How Do Dictionaries Settle on a Preferred Pronunciation?

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Rich in Tucson, Arizona.

Hey, Rich, what’s up?

Well, I am an audiobook narrator, so pronouncing words correctly is really important for my job.

And recently, in one of the many online spaces that we narrators tend to inhabit, somebody posted a link to the Merriam-Webster entry for a certain condiment that is spelled A-I-O-L-I.

It was clear that they were upset about the pronunciation that Merriam-Webster had for that word.

And I looked at it and I thought, well, I have always pronounced that as aioli.

And the pronunciation that Merriam-Webster has is aioli.

And most of the people commenting on this post were in agreement that, well, that’s just wrong.

But then I looked at the word for a few minutes and knowing a little bit about Latin, and a little bit about diphthongs, I thought, you know, actually, it seems like that’s probably more accurate.

But most important, it just got me thinking about how do lexicographers decide what pronunciation to put in a dictionary?

Because clearly there are a bunch of people here who think that this entry is just incorrect.

So we do a lot of first person digging for this show.

And my first person answer for this is it depends.

And I think the main problem with what you’ve gathered from the people in your forum is that the sample size is too small.

And the second problem with this is that the sample size isn’t from the right people.

So when dictionary editors put their pronunciation data together, they gather it from people in the fields that are relevant to the word that they need to pronounce.

So, for example, food words would come from people who work on those fields.

They would gather them from chefs.

They would gather them from food producers.

They would gather them from perhaps the person who coined the word or the person who introduced it into the language.

They would do a variety of things like that.

So this word, aioli, however you want to say it, came into English from French.

And so its pronunciation is somewhat influenced by French, more so than from Latin.

And so that has something to do with that.

And many of our food words are from French.

And they have a French flair to them, even though we’ve anglicized the pronunciation.

So that has some say here.

So you’re not getting that in your audio book form.

You’re not getting that extra layer of data that a dictionary maker would have.

And that’s fine.

But there’s also things like pronunciation surveys.

They will literally send out to agreed upon groups of people packets and say, here are the words that we have.

How would you pronounce this to people who matter?

Wow, crowdsourcing.

Literally.

But, I mean, they do it differently now, obviously, in the digital age.

But they did this in the paper era, too.

Before the internet even existed.

Before computers, they did it.

Now, obviously, sometimes they fall behind.

Old pronunciations persist long after the pronunciation is changed.

Merriam-Webster is very good about being on the curve or even a little bit ahead of the curve.

And given that most dictionary publishers have either closed or been bought out, and Merriam-Webster is the only North American general interest English language dictionary publisher in existence today, they’re the only one that matters in North America.

There are no other dictionary publishers in North America making English language general interest dictionaries.

But they do a very good job.

Something that will surprise a lot of people, that dictionaries actually are a small-sea conservative force.

They mostly are behind the curve of change.

Even Merriam-Webster does tend to be more than other dictionaries, and I’m comparing them to, say, British dictionaries, on or ahead of the curve.

For the most part, it’s behind the curve.

So that might be why your group is outraged.

The pronunciation doesn’t match theirs.

Your group is ahead of the curve.

Your group is contemporary.

And it might be another 10, 20 years before Merriam-Webster catches up to your group.

And that’s okay.

Well, Grant, I have a question.

I’m looking at their entry online, and the first one listed is aioli, and the second one listed is aioli.

But, I mean, you always have to list one of the pronunciations first, right?

I mean, do you always assume that the first pronunciation listed is the best?

That is not a word that dictionary publishers use.

It depends on the dictionary, but generally the first one is it’s either preferred or more common.

And more common is probably what you should assume.

So best isn’t the word to use.

It’s not a judgment that we’re looking at here.

But preferred might be maybe safer is the better word.

Yeah.

So I guess it just boils down to consistency then.

Consistency is huge.

Yeah, and if a word appears multiple times in a book, you’re almost guaranteed to get a correction if you use two different pronunciations.

Right.

Oh, yeah, that makes a lot of sense.

Yeah.

Lovely, Rich.

Thank you so much, my friend.

Take care of yourself.

Bye.

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