"Drouth"

[Charles Doyle]

Some 35 years ago a friend--a learned linguist who has since become eminent in the field--heard me pronounce "height" with a theta at the end. He hypothesized that mine was a "misspelling pronunciation"--that I had visualized the word with the final "h" and "t" interchanged, and then pronounced it accordingly.

In fact, of course, the /-T/ form of "height," like the /-T/ form of "drought," has alternated with the /-t/ form for many centuries (in both pronunciation and spelling). But I have, ever since that conversation, been intrigued by the concept of "misspelling pronunciations." What might real examples be? With most of the words that our students ubiquitously misspell, like "occurrence" and "separate," pronunciation would not be affected (or, rather, the misspelling is based on the phonology).

--Charlie
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---- Original message ----
>Date: Tue, 6 Nov 2007 09:23:37 -0500
>From: Wilson Gray <hwgray at GMAIL.COM>
>
>"Drouth" doesn't look odd, Charlie!. It looks like an old friend! It's the same with "height." We spell it "height," but we pronounce it "high-th." That's pure-dee East-Texan! "Drought" is like some weird pronunciation-spelling.
>
>-Wilson

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