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Pronunciation
Pronunciation, in a most inclusive sense, the
form in which the elementary symbols of TABLE OF CONTENTS
language, the segmental phonemes or speech
Introduction
sounds, appear and are arranged in patterns of
pitch, loudness, and duration. In the simplest The act of pronunciation

model of the communication process in The system and the pronunciation

language—encoding, message, decoding— Language systems
pronunciation is an activity, shaping the output
Dialects and standards of pronunciation
of the encoding stage, and a state, the external
Changes in pronunciation
appearance of the message and input to the
decoding stage. It is what the speaker does and Graphic representation of pronunciation

what the hearer perceives and, so far as Investigation of pronunciation

evaluation is called for, judges. It is so basic to
language that it has to be considered in any
general discussion of the topic.

In a narrower and more popular use, questions of pronunciation are raised only in
connection with value judgments. Orthoepy, correct pronunciation, is parallel to
orthography, correct spelling. “How do you pronounce [spell] that word?” is either a
request for the correct pronunciation (spelling) by one who is unsure or a probing for
evidence that the respondent does not pronounce (spell) correctly or speaks a different
dialect or has an idiosyncracy of speech. Only mispronunciations are noticeable, therefore
distracting; they introduce “noise” into the communication system to reduce its ef ciency.

The act of pronunciation

The production of speech is basically the same as the production of any other sound, with
an apparatus for setting up vibrations in the air which affect the organs of perception in
the ear of the hearer. The sound of speech differs from the sound of a noise- or music-
producing instrument because the organs of speech can change the quality of the sound
produced as well as alter its pitch, loudness, and duration. It is as though speech were
played on a number of instruments, one for ah, another for sh, etc., each one in operation
for only a few hundredths of a second at a time, all smoothed out into a continuous ow.

The term pronunciation is usually restricted to differentiation in the qualities of the

speech sounds and in stresses and tones where pertinent. Voice quality, such as nasality
or breathy voice, is not included unless it is a differentiating feature of the sounds of the
language. The term is only vaguely applied to stretches of speech longer than a word,

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such as the intonation of sentences, and it may be

said that someone has an excellent pronunciation but
poor intonation.

The study of the production of speech is phonetics,

often de ned as the science of pronunciation. It is
here to be noted only that, whereas adjustments of
the organs of speech may be monitored by the
speaker’s tactile, kinesthetic, and even visual senses,
human vocal organs and points of primary monitoring is by ear, and hearing children
articulation learn to speak the language of the group with which
Diagram depicting the location of human they grow up, without any directions as to
vocal organs and possible places of articulation. For languages like English, the consonant
articulation used for speech.
articulations are comparatively neat and stable, the
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vowel articulations less so. For other languages, such
as Spanish, it is the other way around. For some
languages the general pattern of articulation is comparatively precise, for others not so.
The pronunciation of English cannot be made better, but only obnoxiously conspicuous,
by a precision of articulation which is contrary to the essence of the language.

The system and the

pronunciation
The systematic function of pronunciation is to make
those distinctions among the consonants and vowels
in the ow of speech, and, for some languages,
among quantities, stresses, and pitches, which have
to be made in order to distinguish meanings in
sentences. The simplest illustration shows one critical
voice-producing apparatus
point only in the sentence: “I’ve been writing/riding.”
The parts of human anatomy that produce “Ich will die andere Seite/Seide.” (“I want the other
vocal sound.
page/silk.”). “No es nata/nada.” (“It is not cream. /It is
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nothing.”). For the pronunciation to satisfy the ear of
the native speaker, however, the way in which the
distinctions are made (the qualities of the consonants and vowels and the way in which
they are run into the ow of speech) is fully as important as the fact that the distinctions
called for are made. In the terminology of linguistics, the systematic function is said to be
phonemic and the qualitative propriety phonetic.

For all examples above the phonemic statement is very simple: /t/ ≠ /d/ That is, the
distinction between /t/ and /d/ may be used to mark a distinction in meaning in English,
German, or Spanish. By other similar operations each /t/ and /d/ can be shown to be in

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opposition to all other phonemes in its language. It is general practice, although not
strictly phonemic, to group phonemes into phonetic-named classes or identify them as
intersections of classes.

The description of the phones, or speech sounds as sounds, is another matter. These [t]s
(phones rather than phonemes) are voiceless except that in some varieties of English the
[t] in this environment is voiced. In German it is aspirated, in French and Spanish not. The
[d]s are stops except that the Spanish phone is a fricative. Both are strictly alveolar in
standard English, dental with the tongue touching the edges of the incisors in Spanish,
and differently intermediate for German and French. There are other small differences in
articulation in this environment and still others in other environments. It is possible to
describe phonetically dozens of varieties of [t] for General American English; some of
them may be achieved only by straining the apparatus of description, but for most of
them any different articulation will produce a pronunciation not quite right.

Language systems
The pronunciations of various languages may be compared in a general way by noting
the inventory of phonemes by classes. English has one of the most frequently occurring
stop systems, /p/ /t/ /k/, with an affricate, /č/: pin, tin, kin, chin. Other languages have as few
as two stops (Hawaiian) to as many as six (Yuma), with none to three affricates. Examples
of the English fricatives or spirants include /f/ /θ/ /s/— n, thin, sin. Scots has also a /x/, loch,
as in older English and present German and Spanish. Some languages have uvulars or
pharyngals. Chinese has an aspirated-unaspirated system for stops, Hindi four kinds of
stops. The English and German nasal systems correspond to the simple stops, while other
languages have between zero and four nasals. The l and r types are not contrasted in
Japanese and furnish two phonemes each in Castilian Spanish. English /r/ may well be put
into the semivowel system, /j/ /r/ /w/ /h/, yea, ray, weigh, hay. Russian has a double system
of plain and palatalized consonants, Italian a complete system of geminates.

Spanish has a ve-vowel system, /i/ /e/ /a/ /o/ /u/. Tagalog has three vowels. The American
English system is variously interpreted as 9 simple vowels plus complex vocalic nuclei or
as about 15 vowels plus diphthongs. German and French have front-rounded and French
has nasalized vowels, as English and Spanish do not. Some languages have long vowels
contrasting with short, as Middle English did.

There are also systems which include types not used in English and the nearby languages.
Burmese has vowels with breathy voice in contrast to not breathy. Igbo has inspired
voiced stops. Georgian has glottalized stops (air-compressed by raising the closed glottis).
Khoekhoe has clicks (with mouth-air suction). There are many tone languages for which
the relative pitch level or direction of pitch turn of a syllable is part of the phonemic
system, the pronunciation as distinguished from the intonation. Chinese is the best-

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known example. There are other Asian and many African and American Indian tone
languages. Swedish and Norwegian have limited tone systems.

Dialects and standards of pronunciation

In a technical sense, without deprecatory or romantic connotations, a dialect is any form
of a language peculiar to any community of speakers of the language. Every native
speaker speaks a dialect and every native hearer assigns the speaker to a pigeonhole
cross-labeled by region and social class. A language is the sum of its dialects or a
generalization based on them.

For the hundreds of local dialects to be found wherever a language has been spoken by
many people over a large area for a long time, the pronunciation is bound up in a total
complex, including also morphology, syntax, and lexicon. The attitude toward dialect in
this sense—avoided as a lower-class marker in Great Britain, used by many upper-class
speakers in Germany in intimate situations—is an attitude toward the dialect as a whole,
not particularly the pronunciation. The emphasis on pronunciation in dramatic literature,
as in George Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion and My Fair Lady, is presumably to suggest the
dialect without making it incomprehensible. In the United States, where there are few
strictly English dialects of this sort—as there are, for example, few such dialects of Spanish
in Argentina—the nearest equivalent is the assimilation of foreign words.

Among regional dialects of the standard language, distinctions are made primarily in
pronunciation and intonation, what are sometimes called “accents” rather than “dialects,”
where the morphology and syntax vary almost not at all and the lexicon not much more.
Standard English is differently pronounced in London and Edinburgh and in Chicago and
Sydney, standard French in Paris and Marseilles and Quebec, standard Spanish in Madrid
and Buenos Aires, standard German in Berlin and Munich. In some cases the phonemic
system varies, as notably among English, Scots, and American dialects and those of Spain
and Central and South America.

There are of course dialects intermediate between strictly local and strictly regional in the
larger sense and between social classes. Pronunciation is sometimes a more, sometimes a
less, prominent sign. In the United States, where “accent” and “dialect” are
interchangeable terms and “dialect speaker” does not occur, pronunciation is the primary
regional marker. What is called grammar is the class marker where there is any.

The concept of a standard pronunciation—that is, of one pronunciation of the standard

language with greater prestige than others and the only proper basis for the concept of
correctness—seems to be common to most cultivated languages. For the French the
standard is said to be “celle de la bonne société parisienne” (“that of high Parisian
society”); for Spanish, “la que se usa corrientemente en Castilla en la conversación de las

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personas ilustradas” (“that which is commonly used in

American English dialects
Map showing the dialect regions of the
United States.
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the conversation of cultivated Castilians”). For German
the base is a style of speech developed for the stage,
which serves as “ein Ideal, das als Ziel und Masstab für
alles gebildete Sprechen aufgestellt ist” (“an ideal that
is established as goal and norm for all educated
speech”). In all these cases the standard may be
modi ed in practice; few Germans outside theatrical
circles speak the regionless ideal standard, and
Argentinians are proud of their non-Castilian
standard.

The situation is different in Great Britain, where there is a nonregional, strictly upper-class
dialect of enormous prestige, Received Pronunciation (RP), spoken by those who learned
it at home and in the public schools. It is said that only an RP speaker can surely identify
RP speech. For those outside the RP circle, the regional “accents” are a practical standard.
In the United States there can hardly be said to be, and is said not to be, any de nable
standard. With American philologist John S. Kenyon’s “familiar cultivated colloquial” as a
reference, some Americans speak of Eastern, Northern or General, and Southern
standards. American English is as loose a term as British English.

Changes in pronunciation
It is accepted as a truism that pronunciation changes more or less continuously. Since
there is no inheritance of language and every hearing child learns to speak by listening, it
is to be expected that the learning will not be perfect in every detail. Most individual
eccentricities are discouraged by the conservatism of the community and are not passed
on to the succeeding generation. By and large the language corrects itself. From time to
time, however, what might be called a mistake in pronunciation seems to catch on and a
change gets under way, sometimes so gradual in development as to be recorded only in
retrospect.

A change which affects one phone or a group of related phones without apparent
in uence by the environment is known as isolative or independent. Thus the Great Vowel
Shift in English was a gradual change in the pronunciation of all long vowels wherever
they occurred. The only explanation that can be made of this shift is that it did not
materially alter the system, either as to number of phonemes or distribution. The new
diphthongal vowels, in line and cow, were not easier to produce than the simple vowels
that were lost, to be reintroduced later in calm and law. For this and other isolative
changes in English and in other languages, it is hard to say why they took place or why
they happened when they did.

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Vowel shifts in London English

Chaucer’s Chaucer’s Shakespeare’s present present
spelling pronunciation* pronunciation* pronunciation* spelling
lyf li:f leif laif life
deed de:d di:d di:d deed
deel dɛ:l de:l di:l deal
name na:mə** nɛ:m neim name
hoom hɔ:m ho:m houm home
mone mo:nə** mu:n mu:n moon
hous hu:s hous haus house
*Expressed in the International Phonetic Alphabet. **Two syllables.

Changes which affect certain phones or groups of phones only in certain environments
are known as combinative or dependent. The general pattern is one of ease of
pronunciation, the speaker tending to make the least effort; this tendency is countered by
the demand of the hearer for easy intelligibility. Thus the i-umlaut or i-mutation in English
and other languages results when the speaker, anticipating the articulation for a front [i]
or [j] in the next syllable (later lost), shifts the articulation of the vowel in question from
back to front; thus ll (compare with the Gothic fulljan) beside full.

The most obvious effort-reducing change is assimilation of consonants. The term is itself
an example, from ad- (“to”) + simil- (“similar”), the forms adsimil- and assimil- both
attested in Classical Latin. Assimilations may or may not be accepted by the community.
Thus [∫], representing a reciprocal assimilation of [s] + [j], prevails in issue in America but
[sj] in England; [č] is usual in literature but [tj] occurs, sometimes taken as a sign of
affectation; can’t you may be pronounced with [tj] or [č], the latter subject to social
sanctions. Most such assimilations merely shift the distribution of phonemes. When [z] +
[j] became [3], vision, the new phoneme lled a gap in the English system which British
lexicographer John Hart had pointed out half a century earlier.

The change in English which had the greatest effect was the obscuration of vowels in
unaccented syllables. As direct consequence the neutral vowel came to be the most
frequently occurring syllabic in the language, and as indirect consequence many
in ectional endings earlier marked by vowel contrasts became non-discriminating and
then were simpli ed or lost. The number of reconstructions in the system of English
brought about by changes in pronunciation is reported, by Charles Hockett, as
approximately 100.

Graphic representation of pronunciation

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The principal way of holding pronunciation still for examination or for transmitting it
through time and space is alphabetic, or syllabic, writing. The written word is not
coordinate with, much less superordinate to, the spoken word. A Chinese ideograph may
correspond in a way with an English word, but the rst is a rst-order symbol, the other a
second-order symbolization of the composition of a rst-order symbol.

In a way it may be said that any language can be phonemically written with any alphabet
and that, as Leonard Bloom eld said, “A language is the same no matter what system of
writing may be used to record it, just as a person is the same no matter how you take his
picture.” Roman and Cyrillic and Arabic and other alphabets are used for the writing of
quite dissimilar languages, and it is not to be expected that they will work equally well for
all. Nor does writing often keep up with changes in pronunciation. Thus, although the
early writing of English in an augmented Roman alphabet was adequate, most of the later
phonemic changes have not been recorded. Moreover, useless new spellings were
introduced, by Anglo-French scribes, as were analogical and etymological spellings—
some of the latter encouraging spelling pronunciations. Similarly, for other languages, if
on a smaller scale, the long-established writing has come to be less than satisfactory. The
languages now having adequate phonemic writing are those which have recently
adopted a new alphabet or reformed the spelling.

To correct the de ciency, individuals and organizations have developed phonetic

alphabets, either for spelling reform, in English quite unsuccessful, or for special purposes
such as language learning. Nonalphabetic systems with symbols descriptive of
articulations, such as that of Alexander Melville Bell, have not found favour, although
some such symbols are used for teaching the deaf.

Investigation of pronunciation
The study of the distribution of linguistic forms over an area is known as linguistic, or
dialect, geography. The usual systematic technique is direct investigation by trained eld
workers, who go into selected communities and interview typical informants according to
a xed scheme, recording the ndings in phonetic notation. Postal questionnaires may be
used rather than, or as supplementary to, direct interviews. Recordings are usually made
when possible, to serve either as the basis for phonetic interpretation or as a
supplementary check. The number of communities investigated, the number of
informants used in a community, and the length and coverage of the worksheets vary
according to special conditions, especially the number of investigators and amount of
funds and time available. Large-scale investigations are rarely limited to data on
pronunciation, and the number of strictly phonetic items on a worksheet may be small. As
a rule the phonetic recording of morphological, syntactical, and lexical data is trustworthy
and can be used as data on pronunciation.

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Some variations on the general plan of investigation are noteworthy. One is the
quantitative investigation of a limited number of items with many randomly or
systematically selected informants in a community, the results expressed in percentages.
Another is the use of a single informant on the basis of whose speech the pattern of
pronunciation, the phonemic system, and other features of the dialect or language are
described. The letter method is particularly useful when informants are hard to come by
and more frequently used for individual studies than in large-scale undertakings.

The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica This article was most recently revised and
updated by Michael Ray, Associate Editor.

CITATION INFORMATION
ARTICLE TITLE: Pronunciation
WEBSITE NAME: Encyclopaedia Britannica
PUBLISHER: Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc.
DATE PUBLISHED: 16 July 2018
URL: https://www.britannica.com/topic/pronunciation
ACCESS DATE: July 28, 2019

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