POLL: pronunciation of forehead

[Rev Rob]

forehead - with a long O - MDiv.

[TubaTodd]

I've been sitting here for a few minutes trying to figure out how I would pronounce it, by using it in a sentence. I discovered that my NY Yankee upbringing clashes with my adopted home of Alabama. So my pronunciation is somewhere in between. I think the Yankee wins out though. It seems to lean closer to FAR-head than FOUR-head.

[bort]

Whoa...I never knew anyone pronounced it different than "FOUR-head"...?

[TubaTodd]

Whoa...I never knew anyone pronounced it different than "FOUR-head"...?

Don't you mean "FAW-head" ??

I think I've heard FAR-ED (Ed, like someone's name), four-head, FAW-hid, FAW-head, FAW-ED and my personal favorite........"my friggin FAW-ED"

[bort]

Whoa...I never knew anyone pronounced it different than "FOUR-head"...?

Don't you mean "FAW-head" ??

I think I've heard FAR-ED (Ed, like someone's name), four-head, FAW-hid, FAW-head, FAW-ED and my personal favorite........"my friggin FAW-ED"

Nope, I meant 4-head. Only thing I've ever heard or considered correct. Guess I don't spend much time in the south...

[bort]

My least favorites:

-- I should of (should have) known
-- Let me ax (ask) you a question
-- Using the word "utilize" ALL the time in an attempt to sound smart (sometimes "use" is fine).
-- Using "due to the fact that..." instead of just "because"
-- Absolute worst Apostrophe's (:roll:) in the wrong places

People don't talk or write so "good" anymore.

[bort]

Well, maybe I shouldn't have included that. I meant to point out issues of correctness, not dialect. Apostrophes are still the killer for me.

The book Eats, Shoots and Leaves was totally made for people like me.

[gilmored]

Being in an uneducated enviroment is tough. I work in a fast food restaurant and have learned what seems almost like a new language. Ex. Chritma= Christmas, chrun or chrin= children. Also, phrases such as "Ya feel me" make my heart hurt.
In my opinion this is a mixture of being lazy and not caring which shows their self worth.
The online community is also a major source of the problem. Using internet shorthand along with young and uneducated people posting things that they don't know how to properly use is murder to the language. I know of some individuals that believe that the proper spelling of friend is fran. Others also will post pictures and title them "Joe and I" or statuses such as "Joe and me are going too the store". Sometimes I have to look back over something because a person doesn't know how to use to, too or two. I make mistakes but I also try to learn from them. But an 18 year old person entering college should know these differences as well as who the first president was. It was not Lincoln.

[Carroll]

People also look at me funny when I pronounce battery, "batt'ry", when referring to an electrical cell (which is correct/preferrred as well). The pronunciation "battery" is to be reserved for the "military forces" meaning of the word.

I think I might look at you funny for that one. A battery is an organized group for a single purpose, whether chemical cells to produce electricity or artillery devices to produce destruction. No need for different pronunciations in my mind.

[Carroll]

I suppose it follows, logically, that the "correct" pronunciation of the surname CRAIGHEAD would then be crag-ed. I would then have to ask the spelling of the name because to my ear, it would be spelled cragged.

Thanks for finding the correct howjsay entry.

[The Jackson]

I think that the importance of things like spelling and grammar is grossly misunderestimated by a lot of people today. It goes both ways, though, and it's very easy to grossly overestimate that same importance. I take good care to make sure whatever I speak properly states what I mean to state. I do that to the best of my ability and will usually correct myself when I make an error. The same thing goes for writing on the Internet. Like Wade, I now rarely take it upon myself to correct the usage of the language by others. The only thing that comes from a confrontation like that is frustration and anger. I'm happy that I can now simply ask myself, "Do I want to be right, or do I want to be happy?". English doesn't have a central governing body, so all we have is common usage and tradition. Languages and dialects evolve and new ones are born through these changes. That's just the way it is.

I find language (written and spoken) to be a very personal thing. All of us have our own unique diction and employment of language to communicate. I really like that and, even if annoying to me, I'm not prepared to tell someone else that they're wrong or incorrect. It's a changing thing (for English, anyway; I'm not that familiar with languages regulated by institutions).

[cambrook]

I always find it amusing when American (and to some extent Australian) commentators speak about the use of "English".

From the country that brought you "aluminum" (aluminium), "program" (programme) and lacked the patience to count to a million properly and therefore made it a smaller number

[cambrook]

When I was younger a billion was a million million (long scale), due to the pervasive nature of American culture and business it is now more widely counted as a thousand million.

A trillion was correspondingly larger, now it is the same as an "old fashioned" billion.

[Donn]

I think I might look at you funny for that one. A battery is an organized group for a single purpose, whether chemical cells to produce electricity or artillery devices to produce destruction. No need for different pronunciations in my mind.

I find with you on this point. Whatever the evolution of meaning, it's etymologically speaking the same word. Pronunciation may vary by region, but I see no evidence in the dictionary that it varies according to the sense (which I suppose is another way to say, it's the same word.)

English has always been subject to radical variation in pronunciation, going back to Middle English with dialects where the basic pronouns were different. You can still hear some of that, in words like "creek" and "roof". Which not everyone pronounces the same (and it occurs to me that some people might think "crick" is a different word - it isn't, it's just the way "creek" is pronounced.)

I wonder if that's what happened with "forehead" - I'm inclined to think people have been pronouncing it like they do forever, and the lexicographers missed some of what was going on there.

[SRanney]

Languages and dialects evolve and new ones are born through these changes. That's just the way it is.

This is a gr8 explanashon.

i dont always like the way that english is evolutionizing, but i do my best to utilize that wich i learned in skool and try to leed by egsample. internet msg boards are not the rite place for reading good grammer and spelling and i gave up long ago worrying abt the literasy of those who mispell and utilize bad punktuashun. now i just judge them for utilizing bad grammer.

i pronouns the word 4hed and i have a MS digree in fishery science.

George Bernard Shaw once claimed that English was such a mongrel language that the language itself made little sense at all. As an example, he claimed that the word "fish" could easily be spelled "ghoti" yet was pronounceable the same way: the "gh" came from the word "rough", the "o" from the word "women", and the "ti" from the ending "-tion," as in "exception."

[Donn]

My Father (who was from southeast Kansas), occasionally pronounced "wash" as "warsh".

Same with mine, who left Kansas at an early age when his family moved to Warshington State during WWII.

[bort]

Well of course, you "warsh" things with "wooder."

I don't really mind or care when language adapts itself. But some things are just wrong. I have a BS in math and I work in the education business. Serious things and real life demand accuracy and precision. Too often, what is called "attention to detail" really just means "doing it correctly in the first place."

[Donn]

Here's an example of degeneration: people look at your nice tuba or whatever and say "I'm jealous!"

Really that should be "I'm envious!" Jealousy is a different word, because it's a different thing. A kind of interesting wikipedia article about it - the confusion between the two words is long standing and understandable, but they're different. The more we listen to each other saying "jealous" when we mean "envious", the harder it is to understand what "jealous" really means, leaving us with no word to clearly express that concept.

[TMurphy]

Pronunciations always vary greatly along geographic lines. To try and codify this into what is "right" and what is "wrong" is a fool's errand. I have no problem with people maintaining this differences, as long as we can all understand each other. It's when dialect/accent differences creep there way into the written language that it bugs me (for example, I know many people who both say and write "supposibly" instead of "supposedly").

My least favorites:
...
-- Let me ax (ask) you a question
...

This is, 100%, a "black" thing.

Clearly, you've not spent much time on Long Island. (Or, as the locals pronounce it, Lawn Guyland). Listen to Billy Joel's "Don't Ask Me Why" for an example (somewhere around the 1:47 mark).

Just remember, it's spelled "Yacht" but pronounced "throat-warbler mangrove".

[Uncle Buck]

One that is a pet peeve to me is dropping the "t" sound in the middle of a word. Most obvious example is saying "mountain" without the "t."

Not sure if it is just a Utah thing - haven't paid close enough attention when I speak to people from out-of-state.