hearst

[Lynne Murphy]

I was raised in a funeral home (semirural western NYS) and quite old before
I realized that there's no 't' on the end of 'hearse'. I can't tell you how
old, but it must've been when I started to see the word in print, which was
quite old. It might've been the pronunciation in my family, I'm not sure.

When I was little, my struggling dad had to rent them, but by the time I
was a teenager, there was one in our garage.  But I don't know if my
knowing the 'real' pronunciation was related to greater exposure to the
thing and therefore the word.

Lynne



--On Friday, October 8, 2010 06:55 +0000 Tom Zurinskas
<truespel at HOTMAIL.COM> wrote:

> I have a friend that always puts an ending "t" on "ludicrous."
> LOU-di-crust.  ~luedikrust.   hope no one ever corrects her.
>
>
> Tom Zurinskas, USA - CT20, TN3, NJ33, FL7+
> see truespel.com phonetic spelling
>
>
>> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
>> ----------------------- Sender: American Dialect Society
>> Poster: Charles C Doyle
>> Subject: Re: hearst
>> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>> -------
>>
>> Like "twice" as [twaIst]: Isn't that how everybody says it?
>>
>> --Charlie
>>
>> ________________________________________
>> From: American Dialect Society [ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] on behalf of
>> Ronald Butters [ronbutters at AOL.COM] Sent: Thursday, October 07, 2010
>> 11:41
>> AM----------------------------------------------------------------------
>> ---------
>>
>> Well of course no pun was intended. It is remarkable that a news
>> reporter would make such a mistake, but confusion about what words have
>> final clusters in /s/ and what words just have final /s/ alone is so
>> common in American dialects as to be totally unremarkable.
>>
>>
>> On Oct 7, 2010, at 10:17 AM, Laurence Horn wrote:
>>
>> > At 10:01 AM -0400 10/7/10, Jonathan Lighter wrote:
>> >> CNN's Kyra Phillips was reporting a moment ago on ceremonies
>> >> surrounding the return of the casket of a dead soldier from
>> >> Afghanistan. She explained that the casket "is about to be placed on
>> >> the hearst."
>> >>
>> >> Of course I assumed that the excrescent T was just a slip (after all,
>> >> _Citizen Kane_ was on TCM last night!). But then she said it again
>> >> very clearly: / hrst /. And again.
>> >>
>> >>
>> >> JL
>> >
>> > Wonder if there was interference from _Citizen Hearst_, an excellent
>> > biography of the latter by Swanberg. Presumably no pun was actually
>> > intended.
>> >
>> > LH
>>
>> ------------------------------------------------------------
>> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org



Dr M Lynne Murphy
Senior Lecturer in Linguistics
Director of English Language and Linguistics
School of English
Arts B348
University of Sussex
Brighton BN1 9QN

phone: +44-(0)1273-678844
http://separatedbyacommonlanguage.blogspot.com

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