Hello!
Recently, one of my writing seminar students asked this question, on behalf of his 10-year-old son:
Why is it:
wIld (long I sound)
wIlder (still long I sound)
BUT, wilderness (now a short I sound)
My first reaction is that is has to do with the addition of the third syllable; however, I could not find a pronunciation rule that applied. Plus, I couldn't think of any other similar examples when he put me on the spot.
I just KNOW that folks here will know.
Thanks!
Terri G
Or: how did wIld and wIlder get to be pronounced with a long vowel? The German "wild" is short, and I bet so was the M.E. Maybe it has to do with "wilderness" being the only noun on the list, although that would not explain the long "the wilds (of . . .)."
Actually, I've wondered about this one meownself. The only difference between "wild" and "will" is the voiced consonant at the end, yet the pronunciations are markedly different. And yet, as Tess Greenberg points out, "wilderness" gets a short "i".
I can't find any reference to this, so I have to assume that it's just good ol' English being good ol' English!
Could it be related to bewilder? Hmm, she said, having decided to LIU:
bewilder
1684, from be- "thoroughly" + archaic wilder "lead astray, lure into the wilds," probably a back-formation of wilderness. An earlier word with the same sense was bewhape (c.1320).
wilderness
c.1200, from O.E. wildeoren "wild, savage," from wildern (adj.) "wild, savage" (from wilde "wild" + deor "animal;" see deer) + -ness. Cf. Du. wildernis, Ger. Wildernis, though the usual form is Wildnis. Online Etymology Dictionary
Perhaps it has something to do with the order in which english obtained the word. If we had wilderness first wild and wilder could be backformed words from the rootword.
yeahbut®, the post you replied to points out that wilderness comes from wildeoren.. from wildern.. from wilde.
BTW, doesn't the 'e' on the end of wilde make for a long 'i'?
I assume forms another syllable altogether: vil-deh
Well, I've had the same happen to me (students asking me WHY) with the words "Christ" (long /ai/) and "Christian", "Christmas", "christening" (all short /i/ )... is this an example of the same thing, do you think, or are the reasons different for this one and for "wild"/"wilderness"?
I suspect the answer would be found in the history of the word and that in, e.g., wild the i was long and, before the great vowel shift, would have been pronounced weeld. In wilderness it was short. Only long vowels underwent the great vowel shift so the pronunciation of i in wild would have gone from ee to eye and the i in wilderness would not have.
Just a guess, mind, but perhaps someone (nuncle?) would have the resources to check it out.
Just a guess, mind, but perhaps someone (nuncle?) would have the resources to check it out.
Well, the i in both wilde and wildernes is, in Old English, short, according to my Anglo-Saxon lexicon. The marking of a long vowel with a final -e (whether not pronoucned or, as in Middle English, reduced to a schwa) is a Middle English or Early Modern English convention. If length was marked at all in Old English it was with something that looked a lot like an acute accent. Vowel length can also be determined / reconstructed by a words use in poetry (prosody, metrics) or comparison with cognate words in related languages. Because the original i was short, the vowel shift doesn't really explain why this stressed syllable became a diphthong in Present-Day English. It could be from analogy or just a plain fluke, as others have suggested. The OED1 seems to suggest that the wilder in wilderness may be the comparative form of wild, but it may also be from an earlier compound wild-deornes 'wild animal (i.e., deer / German Tier) ness'. (The gloss on wildernes was 'brutish, bestial'.)
Is 'wildebeest' based on the same 'wilde'? Wild beast?
Yes, it's an Afrikaans word.