Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2 8/1/84; site scc.UUCP
Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!mhuxl!houxm!vax135!cornell!uw-beaver!tektronix!hplabs!pesnta!scc!steiny
From: steiny@scc.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.nlang
Subject: Re: How do you pronounce 'often'?
Message-ID: <141@scc.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 14-Sep-84 01:53:55 EDT
Article-I.D.: scc.141
Posted: Fri Sep 14 01:53:55 1984
Date-Received: Fri, 14-Sep-84 03:06:46 EDT
References: <541@asgb.UUCP>
Organization: Personetics, Inc. - Santa Cruz, Calif.
Lines: 34

***

> How do you pronounce "often"?

	I pronounce it "awf^n" and here's why:

	"A knowledge of spelling has been responsible for changing the
pronounciation of certain words whose written from for one reason
or another do not indicate pronounciations which had become
traditional.  For instance, simply because it occurs in writing 
the "t" in "often" has come to be pronounced again, as it was
in earlier days and well into the seventeeth century, though
the pronounciation with the "t" is not yet recorded by all
current dictionaries.  

			Thomas Pyles
			The Origins and Development of the English Langauge
			1971
			p. 74

	Either use is perfectly correct.  The prediction is that
eventually it will change so that the version with the "t" will
be the main one.  On the other hand, when I was learning to talk
30 years ago, the version without the "t" was preferred.

-- 
"When the going gets weird, the weird get going."

	Don Steiny - Personetics @ (408) 425-0382
	109 Torrey Pine Terr.
	Santa Cruz, Calif. 95060
	ihnp4!pesnta  -\
	fortune!idsvax -> scc!steiny
	ucbvax!twg    -/