diphthong

[Erin McKean]

Since I'm not the best judge of a pronunciation I went and (gasp) looked it
up. M-W gives the second pron as "dip-". It's nice to know that it's not
just me who is dissimilating the sound (it so often is).

If it makes any difference, at Scott Foresman (a big, big textbook company
for those of you not involved in K-8 education) you never hear "diphthong"
used to describe these sounds. It's always "digraph" or maybe "cluster." I
haven't checked all the teachers' guides, but I don't recall seeing it in
the latest edition. I think it is a conscious effort to avoid using a term
some teachers might find offputting, funny, or strange.


--Erin

>Erin McKean writes:
>
>>I think it can be explained by the fact that "dipthong" is one of the
>>funniest-sounding words in English. I'd bet that it would get a laugh in
>>any fourth-grade classroom in the country.
>>
>>Erin McKean
>>editor at verbatimmag.com
>
>Not to be a prescriptivist about it,  but I've always spelled it with a
>-ph- (as below) and pronounced that -ph- as an [f].  This makes it somewhat
>less funny-sounding, I fear, and also less likely to serve as a plausible
>euphemism for 'dipshit'.  Perhaps the processing of it as "dipthong" is the
>first step on the route Lynne cites below.
>
>larry
>
>
>>
>>>Spotted today on a salon.com article on the Miss Universe pageant by
>>>Cintra Wilson:
>>>
>>>It was hosted by loudmouthed diphthong Sinbad.
>>>
>>>I take it that 'diphthong' is an alliterative alternative to 'dipshit',
>>>but trying to work out the metaphor here is a bit brain-bending.
>>>
>>>Lynne
>>>
>>>Dr M Lynne Murphy
>>>Lecturer in Linguistics
>>>School of Cognitive and Computing Sciences
>>>University of Sussex
>>>Brighton BN1 9QH
>>>UK
>>>
>>>phone +44-(0)1273-678844
>>>fax   +44-(0)1273-671320