Mispronunciation (annals)

[Joel S. Berson]

 From the quantity and minuteness of the details that they recorded,
I wouldn't be surprised if many 19th-century writers of various "The
Annals of ..." were annal-retentitive.

One 19th-century writer seems to have commented on this.  William
Austin's sketch "Peter Rugg" (1824-27) is the tale of a Bostonian who
has been driving through the colonies in his open chair many years
unable to find his way home.  The narrator learns the history of Rugg
from "an elderly man, Mr. James [sic] Felt ... who had kept a record
of the principal occurrences for the last fifty years".

Joel

At 12/12/2006 08:26 AM, you wrote:
>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?
>
>
>
>~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
>
>    English Language & Linguistics
>    Purdue University
>    mcovarru at purdue.edu
>
>    web.ics.purdue.edu/~mcovarru
>   <http://wishydig.blogspot.com>
>
>~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
>
>------------------------------------------------------------
>The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org

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