Have you ever wondered why “Wednesday” is pronounced “wensday” and “comfortable” “comfterble”?

Or why Gloucester, Worcester, and Leicester (names of towns in the UK) are pronounced “gloster,” “wooster,” and “lester”?

If you haven’t thought about these aspects of the English language, your students probably have! So let’s explore how these words became pronounced the way they are.

Skipping Sounds

If you’ve ever tried a tongue-twister, you’ll know how easy it is to skip sounds. For example, “she sells seashells by the seashore” quickly turns into something like “shells shells by zzshore.”

This happens because tongue-twisters involve a series of sounds made with the same part of the mouth — in this case, the tip of the tongue. After a while, the part of the mouth that’s being used gets tired and starts mushing all of its sounds together.

This is the same principle behind the pronunciations of Gloucester, Worcester, and Leicester. (Try saying them quickly a few times and the CES’s in the middle will soon become more like S’s.)

Funnily enough, similar “sloppiness” resulted in many other words we know and use today. For example: 

• The word “coercive” used to be “coercitive.” In fact, this version of the word continues to be used in languages like French and Italian today. 
• “Humbly” used to be more commonly spelled and pronounced “humblely.” 
• Even the birthplace of the English language suffered this fate: “England” used to be “Englaland.”

You might have also noticed that the sounds being skipped tend to be unstressed syllables in the middle of the word. This is like what happens when people pronounce the words “mystery,” “memory,” and “interesting” as “mystry,” “memry,” and “intresting.”

In sum, we tend to skip sounds that meet two conditions:

1. They involve sounds made with the same part of the mouth. 
2. They are an unstressed syllable in the middle of a word.

So the next time your student asks you why English-speakers often pronounce “probably” as “probly” or “prolly,” you’ll know how to explain this!

Adding & Switching Sounds

To make our lives easier, we also add new sounds and switch them around. For example, you might have heard children pronouncing “something” like “sumpting” or “hamster” like “hampster.” 

It turns out that this sort of pronunciation led to the word “empty,” which used to not have a P in the middle. Similarly, the word “bramble” used to not have the second B, but people found it easier to say these words with extra letters, so these pronunciations became standard!

Now let’s talk about switching sounds. The words “Wednesday'' and “comfortable” are great examples.

• “Wednesday” became pronounced “Wendsday.” The N and D got switched.
• “Comfortable” became pronounced “comftrble.” The T and R got switched.

This process affected many words we know today. For example, “third” used to be “thrid” and “bird” used to be “brid.” The RI sounds reversed and became IR sounds, and these newer versions of the words became standard!

Finally, let’s consider the eternal problem: the pronunciation of “ask.” Currently, “ask” is considered the proper pronunciation while “aks” is frowned upon. However, the original word in Old English was “acsian” (pronounced like “ax-shun”) and even Chaucer, aka “the Father of English Literature,” said “ax”.

At a certain point, “ask” was adopted by speakers of the Standard English dialect, but “aks” continues to be used in many other dialects of English today.

👋 That’s it for now!

I don’t know about you, but personally, learning about these changes gave me a renewed appreciation for the overlap between “standard” and “non-standard” English. 

Did you learn anything that you’d want to share with your students? Happy learning and tutoring!