The other day I was looking up a website supplied by a fellow AWADer for words that rhymed with Many.
Amongst the several dozen words that appeared were the words plenty and twenty.
Aaaarrrrgggghhhhh!!!!!!"©
Maybe there are parts of the US where this might be the case but to even suggest that it is common practice to rhyme these words is ludicrous.
Atomica, which is skewed towards the US spelling and pronunciation, emphasises the 't' when pronouncing either twenty or plenty.
What danged fool decided to throw those in with the words without 't's??
I'd previously commented (a couple of months ago?) about the US pronunciation "innernational", "innernet", and "inneresting". Again in your examples it's the -nt- combination that just turns into -nn-. I'm telling you, I even catch myself sometimes saying things like "paining" instead of "painting". Then I get angry for being so easily influenced by the overbearing foreign media presence in our country!
...Then again, our friends across the pond rhyme "horse" and "sauce". So who's to judge?
you mean you don't pronounce the invisible t in many?
I agree with you Rubrick, one factor conflicts me: think of all the good poetry we'd lose.
Then again, our friends across the pond rhyme "horse" and "sauce". So who's to judge? T.S. Eliot, Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats
I know a cat who makes a habit
Of eating nothing else but rabbit,
And when he's finished, licks his paws
So's not to waste the onion sauce.(highly recommended for any cat lover!)
http://makeashorterlink.com/?H25E24B6Edit: Sorry ASp! The link fits on my screen, but I gather it widens yours, so I've adjusted it.
Amongst the several dozen words that appeared were the words plenty and twenty. Aaaarrrrgggghhhhh!!!!!!"©Gilberts & Sullivan, "Pirates of Penzance" [chanted]
For some ridiculous reason, to which, however, I've no desire to be disloyal,
Some person in authority, I don't know who, very likely the Astronomer Royal,
Has decided that, although for such a beastly month as February, twenty-eight days as a rule are plenty,
One year in every four his days shall be reckoned as nine and twenty.
Through some singular coincidence-- I shouldn't be surprised if it were owing to the agency of an ill-natured fairy--
You are the victim of this clumsy arrangement, having been born in leap-year, on the twenty-ninth of February;
And so, by a simple arithmetical process, you'll easily discover,
That though you've lived twenty-one years, yet, if we go by birthdays, you're only five and a little bit over!I am so conflicted!
Edit: After posting, I realized that Rubrick is saying not that
plenty and
twenty do not rhyme with each other, but that they do not rhyme with
many. But this was too much fun to delete -- paricularly in the middle of said beastly month.
But this was too much fun to delete -- paricularly in the middle of said beastly month.
Quite agree - G&S are always worth quoting, even if they not at all pertinent. And this quote points up what looks like a change in pronunciation between C19 and now. "This beastly month" appears to have been spoken as a four syllable word to rhyme with "fairy", whereas now, in UK at least, February is contracted to three syllables and slurred to "Febr'ry" (indeed, often enough cut down to a 2 syllable "Febry")
Was Gilbert exagerating the word, does anyone know, for lyrical/poetic purposes, or did the Victorians - well, the posh ones - pronounce the word as he uses it?
I agree with Rubick that sanctioning the rhyming of many with plenty and twenty is a gross injustice to the language. However, in instances of "off-rhyme", even the classic poets have be known to stretch it a bit in a pinch.
That being said, I propose, by venturing into sound linguitics, that even in the so-called "silent T" pronunication of those words that it is rather a "soft T" coming off the N. If you do a crisp T you'll see that the tongue clicks off the forward roof of your mouth toward or even on the upper teeth. But coming off the N in a "nt" pronunciation, the tongue instead jumps further back onto the roof of the mouth producing more of a roll than a click. I habitually use the "soft T" pronunciation for twenty and plenty and other "nt" words, but mentally I'm aware of pronouncing the T and still see it, and consider it present in those words. So, no, I would never consider sanctioning that as a valid rhyme.
"The window is wide, I cain't git o'er..."
I agree with Rubick that sanctioning the rhyming of many with plenty and twenty is a gross injustice to the language. However, in instances of "off-rhyme", even the classic poets have be known to stretch it a bit in a pinch.
Oh, I'm not implying at all that it shouldn't be used within a poetic context. Keiva's excellent example of ryhming paws with sauce is one such instance with which writers have cleverly manipulated words over the years. What I am 'moaning' about is that a reference book gives examples of such incorrect usage of words. Pairing twenty with many is akin to giving a false definition in a dictionary. IMHO.
i dunno, (I Don'(t) know) ya wanna (you want to) find some exaples in everday speach?
yes, many times in the day, many and plenty rhhyme. if i make any effort at all, say i don't no.. but i hear, and saydunno, and wanna, and gunna (going to) and cooda, shooda, wooda, Way to often (offen!)
What I am 'moaning' about is that a reference book gives examples of such incorrect usage of words.
Pairing twenty with many is akin to giving a false definition in a dictionary. IMHO. Yeah, that should never be stipulated in a text or reference book, I wholeheartedly agree. I guess the sanctioning of stuff like this in official text is part of the "dumbing-down" process in our educational systems that we've discussed so much. How these strange and erroneous inclusions,
and blatant omissions, make it into print and then escape the perusal of textbook screening/selection committees, I'll never know. It's sadly amazing.
Whit and I, being avid members of the Ogden Nash Amiration Society, can hardly object to
poetic use of dubious rhymes.
I heartily agree with your point about non-poetic use.
I suspect Gilbert was distorting deliberately to make the rhymes cute, as Nash did later. Putting the emphasis on the wrong syllable, when it served his purpose. He (Gilbert) did it again, and with the same sound at that, in Iolanthe:
Fairy Queen:
Oh Chancellor unwary,
It's highly necessary
Your tongue to teach
Respectful speech
Your attitude to vary.
Your badinage so airy,
Your manner arbitrary
Are out of place
When face to face
With an in-flu-en-tial Fairy.
Lord Chancellor:
A plague on this vagary
I'm in a nice quandary
Of hasty tone
With dames unknown
I ought to be more chary.
It seems that she's a fairy -
From Andersen's library -
And I took her for
The proprietor [sic]
Of a la-dies' se-mi-nary!
Then again, our friends across the pond rhyme "horse" and "sauce".
Um, don't they say it that way in Boston? I may be way off base as the only Bostonian accent I've ever heard was Colonel Winchester's in M*A*S*H
Um, don't they say it that way in Boston?
In fact, people in Boston and in northern New England don't pronounce horse and sauce with the same vowel sound. Horse becomes "hoss," while sauce has a more drawn-out aw sound. This gets complicated, and it's hard to explain without getting into phonemic transcription (which I wouldn't dream of doing here).
It's interesting that Hollywood has generally failed miserably in trying to reproduce true NE accents. The actors often come off sounding vaguely southern US. A recent instance is In the Bedroom--a first-rate story well told, but I couldn't believe any of them were from Maine.
...was Colonel Winchester's in M*A*S*HMajor Charles Emerson Winchester III that is!
The
Colonel was Colonel Sherman T. Potter.
Ah bien, you are absolutely right Angel. What is that vitamin one is supposed to take for memory, I'll take a handful please
Dang it, what was the name of that vitamin? It was on the tip of my tongue; just can't recall...
Dammitol©.
Ginko biloba: The maidenhair tree. Loveliest leaves on earth--fans and fishtails and maidenhair, too--all these three moving the wind or the water or a receptive, heaving chest. Ah, it's good to think on the Ginko!
Best regards,
WordWonderer
PS: I do like off-rhymes!!! Throw off those chains of exactness! What a bore! What a bloody bore!
Major Charles Emerson Winchester III (played by actor David Ogden Stiers) had a "Boston Brahmin" accent and Stiers had it down pretty well. Even the OED says that a brahmin is "a highly cultured or aloof person especially a member of the upper classes of Boston, Massachusetts, USA."
What most consider a Boston accent is softer. For instance a Bostonian says gen'lemen where a Brahmin says gentleMEN a la Major Winchester.
I have never heard a regular Boston accent imitated well by any actor who was not born into it.
I cringe every time Cliff the Mailman says Bahstun on "Cheers."
No help at all wot?
February: Fowler (1926) doesn't give a pronunciation, which suggests there was no question mark over it then. Old OED (using its own phonetic symbols which could sometimes impede ready understanding) gives only one pronunciation, with unstressed -ua-, but it's not clear to me whether they mean it one diphthong or two syllables, the second a neutral vowel. Modern Chambers (which has a Scottish influence) gives it as four syllables, with unstressed short -oo-a-.
I was trying to work out my own pronunciation the other day. I think Febr-a-ri with the natural tendency to slur it to Feb-ri (as it has a neutral vowel before a continuant).
I can't tell from this whether a generation earlier than OED and Fowler would have regularly said it with the full -air- vowel.
Compare a word in a similar but not identical situation: military. OED and Chambers make it four syllables, without alternative, the -a- being neutral; and Fowler doesn't mention it or have anything about the -tary ending, which suggests the modern British pronunciation as three syllables is recent. But in the US it's given the full -air- vowel, isn't it? So (if so) is this lengthening a new development in the US, or is it the original pronunciation everywhere, and in Britain -air- dropped to -a- then has now disappeared?
Going back several hundred years I think it would have been a long vowel pronounced in full.
military ... suggests the modern British pronunciation as three syllables is recent.
Coincidentally, Pirates of Penzance is again on point:
For my mil-i-ta-ry knowledge, though I'm plucky and adventury,
Has only been brought down to the beginning of the century.
But still in matters vegetable, animal and mineral,
I am the very model of a modern Major General!
There's probably four or five *major Boston accents with subdivisions of each one. You have some that are primarily regional and some that are ethnic, but the difference between regional and ethnic can be hard to pin down since the different ethnic groups tend to clump together in different regions. It's been years since I've lived there but I would think that Cliff's accent was sort of a Southie accent.
Then there was the time I was at a play that had a character who was supposed to be southern. the actor's accent was an OK generic "southern for the yankee audience" accent but it kept slipping up to a Down East accent in the middle of a sentence. Rather disconcerting, really.