One of the reasons American English uses -er spellings (center, theater) where British English uses -re spellings (centre, theatre) is because of an early American desire to “de-Britishify” after gaining independence. Noah Webster had much to do with this, and changed many other spellings from British English to a newly forming American English.
I wonder if Webster’s “anti-British” sentiment was (part of) the instigation of “American uniquism.”
To this day, whatever the world does, the US does it differently, almost as a knee-jerk reaction.
Also consider that a whole lot of the world was “British” when the US broke away.
Still is. The real distinction is between American English and the rest of the English-speaking world.
Or for non-language issues…
American units vs. metric, used by almost every other country on the planet.
American rules for a given sport vs. every other country on the planet.
American WHATEVER vs. every other fucking country on planet earth.
Colourful reply!
Loyalist!
I say we just admit that R can be a vowel, and drop the E entirely.
Blew my mind when I learned that the Chinese i frequently works like that and that pinyin is a lie.
That’s what we did in Polish. It’s „metr”.
Rookie stuff, in Czech we have čtvrthrst. No vowel in sight.
Holy hell, I thought Croatian was bad with things like trg
Only three? Pff. Our favourite sentence to torture foreigners (and small kids learning to talk) is “strč prst skrz krk” which means “put a finger through your throat”.
You can try it yourself, the “č” sound is the same as English “cz” in “Czech”.
There were already multiple patterns for words ending in “er” (both the doer words, like runner, and a series of words like butter, feather, sister), so it could be a conflation, but I think it’s more likely that it’s just a simplification. British has “er” and “re” endings for meter, depending on whether it’s a verb or a noun, and Americans just spell both “er” for simplicity’s sake.
Because only an idiot pronounces it like “possabell”.
The point is to better match the current pronunciation
bəl, not change the pronunciation.You can think of “le” as a way of showing that it’s a syllabic L. Meaning that you say a dark L, and there isn’t really a vowel before it. The L takes up the whole syllable. It can sound like there’s a schwa in there (usually just a blip of one), but that’s just part of how you say the dark L. It comes from having the back part of your tongue press down and back.
This happens at the end of a word when the L is in an unstressed syllable. The spelling can vary a little. For example:
- people
- simple
- model
- oval
There isn’t really a reason why the spelling is different. That’s just how it happened to develop.
The pronunciation can vary a little too. If you hold the L longer, or emphasize the syllable more, it can sound more like a proper vowel is in there. But your tongue stays a tiny bit lower than it does for the schwa sounds.
That’s the most convincing explanation I have read, thank you!
| There isn’t really a reason why the spelling is different. That’s just how it happened to develop.
There absolutely is a reason for each of your examples, and again, it comes from French : peuple simple modèle ovale
Go ask your teachers why they taught you the wrong pronunciation; and why they didn’t equip you to hear the correct one and adapt.
#noChildLeftBehind?
“Meter” isn’t a French word (it’s “mètre”) and “metre” isn’t an American English word for “mètre”. And neither “meter” nor “metre” are pronounced like “mètre”.
I think it wasn’t the point of OP that “meter” better matches the French pronunciation, but it does better match the (American and British?) English pronouciation than “metre” does.
I am French, I know that. Let me expend the title to make it easier to understand.
In American English, words of French origin like “meter” (American English) inverted the last letters of “metre” (British English from French “mètre”) to better match the English pronunciation. Why isn’t it also the case for other similar situations like “possible”?
If we inverted the last letters of “possible” to “possibel,” that wouldn’t really match how we pronounce it
I’d probably try to read it as something like “possi-bell”
But our actual pronunciation is more along the lines of “possi-bull” not exactly, and I feel like different dialects might maybe lean more towards the last syllable being more like bill, ball, or boll, but I can’t really imagine any dialect where the pronunciation would match a “bel” spelling.
It’s sort of an unintentional half vowel sound that just happens after making the “b” noise, and not really something we’re intentionally trying to put into the word.
Linguists probably have some specific terminology for it, but I’m no linguist.
The vowel you’re talking about is “ə”, also known as “schwa”. It’s probably the most common vowel sound in all varieties of English - in defiance of spelling - but it occurs in lots of languages. (German often uses it as the sound for final e, and French still retains it in some words and dialects for the same thing too.)
As to how common it is in English:
“Thə vowəl yo~ə’re talking əbout is “ə” also known as “schwa”. It’s probəbly thə most commən vowəl sound in all variəties of English.”
In some varieties ə moves closer to ʌ, a similar sound that’s a little further back in the mouth. Links go to Wikipedia where there are sound files to listen to.
It’s actually a syllabic L, which is often spelled out as a schwa in pronunciation dictionaries.
If you speak German, an equivalent would be the -en on most unconjugated verbs. Haben is pronounced with a syllabic n (or m, depending on your accent), for example.
The difference is basically in length. A syllabic consonant is shorter than even a short vowel sound, and which vowel it uses depends on the language. It’s a schwa in English because that’s basically our default vowel, as you pointed out, but not every language uses a schwa as the syllabic consonant carrier: Serbo-Croatian uses [u].
I don’t think it’s really a schwa, at least not the way I say it
A schwa kind of comes from the back of your mouth like you’re saying “uhh…”
When I say possible, that last sound feels more like it’s the little burst of air from the b sort of fading into the l sound
Then again I’m no linguist so I could be out of my depth trying to really describe the noises I’m making, and I’m not very well-equipped to separate how I talk from more general American English (I’m from Philly, and we have more than our share of little linguistic quirks, after all, we pronounce “water” as “wooder”)
Sorry, now I get what you’re asking. But your question was really strangely worded 🙂
MẹŤŘƏ
Töo muçh “spec’ial” char{act}ér.
Other languages exist. Tolerate their writing.
I think seven was answering the question
Poss-i-ble. That’s how you say it in French
Po see blay
