Being rather fond of reading I come across certain discrepancies from time to time. Normally I am able to sort them out fairly quickly by referring to the nationality of the authors (ie u's being missed out of words like favourite etc) who cause the problems but I have been unable to come up with a plausible reason for one of the most annoying.

I am of course talking about the use of TOWARD and TOWARDS in literature. At first I believed them to mean different things, but alas they mean the same and there is absolutely no possibility of one being a plural as they are prepositions or adjectives.

So can any of you help me work out why they are both used in literature and soothe my addled brain before it spontaneously implodes?

bexter

Not much to explain. Towards , in present-day English is merely a variant of toward. More often than not, words ending in -wards are adverbs, like northwards, backwards, or homewards, but as far back as Old English, i.e., a thousand years plus ago, tōweardes has been a preposition as has tōweard.

So is it just use whichever one you fancy or is it slightly more complex than that? A friend of mine has suggested that the s is an Americanism and toward is the correct English form, but I'm not too sure as it is in both American and English literature...

This site, quoting two usage guides, says that it's the other way around. Americans prefer toward and the English towards, but that neither is exclusively one or the other.

Thanks for that, Faldage, really wondered about it myself
oftentimes.

Thanks so much. It explains a lot including why I use towards. It also explains why the national divide didn't help me work it out as it varies. Definately sorted out now and I shall now correct my friend and feel incredibly superior

I've never really thought about it...which I use.
I have said it several ways, out loud, just now....and I think I usually say 'towards'. No reason but it sounds better.

And Bexter....I hope your friend doesn't mind being corrected by you

Another not-quite-related comment, about the word hydrogenated.
I have always pronounced it HIGH-druh-jen-ayt-ed. But there's a commercial on TV in which it is pronounced high-DRAHDGE-en-ayted. Drives me bonkers!

Drives me bonkers!

Funny, I have always heard it pronounced, and pronounced it myself, with the stress on the second syllable.

Me too.

Jackie, did you learn this word in written form and are just now hearing it spoken?

me, too.

AHD4 does list both pronunciations.

AHD4 does list both pronunciations.

No doubt, but I had never heard it. Though I don't get around much in the States.

I've never heard it either, and I've gotten around. I would have thought it was a pronunciation from people who had seen it in print well before hearing it in the wild. I suppose this is still a possibility but common enough for AHD to record it.

I would have thought it was a pronunciation from people who had seen it in print well before hearing it in the wild.

Yes, when I was a wee lad, before I heard it pronounced, I mispronounced the pseudo- in pseudo-intellectual like suede oh. It jollied up the conversation i was having ...

early internal pronunciations..
epitome I read as EP i tome
paradigm was PAIR a DIG em
hegemony = HEDJ-uh-MOH-nee (but this is a variant in AHD4)

(I think we've been down this road before.)

Yeah, but we say INsurance, too, and sometimes warranTEE. (Have to say I can't stand that latter one.)

my pet hate is the word probably said like prob-ly, missing the middle 'ab'.

Hates make even worse pets than peeves do. Listen carefully; you'll hear people talking about Present Obama, sosh security, and who knows what-all. If you listen really carefully (and this is hard to do) you might even hear yourself doing it. Thing is our brains outrun our mouths in colloquial speech.

Ah but then there is the problem of bought/brought that everyone tends to mix up. That is incredibly annoying and has led to the mantra bought is to buy, brought is to bring which inevitably leads to 'what? that's what I said'.

Oh and also on the weekend instead of at

We tend to lose Rs after syllable initial bilabials and labio-dentals. Witness Febyuary, libary, infastructure, and speak/speech.

Re: on vs. at the weekend. Prepositions tend to be slippery. On accident is becoming increasingly popular among younger speakers. Or in line vs. on line, the latter being common in New York City for the former (not in reference to being logged on to a computer network).

then there is the problem of bought/brought that everyone tends to mix up

I've never heard that. I need to sign off the computer and get out more ...

I'd never heard it either but it would fit with my idea about losing Rs after bilabial plosives or labiodental fricatives.

I'd never heard it either Well, who bought it up, then? {wink}

bexter

well I've heard of it...hear it frequently missed used.

I hear it at least once a day, occasionaly I hear it said correctly and I almost die of shock, but then, inevitably, it gets said incorrectly again by the same person, so I have to assume they said it correctly by accident or unintentionally and did in fact mean the other

guess some people just don't care

I have to assume they said it correctly by accident or unintentionally

Well, maybe it's a regionally variation, as Faldo suggested earlier in the thread. If you hear it all the time, it's probably well under way to becoming standard (for the region). Just out of curiosity, where do you live? And do you hear rs being dropped elsewhere?

This reminds me of the brouhaha over AAVE aks pronunciation of ask. The fact, that as far back as Old English, both pronunciations have been in free variation, is usually unknown by those complaining.

Snowy Southern England. Not so much rs but often th turns to f...that is regional I believe...it's spreading though! Rs lost sometimes in February but that is just the diffuculty of r after the bilabial I think...

Not so much rs but often th turns to f ... that is regional I believe ... it's spreading though!

Yes, the f for voiceless th and v for voiced th have been going on for a long time. I believe it has spread from Cockney (via Mockney) to so-called Estuary English. It's nothing to be alarmed at. Happens all the time. Currently in American English there is a vowel shift taking place in the north-central states. I haven't heard it here in California yet.

Rs lost sometimes in February but that is just the diffuculty of r after the bilabial

I think it's the two rs in a row that are the difficulty. Oftentimes, one is dropped or dissimulates, like in pilgrim from Latin peregrinus. Anyway, I believe *Febuary pronunciation is quite common here in the States, too.

Do you hear it with other r after bilabial stops? For example:

bing for bring
bat for brat
pobably for probably

You get the idea ...

Not really...sometimes the r disappears when people shorten the word probably to pobly (also prolly) but that's just pure laziness I believe :p
It will spread down to you soon I fear just as mispronounciations spread over here. It very much annoys when it happens on the news.

Earlier today I did however, hear someone say Februay, which took me by surprise.

These are natural linguistic processes. Nobody ever complains about the missing R in speak, for example, but that happened a thousand years ago or more. It's just people don't like it happening on their watch. If there was a dialect that still had the R in speak and people discovered it, they'd be complaining about it being there.

missed used

I discovered something quite on by accident above: if you type the name of a smiley (grin, crazy, etc.) in between these two brackets: [ and ], the actual smiley emoticon appears. Never mind all those extra punctuation marks and things.

[":)"]

Back to missing Rs. I have noticed in some non-rhotic dialects that Rs in places where it is very difficult to lose them tend get transmogrified into Vs. Specifically I am thinking of the local pronunciation of Cleary Square in Boston, which is pronounced something like Klee-uh-vy Skway-uh. Perhaps something like this is happening to brought. The resulting V could easily get assimilated into the B.

The fact that you know when people are pronouncing brought "wrong" means that no lack of understanding is resulting from the production of the new pair of homophones.

I think the understanding comes from the context rather than phonetics...the V thing sounds quite plausible...I shall listen for it next time brought is mis-pronounced! (also it is possible I am the only one who notices the difference as most people around me tend to use bought for both brought and bought )

My friend Jo (of Jo's helpful hints fame, she said cross-threading), who is British, pronounces Tuesday as chewsday. And there are people, I among them, who at times pronounce him as eem, as in, "Got eem".

Jackie! Avy! It works. I'm gonna try this one out on other words, hmm.. crazy.. Yes! hmm.. tomado.. [tomado]no. what a dissapointment. cry.. .. Great discovery Jackie. It saves whole seconds of time.

Yeah. That's we we allow homophones in the language. There's certainly no phonetics involved when you spot someone using the wrong to/too/two or there/their/they're. You might, as an interesting extra-credit project, try listening for situations where the context is ambiguous and see if other distinctions are made to resolve the ambiguity.

hmmm yes, I think that sounds fun! I never thought about the other homophones we use

but now that you mention it...
Oh and I think is becoming more common because it is easier to say if you don't have the 'Hampshire Accent' (Queen's speech etc)...also lazier than to-use-day (apologies for terrible phonetics!)...and is generaly regional accent (often London) or is attached to phrases like 'go(t) eem' that are always said with the accent

True, unless you pronounce it Toos day without the Y in there.

@bran I don't get it. Maybe it's my phone. [ha ha] [hee hee] [hasiyeh] [glimlach].
ETA: yes it works with grin, smile and maybe crazy too.

and eek, tired, sick & smirk and probly others.

glimlach ?? Wah tee zees glimlach, eh?

Wah tee zees glimlach, eh?

Not sure, but, in Dutch, glimlach means 'smile'; there's also a verb glimlachen 'to smile' (no doubt related to German lachen 'to laugh', English laugh). Branshea?

[i\]Hasiye[/i] might be Urdu. It shows up in song titles in that language.

Yes, and glimmen is to shine so a glimlach is a shinelaugh.
It may be your phone Avy. Hasiye means smile too?

I think the possibilities for making smilies with [] will be strictly within the range of what is provided in the box up here.