Words and their pronunciations

This week’s Independent News an Media Irish regional newspapers’ column.

Michael Commane

So is the camán a hurley or a hurl? I always thought the stick was called a hurley, the game is hurling and hurlers hurl.

Sort of summer season silly stuff but a letter-writer to a national newspaper started the debate and it has taken on a head of steam and all sorts of experts and non-experts have been giving their penny’s worth on the topic. Should that be cent’s worth?

A linguistic’s expert was on radio and his view was that the stick is called a hurley in Munster and a hurl in Leinster.

It set me thinking about words and their pronunciations.

I can still remember in primary school a substitute teacher coming in to our class and asking us what was the correct pronunciation of ‘often’. Was it pronounced with or without the ‘t’. I have no idea on which side he came down but I well remember that he belittled those who got it wrong, or at least got it wrong according to his ‘wisdom’. Maybe it was an important lesson; does it really matter how we pronounce words? And certainly we should never sneer at those who mispronounce words or vere from the accepted norms and rules of pronunciation.

Probably best to say it’s funny how language and words change with time. When I was a young ‘fella’ the sophisticates would sneer at people who pronounced advertisement placing the stress on the ‘ise’. These days the ‘coolest dudes’ are placing the stress of the ‘ise’.

Out of the blue the word ‘contribute’ has appeared with the stress going on the ‘bute’ whereas I have always pronounced it with the stress going on the ‘trib’.

Then there are the regular old chestnuts: Tipperary people often omit the ‘e’ and call it ‘Tipprary’. Have you ever noticed people often say sarcrifice rather than sacrifice? And that’s interesting because the posh English are inclined to add the letter ‘r’ to certain words, they talk about the ‘lawr’.

As to the word ‘posh’, whether true or not, I was told it’s an acronym for Port-Out-Starboard-Home. When the British were visiting the far-flung dominions of their Empire they travelled out on the port side and returned on the starboard side of the ship. Something to do with the sun.

And did it ever dawn on you why they spell it ‘Comptroller General’? It looks and sounds wrong, at least according to any rules of English. It seems the first man in that job was not a good speller and he wrote it so. His underlings were afraid to bring it to his attention and correct him. 

The moral of that story is how important it is to stand up to so much of the nonsense and incompetence of our superiors.

I’m back thinking whether or not the ‘t’ is silent or not in ‘often’, but it certainly is in ‘castle’ and ‘apostle’.

But who knows when we’ll be pronouncing the ‘t’ in castle?

Who is it that decides we’ll change the pronunciation of a word?

I’m sticking with ‘hurley’. But that maybe because my late mother was from Tipperary.