English orthography

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Jump to: navigation, search English orthography refers to the alphabetic spelling system used by the English language. English orthography, like other alphabetic orthographies, uses a set of rules that generally governs how speech sounds are represented in writing. English has relatively complicated spelling rules when compared to other languages with alphabetic orthographies. Because of the complex history of the English language, nearly every sound can be legitimately spelled in more than one way, and many spellings can be pronounced in more than one way.

Contents
[hide]

1 Function of the letters o 1.1 Phonemic representation o 1.2 Word origin o 1.3 Homophone differentiation o 1.4 Marking sound changes in other letters o 1.5 Functionless letters o 1.6 Multiple functionality o 1.7 Underlying representation 2 Spelling patterns o 2.1 Spelling to sound correspondences 2.1.1 Vowels 2.1.2 Consonants 2.1.3 Combinations of consonant and vowel letters o 2.2 Sound to spelling correspondences 3 Diacritics 4 Irregularities o 4.1 "Ough" words 5 History of the English spelling system 6 See also 7 References 8 Bibliography 9 External links

[edit] Function of the letters

Note: In the following discussion, only one or two common pronunciations of American and British English varieties are used in this article for each word cited. Other regional pronunciations may be possible for some words, but indicating all possible regional variants in the article is impractical.

[edit] Phonemic representation

Further information: Phonemic orthography Like most alphabetic systems, letters in English orthography may represent a particular sound. For example, the word cat (pronounced /kt/) consists of three letters c, a, and t, in which c represents the sound /k/, a the sound //, and t the sound /t/. Single letters or multiple sequences of letters may provide this function. Thus, the single letter c in the word cat represents the single sound /k/. In the word ship (pronounced /p/), the digraph sh (two letters) represents the sound //. In the word ditch, the three letters tch represent the sound /t/. Less commonly, a single letter can represent more than one sound. The most common example is the letter x, which often represents more than one sound as in the prefix exwhere it represents the consonant cluster /ks/ (for example, in the word ex-wife, pronounced /kswaf/). The same letter (or sequence of letters) may indicate different sounds when the letter occurs in different positions. For instance, the digraph gh represents the sound /f/ at the end of single-syllable, single-morpheme words, such as cough (pronounced /kf/ in many dialects of American English). At the beginning of syllables (i.e. the syllable onset), the digraph gh represents the sound /g/, such as in the word ghost (pronounced /gost/ or /gst/). Furthermore, the sound value represented by a particular letter (or letters) is often restricted by its position within the word. Thus, the digraph gh never represents the sound /f/ in syllable onsets and never represents the sound /g/ in syllable codas. (Incidentally, this shows that ghoti does not follow English spelling rules to sound like fish.)

[edit] Word origin

See also: Hard and soft C, Hard and soft G, and Silent K Another type of spelling characteristic is related to word origin. For example, when representing a vowel, the letter y in non-word-final positions represents the sound // in some words borrowed from Greek (reflecting an original upsilon), whereas the letter usually representing this sound in non-Greek words is the letter i. Thus, the word myth (pronounced /m/) is of Greek origin, while pith (pronounced /p/) is a Germanic word. Other examples include th representing /t/ (which is usually represented by t), ph representing /f/ (which is usually represented by f), and ch representing /k/ (which is

usually represented by c or k) the use of these spellings for these sounds often mark words that have been borrowed from Greek. Some, such as Brengelman (1970), have suggested that, in addition to this marking of word origin, these spellings indicate a more formal level of style or register in a given text, although Rollins (2004) finds this point to be exaggerated as there would many exceptions where a word with one of these spellings, such as ph for /f/ (like telephone), could occur in an informal text.

[edit] Homophone differentiation

Letters are also used to distinguish between homophones (words with the same pronunciation) that would otherwise have the same pronunciation and spelling but different meanings. The words hour and our are pronounced identically (as /a/ or /ar/). However, they are distinguished from each other orthographically by the addition of the letter h. Spoken language often creates subtle difference to alleviate confusion, "our" often can if desired be pronounced like "are". Another example of this is the homophones plain and plane where both are pronounced /plen/, but are marked with two different orthographic representations of the vowel /e/. Often this is because of the historical pronunciation of each word where, over time, two separate sounds become the same but the different spellings remain: plane used to be pronounced /plen/, but the /e/ sound merged with the /e/ sound in plain, making plain and plane homonyms. In written language, this may help to resolve potential ambiguities that would arise otherwise (cf. He's breaking the car vs. He's braking the car). This can be seen in a positive light since with written language (unlike spoken language) the reader usually has no recourse to ask the writer for clarification (whereas in a conversation, the listener can ask the speaker about lexical uncertainties). Some proponents of spelling reform view homophones as undesirable and would prefer that they be eliminated. Doing so, however, would increase orthographic ambiguities that would need to be resolved via the linguistic context.

[edit] Marking sound changes in other letters

See also: Silent E Another function of English letters is to provide information about other aspects of pronunciation or the word itself. Rollins (2004) uses the term "markers" for letters with this function. Letters may mark different types of information. One common type of marking is that of a different pronunciation of another letter within the word. An example of this is the letter e in the word cottage (pronounced /ktd/ or /ktd/). Here e indicates that the preceding g should represent the sound /d/. This contrasts with the more common value of g in word-final position as the sound /g/, such as in tag (pronounced /t/).

A particular letter may have more than one pronunciation-marking role. Besides the marking of word-final g as indicating /d/ as in cottage, the letter e may also mark an altered pronunciation for other vowels. In the pair ban and bane, the a of ban has the value //, whereas the a of bane is marked by the e as having the value /e/.

[edit] Functionless letters

Further information: Silent letter Other letters have no linguistic function. For example, there is a general "graphotactic" constraint in English orthography against words that end in the letter v. Thus, in order to satisfy this constraint, syllable-final v is followed by the letter e, such as in the word give. Spellings such as rev and slav are extremely rare.

[edit] Multiple functionality

A given letter or (letters) may have dual functions. For example, the letter i in the word cinema has a sound-representing function (representing the sound //) and a pronunciation-marking function (marking the c as having the value /s/ opposed to the value /k/). For another example, see Pronunciation of English th.

[edit] Underlying representation

Like many other alphabetic orthographies, English spelling does not represent noncontrastive phonetic sounds (that is, sub-phonemic sounds). The fact that the letter t is pronounced with aspiration [t] at the beginning of words is never indicated in the spelling, and, indeed, this phonetic detail is probably not noticeable to the average native speaker not trained in the phonetics. However, unlike some orthographies, English orthography often represents a very abstract underlying representation (or morphophonemic form) of English words (Rollins 2004: 16-19; Chomsky & Halle 1968; Chomsky 1970).
"[T]he postulated underlying forms are systematically related to the conventional orthography...and are, as is well known, related to the underlying forms of a much earlier historical stage of the language. There has, in other words, been little change in lexical representation since Middle English, and, consequently, we would expect...that lexical representation would differ very little from dialect to dialect in Modern English...[and] that conventional orthography is probably fairly close to optimal for all modern English dialects, as well as for the attested dialects of the past several hundred years." (Chomsky & Halle 1968:54)

In these cases, a given morpheme (i.e. a component of a word) is represented with a single spelling despite the fact that it is pronounced differently (i.e. has different surface representations) in different environments. An example is the past tense suffix -ed, which may be pronounced variously as [t], [d], or [d] (for example, dip [dp], dipped [dpt], boom [bum], boomed [bumd], loot [lut], looted [lutd]). Because these different

pronunciations of -ed can be predicted by a few phonological rules, only a single spelling is needed in the orthography. Another example involves the vowel differences (with accompanying stress pattern changes) in several related words. For instance, the word photographer is derived from the word photograph by adding the derivational suffix -er. When this suffix is added, the vowel pronunciations change: Pronunciation [fotgrf] or photograph [ftgrf] [ftgrfr] or [f photographer tgrf] It may be argued[weasel words] that the underlying representation of photo is a single phonological form, such as |fotgrf|. Since the (surface) pronunciation of the vowels can be predicted by phonological rules according to the different stress patterns, the orthography only needs to have one spelling that corresponds to the underlying form. Other examples of this type, include words with the -ity suffix (as in agile vs agility, acid vs acidity, divine vs divinity, sane vs sanity, etc.). (See also: Trisyllabic laxing.) Another example includes words like sign (pronounced [san]) and bomb (pronounced [bm] or [bm]) where the "silent" letters g and b, respectively, seem to be "inert" letters with no functional role. However, there are the related words signature and bombard in which the so-called "silent" letters are pronounced [sntr] and [bmbrd] or [bmbd], respectively. Here it may be argued[weasel words] that the underlying representation of sign and bomb is |sagn| and |bmb| or |bmb|, in which the underlying |g| and |b| are only pronounced in the surface forms when followed by certain suffixes (-ature, -ard). Otherwise, the |g| and |b| are not realized in the surface pronunciation (e.g. when standing alone, or when followed by suffixes like -ing or -er). In these cases, the orthography indicates the underlying consonants that are present in certain words but are absent in other related words. Other examples include the t in fast [fst] / [fst] and fasten [fsn] / [fsn] and the h in heir [r] / [] and inherit [nhrt]. Another example includes words like mean (pronounced [min]) and meant (pronounced [mnt]). Here the vowel spelling ea is pronounced differently in the two related words. Thus, again the orthography uses only a single spelling that corresponds to the single morphemic form rather than to the surface phonological form. English orthography does not always provide an underlying representation; sometimes it provides an intermediate representation between the underlying form and the surface pronunciation. This is the case with the spelling of the regular plural morpheme, which is written as either -s (as in tick, ticks and mite, mites) or -es (as in box, boxes). Here the spelling -s is pronounced either [s] or [z] (depending on the environment, e.g. ticks [tks] and pigs [pz]) while -es is pronounced [z] (e.g. boxes [bksz] or [bksz]). Spelling

Thus, there are two different spellings that correspond to the single underlying representation |-z| of the plural suffix and the three surface forms. The spelling indicates the insertion of [] before the [z] in the spelling -es, but does not indicate the devoiced [s] distinctly from the unaffected [z] in the spelling -s. The abstract representation of words as indicated by the orthography can be considered to be advantageous since the etymological relationships between words are very apparent to English readers. This makes writing English more complex, but arguably makes reading English more efficient (Chomsky 1970:294; Rollins 2004:17). However, very abstract underlying representations, such as that of Chomsky & Halle (1968) or of underspecification theories, are sometimes considered too abstract to accurately reflect the linguistic knowledge of native speakers. Followers of these arguments believe the less abstract surface forms are more "psychologically real" and thus more useful in terms of pedagogy (Rollins 2004:17-19).

[edit] Spelling patterns

[edit] Spelling to sound correspondences
[edit] Vowels In a generative approach to English spelling, Rollins (2004) identifies twenty main orthographic vowels of stressed syllables that are grouped into four main categories: "Lax", "Tense", "Heavy", "Tense-R". (As this classification is based on orthography, not all orthographic "lax" vowels are necessarily phonologically lax.)

General American

Letter Lax Tense Heavy Tense-R

// /e/ man mane

/r/ mar

/r/ mare

// met

/i/ mete

/r/ her

/r/ here

//

/a/

/r/

/ar/

win

wine

fir

fire

// /o/ mop mope

/r/ for, fore

// /ju/ hug huge

/r/ cur

/jr/ cure

// pus h

/u/ rude

--

/r/ sure

Received Pronunciation (British)

Letter Lax Tense Heavy Tense-R

// /e/ // man mane mar

// mare

// met

/i/ mete

// her

// here

// win

/a/ wine

// fir

/a/ fire

// // mop mope

// for, fore

//

/ // ju/

/j/

hug huge

cur

cure

// /u/ pus rude h

--

// sure

For instance, the letter a can represent the lax vowel //, tense /e/, heavy /r/ or //, or tense-r /r/ or //. Heavy and tense-r vowels are the respective lax and tense counterparts followed by the letter r. Tense vowels are distinguished from lax vowels with a "silent" e letter that is added at the end of words. Thus, the letter a in hat is lax //, but when the letter e is added in the word hate the letter a is tense /e/. Similarly, heavy and tense-r vowels pattern together: the letters ar in car are heavy /(r)/, the letters ar followed by silent e in the word care are /(r)/. The letter u represents two different vowel patterns, one being / - ju - (r) j(r)/, the other / - u - (r)/. There is no distinction between heavy and tense-r vowels with the letter o, and the letter u in the /-u-(r)/ pattern does not have a heavy vowel member. Besides silent e, another strategy for indicating tense and tense-r vowels, is the addition of another orthographic vowel forming a digraph. In this case, the first vowel is usually the main vowel while the second vowel is the "marking" vowel. For example, the word man has a lax a pronounced //, but with the addition of i (as the digraph ai) in the word main the a is marked as tense and pronounced /e/. These two strategies produce words that are spelled differently but pronounced identically, as in mane (silent e strategy), main (digraph strategy) and Maine (both strategies). The use of two different strategies relates to the function of distinguishing between words that would otherwise be homonyms. Besides the 20 basic vowel spellings, Rollins (2004) has a reduced vowel category (representing the sounds /, /) and a miscellaneous category (representing the sounds /, a, ar, ar/ and /j/+V, /w/+V, V+V). [edit] Consonants See also: Digraph (orthography) Notes:

The dash has two different meanings. A dash after the letter indicates that it must be at the beginning of a syllable, eg j- in jumper and ajar. A dash before the letter indicates that it cannot be at the beginning of a word, eg -ck in sick and ticket. More specific rules take precedence over more general ones, eg 'c- before e, i or y' takes precedence over 'c'. Where the letter combination is described as 'word-final', inflectional suffixes may be added without changing the pronunciation, eg catalogues. The dialect used is RP. Isolated foreign borrowings are excluded. This relies highly on knowledge of where the stress in a word is, but English has no consistent way of showing stress. Minor value (IPA)

Spelling

Major value Examples of (IPA) major value

Examples of minor value

Exceptions

b, -bb

/b/

bit, rabbit centre, city, cyst, face, prince cat, cross

c before e, i or /s/ y

/t/ cello

/k/

-cc before e or /ks/ i -cc /k/

accept

account chord, archaic machine, parachute, chef

ch

/t/

/k/ chin //

-ck

/k/

tack, ticket

ct-

/t/

ctenoid /d/ graduate, gradual (both may also be pronounced as /dj/ in RP)

d, -dd

/d/

dive, ladder

-dg

/d/ /f/

ledger /v/ of

f, -ff

fine, off

g before e, i or /d/ y

gentle, magic, gyrate, page, college go, great, stagger ghost, ghastly /f/

/g/ get, give, girl, begin

g, -gg

/g/

gh-

/g/

-gh

dough, high right, daughter, bought gnome, gnaw exhibit, exhaust

laugh, enough

-ght

/t/

gn-

/n/

h- after ex

/h/ exhale

h-

/h/

he, alcohol

vehicle, honest, hono(u)r

j-

/d/ /k/ /n/ /l/ /m/

jump, ajar

key, bake

kn-

knee, knock

l, -ll

line, hall

m, -mm

mine, hammer climb, plumber mnemonic

-mb

/m/

mn-

/n/ /m/

-mn

hymn, autumn link, plonk, anchor nice, funny England, finger, stronger danger, passenger

-n before /k/

//

n, -nn

/n/

-ng

//

/g/ long, singing /nd/

p, -pp

/p/

pill, happy physical, photograph pneumonia, pneumatic psychology, psychic ptomaine /p/ Phuket, /v/ Stephen

ph

/f/

pn-

/n/

ps-

/s/

pt-

/t/ /k/ //

Iraq

r-, -rr

ray, parrot rhyme, diarrhoea

iron

rh, -rrh

//

in nonrhotic -r, -rr, -rrh dialects such when not bar, bare, as RP, followed by a catarrh // in rhotic vowel sound dialects such as GA -s- between vowels

/z/

rose, prison

/s/

house, base

word-final -s /s/ morpheme after a

pets, shops

voiceless sound word-final -s morpheme /z/ after a voiced sound

beds, magazines

s, -ss

/s/

song, ask, message scene, scissors, scythe

/z/

scissors, dessert, // sugar, tissue dissolve

sc- before e, i /s/ or y

/sk/ sceptic

sch-

/sk/

school

//

schist, schedule (this may be /s/ schism pronounced as /sk/)

sh

// /t/ /t/ // or // /v/ /w/ /h/

shin

t, -tt

ten, bitter

-tch

batch, kitchen /t/ thyme, Thames /t/ eighth

th

thin, them

v, -vv

vine, bovver

w-

we

sword, answer

wh- before o

who, whole

wh-

/w/ (// in dialects where this phoneme exists) // /z/

wheel

wr-

wrong

x-

xylophone excellent, excited excuse

-xc before e or /ks/ i -xc /ksk/ /ks/ /j/ /z/

-x

box

y-

yes

z, -zz

zoo, fuzz

[edit] Combinations of consonant and vowel letters Minor value (IPA)

Spelling

Major Examples of value (IPA) major value

Examples of Exceptions minor value

qu-

/kw/

queen, quick /k/

liquor, mosquito

-cqu

/kw/

acquaint, acquire

gu- before e or i

/g/

guest, guide

/gw/

linguistics

alf

/f/ (RP) calf, half /f/ (GA) /m/ calm, almond /m/ salmon

alm

olm

/m/RP, holm (oak) /om/ GA /k/ /k/ walk, chalk

alk

olk

yolk, folk

al, all

/l/

bald, call, falcon old, roll exist, examine, /ks/ exhaust special, gracious

/l/ shall

ol, oll

/l/

unstressed ex/gz/ before a vowel or h unstressed ci- before // a vowel unstressed scibefore a vowel

exhale

/si/

species

//

conscience

unstressed -si before // a vowel

expansion

//

division, illusion

unstressed -ssi before a vowel

//

mission

unstressed -ti before // a vowel

nation, ambitious

//

equation

/ti/ patio, /ta/ cation

unstressed -ture

/t()/

nature, picture leisure, treasure seizure

unstressed -sure

/()/

unstressed -zure

/()/ /fn/ /sn/ /sl/

unstressed -ften

soften, often

unstressed -sten

listen, fasten

unstressed -stle

whistle, rustle

word-final -le after a /l/ consonant word-final -re after a /()/ consonant word-final -ngue //

little, table

metre, fibre

tongue catalogue, plague, colleague

word-final -gue

/g/

/gju/

argue

word-final -que

/k/

mosque, bisque

/ke/

risqu

barbeque

word-final -ed morpheme after /t/ or /d/* word-final -ed morpheme after a voiceless sound* word-final -ed morpheme after a voiced sound* word-final -es morpheme**

/d/

waited

/t/

topped

/d/

failed, ordered

/z/

washes, boxes

* There is absolutely no way to tell if it is the morpheme or an integral part of the word. Compare snaked and naked. ** Same as above compare the two pronunciations of axes.

[edit] Sound to spelling correspondences

The following table shows for each sound, the various spelling patterns used to denote it. The symbol "" stands for an intervening consonant. The letter sequences are in order of frequency with the most common first. Some of these patterns are very rare or unique, such as au for the sound in laugh. In some cases, the spellings shown are found in only one known English word (such as "mh" for /m/, or "yrrh" for /r/). Consonants IPA spelling example pill, happy, Phuket, tape, hiccough

/p/ p, pp, ph, pe, gh

/b/ b, bb, bh, p (in some dialects) /t/ t, tt, ed, pt, th, ct d, dd, ed, dh, th (in some dialects)

bit, rabbit, Bhutan, thespian

ten, bitter, topped, pterodactyl, thyme, ctenoid

/d/

dive, ladder, failed, dharma, them

/g/ g, gg, gue, gh

go, stagger, catalogue, ghost

/k/

c, k, ck, ch, cc, qu, q, cq, cu, que, cat, key, tack, chord, account, liquor, Iraq, kk, kh acquaint, biscuit, mosque, trekker, khan mine, hammer, climb, hymn, mho, diaphragm, drachm

/m/ m, mm, mb, mn, mh, gm, chm

/n/

n, nn, kn, gn, pn, nh, cn, mn, ng nice, funny, knee, gnome, pneumonia, piranha, (in some dialects) cnidarian, mnemonic, fighting sing, link, tongue, Singh

// ng, n, ngue, ngh /r/ r, rr, wr, rh, rrh f, ph, ff, gh, pph, u, th (in some dialects)

ray, parrot, wrong, rhyme, diarrh(o)ea fine, physical, off, laugh, sapphire, lieutenant (Br), thin vine, savvy, of, Stephen

/f/

/v/ v, vv, f, ph // th, chth, phth, tth

thin, chthonic, phthisis, Matthew

// th s, c, ss, sc, st, ps, sch (in some /s/ dialects), cc, se, ce, z (in some dialects) s, z, x, zz, ss, ze, c (in some dialects)

them, breathe

song, city, mess, scene, listen, psychology, schism, flaccid, horse, juice, citizen

/z/

has, zoo, xylophone, fuzz, scissors, breeze, electricity

//

shin, nation, special, mission, expansion, tissue, sh, ti, ci, ssi, si, ss, ch, s, sci, ce, machine, sugar, conscience, ocean, schmooze, sch, sc crescendo si, s, g, z, j, zh, ti, sh (in some dialects) division, leisure, genre, seizure, jet, Zhytomyr, equation, Pershing chin, nature, batch, bastion, cello, Czech, Deutschmark

//

/t/ ch, t, tch, ti, c, cz, tsch

/ g, j, dg, dge, d, di, gi, ge, dj, gg d/ /h/ h, wh, j, ch /j/ /l/ y, i, j, ll

magic, jump, ledger, bridge, graduate, soldier, Belgian, dungeon, Djibouti, exaggerate

he, who, fajita, chutzpah

yes, onion, hallelujah, tortilla

l, ll, lh

line, hall, Lhasa

/w/ w, u, o, ou, wh (in most dialects) we, queen, choir, Ouija board, what / wh (in some dialects) hw wheel

Vowels IPA spelling e, ea, ee, ee, ae, ei, ie, ie, eo, oe, ie...e, ay, ey, i, y, oi, ue example be, beach, bee, cede, Caesar, deceit, machine, field, people, amoeba, hygiene, quay, key, ski, city, chamois, Portuguese bit, myth, build, pretty, been, sieve, women, busy, damage, counterfeit, sovereign, carriage, mileage, medicine, bargain, Ceylon, oedema tool, luminous, who, flute, soup, jewel, true, lose, fruit, maneuver, canoe, through, two, Sioux, lieutenant (US), Sault Sainte Marie, coup, cwm look, full, wolf, gooseberry, worsted, courier, should paper, rate, pay, rain, cocaine, arraign, straight, gaol (Br), gauge, ukulele (caf), crepe, steak, veil, beige, reign, eight, matinee (soire), eh, ballet, obey, chez, dossier, lingerie (US), reggae, thegn another, anthem, awesome, atrium, mountain, callous, foreign, beryl, Messiah, borough (Br), Edinburgh, Michael, porpoise

/i/

i, y, ui, e, ee, ie, o, u, a, ei, // ee, ia, ea, i...e, ai, ey, oe

oo, u, o, ue, ou, ew, ue, /u/ oe, ui, eu, oe, ough, wo, ioux, ieu, ault, oup, w // oo, u, o, oo...e, or, ou, oul a, ae, ay, ai, ai...e, aig, aigh, ao, au, e (), e...e, ea, /e/ ei, ei...e, eig, eigh, ee (e), eh, et, ey, ez, er, ie, ae, eg

//

a, e, o, u, ai, ou, eig, y, ah, ough, gh, ae, oi

o, oe, oa, ow, ou, oe, oo, /o/ eau, oh, ew, au, aoh, ough, eo

so, bone, boat, know, soul, foe, brooch, beau, oh, sew, mauve, pharaoh, furlough, yeoman

// e, ea, a, ae, ai, ay, eae, ei, met, weather, many, aesthetic, said, says, cleanse,

eo, ie, ieu, u, ue, oe

heifer, jeopardy, friend, lieutenant (Br), bury, guess, foetid hand, plaid, salmon, laugh, meringue

// a, ai, al, au, i // u, o, oe, oe, ou, oo, wo

sun, son, come, does, touch, flood, twopennce

//

a, au, aw, ough, augh, o, oa, fall, author, jaw, bought, caught, cord, broad, door, oo, al, uo, u walk, fluorine (Br), sure (some accents) lock, watch, bureaucracy, yacht, sausage, cough

// o, a, eau, ach, au, ou

ie, i, y, igh, ie, ei, eigh, uy, fine, Christ, try, high, tie, eidos, height, buy, aisle, / ai, ey, ye, eye, ye, ae, ais, geyser, dye, eye, type, maestro, aisle, isle, sign, indict, a/ is, ig, ic, ay, ui tayra, guide ar, a, er, ear, ae, ua, aa, au, car, father, sergeant, heart, are, guard, bazaar, aunt, ou our (some accents) er, ar, ere, are, aire, eir, air, aa, aer, ayr, ear stationery, stationary, where, ware, millionaire, heir, hair, Aaron, aerial, Ayr, bear foil, toy, lawyer, buoy, gargoyle, Freudian

/r/

/r/

// oi, oy, aw, uoy oye, eu / ou, ow, ough, au, ao a/

out, now, bough, tau, Laos

fern, worst, turn, thirst, myrtle, journey, earth, err, er, or, ur, ir, yr, our, ear, err, /r/ amateur, myrrh, grammar, hors d'oeuvre, colonel, eur, yrrh, ar, oeu, olo, uer Guernsey /ju/ u, ue, eu, ue, iew, eau, ieu, music*, use, feud, cue, view, beautiful*, adieu*, ueue, ui, ewe, ew queue, nuisance*, ewe, few, * in some dialects, see

Yod dropping

[edit] Diacritics
Main article: English words with diacritics English includes some words that can be written with accent marks. These words have mostly been imported from other languages, usually French. But it is increasingly rare for writers of English to actually use the accent marks for common words, even in very formal writing. The strongest tendency to retain the accent is in words that are atypical of English morphology and therefore still perceived as slightly foreign. For example, caf and pt both have a pronounced final e, which would be "silent" by the normal English pronunciation rules. Some examples: appliqu, attach, blas, bric--brac, brtchen,[1] caf, clich, crme, crpe, faade, fianc(e), flamb, nave, navet, n(e), papier-mch, pass, piata, protg, raison dtre, rsum, risqu, ber-, vis--vis, voil. Some words such as rle and htel were first seen with accents when they were borrowed into English, but now the accent is almost never used. The words were considered very French borrowings when first used in English, even accused by some of being foreign phrases used where English alternatives would suffice, but today their French origin is largely forgotten. The accent on "lite" has disappeared from most publications today, though Time and the New Yorker magazines still use it. For some words such as "soupon" however, the only spelling found in English dictionaries (the Oxford English Dictionary and others) uses the diacritic. Italics, with appropriate accents, are generally applied to foreign terms that are uncommonly used in or have not been assimilated into English: for example, adis, coup d'tat, crme brle, pice de rsistance, raison d'tre, ber (bermensch), vis--vis. It was formerly common in English to use a diaeresis mark to indicate a hiatus: for example, coperate, das, relect. One publication that still uses a diaeresis for this function is the New Yorker magazine. However, this is increasingly rare in modern English. Nowadays the diaeresis is normally left out (cooperate), or a hyphen is used (cooperate). It is, however, still common in loanwords such as nave and nol. Written accents are also used occasionally in poetry and scripts for dramatic performances to indicate that a certain normally unstressed syllable in a word should be stressed for dramatic effect, or to keep with the metre of the poetry. This use is frequently seen in archaic and pseudoarchaic writings with the "-ed" suffix, to indicate that the "e" should be fully pronounced, as with cursd.

In certain older texts (typically British), the use of ligatures is common in words such as archology, diarrha, and encyclopdia. Such words have Latin or Greek origin. Nowadays, the ligatures have been generally replaced in British English by the separated digraph "ae" and "oe" ("encyclopaedia", "diarrhoea"; but usually "economy", "ecology") and in American English by "e" ("encyclopedia", "diarrhea"; but usually "paean", "amoeba", "oedipal", "Caesar").[2]

[edit] Irregularities
The English spelling system, compared to the systems used in other languages, is quite irregular and complex. Although French presents a similar degree of difficulty when encoding (writing), English is more difficult when decoding (reading)[citation needed]. English has never had any formal regulating authority, like the Spanish Real Academia Espaola, Italian Accademia della Crusca or the French Acadmie franaise, so attempts to regularize or reform the language, including spelling reform, have usually met with failure. The only significant exceptions were the reforms of Noah Webster which resulted in many of the differences between British and American spelling, such as center/centre, and dialog/dialogue. (Other differences, such as -ize/-ise in realize/realise etc, came about separately.) Besides the quirks the English spelling system has inherited from its past, there are other idiosyncrasies in spelling that make it tricky to learn. English contains 24-27 (depending on dialect) separate consonant phonemes and, depending on dialect, anywhere from fourteen to twenty vowels. However, there are only 26 letters in the modern English alphabet, so there cannot be a one-to-one correspondence between letters and sounds. Many sounds are spelled using different letters or multiple letters, and for those words whose pronunciation is predictable from the spelling, the sounds denoted by the letters depend on the surrounding letters. For example, the digraph "th" represents two different sounds (the voiced interdental fricative and the voiceless interdental fricative) (see Pronunciation of English th), and the voiceless alveolar fricative can be represented by the letters "s" and "c". Of course, such a philosophy can be taken too far. For instance, there was also a period when the spellings of words was altered in what is now regarded as a misguided attempt to make them conform to what were perceived to be the etymological origins of the words. For example, the letter "b" was added to "debt" in an attempt to link it to the Latin debitum, and the letter "s" in "island" is a misplaced attempt to link it to Latin insula instead of the Norse word igland, which is the true origin of the English word. The letter "p" in "ptarmigan" has no etymological justification whatsoever. Some are just randomly changed: for example, 'score' used to be spelled 'skor'. Furthermore, in most recent loanwords, English makes no attempt to Anglicise the spellings of these words, and preserves the foreign spellings, even when they employ exotic conventions, like the Polish "cz" in "Czech" or the Old Norse "fj" in "fjord"

(although New Zealand English exclusively spells it "fiord"). In fact, instead of loans being respelled to conform to English spelling standards, sometimes the pronunciation changes as a result of pressure from the spelling. One example of this is the word "ski", which was adopted from Norwegian in the mid-18th century, although it didn't become common until 1900. It used to be pronounced "shee", which is similar to the Norwegian pronunciation, but the increasing popularity of the sport after the middle of the 20th century helped the "sk" pronunciation replace it. The spelling of English continues to evolve. Many loanwords come from languages where the pronunciation of vowels corresponds to the way they were pronounced in Old English, which is similar to the Italian or Spanish pronunciation of the vowels, and is the value the vowel symbols [a], [e], [i], [o], and [u] have in the International Phonetic Alphabet. As a result, there is a somewhat regular system of pronouncing "foreign" words in English, and some borrowed words have had their spelling changed to conform to this system. For example, Hindu used to be spelled "Hindoo", and the name "Maria" used to be pronounced like the name "Mariah", but was changed to conform to this system. It has been argued that this influence probably started with the introduction of many Italian words into English during the Renaissance, in fields like music, from which come the words "andante", "viola", "forte", etc. Commercial advertisers have also had an effect on English spelling. In attempts to differentiate their products from others, they introduce new or simplified spellings like "lite" instead of "light", "thru" instead of "through", "smokey" instead of "smoky" (for "smokey bacon" flavour crisps), and "rucsac" instead of "rucksack". The spellings of personal names have also been a source of spelling innovations: affectionate versions of women's names that sound the same as men's names have been spelled differently: Nikki and Nicky, Toni and Tony, Jo and Joe. As examples of the idiosyncratic nature of English spelling, the combination "ou" can be pronounced in at least seven different ways: // in "famous", // in "journey", /a/ in "loud", // in "should", /u/ in "you", /a/ in "flour", // in "tour"; and the vowel sound /i/ in "me" can be spelt in at least ten different ways: "paediatric", "me", "seat", "seem", "ceiling", "people", "chimney", "machine", "siege", "phoenix". (These examples assume a more-or-less standard non-regional British English accent. Other accents will vary.) Sometimes everyday speakers of English change a counterintuitive pronunciation simply because it is counterintuitive. Changes like this are not usually seen as "standard", but can become standard if used enough. An example is the word "miniscule", which still competes with its original spelling of "minuscule", though this might also be because of analogy with the word "mini".

[edit] "Ough" words

Main article: Ough (combination)

The most notorious group of letters in the English language, ough, is commonly pronounced at least ten different ways, six of which are illustrated in the construct, Though the tough cough and hiccough plough him through, which is quoted by Robert A. Heinlein in The Door into Summer to illustrate the difficulties facing automated speech transcription and reading. Ough is in fact a word in its own right; it is an exclamation of disgust similar to "ugh".

though: /o/ as in toe; tough: /f/ as in cuff; cough: /f, f/ as in off; hiccough (a now uncommon variant of hiccup): /p/ as in up; plough (Commonwealth spelling): /a/ as in cow; through: /u/ as in boo.

[edit] History of the English spelling system

Throughout the history of the English language, these inconsistencies have gradually increased in number. There are a number of contributing factors. First, gradual changes in pronunciation, such as the Great Vowel Shift, account for a tremendous amount of irregularities. Second, relatively recent loan words from other languages generally carry their original spellings, which are often not phonetic in English. The Romanization of languages (e.g., Chinese) using alphabets derived from the Latin alphabet has further complicated this problem, for example when pronouncing Chinese place names. Third, some prescriptivists have had partial success in their attempts to normalize the English language, forcing a change in spelling but not in pronunciation. The regular spelling system of Old English was swept away by the Norman Conquest, and English itself was eclipsed by French for three centuries, eventually emerging with its spelling much influenced by French. English had also borrowed large numbers of words from French, which for reasons of prestige and familiarity kept their French spellings. The spelling of Middle English, such as in the writings of Geoffrey Chaucer, is very irregular and inconsistent, with the same word being spelled differently, sometimes even in the same sentence. However, these were generally much better guides to pronunciation than modern English spelling can honestly claim. For example, the sound //, normally written u, is spelled with an o in son, love, come, etc., due to Norman spelling conventions which prohibited writing u before v, m, n due to the graphical confusion that would result. (v, u, n were identically written with two minims in Norman handwriting; w was written as two u letters; m was written with three minims, hence mm looked like vun, nvu, uvu, etc.) Similarly, spelling conventions also prohibited final v. Hence the identical spellings of the three different vowel sounds in love, grove and prove are due to ambiguity in the Middle English spelling system, not sound change. There was also a series of linguistic sound changes towards the end of this period, including the Great Vowel Shift, which resulted in "i" in "mine" changing from a pure

vowel to a diphthong. These changes for the most part did not detract from the rulegoverned nature of the spelling system; but in some cases they introduced confusing inconsistencies, like the well-known example of the many pronunciations of "ough" (rough, through, though, trough, plough, etc.). Most of these changes happened before the arrival of printing in England. However, the arrival of the printing press merely froze the current system, rather than providing the impetus for a realignment of spelling with pronunciation. Furthermore, it introduced further inconsistencies, partly because of the use of typesetters trained abroad, particularly in the Low Countries. By the time dictionaries were introduced in the mid 1600s, the spelling system of English started to stabilize, and by the 1800s, most words had set spellings.

[edit] See also

Alternative political spellings American and British English spelling differences Apostrophe Basic Roman spelling of English Classical compound Disc or disk (spelling) English language English phonology English plural English spelling reform False etymology Ghoti I before E except after C Initial-stress-derived noun International Phonetic Alphabet for English (or the condensed IPA chart for English) Internet spelling List of English homographs List of English words containing a Q not followed by a U List of names in English with counterintuitive pronunciations List of the longest English words with one syllable List of unusual English words Long S Longest word in English Misspelling Sensational spelling Spelling bee Three letter rule Weak form and strong form

[edit] References

1. ^ Included in Webster's Third New International Dictionary,1981 2. ^ For information on entering diacritics and ligatures on keyboards, see British and
American keyboards, keyboard layouts.

[edit] Bibliography
Albrow, K. H. (1972). The English writing system: Notes towards a description. Schools Council Program in Linguistics and English Teaching, papers series 2 (No. 2). London: Longmans, for the Schools Council. Aronoff, Mark. (1978). An English spelling convention. Linguistic Inquiry, 9, 299-303. Brengelman, Fred H. (1970). Sounds and letters in American English. In The English language: An introduction for teachers (pp. 77-98). Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall. Brengelman, Fred H. (1970). Generative phonology and the teaching of spelling. English Journal, 59, 1113-1118. Brengelman, Fred H. (1971). English spelling as a marker of register and style. English Studies, 52, 201-209. Brengelman, Fred H. (1980). Orthoepists, printers, and the rationalization of English spelling. Journal of English and German Philology, 79, 332-354. Carney, Edward. (1994). A survey of English spelling. London: Routledge. Chomsky, Carol. (1970). Reading, writing and phonology. Harvard Educational Review, 40 (2), 287-309. Chomsky, Noam; & Halle, Morris. (1968). The sound pattern of English. New York: Harper and Row. (Particularly pp. 46, 48-49, 69, 80n, 131n, 148, 174n, 221). Cummings, D. W. (1988). American English spelling: An informal description. Baltimore: The John Hopkins University Press. Derwing, Bruce; Priestly, Tom; Rochet, Bernard. (1987). The description of spelling-to-sound relationships in English, French and Russian: Progress, problems and prospects. In P. Luelsdorff (Ed.), Orthography and phonology. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Dixon, Robert. (1977). Morphographic spelling program. Eugene, OR: Engelman-Becker Press. Emerson, Ralph. (1997). English spelling and its relation to sound. American Speech, 72 (3), 260288. Hanna, Paul; Hanna, Jean; Hodges, Richard; & Rudorf, Edwin. (1966). Phoneme-grapheme correspondences as cues to spelling improvement. Washington, D.C.: US Department of Health, Education and Welfare. Jespersen, Otto. (1909). A modern English grammar on historical principles: Sounds and spellings (Part 1). Heidelberg: C. Winter. Luelsdorff, Philip A. (1994). Developmental morphographemics II. In W. C. Watt (Ed.), Writing systems and cognition (pp. 141-182). Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers. McCawley, James D. (1994). Some graphotactic constraints. In W. C. Watt (Ed.), Writing systems and cognition (pp. 115-127). Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers. Mencken, H. L. (1936). The American language: An inquiry into the development of English in the United States (4th ed.). New York: A.A. Knopf. Rollins, Andrew G. (1998). Marking devices in the spelling of English. Atlantis, 20 (1), 129-143. Rollins, Andrew G. (1999). Markers in English and other orthographies. In L. Iglesias Rbade & P. Nuez Pertejo (Eds.), Estudios de lingstica contrastiva (pp. 441-449). Universidad de Santiago. Rollins, Andrew G. (2003). System and chaos in English spelling: The case of the voiceless palato-alveolar fricative. English Language and Linguistics, 7 (2), 211-233. Rollins, Andrew G. (2003). The spelling patterns of English. LINCOM studies in English linguistics (04). Muenchen: LINCOM EUROPA. Sampson, Geoffrey. (1985). Writing systems: A linguistic introduction. London: Hutchinson.

Seymour, P. H. K.; Aro, M.; & Erskine, J. M. (2003). Foundation literacy acquisition in European orthographies. British Journal of Psychology, 94 (2), 143-174. Simpson, J. A.; & Weiner, E. S. C. (Eds.). (1989). Oxford English dictionary. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Steinberg, Danny. (1973). Phonology, reading and Chomsky and Halle's optimal orthography. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, 2 (3), 239-258. Stubbs, Michael. (1980). Language and literacy: The sociolinguistics of reading and writing. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Venezky, Richard L. (1967). English orthography: Its graphical structure and its relation to sound. Reading Research Quarterly, 2, 75-105. Venezky, Richard L. (1970). The structure of English orthography. The Hague: Mouton. Venezky, Richard L. (1976). Notes on the history of English spelling. Visible Language, 10, 351365. Venezky, Richard L. (1999). The American way of spelling. New York: Guildford Press. Weir, Ruth H. (1967). Some thoughts on spelling. In W. M Austin (Ed.), Papers in linguistics in honor of Leon Dostert (pp. 169-177). Janua Linguarum, Series Major (No. 25). The Hague: Mouton.

[edit] External links

Teaching Spelling - Information on teaching English spelling Rules for English Spelling: Adding Suffixes, QU Rule, i before e, Silent e, 'er' vs. 'or' White Paper Research based Tutoring of English Spelling Hou tu pranownse Inglish describes rules which predict a word's pronunciation from its spelling with 85% accuracy Free spelling information and Free spelling lessons in QuickTime movie format at The Phonics Page.

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_orthography" Categories: English spelling | English language | Language orthographies Hidden categories: Articles with specifically-marked weasel-worded phrases | All articles with unsourced statements | Articles with unsourced statements since February 2007
Views

Article Discussion Edit this page History

Personal tools

Log in / create account

Navigation

 Search

Main page Contents Featured content Current events Random article

Interaction Toolbox

About Wikipedia Community portal Recent changes Contact Wikipedia Donate to Wikipedia Help

What links here Related changes Upload file Special pages Printable version Permanent link Cite this page

Languages

esky

This page was last modified on 26 July 2008, at 21:39. All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License. (See Copyrights for details.) Wikipedia is a registered trademark of the Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., a U.S. registered 501(c)(3) tax-deductible nonprofit charity. Privacy policy About Wikipedia Disclaimers

List of English words containing Q not followed by U

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

(Redirected from List of English words containing a Q not followed by a U) Jump to: navigation, search

Qwerty, one of the few native English words with q and no u in current usage, is derived from the first six letters of a standard keyboard layout. In English, the letter q is usually followed by the letter u. While this is true in the vast majority of cases, there are some exceptions, the majority of which are naturalised from Arabic, Chinese, Hebrew, Inuktitut, or other languages which do not use the English alphabet, with q representing a sound not found in English. For example, in the Chinese pinyin alphabet, qi is pronounced /ti/, as pinyin uses q to represent the sound [t ], which is approximated as [t] in English. In other examples, q represents [q], such as in qat and faqir, and alternative spellings are accepted which use k in place of q. Almost all of these words are nouns, and most would generally be considered loanwords. However, they are all considered to be naturalised in English according to at least one major dictionary (see References), often because they refer to concepts or societal roles that do not have an accurate equivalent in English. For words to appear here, they must appear in their own entry in a dictionary; words which occur only as part of a longer phrase are not included.

A suq in Marrakech, Morocco. Like many English words that use a q not followed by a u, suq is of Arabic origin. In addition, there are many place names and personal names, mostly originating from North Africa, the Middle East or China, that have a q without a u. The most familiar of these are the countries of Iraq and Qatar, along with the derived words Iraqi and Qatari. Iqaluit, the capital of the Canadian territory of Nunavut, also has a q which is not directly followed by a u. Qaqortoq, in Greenland, is notable for having three naked qs. Other proper names and acronyms that have attained the status of English words include: Compaq (a computer company), Qantas (an Australian airline), Nasdaq (the US electronic stock market) and QinetiQ (a British technology company). Zaqqum (a tree mentioned in the Qur'an) and Saqqara are proper nouns notable for their use of a double q. However, the nouns in this list are common nouns.

Contents
[hide]

1 Words 2 Uses 3 See also 4 References

[edit] Words
Unless noted otherwise all words listed here are assumed to be pluralized by adding -s or -es. References in the "Sources" column relate to the headword in column one; variant spellings are then separately referenced. The sources given are selective, and the absence of a reference to a particular dictionary does not necessarily mean that the word does not appear in that dictionary. Word buqsha Meaning A former Yemeni monetary unit. A veiled garment worn by Muslim women. Sources
[L]

Other forms Also written bogache.

Etymology Arabic.

burqa

[ODE][LC][C][AHC] [OED]

Also written burka or burqua.

Urdu and Persian burqa, from Arabic burqu`.

cinq

The number five, as signified in dice or cards. A plant of the genus Potentilla, or an ornamental design thereof.

[ODE][COD][OED]

French cinq, "five".

cinqfoil

[SOED][OED]

Much more commonly written cinquefoil.

Middle English, from Latin quinquefolium, from quinque "five" + folium "leaf". French coq, "cockerel".

coq

A trimming [WI] of cock feathers on a woman's hat. An Islamic lawyer. A Muslim ascetic. Muslim jurisprudenc e. A revolution in India or Pakistan. A style of South African music. The Tanakh, or Hebrew text of the Bible.
[RHW]

faqih faqir fiqh

Plural faqihs or fuqaha [RHU]. More commonly written fakir.

Arabic . Arabic Arabic , "understanding ".

[L]

[ODE]

inqilab

[C]

mbaqanga

[ODE][C][W]

Zulu umbaqanga, "steamed maize bread". Hebrew .

miqra

[WI]

muqaddam A Bangladeshi headman.

[C]

nastaliq

An Arabic script used in Persian writings. A sweet wine from Pontac.

[OED]

Also written Arabic , nasta'liq [C], from naskh + nestaliq [OED], or ta`liq. shortened to just taliq [OED].

pontacq

[OED]

qabab

[OED] A dish consisting of pieces of seasoned meat.

Much more commonly written kebab, kebob or kabob. More commonly written Kabbalah, and also written Qabala [AHC], Qabbala [WI], Cabalah etc.

Arabic.

qabalah

A form of Jewish mysticism.

[C][AHC][WI]

Hebrew .

qadarite

A member of the Qadariyah. In Islam, adherents of the doctrine of free will. In Judaism, a prayer of mourning. A Muslim judge. In Islam, a Sufi order. Twenty-first letter of the Arabic

[RHU]

qadariyah

[RHU]

Also written Qadariya [RHU].

qaddish

[C]

More commonly written Kaddish. Also written qadhi [OED] or qazi [OED]. Also written Qadiriya [RHU]. Arabic . Arabic .

qadi

[L][C][W][OED]

qadiriyah qaf

[RHU]

[RHW]

alphabet. qaid qaimaqam A Muslim tribal chief. A minor official of the Ottoman Empire.
[RHW]

[C][OED]

qalamdan qalandar

[C] A Persian writing-case.

A member of an order of mendicant dervishes.

[RHU]

Also written calender, or capitalised.

qanat

[ODE][C][OED] A type of water supply tunnel found in north Africa and the Middle East.

Persian, from Arabic qant, "channel".

qanun

A type of harp.

[OED]

Also written qanon [OED]. Also written Karakalpak Also written qasidah Qaraqalpaq Arabic .

Qaraqalpaq A MiddleEastern language. qasida An Arabian poem of praise or satire. A kind of Arabian shrub used as a narcotic. A person who practises

[WED]

[C][OED]

qat

[L][C][OED]

More commonly written khat.

Arabic qt.

qawwal

[ODE][C]

qawwali music. qawwali Devotional music of the Sufis. Variant of qadi. An Azerbaijani unit of currency. A marginal reading in the Hebrew Bible. An obsolete spelling of what. An obsolete spelling of which. An obsolete spelling of whom. An obsolete spelling of Whitsuntide (the day of Pentecost). In Chinese culture, a physical life force. A type of nylon.
[AH] [ODE][C]

Arabic (qawwli), "loquacious" or "singer".

qazi qepiq

qere

[OED][WI]

Also written qeri [WI] or qre [WI].

qhat

[OED]

qheche

[OED]

qhom

[OED]

qhythsonty d

[OED]

qi

[ODE][C][AHC][OED]

Commonly written chi or ki.

Chinese , 'air'

qiana

[OED]

Originally a trademark of DuPont, now generic.

qibla

The point to which Muslims turn in prayer. A local Libyan name for the sirocco, a southeasterl y Mediterrane an wind. A Chinese system of medical exercises. A classificatio n of Chinese musical instruments. A Hebrew elegy.

[ODE][COD][C][OED]

Also written qiblah [OED], or qib'lah [RHU]. Sometimes capitalised. Also written ghibli.

17th Century Arabic, "the opposite".

qibli

[OED]

qigong

[ODE][C]

Also written qi gong, ki gong, or chi kung.

Chinese (simp.).

qin

[AOX]

qinah

[WI]

Also written kinah; plural qinot, qinoth Plural qindarka Albanian. [L] or qindars [C]. Also written qintar [L][C] [AOX] or quintal.

qindar

An Albanian [ODE][L][C] unit of currency, equal to one onehundredth of a lek. The last Imperial chinese dynasty. A drug, artemisinin, used to treat malaria.
[C]

Qing

Also Ch'ing, Ching, or Manchu Dynasty

Chinese

qinghaosu

Chinese .

qipao

A traditional Chinese dress.

[OED]

Also written chi pao. Also written qurush, qursh, gursh, girsh or ghirsh.

Chinese

qirsh

A monetary [RHU] unit of Saudi Arabia and, formerly, various other countries. The wool of the muskox. An analogy in Sharia, Islamic law. The nineteenth letter of the Hebrew alphabet. The nineteenth letter of the ancient Greek alphabet. A type of curry. (Variant of qere) A standard English keyboard layout. An obsolete spelling of
[ODE][COD][LC][C] [OED] [Co] [OED]

qiviut

Inuktitut

qiyas

[RHW]

Arabic .

qoph

[L][C]

Also written koph.

Hebrew .

qoppa

Generally written koppa.

Greek .

qorma

Much more commonly written korma.

Urdu.

qre qwerty

Plural qwertys or qwerties. Also rendered QWERTY.

Named after the letters on the top row of keys.

rencq

[OED]

rank. sambuq A small Arabian boat. A unit of weight originally used in Mesopotami a. The currency of Israel, divided into 100 agorot.
[OED]

sheqel

[MW]

Plural sheqels or sheqalim. More commonly written shekel.

Hebrew , Yiddish - .

suq

[ODE][C][OED] A Muslim marketplace.

Most commonly Arabic written souk (sq). (French spelling). Arabic talaq from talaqa, "repudiate".

talaq

A form of Islamic divorce. (Variant of nastaliq) An Indian estate. A person who collects the revenues of a taluq. An Indian landholding tenure. In Islam, the dissimulatio n of faith displayed for fear of one's life. Acceptance

[ODE][C][OED]

taliq taluq taluqdar

[OED]

Also written taluk or talook. Also written talukdar or talookdar.

[OED]

taluqdari

[OED]

taqiya

[RHW]

Also written taqiyah [RHU], or capitalised.

Arabic .

taqlid

[RHW]

Arabic .

of Muslim orthodoxy. tariqa

[E] A Sufi method of spiritual development , or a Sufi missionary.

Also written tariqat [E] or tarika.

Arabic .

tranq

A form of sedative. In Judaism, a term bestowed upon the righteous.

[OED]

Also written trank [OED].

Apocopation from tranquilizer.

tsaddiq

[C][OED]

Plural tsaddiqs or Hebrew . tsaddiqim. Also written tzaddiq [C], tzadik or tzaddik. Also spelled umiak Plural waqf [ODE] Arabic, [C][OED] or literally waqfs [C][OED]. "stoppage" from waqafa, "come to a standstill". Fijian yaqona, in which q represents [g]

umiaq waqf

[OSPD4] An open eskimo boat.

A charitable trust in Islamic law.

[ODE][C][OED]

yaqona

A Fijian intoxicating beverage, kava.

[C][OED]

[edit] Uses
In many word games, most famously in Scrabble, a player must build a word using a certain set of letters. Therefore, if a player is obliged to use a Q but does not have a U, it may be useful to construct words from this list. In Scrabble in North America, the only acceptable words with a Q and not a U are qi, qat, qaid, qai, qadi, qoph, qanat, tranq, faqir, sheqel, qabala, qabalah, qindar, qintar, qindarka, mbaqanga, and qwerty, along with their plurals (such as qats and sheqalim).[ TWL ] Other words in this list, such as suq and qiviut, are also acceptable, but since these contain a U, they are less likely to be useful.

[edit] See also

List of words without vowel letters

[edit] References

[AH]: The American Heritage Dictionary, Fourth Edition (ISBN 0-440-23701-7) [AHC]: American Heritage College Dictionary, Fourth Edition, 2000 [AOX]: Ask Oxford Last accessed May 29, 2006. [C]: The Chambers Dictionary, 2003 [Co]: Collins English Dictionary, Third Edition (updated 1994) [COD]: The Concise Oxford Dictionary, Eighth Edition, 1990 [E]: Microsoft Encarta online dictionary Last accessed May 29, 2006. [L]: The Longman Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition, 1988 (ISBN 0-582-55511-6) [LC]: The Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English, Fourth Edition, 2003 [MW]: Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, Eleventh Edition [MWO]: Merriam-Webster online dictionary Last accessed May 29, 2006. [ODE]: Oxford Dictionary of English, Second Edition, 2003 (ISBN 0-19-8613474) [OED]: Oxford English Dictionary, 2003 [OSPD4]: The Official Scrabble Players Dictionary, 2005 (ISBN 0-87779-929-6) [RHU]: Random House Unabridged Dictionary, 1997 [RHW]: Random House Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 2005 (ISBN 0-37542599-3) [SOED]: The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary, Third Edition, 1992 [W]: Random House Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, 2000 [WI]: Webster's Third New International Dictionary, Unabridged (ISBN 0-87779201-1)

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_English_words_containing_Q_not_followed_by_U " Categories: Lists of English words | English spelling | Dynamic lists | Scrabble
Views

Article Discussion Edit this page History

Personal tools

Log in / create account

Navigation Search

Main page Contents Featured content Current events Random article

Interaction Toolbox

About Wikipedia Community portal Recent changes Contact Wikipedia Donate to Wikipedia Help

What links here Related changes Upload file Special pages Printable version Permanent link Cite this page

This page was last modified on 21 July 2008, at 06:16. All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License. (See Copyrights for details.) Wikipedia is a registered trademark of the Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., a U.S. registered 501(c)(3) tax-deductible nonprofit charity. Privacy policy About Wikipedia

Disclaimers List of names in English with counterintuitive pronunciations

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Jump to: navigation, search This article is being considered for deletion in accordance with Wikipedia's deletion policy. Please share your thoughts on the matter at this article's entry on the Articles for deletion page. Feel free to edit the article, but the article must not be blanked, and this notice must not be removed, until the discussion is closed. For more information, particularly on merging or moving the article during the discussion, read the guide to deletion.
Steps to list an article for deletion: 1. {{subst:afd}} 2. {{subst:afd2|pg=List of names in English with counterintuitive pronunciations|cat=|text=}} ~~~~ (categories) 3. {{subst:afd3|pg=List of names in English with counterintuitive pronunciations}} (add to top of list) 4. Please consider notifying the author(s) by placing {{subst:adw|List of names in English with counterintuitive pronunciations}} ~~~~ on their talk page(s).

This is a set of lists of English personal and place names whose pronunciations are counterintuitive to their spelling, either because the pronunciation does not correspond to the spelling, or because a better-known namesake has a markedly different pronunciation. Excluded are the numerous spellings which fail to make the pronunciation obvious without actually being at odds with it: for example, the pronunciation /sknktdi/ of Schenectady is non-intuitive but not counterintuitive. See International Phonetic Alphabet for English and Help:IPA English pronunciation key for guides to the IPA symbols used. See English Phonemic Representation for a guide to the enPR symbols used. For readability, a colon is used for the long vowel sign () in the IPA pronunciation, as the latter displays awkwardly in some fonts and browsers, and r is used rather than the more precise since these are all words pronounced in English.

Contents
[hide]

1 Place names in Britain and Ireland o 1.1 A o 1.2 B o 1.3 C

1.4 D 1.5 E 1.6 F 1.7 G 1.8 H 1.9 I 1.10 K 1.11 L 1.12 M 1.13 N 1.14 O 1.15 P 1.16 R 1.17 S 1.18 T 1.19 U 1.20 W 1.21 Y 1.22 Z 2 Place names in the United States of America o 2.1 A o 2.2 B o 2.3 C o 2.4 D o 2.5 E o 2.6 F o 2.7 G o 2.8 H o 2.9 I o 2.10 J o 2.11 K o 2.12 L o 2.13 M o 2.14 N o 2.15 O o 2.16 P o 2.17 Q o 2.18 R o 2.19 S o 2.20 T o 2.21 V o 2.22 W o 2.23 Y o 2.24 Z 3 Place names in other English-speaking countries
o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o

4 Given names 5 Surnames o 5.1 A-B o 5.2 C o 5.3 D-E o 5.4 F-H o 5.5 I-L o 5.6 M o 5.7 N-Q o 5.8 R o 5.9 S o 5.10 T-V o 5.11 W-Z 6 See also 7 Online sources 8 References

[edit] Place names in Britain and Ireland

Although several examples are included in the list below, pronunciations for the following suffixes may be considered regular:

-burgh /-b()r/; (-br, -br) -bury /-b()ri/; (-br, -br) -cester /-st/; (-str) -ham /-m/; (-m) -shire /- ()/; (-shr, -shr) -wick /-k/; (-k) -mouth /-m/; (-mth)

[edit] A

Ahoghill, County Antrim /'hhl/ or /'hxl/; (-hhl) or (h KHl) Aigburth, Liverpool /gb/; (gbrth) Alcester, Warwickshire /lst/, /lst/; (lstr, lstr) Allesley, Coventry - /lzli/; (lzl) Aldeburgh, Suffolk /lbr/; (lbr) Alnwick, Northumberland /nk/; (nk) Althorp, Northamptonshire /ltrp/; (ltrp) Altrincham, Greater Manchester /ltrm/; (ltrngm) Alverdiscott, Devon - /l'skt/

Auchinleck, Ayrshire /flk/; (flk) Averham, Nottinghamshire /rm/; (rm) Aveton Gifford, Devon - /'tn di'fd/ Avoch, Highland /x/; (KH)

[edit] B

Balliol College, University of Oxford /belil/; (bll) Barugh, South Yorkshire /b (bk) k/; Great Barugh and Little Barugh, North Yorkshire /brf/; (brf) Barnstaple, Devon /bnstbl/; (brnst-bl) Beauchief, Sheffield /bi:tf/; (bchf) Beaconsfield, Buckinghamshire /bknzfild/; (bknz-fld) Beaudesert, Warwickshire until recently /blz/ ("belser") reflecting original name "Beldesert" [1] Beaulieu, Hampshire /bjuli/; (byl) Bellingham, Northumberland /'blndm/; (bln-jm) (the city of Bellingham, Washington, U.S.A., is pronounced as spelled [/blhm/, blng-hm]) Vale of Belvoir, England /biv/; (bvr) Berkeley (all English towns) /bkli/; (brkl) Berkshire /bk/; (brkshr) Berwick-upon-Tweed, Northumberland /brk-/; (brk) Bicester, Oxfordshire /bst/; (bstr) Billericay, Essex /blrki/; (bl-rk) Blackley, Greater Manchester /blekli/; (blkl) Boyounagh, County Galway /bwinx/; (bwnKH) Bozeat, Northamptonshire /b (bzht) t/; Breaghwy, Connacht /brefi/; (brf) Bradley, West Midlands /bredli/; (brdl) Brewood, Staffordshire - /'brud/; (brd) Bridestowe, West Devon - /'brdst/; Brougham, Cumbria /brum/; (brm) Burgh by Sands, Cumbria /brf/; (brf)

[edit] C

Cahir, County Tipperary /ker/; (kr) Caldmore, West Midlands /km/; (kmr) Cambois, Northumberland /kms/; (kms) Cambridge /kembrd/; (kmbrj) (note that the River Cam and Cambridge, Gloucestershire are pronounced intuitively) Canterbury, Kent /kntbri/; (kntr-br) River Cherwell, river in England /twl/; (chrwl) Chiswick, London /tzk/; (chzk)

Cholmondeley, Cheshire /tmli/; (chml) Cirencester, Gloucestershire now usually /sarnsst/ (srnsstr), but formerly (and still occasionally) /sst/ (ss-tr) Claughton, Lancashire /klftn/ Cleobury Mortimer, Shropshire /klbri/; (klb-r) Cley next the Sea, Norfolk /kla/; (kl) Cliveden, Buckinghamshire /klvdn/; (klvdn) Cloghore, County Donegal /klahor/; (klhr) Clones, County Monaghan /klons/; (klns) Cobh, County Cork /kov/; (kv; Cbh is regular in Irish) Cogenhoe, Northamptonshire /kkn/; (kkn) Costessey, Norfolk /ksi/; (ks) Cowpen, Northumberland /kupn/; (kpn) Cruwys Morchard, Devon - /kruz/; (krz) Cuckfield, Sussex /kkfild/; (kkfld) (versus intuitively pronounced Uckfield nearby) Culross, Fife /kurs/; (krs) Cultra, Northern Ireland /kl'tr/; (kl-tr) Culzean Castle, Ayrshire kulen/; (k-ln)

[edit] D

Denbigh /dnbi/; (denb) Derby /dabi/; (db) Dodworth, South Yorkshire - /dd/ Durham /drm/ in RP, locally IPA: /drm/

[edit] E

Edensor, Derbyshire /nz/; (nzr) Edinburgh /dnb()r/; (dn-br) or (dn-br) Elsecar, South Yorkshire /lsk/; (ls-k) Ely, Cambridgeshire /'ili/; (l) England /glnd/ Erith, London /ir/; (rth) Esher, Surrey /i/; (shr) Euxton, Lancashire - /'kstn/; (ks-tn) Eyam, Derbyshire /im/; (m)

[edit] F

Findochty, Moray /fnkti/ or /fnxti/; (fnk-t) or (fnKH-t) Fowey, Cornwall /f/; (foi) Frome, Somerset /frum/; (frm)

[edit] G

The Garioch, Aberdeenshire /gri/; (gr) Gateacre, Liverpool /gtk/; (gtk-r) Gillingham, Kent /'dlm/; (jlng-m) Gillingham, Dorset /'glm/; (glng-m) Glenzier, Dumfries and Galloway /gl/; (glngr) Gloucester /glst/; (glstr) Godmanchester, Cambridgeshire /gmst/ Gotham, Nottinghamshire /gtm/; (gtm) Greenwich, Greater London /grnt/ or /rnt/; (grnch) or (grnch) Greysouthen, Cumbria /gresun/; (grsn) Groby, Leicestershire /grubi/; (grb) Guildford, Surrey /glfd/; (glfrd) Guisborough, North Yorkshire /gizbr/; (gzbr)

[edit] H

Halford, Midlands /hlfd/; (hlfrd) Happisburgh, Norfolk /hezb()r/; (hzbr) Hawarden, Flintshire /hdn/; (hrdn) Hawick, Scottish Borders /hk/; (hoik) Heather, Leicestershire /hi/; (hthr) Hereford, England /herfd/; (hr-frd) Hertford, England /htfd/ [hrtfrd]) Hessle, East Yorkshire /hzl/; (hzl) Heysham, Lancashire /him/; (hshm) Holborn, London /hbn/; (hbrn) Holyhead, Wales /hlihd/; (hl-hd) Hunstanton, Norfolk /hnstn/; (hnstn)

[edit] I

Ide, Devon /id/ Inistioge, County Kilkenny /nti/; (nsh-tg) Islay, island of the Inner Hebrides /al/; (l)

[edit] K

Keadby, Lincolnshire /kdbi/; (kdb) Keighley, West Yorkshire) /kili/; (kthl) Keswick, Cumbria /kzk/; (kzk) Keynsham, near Bristol /kenm/; (knshm)

Kilconquhar, Fife /kinx/ or /kin(j)k/; (k-nKHr) or (knkr) or (k-nykr) Kingussie, Highland /kjusi/; (kng-js) Kiltimagh, County Mayo /kltmk/; (klch-mk) Kirkby, Merseyside /kbi/; (krb) Kirkcaldy, Fife - /kr'kdi/; (kr-kd) Kirkcudbright, Galloway /kku:bri/; (kr-kbr)

[edit] L

Laugharne, Carmarthenshire /ln/; (lrn) Launceston, Cornwall /lns(t)n/ or /lns(t)n/ or /lns(t)n/; (lnstn, lnsn) or (lnstn, lnsn) or (lnstn, lnsn) (versus Launceston, Tasmania, pronounced /lnsstn/ [lnss-tn]) Leamington Spa and Leamington Hastings, Warwickshire /lmtn/; (lmng-tn) Leap, County Cork /lp/; (lp) Leicester /lst/; (lstr) Leigh, Kent /la/; (l) Leominster, Herefordshire /lmst/; (lmstr) (compare Leominster, Massachusetts below) Lewannick, Cornwall /lunk/; (l-nk) Liskeard, Cornwall /lskd/; (l-skrd) Loose, Kent /luz/; (lz) Lostwithiel, Cornwall /lswil/; (ls-wth-l) Loughborough, Leicestershire /lfbr/; (lfbr) Lympne, Kent /lm/; (lm)

[edit] M

Magdalen College, University of Oxford /mdln/; (mdln) Magdalen Hill, Winchester /mn/; (mn) Magdalene College, University of Cambridge /mdln/; (mdln) Manea, Cambridgeshire /meni/; (mn) Marlborough, Wiltshire /mlbr/; (mlbr) Meols, Cheshire /mlz/; (mlz) Meols Cop, Southport /milz/; (mlz) Meopham, Kent /mpm/; (mpm) Mildenhall, Wiltshire /manl; (mnl) Milngavie, Scotland /mlga/ or /mlga/; (mlg) or (mlg) Minories, London /mnriz/; (mnr-z) Monmouth, Wales /mnm/; (mnmth) Mousehole, Cornwall /mazl/; (mouzl) Mweelrea, County Mayo /mwelri/ ; (mwl-r) Mytholmroyd, West Yorkshire /mamrd/; (mthm-roid)

[edit] N

Naas, County Kildare, Ireland /nes/; (ns) Lough Neagh, Northern Ireland /ne/; (n) River Nene, Northamptonshire /nn/; (nn) Newquay, Cornwall /njuki/; (nyk) Norwich, Norfolk /nrd/; (nrj)

[edit] O

Olney, Milton Keynes /ni/ (n) (local pronunciation) /lni/ (ln) Oswaldtwistle, Lancashire /ztwisl/; (ztwsl) (local pronunciation) /zltwizl/ (zl-twzl) Owenabue, river in County Cork /onbwi/ (n-bw)

[edit] P

Plaistow, Newham, Greater London /plst/; (plst) Plymouth, Devon /plm/; (plmth) Prinknash, Gloucestershire /prn / (prnsh) Puncknowle, Devon /pnl/ (pnl)

[edit] R

Rainworth, Nottinghamshire /rn/; (rnth) Ratlinghope, Shropshire /rtp/; (rtshp) (local pronunciation) Reading, Berkshire /rd/; (rdng) Rievaulx, North Yorkshire /riv/; (rv) Ruthven, Aberdeenshire /rvn/; (rvn)

[edit] S

St. Ive, Cornwall /iv/; (v) (however, St Ives is pronounced intuitively) St. Teath, Cornwall /t/; (tth) Salisbury, Wiltshire /zzbri/; (zzbr) (local pronunciation) / slzbri/ or /slzbri/; (slzbr) or (slzbr) Shrewsbury, Shropshire /rzbri/; (shrz'br) (though the "Shrews-" is sometimes pronounced phonetically) Slaithwaite, West Yorkshire /slwt/; (sl-wt) Slough, Berkshire /sla/; (slou) Smethwick, West Midlands /smk/; (smthk) South Elmsall, West Yorkshire - /sa emsl/ or local variant /sa emsl/ Southwark, Greater London /sk/; (sthrk) / svk/; (svrk) (local pronunciation)

Southwell, Nottinghamshire /sl/ or /sawl/; (sthl) or (southwl) Staithes, North Yorkshire locally /stz/; (strz) Stawell, Somerset /stl/; (stl) Stiffkey, Norfolk /stjuki/; (styk) (though it can be intuitively pronounced) Strabane, County Tyrone /str'bn/; (str-bn) Strathaven, South Lanarkshire /strevn/; (strvn) River Suir in Leinster, Ireland /u/; (shr)

[edit] T

Tacolneston, Norfolk /tklstn/; (tkl-stn) Tallaght, County Dublin /tl/; (tl) Teignmouth, Devon /tnm/; (tnmth) Teston, Kent /tis/; (tsn) River Thames /tmz/; (tmz) (the Thames River in Connecticut is pronounced intuitively) Tideswell, Derbyshire /tdsl/; (tdzl) Tintwistle, Derbyshire /tnsl/; (tnsl) Todmorden, West Yorkshire - /tdmdn/ is the most common pronunciation although the BBC uses /tdmdn/.[1] Torpenhow Hill, Cumbria /trpn/; (tr-pn) (local pronunciation) (elsewhere pronounced intuitively) Torquay, Devon /tki/; (trk) Tottenham, Greater London - /'ttnm/ Towcester, Northamptonshire /tst/; (tstr) Trottiscliffe, Kent /trsli/; (trsl)

[edit] U

Ulgham, Northumberland /fm/ (fm)

[edit] W

Warwick and Warwickshire /wrk/; (wrk) /wrk/; (wrkshr) Market Weighton, East Yorkshire /wit/; (wtn) Wemyss Bay, Inverclyde /'wimz be/ (wmz) Widecombe, Devon - /'wdcm/ Wisbech, Cambridgeshire /wzbit/ (wzbch) East Woodhay and West Woodhay - /wdi/; (wd) Woolfardisworthy, Devon /wlzi/ or /wlzri/; (wlz) or (wlzr-) Worcester /wst/ (wstr)

Wrotham, Kent /rutm/ (rtm) Wybunbury, Cheshire /wnbri/; (wnbr) Wycombe, Buckinghamshire / wkm/; (wkm) Wymondham, Norfolk /wndm/; (wndm) (local pronunciation) Wytham, Oxfordshire /watm/; (wtm)

[edit] Y

Youghal, County Cork, Ireland /jl/; (yl)

[edit] Z

Zouch, Nottinghamshire /zot/; (zch) Ashby-de-la-Zouch, Leicestershire /zu/; (zsh)

[edit] Place names in the United States of America

[edit] A

Aberdeen, Washington stressed on the first syllable (/bdin/), unlike Aberdeen, Scotland, which is stressed on the final syllable Abiquiu, New Mexico /bkju/ (abbecue) Acequia, Idaho /sikw/ Achilles, Kansas /kls/ (Achilles is /kliz/) Aloha, Oregon /lo/ Alsea, Oregon /lsi/ Amherst, Massachusetts /mst/ (The "h" is silent.) Arab, Alabama /erb/ (ayrab) Arkansas /rkns:/ (ARkensaw). However, Arkansas City, Kansas is pronounced /rknss/ (arCANses), as is the name of the Arkansas River to many Kansans. Arriba, Colorado /rb/ Athens, Kentucky, Athens, Illinois and New Athens, Illinois /e.nz/ (aythenz) Ausable River (New York) /a sebl/ (oh sable)

[edit] B

Bahama, North Carolina /bheim/ Barre, Vermont - /bri/ Beatrice, Alabama /bitrs/; usually Beatrice is /bitrs/ Beaufort, South Carolina /bju.ft/ vs. /bo.ft/ of Beaufort, North Carolina Belen, New Mexico - /bln/ Bellefontaine, Ohio /blfan.tn/

Benld, Illinois /bnld/ Bergen, New York /bdn/ Berlin, Connecticut, New Berlin, Illinois, Berlin, New Hampshire, New Berlin, Wisconsin, and Berlin, Ohio /bln/ (stress on first syllable) listen (helpinfo) Bernalillo, New Mexico (county and town) /bnlijo/ Bernardsville, New Jersey - bndzvl BERN-erds-ville Bexar, Texas /be/ or /br/ Billerica, Massachusetts /blrk/ Bingen, Washington /bndn/ Biscay, Minnesota /bski/ (cf Biscay /bske/ ) Boerne, Texas [bni] Bois D'Arc, Missouri /bodrk/ Boise, Idaho /b.si/ (this is the standard local pronunciation, but most Americans, especially those far removed from Idaho, pronounce it /b.zi/) Boise City, Oklahoma The "Boise" in this place name is locally pronounced /bs/[2], which is different from either pronunciation of the name of the Idaho city. The "s" sound generally merges with the same sound in "City." Bolivar, Tennessee, Bolivar, Missouri named for Simn Bolvar but pronounced /'balv/, as if to rhyme with "oliver" Bossier City, Louisiana /bo sti/ Bowie, Maryland /bui/ Bothell, Washington /bl/ Buena Vista, Colorado, Buena Vista, Oregon, Buena Vista, Virginia /bjun vst/ Bucoda, Washington bkod buh-coe-duh Buddha, Indiana - /budi/ Buhl, Idaho /bjul/ Burien, Washington /bjin/ Butte, Montana /bjut/

[edit] C

Cairo, Illinois and Cairo, Ohio /kero/ listen (helpinfo) Calais, Maine and Calais, Vermont /kls/ listen (helpinfo) (The town of Calais in France was formerly also pronounced /kls/ in English; today /kle/, with initial stress in British English and final stress in American English, is the normal pronunciation.) Camano Island, Washington /kmeno/ Cambridge, Massachusetts /kembrd/ Casa Grande, Arizona /ks grnd/ (not as it would be in Spanish) Canyon de Chelly, Arizona Chelly pronounced /e/ Celina, Texas /slan/ Chatham, Massachusetts /ttm/ Chehalis, Washington /hels/ Chelan, Chelan County, and Lake Chelan, Washington /ln/ Cherryville, North Carolina /tvl/ or /tvil/

Chewelah, Washington /twil/ Chicago /.k:.o/ or /.k:.o/ Chickasha, Oklahoma /tke/ Chili, New York /tala/ though indeed named after the country Chili/Chile[3] Clatskanie, Oregon /kltskna/ Coeur d'Alene, Idaho /krdlen/ Columbus, Ohio /klmbs/ (non-standard) Conneaut, Ohio (also Conneautville, Pennsylvania) /knit/ Conetoe, North Carolina /knit/ Connecticut /kntkt/ Copalis Beach, Washington /kopels/ Coquille, Oregon /kokil/ Cordele, Georgia kdil cor-DEAL Cudahy, California - [kdhe] or [kudha]

[edit] D

Delhi, New York /dlha/ Des Moines, Iowa /dmn/ Des Plaines, Illinois /dzplenz/ for contrast Deschutes River, Oregon, and Deschutes River, Washington /duts/ Mount Desert Island, Maine /dzt/ to add to the confusing pronunciation of desert and dessert DuBois, Pennsylvania - /dubz/ or /dubs/ vs. French /dybwa/ Duenweg, Missouri - /dnwg/ Dungeness River and Dungeness Spit, Washington /dndns/

[edit] E

El Dorado, Arkansas, El Dorado, Kansas and Eldorado, Illinois /ld redo/ listen (helpinfo) Elbe, Washington /lbi/ Embarras (or Embarrass) River in Illinois /mbr/ Ephrata, Washington /fret/ (unlike the Borough of Ephrata, Pennsylvania, which is pronounced /frt/) Estacada, Oregon /stked/

[edit] F

Faneuil Hall, Boston, Massachusetts /fn./ Fries, Virginia /friz/

[edit] G

Galice, Oregon /glis/ Galveston, Indiana /glvstn/ vs /glvstn/ for Galveston, Texas Gloucester, Massachusetts /lst/. Greenwich, Connecticut and Greenwich Village in New York City /rnt/ Gruene, Texas /ri:n/

[edit] H

Haverhill, Massachusetts /hev()rl/ Havre, Montana /hv/ Havre de Grace, Maryland /hv d ges/ Hereford, Texas and Hereford, Pennsylvania /hfd/ (herfurd) Hockessin, Delaware /hoksn/ Houston, Georgia and Houston Street (Manhattan) /hastn/, vs the better known, irregularly pronounced /(h)justn/ of Houston, Texas, named via Sam Houston after Houston, Scotland, a concatenation of "Hu's town" Huger, South Carolina /hjudi/ or /judi/ Hurricane, Utah and Hurricane, West Virginia /hkn/ (The /-n/ ending is standard in the British pronunciation of hurricane, but not in American English) Hyak, Washington /hak/

[edit] I

Illinois /ln/ Ilwaco, Washington /lwko/ Ironton, Ohio /rntn/ Ischua, New York /'we/ Iselin, New Jersey /'zln/ Isle au Haut, Maine /'ailho/ Islip, New York /'aislp/ Italy, Texas /tli/ with two syllables only

[edit] J

Strait of Juan de Fuca /wndfjuk/ Julian, Pennsylvania /dulin/

[edit] K

Kahlotus, Washington /klots/ Kalaloch, Washington /klelk/ Kalama, Washington /klm/ Kamela, Oregon - /kmil/ Kamiah, Idaho /kmia/

Kearny, New Jersey /karni/ Keechelus Lake, Washington /ktls/ Kenai, Alaska /kina/ Kittitas and Kittitas County, Washington /kt ts/ Kosciusko, Mississippi /kzisko/ Kountze, Texas /kunts/ Kure Beach, North Carolina /kjuri/

[edit] L

Lac Courte Oreilles, Wisconsin /lkudre/ Lafayette in Georgia, Mississippi, and Tennessee /lefet/ vs. e.g. the cities in Indiana and Louisiana that are pronounced /lfat/, approximating the original French La Grande, Oregon /lrnd/ Lake Oswego, Oregon /swigo/ La Plata, Maryland /lplet/ listen (helpinfo) Lapwai, Idaho /lpwa/ Latah, Washington and Latah County, Idaho /let/ Leakey, Texas /lki/ Lebam, Washington /lbm/ Lebanon, New Hampshire /lbnn/ Leicester, Massachusetts /lst/ (lester) Lemhi County, Idaho /lmha/ Lemoore, California officially /li:mr/ after the founder, quickly becoming /lmr/ due to its spelling and the number of new people moving in to the town Leominster, Massachusetts /lmnstr/ Lewes, Delaware /lus/ Lima, Ohio /lam/ Lodi, California, and elsewhere in US /loda/ Lompoc, California /lmpok/ Louisville, Colorado, Louisville, Georgia, Louisville, Ohio /lu:wisvil/ vs. Louisville, Kentucky /'lu:ivl]/ locally /lu:vl/ or even /lvl/

[edit] M

Mackinac Island, Michigan /mkn:/ Madras, Oregon /mdrs/ Madrid, New Mexico and New Madrid, Missouri /mdrd/ Malad City, Idaho and Malad River /mld/ Malheur County, Oregon and Malheur River /mlhj/ Manchaca, Texas /mntk/ Manor, Texas /men/ Mantua, Utah /m.n.we/ Marquam, Oregon /mrkm/

Maury County, Tennessee /mre/ Medina, Washington /mdan/ Mesa, Washington /mis/ Methow, Washington /'mta/ Mexia, Texas /mhe/ listen (helpinfo) Miami, Oklahoma /mam/ Milan, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, New Hampshire, Ohio, Tennessee, and Washington /maln/ listen (helpinfo) Minam, Oregon /ma.nm/ Missouri The "ss" represents IPA: [z] in either common pronunciation: /m zi/ or /mz/ Monson, Massachusetts /mnsn/ Montague, Texas /montg/ Montpelier, Virginia /montplr/, perhaps more intuitive than the US standard /mntpi:lj/ of Montpelier, Vermont and others (derived from Montpellier, France) Moscow, Idaho /msko/ (similar to the British English pronunciation of Moscow, Russia). Other Moscows in America are /mska/, the American English pronunciation of the Russian city. Mukilteo, Washington /mkltio/ Mulino, Oregon /mlano/

[edit] N

Naches, Washington /ntiz/ Nacogdoches, Texas - [nkdots] Nahant, Massachusetts /nhnt/ Naselle, Washington /nesl/ Natchitoches, Louisiana /nkt/ ("nacktsh") Neah Bay, Washington /ni/ Nenana, Alaska and Nenana River /ninn/ Nespelem, Washington /nspilm/ Nevada /nvd/; the pronunciation /nvd/, while fairly common (particularly in the eastern United States), is stigmatized locally. Nevada County, Arkansas; Nevada, Iowa; and Nevada, Missouri /nved/ listen (helpinfo) Newark, Ohio /nk/ ("nerk") vs. Newark, Delaware /'nu:.k/ New Orleans /nurlnz/ or /nwrlnz/ (local pronunciation only)

[edit] O

Ojai, California /oha/ Orcas Island, Washington /rks/ (not /rkz/, like the plural of orca) Ouray, Colorado /jre/ Owyhee River and Owyhee County, Idaho /owahi/

[edit] P

Palacios, Texas /pls/ ("puh-LASH-uhs") Palestine, Texas /pl.s.tin/ (cf Palestine /pl.s.tan/ Palouse, Washington /plus/ Pass Christian, Mississippi /ps krstn/ or /ps krsti:n/ (cf. the regular pronunciation of "Christian" /krstn/) Pawtucket, Rhode Island /ptkt/ ("puh TUCK it" or "p'TUCK it") Peabody, Massachusetts /pi:bdi/, not /pi:bdi/ Pearrygin Lake, Washington prdn Pedernales River, Texas /pdnls/ ("perden alice") Pend Oreille County, Washington and Pend Oreille (also Pend d'Oreille) River /pnd're/ ("ponderay") Picabo, Idaho /pikbu/ Pierre, South Dakota /pr/ ("peer") Pfafftown, North Carolina /pftan/ (Usually the p is silent in names starting with Pf) Piceance Creek & Basin, Colorado /pi:nts/ or /pi:nts/ (pee-ants) Plano, Texas /pleno/ ("PLAY-no") Plymouth, Massachusetts and elsewhere /plm/ ("plimmuth") Pojoaque Pueblo, New Mexico /pwki pwblo/ ("puhWOKee") by Anglos only Pompeii, Michigan pmpia (paum-pee-eye, unlike the Italian town pronounced Pom-pay) Poughkeepsie, New York /p'kpsi/ ("puhKIPsy") Poulsbo, Washington /plzbo/ ("PAHLZ-bow") Puget Sound, Washington [pjut] ("PEW-jit") Puyallup, Washington /pjulp/ ("pew-AL-up")

[edit] Q

Quincy, Massachusetts /kwnzi/ (kwinzy) Quitaque, Texas - /ktiki/ Qulin, Missouri - /kjuln/

[edit] R

Raleigh, North Carolina /r:li/ (rahly) Refugio, Texas /rfjurio/ listen (helpinfo) (refurio) Rhea County, Tennessee /re/ (ray) Riga, New York /ra/ (righ-ga) Rio Grande, Ohio /'ra.o grnd/ (righ-o-grand) Ruch, Oregon /ru/ (roosh) Russia, Ohio /'ru:i:/ (ROO-she)

Rutherfordton, North Carolina locally /rlftn/ (rulfton) or variations on that

[edit] S

Saline, Michigan and Saline County, Illinois /sli:n/ (suh-lean) Samish Island, Washington /sm/ Sammamish, Washington /smm/ San Jose, Illinois /sn oz/ listen (helpinfo) San Rafael, California /sn rfl/ San Xavier, Arizona /sn hvie/ Schenectady, New York /sknktdi/ Schuylkill in Pennsylvania /sku:k/ (skookel) SeaTac, Washington /si:tk/ Sedro-Woolley, Washington /si:dro wli/ Sekiu, Washington /sikju/s Semiahmoo, Washington /smi:mo/; (sm-m) Sequim, Washington /skwm/ (skwim) Shawangunk (Mountains, town and prison in Hudson Valley region of New York) /m/ is preferred by residents of the area, although original pronunciation still used by visitors is more intuitive /wk/ Shoshone, Idaho /oon/ Sioux Falls /su flz/ Siuslaw River, Oregon /sajusl/ Skagit (name of a Native American tribe and various locales in Washington) / skdt/ Skamokawa, Washington /skmkwe/ (ska-mock-a-way) Sol Duc River, Washington /soldk/ (the spelling soleduck is also encountered) Spokane, Washington /spokn/ (spo-can) St. Maries, Idaho /sent mriz/ (St. Mary's) Staunton, Virginia /stntn/ (stan-tin) Stehekin, Washington /sthikn/ Steilacoom, Washington /stlkm/ (stillakum) Suisun City, California /ssu:n/ (se-SOON) Swansea, Massachusetts /sw:nzi/

[edit] T

Taliaferro County, Georgia /tlv/ (tolliver) Tanana, Alaska and Tanana River /tnn/ Tekoa, Washington /tiko/ Telocaset, Oregon /tl.k.st/ Tempe, Arizona /tem'pi:/ Tennessee /ten'si:/

Terre Haute, Indiana /trhot/ Tewksbury, Massachusetts traditionally /tks.b.ri:/ (tooksbury) The Dalles, Oregon /dlz/ Thibodaux, Louisiana /tbdo/ (tibbuhdoe) Tieton, Washington /tatn/ Tillamook County, Oregon /tlmk/ (although locals pronounce it intuitively, /tlmk/) Tok, Alaska /tok/ Tooele, Utah /tuwl/ (to-will-a) Topsail Beach, North Carolina /tps/ (topsl) Touchet River, Washington /tui/ Toutle River, Washington /tutl/ Tripoli, Iowa /trpol/ Tualatin, Oregon, Tualatin River - /tul.tn/ Tulare, California /tulri/ Tucson, Arizona /tu:sn/ Tygh Valley, Oregon /ta/ (tie)

[edit] V

Valdez, Alaska /vl'di:z/ Vallejo, California /vleho/ Veneta, Oregon /vni.t/ Verdi, Nevada /vda/ Versailles, Illinois, Versailles, Kentucky, Versailles, Missouri, and Versailles, Ohio /vselz/ listen (helpinfo) Vienna, Illinois /van/ listen (helpinfo)

[edit] W

Washington /wrtn/ or /wrtn/ (considered an uncouth variant of /wtn/) Wahkiakum County, Washington /wkakm/ Wallowa, Oregon, Wallowa County, and the Wallowa Mountains /wla/ Wallula, Washington /wlul/ Weippe, Idaho /wi.ap/ Weiser, Idaho /wi:z/ (weezer) Whitemarsh Island /'wtmr/ (witmarsh) Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania /wlks br/, /-bri/, or /-br/ (wilks bear) Willamette River, Oregon /wlmt/ (wil-LAM-it) Willapa River and Willapa Hills, Washington /wlp/ (WILL-a-paw) Woburn, Massachusetts /wubn/ (woo-burn), Woburn, Bedfordshire and Woburn, Toronto are simply /wobn/ (woe-burn) Worcester, Massachusetts /wst/ (wooster)

[edit] Y

Yakima, Yakima County, and Yakima River, Washington /jkm/ (yaka-maw), though the pronunciation /jkm/ is also heard. The Native American people for whom the river, city, and county are named now prefer the spelling Yakama. Yachats, Oregon /jhts/ (yah-hahts) Yaquina Bay and related place names in Oregon /jkwn/ Yocona River, Mississippi /'j.kni/ (yahk-nee) Youghiogheny River, U.S. /jokeni/ (yah-kuh-GAIN-ee) Yreka, California /wa'ri:k/ (why-reek-a)

[edit] Z

Zzyzx, California /zzzks/ (zuh-zih-zix)

[edit] Place names in other English-speaking countries

A

Agassiz, British Columbia /gsi/

Baie d'Espoir, Newfoundland /bei dspr/, French for "Bay of Hope", ironically pronounced "Bay Despair" Brisbane, Australia /brz.bn/

Cockburn, Australia /kobn/

Etobicoke, Ontario /tobko/

Gaultois, Newfoundland and Labrador /g:lts/

Job's Cove /dobz kov/

Kelowna, British Columbia /klon/ (formerly pronounced /klan/) Keremeos, British Columbia /krmis/ Kiribati (island nation in Pacific Ocean) /kribs/ (spelling is regular in Gilbertese) Kiritimati (island in Pacific Ocean) /krisms/ (spelling is regular in Gilbertese)

Labrador, Canada /lb:.rdor/

Melbourne, Australia /mel.bn/ or /ml.bn/ ("mel-bern")

Newfoundland /'nu:.fn.lnd/

Osoyoos, British Columbia /o'su:ju:s/ ("oh-sue-yoos") or /o'su:js/

Pago Pago, American Samoa /po po/ (pronounced /pgo pgo/ by non-Samoan-speakers) Pouce Coupe, British Columbia /pus kupi/ (Some maps place an acute accent over the final e [as , as in /pus kupe/]; however, this is incorrect.)

Quesnel, British Columbia /kwnl/ Quidi Vidi, Newfoundland /kdi vdi/ (kiddy viddy) Quirpon, Newfoundland and Labrador /'krpu:n/ (carpoon)

Saanich Peninsula and related place names in British Columbia /snt/ Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario/ Michigan /su: sent mri:/ ("soo saint marie") Sechelt, British Columbia /silt/ Skidegate, British Columbia /skdt/ (skiddeget) Stouffville, Ontario /stovl/ (sto-vil) Summerland, British Columbia /smlnd/ (not /smlnd/)

Thames River in Ontario, and town and firth in New Zealand /tmz/ (the Thames River in Connecticut is pronounced /emz/) Tsawwassen, British Columbia /twsn/

[edit] Given names

Aloysius /los/ ("aloe-WISH-us") Antawn (Jamison) /ntwn/ (American English pronunciation of "Antoine". For more information, see the section on his name.) Chynna (Phillips) /tan/ (china) Geoffrey /dfri/ (jeffry) Greig (Scottish/English surname or forename) /grg/ ("greg") Job /dob/ (jobe) John /dn/ (RP) /dn/ (GA) Kaffe (Fassett) /kef/ (kafe) Kiki (Cuyler) /kaka/ ("KYE-kye"); compare with the more common / kiki/ ("KEE-kee"), as in Kiki Dee and Kiki Vandeweghe Liam /li:m/ ("LEE-am") Magdalen(e) (as in Magdalen College, Oxford and Magdalene College, Cambridge) /m:dln/ (maudlin) MaliVai (Washington) /mlvi:/ (mal-a-VEE-a) Matraca (Berg) /mtres/ ("muhTRAYsuh") Michael /makl/ Michellie (Jones) /mki:li:/ ("muh-KEE-lee") Phoebe /fi:bi:/ ("fee-bee"; regular English pronunciation of romanization of Greek ) Picabo (Street) /pi:kbu:/ (peek-uh-boo) Ralph traditionally /ref/ (rafe), as for Ralph Fiennes, Ralph Vaughan Williams; now usually the intuitive /rlf/ Regina the female name is /rdi.n/, but in British and Canadian place names (and in the legal Latin term for "queen") it is /rda.n/ Rise occasionally /ri:s/ ("REE-suh"; after Ris Stevens: the diaeresis over the e of Ris indicates that it is not a silent e) Seamus /ems/ ("SHAME-us"; spelling Samus is regular in Irish) Sean /:n/ ("shawn"; spelling Sen is regular in Irish) Shan (Foster) /en/ ("Shane") Siobhan /v:n/ or /v:n/ ("shuVAWN"; spelling Siobhn is regular in Irish) Siouxsie (Sioux) /su:zi/ ("SUE-zee") Stephen (Curry), basketball player /stfn/, instead of the more common (in American English) /sti:vn/ Wynonna (Judd) /wanon/ ("wye-NO-na") Xe /ksi/ ("EK-see")

[edit] Surnames
[edit] A-B

Duke of Abercorn /vrkrn/ (avvercorn) David Acer /kr/ (acker) Peter Agre /gre/ or /gri:/ ("ah-gree") Ameche (Don & Alan) /mi:ti:/ ("uh-MEE-chee") (Anglicized spelling for original Italian name "Amici") Aucoin from /okwn/ (e.g. Kevyn Aucoin), /okwin/, /okon/ (e.g. Bill Aucoin), to /:kon/ Ayscough (e.g. Hannah Ayscough) /skju:/ (askew) Walter Bagehot /bdt/ (badget) Jim Bakker /bekr/ (baker) Earl Beauchamp /bi:tm/ (beechm) Berkeley (English surname) /b:kli/ ("barkly"). Surname in the US / bkli/. Bohun /bu:n/ Blount (e.g. Mel Blount, Roy Blount, Jr.) /blnt/ ("blunt") Roger Boisjoly /bole/ ("beaujolais") Boulware (Virginia) /bolr/ (bowler) John Boozman /bozmn/ ("bozeman") KC Boutiette /bu:ti:e/ ("BOO-tee-ay") Duke of Buccleuch /bklu:/ ("buhCLUE") Steve Buyer /bu:jr/ ("boo-yer")

[edit] C

John Caius (as in Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge) /ki:z/ ("keys") Thomas Carew, poet /kri:/ ("kerry"); compare with the more intuitive /k ru:/ ("ka-ROO"), as in John Carew (footballer) and Rod Carew Craig Chaquico /tki:so/ ("cha-KEY-so") Mamah Cheney /mem teni/ ("mayma chayny") Cheves (e.g. Langdon Cheves) /tvs/ (chiv-is) Cholmondeley /tmli/ (chumly) Cecelia Cichan /i:hn/ ("SHE-han") Cockburn /kobn/ ("co-burn") Colcolough (Virginia, e.g. Tom Colcolough) /kokli/ ("coke-lee") or / kkli/ ("calkly") Colquhoun /khu:n/ ("ka-hoon") Aaron Copland /koplnd/ ("copeland") Dan Cortese /kortz/ ("cortez") Cowper /ku:p(r)/ ("cooper") Crichton /kratn/ ("crighton") Cruwys (e.g. Margaret Cruwys /kru:z/ ("cruise")

Culzean Castle, Scotland /klen/ ("kuhLAIN") Cuyjet /su:e/ ("soo-zhay")

[edit] D-E

Vernon Dahmer /demr/ Dalyell and Dalziel (as in the UK television series Dalziel and Pascoe) /di l/ ("dee-EL") Davies both /devs/ ("Davis") and /devi:z/ DeLaughter, e.g. Tim DeLaughter /dl:tr/ ("DeLawter") Diuguid /du:gd/ (do gid) John Donne, poet /dn/ ("dun") Andre Dubus /dbju:s/ (duhBYOOS) Justin Duchscherer /du:k/ (dooksher) Keir Dullea /dle/ (duh-lay) Dyches /daks/ (dikes) Eames (e.g. Emma Eames) /emz/ (aims), though often just /i:mz/ Ehle (Jennifer; John) (EE-lee) Cary Elwes /lwez/ (el-ways) Enroughty (S. Carolina) /drbi/ ("darby") [4]

[edit] F-H

Faneuil /fn/ or /fnj/ Ron Faucheux /foe/ ("foe-SHAY") Brett Favre /frv/ (farv) Featherstonehaugh /fn:/ (fanshaw), also /fstnh:/, /fi:snhe/, / fstnh:/, or intuitively as /fstnh:/ * Paul Feig /fi:g/ (feeg) Fiennes /fanz/ (fines) William Foege /fegi:/ (fay-ghee) Robert Fulghum /fldm/ (full jum) Clifford Geertz /gts/ ("gurts") Geogehan, Geoghegan /gegn/ ("gaygan") Louise Gluck /glk/ ("glick") Donald Glut /glu:t/ ("gloot") Lee Godie /gode/ ("GO-day") Elizabeth Goudge /gu:/ ("goozh") Greenhalgh /gri:nhl/ or /gri:nhl/ ("greenhalsh") Matt Groening /greni/ (graining) Grosvenor /grvn/ ("grove-ner") Guild, e.g. Nancy Guild /gald/ ("guiled") Morgan and Paul Hamm /hm/ (hahm) (as opposed to Mia Hamm /hm/, same as ham) Earl of Harewood /h:wd/ ("harwood")

Earl of Home /hju:m/ (rhymes with fume) Benjamin Huger /udi/ ("oodgy") or /ude/ William Hulme /hju:m/ (same as the earl of Homes name)

[edit] I-L

David Icke /ak/ (ike) Andrew P. Iosue /zwe/ ("oz-way") [5] Isley Brothers /azli/ (eyes-lee) Darrell Issa /az/ (eye-zuh) Jacques sometimes (e.g. Brian Jacques) /deks/ (jakes) Hamilton Jordan /ddn/ ("jerdn") John Keble (of Keble College) /kib/ (keeble) Kehoe, Keogh (Irish surname) /kjo/ Kerr sometimes (e.g. Deborah Kerr) /kar/ car, original Scottish /ker/ ~"care" Keynes, e.g. John Maynard Keynes - /kenz/ ("canes") Karch Kiraly /kra/ ("keer-eye") Shia LaBeouf /a lbf/ ("luh-BUFF") Landrieu /lndru/ ("LAN-droo") Lalor /ll/ ("LAW-ler") Lange usually /l/ ("Lang") o David Lange /li/ ("LONG-ee") Lascelles (e.g. Alan Lascelles) /lsls/ (rhymes with "tassels") Lauren (Ralph) (LOR-en, rather than lo-REN) Legar (e.g. Hugh S. Legar ) /lgri/ (luh-gree) John Lescroart /lskwa/ ("less-kwah") Leveson-Gower (e.g. H. D. G. Leveson-Gower, Granville George LevesonGower) /lusn gr/ (Lewson-Gore) Lewes, e.g. George Henry Lewes /lus/

[edit] M

Machin (e.g. Arnold Machin) /'metn/ (may-chin) MacKay in Scotland /m'ka/ (to rhyme with "sky"), elsewhere more often the anglicised /m'ke/ Mackay (e.g. Clarence Mackay) /'mki/ (macky) MacLeod, McLeod /m'klad/ (mcloud) MacMahon, McMahon sometimes /mk'mn/ (macMAN), as in the McMahon wrestling family Mainwaring /mnr/ (mannering) (non-fictional Mainwarings pronounce it the same) Robert Mapplethorpe /'meplorp/ (maplethorp) Marjoribanks /m:rbks/ (marsh banks) Marlborough /m:lbr/

Maugham (e.g. Somerset Maugham) /m:m/ Marin Mazzie /mezi:/ (may-zee) McCaughey (e.g. the McCaughey septuplets) / mk/ ("McCoy") Geraldine McCaughrean /mk:krn/ (McCorkren) McGrath In Ireland usually /mgra:/ (McGrah), though elsewhere often /mgr/ McLean, MacLean /m'klen/ (McLane) [6][7][8], occasionally its anglicised equivalent /m'kli:n/ (to rhyme with "clean") Meagher / mr/ (mar), / mhr)/ (maher) David Mech / mi:t/ (meech) Melancon (e.g. Charlie Melancon) /mlansn/ Menzies /ms/ (mingis) Moog /mo/ Moragne (U.S.) /moreni/

[edit] N-Q

Naifeh /nefi:/ (nay-fee) Bill Nighy /na/ (nigh) Laura Nyro /nro/ (nero) Laurence Olivier /lvi:.e/ Ouzts /u:ts/ ("oots") Lou Piniella /pnl/ (puhNELuh) Pole-Carew (e.g. Sir Reginald Pole-Carew) /pu:l kri/ (Pool-Kerry) Cliff Politte /poli:t/ (poleet) Pou (e.g. Edward W. Pou) /pju:/ (pew) Prioleau (e.g. Pierson Prioleau) /prelo/ (pray-low) Proulx (as in Marcel Proulx and E. Annie Proulx) /pru:/

[edit] R

Raleigh (surname) /rli/ (rawly) (although pronounced by most people as /r:li/) Rehm (e.g. Diane Rehm) /ri:m/ (ream) Pete Reiser /ri:s/ (reeser) Renault (Mary) (REN-alt) Reynolds /rnldz/ Rhea (e.g. Caroline Rhea) /re/ (ray) Rhys /ri:s/ (reese) Lisa Rieffel /rfl/ (ruhFEL) Riordan (e.g. Richard Riordan, Mike Riordan) often/rrdn/ (reardon) Klaus Roth /r/ ("roath") Marge Roukema /rkm/ (rockema) Kirk Rueter /ri:tr/ (reeter) Ed Ruscha /ru:e/ (rooSHAY)

[edit] S

St John (first name and surname) /snn/ (as in Oliver St. John Gogarty); or intuitively /snn/ or /santn/ (as in Ian St. John). Rachael Scdoris - /sdors/ (the same as the Sedoris from which it developed) Schaffer, Shaffer often /ef/ rather than /f/ Terri Schiavo /avo/ (shy-vo) vs. regular Mary Schiavo /ski vo/ Schlumberger /lmbre/ (shlumberZHAY) Patti Scialfa /sklf/ (skalfa) Steven Seagal /sgl/ (after Chagall; his father's name is simply pronounced /si:gl/ ) Junior Seau /se.a/ ("say ow") Seay sometimes (Seay, Mark Seay) /se/, usually /si:/ (see) Karen Sillas /sals/ ("sigh-less") Smellie (Scottish, e.g. William Smellie) /smal:/ (smiley) Strachan /str:n/ (strawn) (e.g. Gordon Strachan), /straxn/, but now often /strkn/ Dana Suesse /swi:s/ (swees) Synge /s/ (sing)

[edit] T-V

Tal(l)iaferro /tlv/ (tolliver) Roger Taney /tni/ (tawny) Lauren Tewes /twi:z/ (tweeze) Thome (e.g. Jim Thome) /tome/ Threatt (e.g. Sedale Threatt) /ri:t/ (threet) Todd Tiahrt /ti:hrt/ (tea-heart) Tilghman /tlmn/ (tillman) Tjoelker /tokr/ ("choker") Tyrwhitt (e.g. Reginald Tyrwhitt) /trt/ (rhymes with spirit) Urquhart /:k(r)t/ (urkert) Vanderhorst (S. Carolina) (e.g. Arnoldus Vanderhorst /vndrs/ (van dross) Bill Veeck /vk/ (vek)

[edit] W-Z

Waldegrave /wgev/ (war-grave) Wein, Weiner often /wi:n/ and /wi:n/ (wiener) Winzet /wnjt/ (win-yet) Wodehouse /wdhas/ (woodhouse) Worcester /wst/ Larry Woiwode /wawdi/ (why woody)

Woolfhardisworthy - /wlzi/ ("wolsey") Herman Wouk /wok/ (woke) Patricia Wrede /ri:di:/ (reedy) Wriothesley (e.g. the Earls of Southampton) variably given as /rzli/, / razli/, /rzli/ [9], /rksli/ (roxly) Yeaton /jt/ (yetten) William Butler Yeats /jets/ ("yates") Yeend, e.g. Frances Yeend /jnd/ (yend) Clayton Yeutter /jat/ (rhymes with fighter)

[edit] See also

English spelling List of words of disputed pronunciation (includes names like Melbourne that are pronounced differently in different locations)

[edit] Online sources

h2g2 guide to Pronouncing British Placenames How Do You Pronounce That Name? on genealogymagazine.com A Pronunciation Guide to Names of Public Figures

[edit] References

G. M. Miller (editor) (1971). BBC pronouncing dictionary of British names. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-431125-2. Ordnance Survey of Ireland (1989). Gazetteer of Ireland. Government Publications Office. ISBN 0-7076-0076-6.

Pronunciations marked with * are from:

Wells, John C. (2000). Longman Pronunciation Dictionary. 2nd ed. Longman. ISBN 0-582-36468-X.

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_names_in_English_with_counterintuitive_pronunci ations" Categories: English phonology | Lists of place names | Lists of names Hidden category: Articles for deletion
Views

Article Discussion Edit this page

History

Personal tools

Log in / create account

Navigation Search

Main page Contents Featured content Current events Random article

Interaction Toolbox

About Wikipedia Community portal Recent changes Contact Wikipedia Donate to Wikipedia Help

What links here Related changes Upload file Special pages Printable version Permanent link Cite this page

Languages

This page was last modified on 21 July 2008, at 18:20. All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License. (See Copyrights for details.) Wikipedia is a registered trademark of the Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., a U.S. registered 501(c)(3) tax-deductible nonprofit charity. Privacy policy About Wikipedia Disclaimers

English words with uncommon properties

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

(Redirected from List of unusual English words) Jump to: navigation, search For the purposes of this article, any word which has appeared in a recognised general English dictionary published in the 20th century or later is considered a candidate. For interest, some archaic words, non-standard words and proper names are also included. The treatment of words of foreign origin can be problematic. The entire history of English involves influence and loanwords from other languages, and this process continues today (see Foreign language influences in English). However, there is a grey area between foreign words and words accepted as English. The Oxford English Dictionary calls such words "resident aliens". Generally, a word of foreign origin is legitimate here if it may be encountered in an English text without translation.

Contents
[hide]

1 Combinations of letters o 1.1 Many vowels o 1.2 Containing all the vowels o 1.3 No vowels but "y" o 1.4 Many consonants o 1.5 Alternating vowels and consonants o 1.6 Doubled, tripled, and quadrupled letters o 1.7 Many repeated letters o 1.8 Isograms o 1.9 Unusual word endings o 1.10 Unusual word beginnings

1.11 Q without U 1.12 Containing the letters a, b, c, d... 1.13 Typewriter words 1.14 Letters in alphabetic order 1.15 Palindromes 1.16 Kangaroo words 1.17 First and last words by reversed spelling 1.18 First and last words in anagram dictionary 1.19 Other unusual spellings 1.20 Scrabble 1.21 Pyramid words 2 Pairs and groups of words o 2.1 Homophones o 2.2 Homographs o 2.3 Self-antonyms o 2.4 Sequences of words formed by the addition of letters o 2.5 "ough" words o 2.6 Masculine and feminine adjectives 3 Long words o 3.1 Longest one-syllable word 4 Unrhymable words 5 Words with large numbers of meanings 6 References 7 See also
o o o o o o o o o o o

8 External links

[edit] Combinations of letters

[edit] Many vowels
It is important to note the difference between vowel letters and vowel sounds. A string of letters may represent a single vowel sound (like ea in head); conversely, a single letter may represent multiple vowels, or a diphthong (such as boy, with one diphthong, or Peoria, which has multiple diphthongs). This section deals with words that have many vowel letters, which may, however, represent a smaller number of vowel sounds. Unless otherwise specified, "vowels" here refers to the regular vowels, a, e, i, o, u. Euouae (a type of cadence in medival music) contains six vowel letters in a row. It is a pseudo-word, however, formed from the vowels of the last six syllables of the "Gloria Patri" doxology: "seculorum. Amen". It is also often spelt evovae.[1] There is only one common word in English that has five vowels in a row: queueing. More unusual examples are cooeeing (making a "cooee" sound), miaoued or miaouing (from miaou, to make a sound like a cat; more commonly miaow or meow). Another candidate

is zoaeae, a plural of zoaea. Zoaea, more commonly spelt zoea, is a larval stage in crustacean development. Those who write using the ligature "" may consider the singular to have only three vowels (zoa). Capitalised words include Rousseauian (pertaining to the philosopher Rousseau), Aeaea or Aiaia (a location in Greek mythology) and the related adjectives Aeaean/Aiaian, and Iouea, a genus of sea sponges. The list of common words with four vowels in a row is also fairly short, and includes aqueous, Hawaiian, obsequious, onomatopoeia, pharmacopoeia, queue, plateaued, miaou, and sequoia, amongst a few others. Examples of words consisting entirely of vowels, including proper names and some words already mentioned, are:

a (the indefinite article) aa (a geological term for a type of lava) ae (a Scots adjective form of "one") Aeaea or Aiaia (a location in Greek mythology) aeaeae (magic) ai (the three-toed sloth) aia (a Brazilian bird) Aiea (a town in Hawaii) au (French for "to" or "with", encountered in English in compounds such as au pair and au fait) euouae (a type of cadence in mediaeval music) euoi (a Greek exclamation of joy) eau (French for "water", encountered in English in compounds such as eau de cologne) Eiao (one of the Marquesas Islands) I (first person pronoun) Iao (a Polynesian god) I'i (a figure in Polynesian mythology) contains a consonant, but not one written with a letter generally recognized as a consonant in English. Io (a figure in Greek mythology, also a moon of Jupiter) Iouea (a genus of sea sponges) O (interjection) oe (a whirlwind in the Phillipines) oi (an impolite exclamation used to gain someone's attention) oo (a Hawaiian bird).

Exclamations such as oooo, aaaa and eeee are not normally considered legitimate words. Other words that have a high proportion of vowels, including some proper names, are as follows.

6 letters, 1 consonant: o Aeolia (a region now in Turkey)

Eogaea (a supposed ancient continent) Euboea (a Greek island) ooecia (plural of ooecium, part of the reproductive system of some primitive animals) o zoaeae, Aeaean/Aiaian, eunoia, already mentioned 7 letters, 1 consonant: o ouabaio (an African tree that yields the poison ouabain) 8 letters, 2 consonants: o aboideau or aboiteau (a sluice gate) o aureolae (plural of aureola, a halo) o Beaulieu (a village in Hampshire, England) o epopoeia (variant of epopee, an epic poem) o eulogiae (plural of eulogia, holy bread in an Eastern Orthodox ritual) o quiaquia (a type of fish) 9 letters, 2 consonants: o Aizoaceae (a plant family) o Aloeaceae (a plant family) o Outaouais (a region of western Quebec) 10 letters, 3 consonants: o autoecious (pertaining to a fungus that completes all stages of its life cycle on one host) 11 letters, 3 consonants: o Aecidiaceae (a plant family) o Ouagadougou (capital of Burkina Faso) o Paeoniaceae (a plant family) 12 letters, 3 consonants: o Saurauiaceae (a plant family)
o o o

[edit] Containing all the vowels

The word Iouea, a genus of sea sponges, contains all five regular vowels and no other letters. Other short words containing all the regular vowels are eunoia at six letters, followed by sequoia (and a variety of rarer words such as Aeonium, eulogia, miaoued) at seven. The shortest words with all six vowels (including y) are oxygeusia (an abnormally acute sense of taste), Oxyuridae (a family of parasitic nematodes), Oxyurinae (a subfamily of ducks), and aeriously (meaning "airily"; see below), with nine letters. Oxyuriases (plural of oxyuriasis) has ten letters; Oxyuroidea (an order of nematodes; see below) has ten letters, including a second o. There are many words that feature all five regular vowels occurring only once in alphabetical order, the commonest being abstemious and facetious. Two of the shortest, at eight letters, are caesious and anemious (OED); and aerious (OED) has only seven letters. Some others are abstentious, acheilous, arsenious, arterious, tragedious, fracedinous, and Gadsprecious (all in OED). Considering y as a vowel, the suffix -ly can be added to a number of these words; thus the shortest word containing six unique vowels

in alphabetical order is aeriously, with nine letters (OED); the much more common facetiously has eleven letters. Subcontinental and uncomplimentary are common words having the five vowels once only in reverse order. One of the shortest such words, at eight letters, is Muroidea, a superfamily of rodents. Dasyuroidea (a superfamily of marsupials; in OED) has the full set of six vowels including y once only in reverse order, but with an extra a preceding. Oxyuroidea (in OED; ten letters) has o preceding the sequence of vowels in reverse order, and it may be the shortest with such a sequence.

[edit] No vowels but "y"

Main article: Words without vowels Rhythms is the longest common word containing neither a, e, i, o or u. Gypsyfy, gypsyry, symphysy, nymphly and nymphfly are longer but rarer. The archaic word twyndyllyngs has been cited[who?] as the longest of all. Syzygy, which contains three y's, is still in common usage.

[edit] Many consonants

The longest word with only one vowel is strengths (9 letters), packing six consonant sounds into a single syllable. The words psychorhythms (13), rhythmlessly (12) and polyrhythms (11) are longer, but each clearly uses the letter y as a vowel. There are also a variety of onomatopoeic words, such as the nine-letter tsktsking (making a "tsktsk" sound), which appears in Chambers Dictionary (in which case tsktsks, seven letters and no vowels, should also be possible). Eight-letter words with just one vowel are also fairly rareas well as strength itself, some examples are schmaltz, schnapps and twelfths. Candidates for words with seven consonants in a row are Twelfthstreet (normally two words but sometimes written as one, as in a song title; Eighthstreet is feasible by analogy), and Hirschsprung, as in Hirschsprung's disease (though this is after a Danish surname). The place-name Knightsbridge has six consonants in a row (with four consonant sounds), as do the compound words catchphrase, latchstring, sightscreen, watchspring and watchstrap, and the somewhat more obscure borschts (plural of borscht, a type of soup from Eastern Europe), the German-derived festschrift (a collection of writings honouring a noted academic), Eschscholzia (a plant genus) and bergschrund (a glacier crevasse). Apart from words already mentioned (and their plurals), long words with just two, three, and four vowels include Christchurch, spendthrifts, stretchmarks (2 vowels, 12 letters); farthingsworths, shillingsworths, strengthfulness (3, 15); and handcraftsmanship, splanchnemphraxis (4, 17).

[edit] Alternating vowels and consonants

The superlatively long word honorificabilitudinitatibus (27 letters) alternates consonants and vowels, as do the slightly more prosaic medical terms hepatoperitonitis and mesobilirubinogen (both 17 letters). The longest such words that are reasonably well known may be overimaginative, parasitological and verisimilitudes (all 15 letters). As a country, United Arab Emirates is unsurpassed for length in its vowel/consonant alternation. The longest alternating words beginning with a vowel are possibly the 16-letter adenolipomatosis (a glandular condition), aluminosilicates (a class of chemical compounds containing aluminium and silicon) and anatomicomedical (relating to anatomy and medicine). Theopneustia (an obscure word for Christian divine inspiration) alternates pairs of vowels and consonants.

[edit] Doubled, tripled, and quadrupled letters

Esssse, a spelling used for the word ash in a 14th-century text, has four of the same letter in sequence and is cited in the second edition of the OED.[2] A number of English words have three of the same letter in sequence, but almost all are constructions involving a suffix, and could arguably be hyphenated or, in some cases, written as two words. They include Aaadonta, goddessship, headmistressship, willless, and bulllike. The OED contains the word frillless. In some fabrication plants, scrap is called offfall, though the hyphen is nearly universal. This suggests that similar material could be described as offfalllike. Other candidates are the archaic agreeeth (third person singular present tense of the verb to agree), Cavaticovelia aaa (a Hawaiian water bug), and tweeer (comparative adjective of the qualifier twee meaning infantilely kitsch), though comparison to freer and seer argues against the third e. The use of tree as a transitive verb meaning "to drive up a tree" makes the dog the tree-er and the cat the tree-ee. There are also many possessives ending in -ss's (e.g. actress's). The term cryptozoology means the study of hidden animals and oology is the study of eggs; this implies that the study of hidden eggs could be described as cryptooology, where each o possesses a separate sound. Place-names include Rossshire and Invernessshire, both in Scotland, UK (though both of these counties are usually hyphenated in official documentation), and Kaaawa in Hawaii (although this is a common misspelling of Kaaawa in Hawaiian, the okina being a glottal stop). The famous Welsh placename Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch contains the letter l four times in a row, but the llll is in fact the single Welsh digraph ll twice, rather than four ls; the name was in fact concocted in the 1860s as a publicity stunt.

Bookkeeper has three consecutive doubled letters (subbookkeeper, which has four, seems to have been invented by word puzzlists). There is also a section of a fly rod called a hookkeeper. Sweet-toothed and hoof-footed are hyphenated examples. Many words have two consecutive doubled letters; examples are roommate, balloon, coffee, woolly, and succeed. The word possessionlessness has four non-consecutive sets doubled letters; examples of common words with three sets are addressee, committee and keenness. The letters a, j, q, x and y appear doubled only in words imported from other languages or proper names (e.g. aardvark, hajj, Zaqqum, Exxon, Hayyim). Doubled h, i, k, u, v and w are also rare in English, with hh and ww occurring only in compounds. Examples include:

h: bathhouse, beachhead, fishhook, hitchhiker, roughhouse, withhold i: genii, radii, skiing, taxiing k: bookkeeper, chukka, dekko, tikka, trekked, markka u: continuum, duumvir, residuum, vacuum v: bevvy, bivvy, civvies, chivvy, divvy, flivver, navvy, revving, skivvy, savvy w: glowworm, meadowwort, strawworm powwow (a Native American gathering)

[edit] Many repeated letters

The following table lists words that repeat the given letter many times. The number of repetitions is shown in brackets. If the word with the most repetitions is dubious (for example, it is hyphenated, arguably should be hyphenated, is a proper name, or seems artificial) then further candidates with fewer repetitions are offered. Where there are many candidate words with the same number of repetitions only the shortest or commonest (judged subjectively) is listed. a b c taramasalata (6) a fish roe paste Galatasaray (5) a Turkish football team bibble-babble (6) babble flibbertigibbet (4) a silly woman pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis (6) a famously long word for a respiratory disease micrococcic (5) relating to micrococcus, a type of bacterium sacrococcygeal (4) pertaining to both the sacrum and the coccyx dodecahemidodecahedron (5) a type of polyhedron (solid geometrical figure) ethylenediaminetetraacetate (7) a chemical compound, used as a drug degenerescence (6) decay beekeeper (5) riffraff (4) undesirable people "Chargoggagoggmanchauggagoggchaubunagungamaugg" (15) the name of a lake in Massachusetts Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch (7) a famously long Welsh placename hugger-muggering (5) acting secretly

d e f g

h i

j k l m n o

p q

r s t u v w x y z

giggling (4) laughing in a silly manner High-Churchmanship (5) the state of being a High-Churchman, that is, supporting the High Church (a faction of the Anglican church) Rhamphorhynchus (4) a genus of pterosaur or orchid floccinaucinihilipilification (9) a famously long word meaning "the action of estimating as worthless" indivisibilities (7) a supposed plural of indivisibility indivisibility (6) the state of being indivisible jejunojejunostomy (4) a surgical procedure carried out on the intestine knickknack (4) a small article of little value Llullaillaco (6) a mountain in the Andes skillfully (4) with skill lulliloo (4) to welcome joyously mammogram (4) a breast X-ray nonannouncement (6) absence of an announcement inconveniencing (5) causing difficulty for pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis (9) a famously long word for a respiratory disease Chrononhotonthologos (7) the name of a play by English writer Henry Carey odontonosology (6) dentistry whippersnapper (4) a young, impertinent person Qaraqalpaq (3) a Middle-Eastern language Albuquerque (2) a city in New Mexico quinquennium (2) a period of five years riqq (2) a type of Egyptian tambourine strawberry-raspberry (6) a Japanese plant refrigerator (4) an appliance for keeping food cool possessionlessness (8) the state of being without possessions senselessness (6) lack of sense tittle-tattle (6) gossip anticonstitutionalist (5) someone who opposes a constitution humuhumunukunukuapuaa (9) a Hawaiian fish unscrupulous (4) lacking morals ovoviviparous (3) producing eggs that hatch within the body wow-wow (4) a type of gibbon powwow (3) a Native American gathering swallowwort (3) any of several plants hexahydroxycyclohexane (3) a chemical compound, part of the vitamin B complex executrix (2) a female executor maxixe (2) a Brazilian dance exotoxin (2) a soulible protein polysyndactyly (4) webbing of the hands or feet syzygy (3) a kind of astronomical coordination or alignment zenzizenzizenzic (6) the eighth power or exponent of a number razzmatazz (4) showy spectacle pizzazz (4) the quality of being showy or attractive

Ignoring the 20-letter play title Chrononhotonthologos, the longest words containing only one of the five regular vowels (overlooking y) may be the 17-letter proctocolonoscopy and synchrocyclotrons. Long words with only one of the six vowels including y are the 15-letter defencelessness and respectlessness. A candidate for longest word containing only one type of consonant is the 10-letter coucicouci, a word apparently included in at least one version of Roget's Thesaurus to mean "imperfect", but otherwise almost unknown. 9-letter words are allolalia (a speech disturbance) and Coccaceae (an obsolete name for a family of bacteria). Words containing the same sequence of letters multiple times are often relatively uninteresting, being formed by reduplication (e.g. higgledy-piggledy, namby-pamby), repetition of the same word or essentially the same word (countercountermeasure, gastrogastrostomy, benzeneazobenzene), or compounding (handstands, foreshores, nightlight). Some other examples, with the repeated sequence in brackets followed by the number of repetitions, include: nationalisation (ation, 2), undergrounder (under, 2), patinating (atin, 2), assesses (sses, 2), Mississippi (issi, 2), hotshots (hots, 2), Tetet (te, 3), expressionlessness (ess, 3), phosphophorin (pho, 3), Pitjantjatjara (tja, 3), tintinnabulating (tin, 3), nonconfrontation (on, 4), trans-Panamanian (an, 4). Long words with just two, three, four, etc. distinct letters include booboo, deeded, muumuu, Tetet (2 distinct letters, 6 letters in total); assesses, referrer (3, 8); senselessness (4, 13); defenselessness (6, 15); disinterestedness (7, 17); and institutionalisation (8, 20).

[edit] Isograms
Words in which no letter is used more than once are called isograms (though its use in this sense is jargon restricted to those who enjoy recreational linguistics, and is not commonly found in dictionaries). Uncopyrightable, with fifteen letters, is the longest common isogram in English (some also allow uncopyrightables). Misconjugatedly and dermatoglyphics share the distinction but are less well-known; subdermatoglyphic is two letters longer but even more obscure it has only one report of alleged live use (an article in Annals of Dermatology), and supposedly means "of or pertaining to the patterns on the lower skin layers." The words blepharoconjunctivitis and pneumoventriculography (as well as several others) contain 16 of the 26 letters of the alphabet, though they are not isograms as some letters are repeated. Sometimes isograms are defined as words in which each letter appears the same number of times, not necessarily just once. Long examples in which each letter appears twice are scintillescent (an obscure word for sparkling or twinkling), Cicadellidae (a family of insects), Gradgrindian (in the manner of Gradgrind, a character in Dickens' novel Hard Times noted for his soulless devotion to facts and statistics), happenchance (chance circumstance), and trisectrices (plural of trisectrix, a type of geometrical curve). Long

isograms in which each letter appears three times include sestettes (plural of sestette, a variant of sestet or sextet), and the fairly uninteresting cha-cha-cha (a type of dance music). The words senescence, intestines and arraigning have four distinct letters, each of which appears an even number of times. The word unprosperousness has seven such letters.

[edit] Unusual word endings

Dreamt and its derivatives are the only common English words that end in mt. (Though many Americans prefer using dreamed.) Derivatives include undreamt (typically used only in the phrase "undreamt of"), daydreamt, and the rarer outdreamt and redreamt. Other -mt words include the Scots word fremt (usually fremd or fremmit[3]) meaning "foreign" or "estranged" (cf. the German "fremd", same meaning) and, familiar but of foreign origin, Klimt, the Austrian painter. Despite the assertions of a well-known puzzle, modern English does not have three common words ending in -gry. Angry and hungry are the only ones. There are, however, a number of rare and obsolete words; see -gry for a further discussion. Excluding derivatives, there are only two words in English that end -shion (though many words end in this sound). These are cushion and fashion (derivatives include pincushion, refashion and misfashion). There are only two common English words ending in -cion. These are coercion and suspicion (the other two are the less-common cion and scion). -mt and -gry are possibly the best-known unusual word endings, but there are many others exhibited by only one or two everyday words. Some examples, excluding derivative words, are -ln (kiln, Lincoln),-tl (axolotl, Quetzalcoatl, rotl, Ueueteotl), -bt (doubt, debt), -igy (effigy, prodigy), -nen (linen), and cay (decay, Biscay). There are very few common English words ending in -u, and many are assimilated from other languages. Examples include, but are not limited to: adieu, beau, bureau, caribou, emu, flu, gnu, guru, impromptu, menu, milieu, ormolu, plateau, portmanteau, thou, tofu, tutu, and, of course, you. All of these words, excepting emu, flu, gnu, guru, thou, tofu, and you, are derived from French. In addition, there are the Greek letters mu, nu, and tau, and the proper nouns Urdu, Hindu and Katmandu. There are similarly few words ending in -v. Examples found in English dictionaries, including some words of foreign origin, are chav, lev, shiv, Slav, Yugoslav, spiv and tav. Abbreviations and acronyms that have to a greater or lesser extent attained the status of words include derv (diesel fuel), guv (British informal term of respectful address, from governor), lav (lavatory), luv (love), perv (pervert), rev (as of an engine, from revolution), sov (British, old-fashioned, for sovereign, the coin). There are also numerous place-names and personal names, especially of Russian or Eastern European origin, such as Kiev, Chekhov, Molotov, Prokofiev.

[edit] Unusual word beginnings

Words beginning with a double letter are generally very rare. The most common combination is probably oo- (oodles, oolong, oomph, oops, ooze, and a number of less familiar examples, mostly technical words incorporating the prefix oo-, meaning "egg"), followed by aa- (familiar examples being aardvark and Aaron), and ee- (eel, eerie, eek, eesome (attractive)). Otherwise such words are unlikely to be considered part of the English vocabulary, and almost entirely of foreign origin. Some examples are Ccoya (Inca queen), iiwi (a Hawaiian bird), llama, llano (a grassy plain), and llanero (someone who lives on a llano). There are, however, numerous Welsh placenames beginning Ll- (e.g. Llandudno, Llanberis)plus the familiar personal names Lloyd and Llewel(l)ynand a smaller number beginning Ff- (e.g. Ffestiniog, Ffrith). A number of Japanese names begin Iiwhen transliterated into the Roman alphabet. The words euouae, Aeaea and euoi, mentioned earlier under "Many vowels", start with six, five and four vowels respectively. There are very few other words starting with four vowels. Some proper name examples are: El Aain (a city in Western Sahara), Aeaetes (a character in Greek mythology), Aiea (a town in Hawaii), Aouad (personal name), Aouita (personal name), Euaechme (a character in Greek mythology), Ueueteotl (an Aztec god) and El Ouaer (a retired Tunisian football goalkeeper). The list of words starting with three vowels is rather longer, but most are obscure. Some of the more familiar examples are: aeolian (relating to the wind), aeon (an age), aoudad (a sheep-like animal of northern Africa), eau (French for "water", encountered in English in compounds such as eau de Cologne), Iain (personal name), oeuvre (an artist's body of work), Ouagadougou (capital of the African country Burkina Faso), and ouija (a board used by mediums to reveal spirit messages). Aeolian and aeon are British English spellings. There are similarly few English words beginning with a large number of consonants. Tsktsks appears in Collins Dictionary. The words crwth and cwtch (of Welsh origin) might be claimed to consist of five consonants, but the "w" clearly functions as a vowel. There is also a surname Schkrohowsky of Russian origin, and The Oxford Companion to Music lists Schtscherbatchew as an alternative spelling (which is a transliteration into the German language) of the surname of Russian composer Vladimir Shcherbachev, although in the Cyrillic alphabet, 'schch' is but one character . There are a reasonable number of words beginning with four consonants. The commonest beginnings are phth- (phthalein, phthisis, Phthirus) and sch- (mostly words of German/Yiddish origin such as schlep, schmaltz, schnapps). Other examples are chthonic, pschent, sphragide and tshwala. A selective list of words with other unusual initial letter combinations follows. Unsurprisingly, many are of foreign origin: bdellium, bwana, cnemis, ctenoid (comb-

like), czar, dghaisa (a Maltese rowing boat), dvandva, dziggetai (a Mongolian wild ass), fjord, Gbari (an African language), gmelina, jnana, kgotla (in southern Africa, a meeting place), kshatriya, kvetch, kwacha, mbaqanga, mho, mnemonic, mridanga, Mwera (an African language), mzungu (in East Africa, a white person), Ndebele, ngaio, ngwee, oquassa (a type of North American trout), pfennig, pneumonia, ptarmigan, pzazz (glamour), qawwali, qintar, qoph, sforzando, sfumato, sjambok, svelte, tmesis, tsunami, tzar, vlei (in southern Africa, a seasonally flooded area), vroom (a revving sound), Xhosa, xiphoid, xoanan (a carved wooden icon), Yggdrasil, ylem, ynambu (a South American bird), yttrium, ytterbium, zloty, zwitterion, zwinger (originating from German).

[edit] Q without U
Main article: List of English words containing Q not followed by U

[edit] Containing the letters a, b, c, d...

Boldface and feedback both contain all the letters from a to f (there are many such words, but these are the shortest at eight letters). There is probably no common English word that contains all letters a through g. Feedbacking or deboldfacing may be acceptable in some usage. Black-figured (referring to a type of pottery decoration) and doublerefracting are hyphenated examples. Short words with a, b, c, d, and e in any order include abduce, backed, beclad, and cabled. The shortest word with first occurrences of a, b, c, d, in e in order is abscede (OED; to move away). The shortest such word without repetitions is absconder. The longest word consisting entirely of letters from the first half of the alphabet (a through m) may be Hamamelidaceae (a plant family) at 14 letters. Long common words include fickleheaded (12 letters), fiddledeedee (12), blackballed (11), and blackmailed (11). Among the longest words consisting only of the letters a through g (the names of the notes of a musical scale) are: cabbaged (past tense of "to cabbage", meaning to steal), debagged (past tense of "to debag", meaning to remove the trousers of), Fabaceae and Fagaceae (all 8 letters). The first seven letters of abecedarian (someone who is learning the alphabet) use only the first five letters of the alphabet. Several other words share this property, such as acceded and deadbeat. Soupspoons (10) consists entirely of letters from the second half of alphabet, as does the hyphenated topsy-turvy and a number of rarer 10-letter words such as nonsupport (failure to support), puttyroots (plural of puttyroot, normally spelt putty-root: a species of orchid), and zoosporous (relating to a zoospore, a type of fungal or algal spore).

Zzyzx, a location in California, consists of only the last three letters of the alphabet.

[edit] Typewriter words

The longest words spelt solely with the left hand when typing properly using a QWERTY keyboard may be the 14-letter aftercataracts (secondary cataracts of the eye) and sweaterdresses (plural of sweaterdress, a knitted dress). The longest common words are the 12-letter desegregated, desegregates, reverberated, reverberates and stewardesses. The 13-letter chemical name phyllophyllin can be typed solely with the right hand. The longest such word that is reasonably common is the 9-letter polyphony. The phrase Hoi polloi is another 9-letter example. Common words of ten letters that can be spelled solely with the top line of letters on a QWERTY keyboard include perpetuity, proprietor, repertoire, property, and, fittingly, typewriter (though this may have been a deliberate goal driving the design of the QWERTY layout[citation needed]). There are at least two eleven-letter words, both rare: proterotype and rupturewort. The eight-letter words ashfalls, Falashas, Hadassah, Haggadah and Haskalah can all be typed on the middle row of letters on the keyboard. The longest such common word is probably the seven-letter alfalfa. No English word takes its letters exclusively from the bottom row of letters on a keyboard; neither vowels nor pseudo-vowels reside on this row.

[edit] Letters in alphabetic order

The longest words whose letters are in alphabetical order include the eight-letter Aegilops (a grass genus), and the seven-letter addeems (from the archaic verb addeem, meaning to award), alloquy (an archaic or literary word for an address), beefily (in a beefy manner), billowy (like a wave or surge), dikkops (a South African bird) and gimmors (plural of gimmor, an old-fashioned word for a mechanical contrivance). Many six-letter words have this property. In reverse alphabetical order are the nine-letter spoonfeed and the eight-letter spoonfed and trollied. There are a number of words that contain a string of four consecutive letters of the alphabet. The commonest combination is rstu, with most examples having the prefix under-, over- or super- (e.g. understudy, overstuff, superstud). Words with the combination mnop include cremnophobia (a fear of steep slopes), gymnopaedic (of birds, having unfeathered young), limnophilous (marsh-loving) and Prumnopitys (a genus of conifers). Chelmno, a town in Poland, has the unusual combination lmno.

The most common words formed only from consecutive letters of the alphabet are hi and no. Other possibilities are limited to ab (short for abdominal), de (arguably foreign), def (slang word meaning excellent), ef (the name of the letter f) and op (short for operation).

[edit] Palindromes
Main article: Palindrome A palindrome is a word or phrase that is spelled the same whether read forward or backward, disregarding punctuation - such as "Madam, I'm Adam." The longest common single-word palindromes are "malayalam" (a south Indian language),deified, racecar, repaper, reviver, and rotator. See Wiktionary:Appendix:Palindromic words for a comprehensive list.

[edit] Kangaroo words

Main article: Kangaroo word A kangaroo word is a word that contains all letters of another word, in order, with the same meaning.

[edit] First and last words by reversed spelling

In a dictionary that lists the reversed spellings of words alphabetically, some of the first entries (excluding proper names) would be:

a (=a, the indefinite article) aa (=aa, a type of lava) aab (=baa, the sound made by a sheep) aahc (=chaa, a variant of char, British slang for tea) aakkram (=markkaa, partitive singular (used after numbers) of markka, a former Finnish unit of currency) ...

Some proper names would appear earlier: aabbirem (=Meribbaa, a Biblical name); aabmup (=Pumbaa); aabre (=Erbaa, a town in Turkey); aacisuan (=Nausicaa); aaemu (=Umeaa); aagsin (=Nisga'a). The first entries that correspond to common words (including some proper names) would be, in normal letter order, casaba, Abba, Sheba, amoeba, Toshiba, Elba, melba, mamba, samba. The last few entries all come from words ending -uzz, including:

zzuh (=huzz, to buzz or murmur)

zzuks (=skuzz, variant of scuzz) zzul (=luzz, British slang, meaning to chuck) zzum (=muzz, British slang, meaning to confuse) zzurf (=fruzz, to brush hair the wrong way)

[edit] First and last words in anagram dictionary

Suppose that, in a dictionary of anagrams, the letters of each word are sorted into alphabetical order (for example, "alphabet" becomes "aabehlpt"), and then the resulting strings are themselves sorted alphabetically. After the usual culprits a and aa, some of the first few words in the dictionary (including only the singular form of nouns) would be:

aaaaaacceglllnorst (=astragalocalcaneal) aaaaaaccegllnorrst (=calcaneoastragalar) aaaaaalmrsstt (=taramasalata, a fish roe paste) aaaaaannrstyy (=Satyanarayana, another name for Vishnu) aaaaabbcdrr (=abracadabra, a word said when performing a magic trick)

The end of the list might appear something like:

uw (=Wu, a Chinese dialect (and region)) ux (=xu, a Vietnamese unit of currency) uy (=yu, Chinese jade) uz (=Zu, a Sumerian god) uzz (=zuz, an ancient Hebrew coin) xyyzz (=xyzzy, a magic word from the Colossal Cave Adventure) xyyzzz (=zyzzyx, a type of wasp)

[edit] Other unusual spellings

Like the letter y, the letter w can serve as both a consonant and orthographic vowel; for example, how is pronounced /hau/ (with w representing the second half of the diphthong.) The word cwm (pronounced "koom", defined as a steep-walled hollow on a hillside) is a rare case of a word used in English in which w represents a nucleus vowel, as is crwth (pronounced "krooth", a type of stringed instrument). Both words are in MerriamWebster's Collegiate Dictionary. They derive from the Welsh use of w to represent a vowel. The word cwm is commonly applied to Welsh place names; cwms of glacial origin are a common feature of Welsh geography. It is also used to describe features in the Himalayas. Both these examples may be classified as "words of foreign origin", as they are actual words in the Welsh language which have been absorbed into English. See coombe as the south-west English equivalent of cwm.

[edit] Scrabble

The highest-scoring words that would fit on a Scrabble board are benzoxycamphors (45) (not in any on-line dictionaries and possibly fictitious [4]), sesquioxidizing (42) (sesquioxidized is in the OED), or oxyphenbutazone (41) (in both the TWL06 and SOWPODS official scrabble dictionaries). With the Q and Z fortuitously on the doubleletter-score squares, 'sesquioxidizing' played across an edge of the board (which has three triple word squares) could score 62 27 = 1674 by itself, thus more than doubling the high score for an entire game in the English language Scrabble, 830, set by Michael Cresta in 2006. Benzoxycamphors would score only 59 27 = 1593 while oxyphenbutazone would only score 54 27 = 1458. Since there are only 7 letters to play in a turn, 8 of the 15 letters of these words need to be on the board already.[3] Using SOWPODS words only in the rest of the game, single move scores could hypothetically be obtained of 1785 points with oxyphenbutazone and 2044 points with sesquioxidizing.
[4]

[edit] Pyramid words

A pyramid word contains a single occurrence of one letter, two of another letter, three of the next, etc. The longest examples have four occurrences of the most common letter. Common examples are banana, papaya, sleeveless, deadheaded and sereneness. Others include rememberer, restresses, chachalaca, kotukutuku, susurruses and Sassanians. In addition, Tennessee's and peppertree have been cited by Richard Lederer, with an analysis of some other interesting properties of the latter.[5]

[edit] Pairs and groups of words

[edit] Homophones
Ewe and you are a pair of words with identical pronunciations that have no letters in common. Another example is the pair eye and I. However, such word pairs are often dependent on the accent of the speaker. For instance, Canadians might recognize a and eh as such a pair, whereas other American English speakers might not. In Ireland, ewe and yo are homophonous also. An example of fourfold homophony is write, wright, rite, right. Rarely, pairs of homophones have exactly opposite meanings. A well-known example is raise (to build or rise) and raze (to demolish or push down by force). The antonyms cleave (to split apart) and cleave (to adhere, or stick together) are homographs as well as homophones. See also

Homophone

Wiktionary appendices

List of dialect-independent homophones

List of dialect-dependent homophones

[edit] Homographs
Homographs are words with identical spellings but different meanings. A famous example is the town of Reading (pronounced to rhyme with threading) vs. the gerund reading, as in reading a book (pronounced to rhyme with feeding). At one time the bookseller Blackwell's had a branch in Reading, signed "Blackwells Reading Book Shop", in which either pronunciation made sense[citation needed]. See also List of English homographs.

[edit] Self-antonyms
Main article: Auto-antonym A few English words have such disparate definitions that one meaning is the opposite of another. These are called "self-antonyms", "auto-antonyms" or "contronyms". Examples include cleave or clip (joining things together or taking them apart), fast (move quickly or fix in one spot) and enjoin (to cause something to be done, to forbid something from being done). There are also rare instances of pairs of English words that are pronounced the same but have opposite meanings (e.g. raze and raise).

[edit] Sequences of words formed by the addition of letters

The nine-word sequence I, in, sin, sing, sting, string, staring, starting (or starling), startling can be formed by successively adding one letter to the previous word. There are a number of other nine-word sequences that use only common words, and numerous shorter sequences, such as the seven-word a, at, rat, rate, irate, pirate, pirates. If rare words, proper names and/or obsolete words are allowed then sequences of at least eleven words are possible. One example is: a, ma (mother), mac (raincoat, British), mace (spice), macle (mineral), macule (skin spot), maculae (plural of macula, variant of macule), maculate (blotchy), masculate (to make strong, obsolete), emasculate, emasculated. Al, Ala, Alan, Alana, Alayna is a sequence consisting only of first names. A seven-word sequence in which letters are added to the end of the previous word is: ma, max (used in phrases such as to the max), maxi (a long skirt), maxim, maxima (plural of maximum), maximal, maximals (plural of maximal, used as noun in mathematics). An eight-word sequence including proper nouns is: ta (thanks, British), tam (Scottish cap), Tama (asteroid), Tamar (English river), tamari (soy sauce), tamarin (monkey), tamarind (tree), tamarinds (plural).

The one-syllable word are, with the addition of one letter, becomes area, a word with three syllables. A six-word sequence in which letters are added to the beginning of the words is: hes (plural of he, used as a noun to mean a male), shes (plural of she), ashes, lashes, plashes (plural of plash, a splashing sound), splashes.

[edit] "ough" words

See Ough (combination).

[edit] Masculine and feminine adjectives

While common in other languages, in English there is perhaps only one adjective, blond, that declines for masculine and feminine: a blond man, a blonde woman. Sometimes the same distinction is applied to brunet (masculine) and brunette (feminine).

[edit] Long words

Main article: Longest word in English Antidisestablishmentarianism listed in the Oxford English Dictionary, was considered the longest English word for quite a long time, but today the medical term pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis is usually considered to have the title, despite the fact that it was coined to provide an answer to the question 'What is the longest English word?'. The Guinness Book of Records, in its 1992 and subsequent editions, declared the "longest real word" in the English language to be floccinaucinihilipilification at 29 letters. Defined as the act of estimating (something) as worthless, its usage has been recorded as far back as 1741. Chemical nomenclature of organic compounds and especially proteins can easily beat any record, as official nomenclature rules lead to legitimate names thousands of letters long.

[edit] Longest one-syllable word

Main article: List of the longest English words with one syllable The longest one-syllable word in the English language is either squirrelled, scraunched, or one of several 9-letter words (such as squelched). The first two words may be pronounced using more than one syllable in some accents. Strengths is the longest with only one vowel.

[edit] Unrhymable words

In the most common form of rhyme, words rhyme if they end in identically or nearlyidentically sounding syllables, and match in stress. If a word has an unusual or unique ending syllable and no other word has a stress pattern to match, it does not rhyme. While many polysyllabic words have no rhyme, only a handful of single-syllable words fit this description. Excluding disputed loan words, whose foreign sounds make them obviously difficult, such unrhymable English words include bulb, depth, month, pint, and wolf. Many of these words' plurals are also unrhymable. Although it has two syllables, orange is arguably the most famous unrhymable word, though there exists a rare Sussex surname "Gorringe"[6] and a mountain in Wales named "Blorenge".[7] The word "purple" is also noted for its lack of rhymes, though there is a rare word curple, meaning the hind quarters of a horse and a Scottish English word hirple meaning to walk with a limp. Silver is commonly considered unrhymable, but in fact rhymes with chilver, a provincial English term meaning a ewe-lamb or ewe mutton. Note that some words rhyme if prefixed derivatives are allowed (like empurple or desilver), but this is not commonly considered proper rhyme. The most common way to concoct a "rhyme" for such wordsusually in humorous poetryis to rhyme it with the first syllable of a word that is split over two lines, thus forming an enjambment (this is sometimes called Procrustean rhyme). An example is rhyming orange with car eng/ine, noted by Douglas Hofstadter. Likewise, Stephen Sondheim rhymed silver with "will, ver-/bosity, and time",[8] and Willard R. Espy managed the couplet "I might distil Ver-/ona's silver". A song famous for this style of rhyme was Arlo Guthrie's Motorcycle Song.

[edit] Words with large numbers of meanings

For many years, the word set had the most entries in the Oxford English Dictionary. However, the top five entries of the Online Third Edition with large numbers of meanings are as follows [5]: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. make set run take go

[edit] References
1. ^ Berry, Mary: "Evovae", Grove Music Online ed. L. Macy (Accessed April 6 2006), [1] 2. ^ Fun with Words Consecutive letters 3. ^ The Scrabble Omnibus, Gyles Brandreth, ISBN 0-00-218081-2

4. ^ Record for the Highest Scoring Scrabble Move at scrabulizer.com, accessed 2008-05-30 5. ^ A man of my words: reflections on the English language, Richard Lederer, ISBN 0312317859 6. ^ From the television programme QI 7. ^ [2]From the Abergavenney Tourist Guide 8. ^ "- TIME". Retrieved on 2008-02-09.

[edit] See also

English language Word Ways: The Journal of Recreational Linguistics Inherently funny word Irregular plurals of English nouns Lists of English words of international origin List of names in English with counterintuitive pronunciations Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious Cellar door Ghoti Siamese twins (English language) Constrained writing: literature with uncommon properties Lipogram, a type of constrained writing in which prescribed letters are not allowed to be used

[edit] External links

Word Oddities Word Trivia Strange and Unusual Dictionaries What does antidisestablishmentarianism mean? Fun with words

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_words_with_uncommon_properties" Categories: Lists of English words Hidden categories: Articles with specifically-marked weasel-worded phrases | All articles with unsourced statements | Articles with unsourced statements since February 2007
Views

Article Discussion Edit this page History

Personal tools

Log in / create account

Navigation Search

Main page Contents Featured content Current events Random article

Interaction Toolbox

About Wikipedia Community portal Recent changes Contact Wikipedia Donate to Wikipedia Help

What links here Related changes Upload file Special pages Printable version Permanent link Cite this page

This page was last modified on 26 July 2008, at 20:01. All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License. (See Copyrights for details.) Wikipedia is a registered trademark of the Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., a U.S. registered 501(c)(3) tax-deductible nonprofit charity. Privacy policy About Wikipedia

Disclaimers