Pronuncations

[Chad Douglas Nilep]

There is variation in the pronunciation of 'often', but I'm not aware of arguments that this is age-related. Some suggest the t-full version is an Americanism, other that it is a Briticism, but both variants seem to exist in the USA, Scotland and Ireland (not sure about England nor other Anglophone countries). 

(On the other hand, it appears to be age linked in the Lawless household. Personally, I think my own pronunciation varies, but recollection for such things is notoriously unreliable.)

The variation seems to go quite far back in history. The American Heritage Book of English Usage (1996) suggests that the /t/ was lost in the 15th century, but that "Because of the influence of spelling," often "is now commonly pronounced with the t."
http://www.bartleby.com/64/C007/0141.html
That would, as Robert suggests, make the t-full version a spelling pronunciation.

In contrast, though, Oxford English Dictionary notes, "Several orthoepists of the 16th and 17th centuries, including Hart, Bullokar, Robinson, Gil, and Hodges, give a pronunciation with medial -t-. Others, including Coles, Young, Strong, and Brown, record a pronunciation without -t-, which, despite its use in the 16th cent. by Elizabeth I, seems to have been avoided by careful speakers in the 17th cent." OED goes on to note that twentieth century usage guides, including Modern English Usage (Fowler 1926) call pronunciation with /t/ a hypercorrection.

I note, too, that OED lists spellings with and without <t> going all the way back to Middle English. The first spelling OED lists is <offen> (dated simply "ME" Middle English), but their earliest literary citation (dated 1325) spells it <often>. Etymologically, it is thought to derive from 'oft' (which appears unchanged since Old English), with the final syllable probably added by analogy to 'seldom' (also Old English; earliest spelling in OED <seldun>, c897).

Chad D. Nilep
Linguistics
University of Colorado at Boulder
http://rintintin.colorado.edu/~nilep/


---- Original message ----
>Date: Thu, 15 Jan 2009 09:17:41 -0600
>From: Robert Lawless <robert.lawless at WICHITA.EDU>  
>Subject: [LINGANTH] Pronuncations  
>To: LINGANTH at LISTSERV.LINGUISTLIST.ORG
>
>For all you guys who teach college-age students and (if you're 
>listening) hear them talk:  Is the pronunciation of often with "t" 
>becoming more common with the younger generation? (I think most of us 
>old foggies don't pronounce the "t".) I believe linguists refer to this 
>as "spelling pronunciation." I suppose then that pronouncing sophomore 
>as two syllables would be anti-spelling pronunciation. Although I and 
>most of my colleagues pronounce it with three syllables, seemingly all 
>the sophmores here use only two syllables. (My daughter, who's a 
>sophmore in high school corrected me the other day when I called her a 
>sophomore.)