Mispronunciation

[Michael H Covarrubias]

Natalie Morales on NBC's Today reported on a recent article in the "Annals of
Neurology."  [ae]>[ej] in "annals" (ae=ash)

"Uranus" is in the middle of a fight between prudish and bold
pronunciations--the OED listing the prudish pronunciation first: stress on the
first syllable and reduction of the [ej] vowel to a schwa.

Is 'annals' so similar to 'anal' that the [ae] doesn't occur to a first-time  or
nervous reader?  It seems so many other forms would work better on analogy with
the spelling of other pre-'nn' A's. cf channel, flannel, annual, annotate,
canned, planner etc.

Is this some sort of forbidden-fruit/Freudian slip that makes annals so
resistant to these analogies?



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   English Language & Linguistics
   Purdue University
   mcovarru at purdue.edu

   web.ics.purdue.edu/~mcovarru
  <http://wishydig.blogspot.com>

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