word often has a shorter version, oft, that means essentially the same thing. We have a number of words that, like often, have a shorter form without the –en: soft/soften; haste/hasten; list/listen (though list is now obsolete). In each of these cases, when the –en is added to the base, the t sound disappears from the pronunciation. But it is true that the spelling pronunciation has brought the t sound back for a lot of speakers. Then again, this is the (mis)pronunciation that drives me nuts.

We may pronounce some of these words differently, and such differences may be only that, and not one of us mispronouncing the word. And these words are not really all that difficult to pronounce. Except for orthoepy—now that’s a tongue twister all by itself.

 

The image is of a reprint of The Student’s Spelling-Book: Designed to Teach the Orthography and Orthoepy of the English Language, as Contained in Webster’s American Dictionary, by Jacob S. Denman, originally published in 1851. I show it to demonstrate that in at least one time and place the word orthoepy was successfully used in a sentence (of sorts). The reprint is from Forgotten Books, and you can find it on amazon.com.