Heard on NOVA:

[Charles C Doyle]

Somehow, I'm proceeding backwards today--but I finally looked up "arctic" in the OED.  I am surprised, in light of the common pronunciation currently and historically (as indicated by "c"-less spellings), that only the pronunciation with [-k] is given.

--Charlie

________________________________________
From: American Dialect Society [ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] on behalf of Charles C Doyle [cdoyle at UGA.EDU]
Sent: Thursday, July 28, 2011 9:57 AM

Thanks for posting that link, Arnold.  Highly informative!

--Charlie

________________________________________
From: American Dialect Society [ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] on behalf of Arnold Zwicky [zwicky at STANFORD.EDU]
Sent: Thursday, July 28, 2011 9:41 AM

On Jul 27, 2011, at 11:32 PM, Jocelyn Limpert wrote:
>
>
> I totally agree with you and learned the same pronunciation as you,
> pronouncing the initial "c" and not dropping it. These days I am forever
> hearing TV newspeople and others dropping the initial "c" sound in both
> Arctic and Antarctic. It bothers me, as to my ear it sounds "wrong"!

but Wilson is saying that he learned the /t/, not the /kt/, pronunciation, and still considers *that* to be correct.

as he said three years ago, reported on Language Log here:

AZ, 7/22/08: Ar(c)tic:
 http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=342

>
> On Wed, Jul 27, 2011 at 9:30 PM, Wilson Gray <hwgray at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>> Poster:       Wilson Gray <hwgray at GMAIL.COM>
>> Subject:      Heard on NOVA:
>>
>> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>> "It's thirty degrees, it's snowing, and we're in the Arctic [ar.tIk]."
>>
>> The pronunciation that I was specifically taught to use ca. 1945 - as
>> opposed to the "spelling-pronunciation," [arktIk] - still lives.
>>
>> You never know.
>>
>> --
>> -Wilson

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