How do you pronounce the word “often”? I’ve always pronounced it as one syllable, but many of the YouTubers I’ve been listening to recently pronounce it as two.
“Wise men talk because they have something to say; fools, because they have to say something.” — Plato
Posts: 49956 | Location: 10,160 Feet Above Sea Level in Commirado | Registered: April 04, 2002
I'm from the St. Louis area, so we pronounce some things differently here than other areas.
I pronounce this word more like "offen" without the hard "t".
I say Missour "eee", where some in this area say Missour "uh".
I also ad a nonexistent "r" to wash, saying "warsh". Conversely, my other half, originally the Boston area removes existing "r" from words which is common there.
I think you'll find that not only are the same words pronounced differently depending upon where the person is from, but also entirely different words used for the same thing, like soda vs. pop, cart vs. buggy, etc.
When I first heard my lovely wife omit the "to be" from the sentence "The car needs to be washed." I was mortified. Later I realized that a whole swath of people in the western PA-eastern OH area habitually do the same thing. More recently, it seem this stylistic misuse appears to be spreading. I am no longer mortified, just disgusted. If you must drop the "to be" at least use "washing" (present participle/gerund) rather than the past participle/transgressive form (which are legitimate in Slavic languages, but not English).
Variances in pronunciation of "often" seem of little consequence in comparison, but I suppose we have some room for regional differences, all y'all.
It is "offen" (or maybe "awfen") the "t" is silent.
Posts: 8139 | Location: NoVA | Registered: July 22, 2009
There’s a t in oftenplay , but often, ahem, you don’t hear it. As you might guess, the t was pronounced in the past, when the word began to be used in the early 1300s as a variant of oft (also spelled ofte in Middle English). (Oft was the more common form until the 1500s; it’s now archaic for most of the senses of often, but it is still used in compound adjectives like oft-repeated and oft-quoted. Ofttimes and oftentimes both carry that archaic flavor but are still in active use.) But eventually the t in often fell away in pronunciation, remaining only as a hint of the word’s meaning and origin.
Q
Posts: 31439 | Location: TEXAS | Registered: September 04, 2008
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Posts: 13696 | Location: Florida, Northwest of the Mouse | Registered: November 02, 2008
