Even newscasters and politicians are pronouncing “folk” with an /l/, I’ve noticed. In fact I can hardly remember the last time I heard somebody pronounce it without an /l/ aside from my parents and grandparents. Certainly every damn person at college who ever said they were gonna play some /fɔlk/ music at the open mic said it with an /l/. I’m sure it’s just an inevitable countdown till the day someone makes a snarky comment about my pronunciation - probably they’ll say “You know, the way you say ‘folk’ is kind of…/fɔlksi/!” Is there any hope left for the original* pronunciation of “folk” among college-educated Americans?
And I swear to god sometimes I hear people saying “yolk” with an /l/ too
*original in that, afaik, all English speakers had already dropped the /l/ centuries ago before it was reinserted as a spelling pronunciation the last few decades
Oh, spelling pronunciations. The absolute worst thing is people pronouncing ‘often’ with /t/. Everyone does that nowadays.
While I’m here, the days of the week end in /i/, not /ej/, but that battle is already lost. I’ve never heard the correct pronunciation from anyone under 50.
(Actually, I’m starting to think it’d make sense to analyze final unstressed [i], the happY lexical set, as /əj/, and final [o], the potatO lexical set, as /əw/. This makes diachronic sense: diachronically, happY used to be [əj], and potatO is, in native words, mostly from word-final Cx/Cɣ clusters, so it’s not hard to imagine schwa epenthesis followed by the standard development of /x/ to an offglide. Then all you need is the laxing rule in absolute word-final position.)
Some spelling pronunciations which are now pretty much universal (from Dobson, 1956):
- lots of words used to have th pronounced /t/ (after French), but now have a voiceless dental fricative (after Modern Greek): Arthur, author, authority, Catherine, diphthong (this word also used to have /p/ for the ph, and many people still use that pronunciation), lethargy, orthography, throne; also sphere used to be a homophone of spear
- bankrupt used to be pronounced “bankrout”
- baptism used to be pronounced “baptime”
- corpse with a /p/, not homophonous with course (however the /s/ has always been pronounced; the Old French word was cors, and final esses weren’t silent in Old French)
- perfect used to be pronounced “perfit” or “parfit”; verdict used to be pronounced “verdit”
- schedule—both modern pronunciations (“skedule” and “shedule”) are spelling pronunciations; the older pronunciation was just “sedule” (likewise for schism although some people still pronounce that one as “sizzum”)
There is one /l/-restoring spelling pronunciation which is very very widespread: very few people still pronounce falcon as “fawken”, like walk, talk, etc. I wonder if Malcolm was ever pronounced Mawkem? Unfortunately personal names don’t get entries in the OED… Balkans always has /l/ but maybe it was borrowed too late (attested 1785 according to OED).
Isn’t that all to be expected in a language where spelling varies from pronunciation, and thus each person has to carry two units of information per word, as more and more people spend more time interacting with language primarily through text rather than the spoken word?
- non-linguist