Probably too late, now

[Dennis R. Preston]

A survey this semester of over 700 MSU undergrads (none had had any
linguistics) revealed the following:

TABLE OF VALUES FOR   ARCTIC
1.000 = /arktIk/ is correct and I pronounce it that way
2.000 = /artIk/ is correct and I pronounce it that way
3.000 = arktik/ is correct but I don't pronounce it that way
4.000 = /artik/ is correct but I don't pronounce it that way

FREQUENCIES
             .1.0000    2.0000    3.0000    4.0000     TOTAL
          ---------------------------------------------------
               324          231          176        34         766
          ---------------------------------------------------
TABLE OF VALUES FOR   ARCTIC
ROW PERCENTS
             .1.0000    2.0000    3.0000    4.0000     TOTAL       N
          ---------------------------------------------------
              42.30       30.16      22.98        4.44       100.00    766.00

So 65% belive /arktik/ is "correct" (and over 70% are "secure" in
their pronunciation, regardless of which form they thin is correct).

Just a little empirical crap to annoy y'all with.

dInIs

>---------------------- Information from the mail header
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>Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>Poster:       Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at YAHOO.COM>
>Subject:      Re: Probably too late, now
>-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>I grew up saying "Artic/antartic."  Then one day in grade school
>(musta been 1956 or '57) a teacher told us emphatically that only
>losers failed to pronounce the "t." (I'm paraphrasing).
>
>   So I switched. Had I known Wilson was doing the opposite, however,
>I'd have stuck to my ways.
>
>   JL
>
>Wilson Gray <hwgray at GMAIL.COM> wrote:
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>Sender: American Dialect Society
>Poster: Wilson Gray
>Subject: Probably too late, now
>-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>Some time in the early to middle 'Nineties, a brief analysis of
>English consonant clusters, IIRC, was published in Linguistic Inquiry.
>The author noted that her analysis had one major flaw: it predicted
>that "Arctic" [arktIk] would be pronounced as though spelled "Artic"
>[artIk]. When I saw this, I "jumped straight up," as we say in Los
>Angeles BE.
>
>As children in Saint Louis, we were specifically taught, in
>fourth-grade "georgaphy" - another pronunciation that the nuns labored
>to eliminate - that "Arctic" was to be pronounced as though spelled
>"Artic" [artIk] and *not* as [arktIk].. As a consequence, for the past
>sixty years or so, I've been incredibly annoyed by the
>seemingly-universal use of the spelling-pronunciation, [ar_k_tIk].
>
>I should have e-mailed the author and, quoting Stan Freberg's The
>Great Pretender, written, "That's right! That's right!"
>
>But I just never got around to it.
>
>-Wilson
>--
>All say, "How hard it is that we have to die"---a strange complaint to
>come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
>-----
>-Sam'l Clemens
>
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--
Dennis R. Preston
University Distinguished Professor
Department of English
15C Morrill Hall
Michigan State University
East Lansing, MI 48824
517-353-4736
preston at msu.edu

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The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org