Etcetera

[Herbert Stahlke]

I suspect it's simply a phonotactic adjustment of the sort that speakers not
driven by etymology make.  English has very few iambic words with /ts/ after
the first vowel.  I can't think of any immediately, and Valeda Blockcolsky's
40,000 Selected Words: Organized by Letter, Sound, Syllable doesn't give any
either.  Plenty of trochees but no iambs.  So we change the /t/ to a /k/
because we have plenty of /Vks-/ or /Vgz-/ iambs.  This strikes me as
similar to the pronunciation /'nukj at l@r/ for /nu'klj at r/, since there are so
few /-klj at r] forms but plenty with /-kj at l@r/.  We reorganize the
phonotactics to our expectations.

Herb Stahlke

-----Original Message-----
From: American Dialect Society [mailto:ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU]On Behalf
Of sagehen
Sent: Wednesday, July 30, 2003 9:59 AM
To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
Subject: Etcetera


Is the commonly-heard pronunciation of "etcetera" as "exetera" or "ek
setera" a regional or dialectal thing (like "axe" for "ask") or simply a
misapprehension of the letter order?  Could it be related to the Italian
/eccetera/?
A. Murie