I seem to have fallen into some old, possibly bad, habits. I feel like perhaps I should try and change my behavior now before I go ahead and do something I could come to regret. At the same time, this course of action hasn’t really yielded bad results in the past, though I guess it wasn’t quite the same then. Perhaps I simply think too much of myself again, as I am wont to do.
Also, who knew that “err” was pronounced like “urr” but has only recently come into use sounding like the beginning part of “error”? News to me. And I bet if I start using the “correct” pronounciation I’ll just get a lot of weird looks and people convinced that they are correcting me when they tell me “no no it’s ‘err’”. *sigh*
3 responses so far ↓
1 farmerje // Jul 9, 2006 at 1:10 pm
Pronunciation is defined by usage, so “urr” is incorrect. I mean, if age of pronunciation somehow invested authority, shouldn’t we all be speaking Middle English?
2 Russell // Jul 9, 2006 at 1:12 pm
No no I will still use err as that’s what I always understood to be correct. What I’m curious about is when this switch sort of came about.
3 farmerje // Jul 10, 2006 at 6:45 pm
Oh, it’s probably because of analogy. “err” shares both meaning and spelling with words like “error,” “errant,” and so forth, so people started pronouncing it the same way. This process is common historically.
For example, “male” and “female” are not related etymologically. English got the word “female” from French and it was pronounced like the French pronounce it: “femelle.” But by analogy people started saying “female,” since both male and “femelle” are related semantically.
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