Here’s something to ponder on a Wednesday in February

Kimberly Joki, social media and content manager at Grammarly.com, recently posted the thought: “I am fairly certain that the person who put the first R in February also decided how to spell Wednesday.”

 

“Have you ever wondered why February has that random, silent first R?” Joki asked. “February, like the names of most months, has Latin roots. It descended from Februarius, a month in the ancient Roman calendar.”

 

Kimberly Joki

The most common pronunciation of February is “feb-yoo-air-ee.” Some people slip a slight “W” sound in there, as in “feb-yoo-wair-ee,” and that’s OK, too. 

Some traditionalists may try to say “feb-roo-air-ee,” but “the loss of the first R in February is not some recent habit propagated by lazy teenagers,” said Dr. Arika Okrent of Chicago, a professional linguist.

 

Dr. Arika Okrent

“People have been avoiding that R for at least the last 150 years, and probably longer than that,” she said. 

“Given certain conditions having to do with word stress and the other sounds in a word, we simply do not like to have two Rs so close to each other. The name for the linguistic process where one sound drops out because another of the same sound is too close to it is ‘dissimilation,’ and it affects lots of languages,” Dr. Okrent stated. 

“Consider your pronunciation of the following words and be honest about whether you really say the Rs in parentheses: gove(r)nor, pa(r)ticular, be(r)serk, paraphe(r)nalia, cate(r)pillar, southe(r)ner, p(r)erogative.” 

“Not everybody drops these Rs, but at the same time, nobody seems to get too upset when they hear others do it,” Dr. Okrent said. 

“There are, however, a few cases of R dissimilation that get people very worked up, namely, lib(r)ary,” she said. “Lib(r)ary attracts attention due to its association with commonly ‘disparaged dialects.’” 

Joel Achenbach of The Washington Post has an interesting take on the history of Wednesday.

 

“The problem with the English language is that it was invented by people who didn’t actually speak English,” Achenbach quipped. “Norwegians are to blame for the word Wednesday, which comes from Woden, another name for the Norse god Odin. That Odin was a rather dour guy with a big white beard and serious need to get on a jogging program.”

 

To learn how we got from Woden’s Day to Wednesday is a tricky maneuver, requiring input from Adam Aleksic, a senior at Harvard University, co-founder of the Harvard Undergraduate Linguistics Society. 

He said: “The orthography of the word Wednesday has befuddled generations of English speakers. It seems that Woden’s Day was spelled Wodnesdæg in Old English.” 

Somewhere along the line, the first D in Wednesday just vanished. 

Achenbach said: “The word ‘Wednesday is not pronounced ‘Wed-nez-day,’ but rather ‘Wenz-day,’ or even ‘Wenz-dee’” in some sections of the world. 

“Wednesday looks like a three-syllable word, but we can say it in a mere two syllables,” he said. “This saves labor.” 

The English language is full of words that are pronounced unlike they are spelled. How about solder? The word describes the act of melting and joining metallic surfaces – pronounced as “sah-der.” Silent Ls abound in words like salmon, should and calf. 

The P sound disappears in the word cupboard. A “kub-erd” is a place to store cups as well as dishes, bowls and dog bones.

 

A lot of letters just fade away in a word like “boatswain,” a term used to describe an “officer on a ship whose job is to take care of the main body of the vessel and all its equipment.” 

You say it “boe-sun.”