Pronunciation

Do these two words rime? (pp grease, grass, grace and knees)

(history)

Nowadays they don't rhyme anymore but they used to in Shakespeare's rimes, in the sixteenth century. The change in pronunciation is caused by the great vowel shift. This took place between the fourteenth and the seventeenth century in England. The reason behind these changes is because of migration, according to my source the history guy on Youtube. People with different accents came together in the city and the accents started mixing. Even though a lot of pronunciations have changed, the 'e' in bed and 'I' in hill were remained and are still pronounced the same as 1200 years ago.

But how do they know how these words were pronounced centuries ago? Well, experts can deduce this from poems in which certain words rhyme with each other that do not rhyme in current English. From spelling mistakes, they can also infer a lot. People used to often write down a word as it was pronounced but this was wrong. Yet this comes in handy now.

Some of these changes from the Great Vowel Shift didn't take place everywhere. In Scotland a lot words kept their old pronunciation. For example house is pronounced 'hoose' over there.

(words in different dialects)

The biggest difference between English-speaking countries is their dialect and this is related to their pronunciation. What they all have in common is that they shorten the name of their origin. For example, Australians will say they are from 'Stralia'. This is because they say the word often and they tend to shorten it. There are terms for omitting parts in a word. If you leave out the beginning of a word it is called 'aphesis', at the end 'apocope' and in the middle syncope.

In today's English, many words have already been shortened.(pp with terms) Words that used to consist of two words have become 1. daisy was once day's eye. (pp daisy) Slurvian, a term invented by John Davenport, is used to explain the tendency to compress and mangle words. In American English its Baltimore where it happens often. Where orange juice is pronounced 'arnjoos'. The reason why we do this is because we tend to speak faster than we can think so we make words shorter so we can get them out faster.

(how we speak and listen)

We speak very fast and sometimes we even can interpret a question when it's not finished yet. When we write a story we split it in words and sentences but when we speak it's like the words run together, like Bill has said it beautifully, like a watercolour left in the rain. If people listen attentively they can hear the difference between isle of view and I love you. Yet eye contact is important because we lip-read subconsciously. From this, one can see that not only pronunciation is important but also body language.

(spelling)

While reading this you might have noticed that the spelling seems the same but it's pronounced completely different. This is one of the many examples in the English language. All the twenty-six letters have a different pronunciation so there is no constancy. This makes English one of the languages that possesses the most sounds. One concludes that almost all words are pronounced differently than they are spelt.

Slot: To quote Bill Bryson 'language is more fashion than science'.

By this he means that we adapt our pronounciation to what's in and how people like it. There is no constancy so it's not science. Spelling and pronunciation don't always go together in English and because we want to speak so fast we change words.