Heighth

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, Martha. My name is Joel Emanuel.

Hi, Joel.

Hi, I live in Mesquite, Texas, but I’m currently sitting at my work desk in Irving, Texas.

Okay.

All right.

I moved to Texas from New York City about 30 years ago.

And when I got here, I began hearing a mispronunciation of the word height, H-E-I-G-H-T.

Mm—

It seems that people in this area insist on pronouncing the word H-E-I-G-H-T-H, height.

I’m assuming that this comes from a confusion of the words length, width, and height, being mistaken for length, width, and height, out of some quirk of speech or plain ignorance of the proper pronunciation of the word.

Pronunciation drives me nuts.

You know, it’s interesting that you say that because that was the one word that would make my mother, the English teacher, walk to the chalkboard and literally drag her fingers down it.

Well, good for her.

I wish I had a chalkboard most of the time.

Are they pronouncing the T or not?

Yes, it’s height.

Height.

So there’s a T. They’re not saying height.

No, they’re not.

Okay, great.

And now I’m hearing it on TV, on radio, interviews.

Let me tell you, this is definitely a case of Diego Garcetti, which is once you hear something, you seem to find it everywhere.

That’s a word used in various places online.

Humans do this all the time.

It probably was just as frequent before you noticed it.

So I just want to say that, all right?

Because this pronunciation has a history going back hundreds of years.

In fact, the spelling of height was so variable hundreds of years ago that it was very common for it to be spelled H-E-I-G-H-T-H.

It was part of the set with width, length, and breadth.

Until about 1700, I think.

Right.

And so then the spelling became fixed without that final H.

Now, there’s two theories about why it’s pronounced this way.

The one which is a little more forgiving and doesn’t blame ignorance is that these are holdovers and that somehow this old pronunciation has continued to be transmitted across the centuries.

And, you know, that’s forgiving people and basically saying it’s not ignorance.

It’s just history that makes them pronounced that way.

The other one says that it’s carelessness, and that’s kind of what you’re saying, right?

It’s what it feels like to me.

Yeah, yeah.

The carelessness is that they’re not really noticing what they’re doing, and it’s just coming out of their mouth and they’re moving onward.

Certainly, it’s so common that in some style guides, they acknowledge it and say, you will hear this come out of the mouths of the most educated speakers.

And so when you have that happen, you need to ask yourself, does that make it wrong or right, or are you indifferent to that kind of evidence?

And that’s up to each speaker.

So you see what I’m saying here, Joel?

If you’re hearing lots of people do it, does that mean that they’re all wrong?

Sometimes it feels that way.

It just simply hurts my ears like Martha’s mom.

Here’s something for you, Joel.

This might make you feel a little better.

Research has shown that the same parts of the brain are activated when you hear something ungrammatical or contrary to your own language experience as when you hear a curse word.

Oh.

So for you, it’s kicking in the parts of your brain where you might cringe or flinch if you heard somebody use, say, the F word in the wrong context.

Right.

So that’s kind of the – I’m just kind of helping you understand that gut response that you’ve got to this word height.

Well, I’ve lived here long enough to where it’s become part of the lexicon of the area, and it doesn’t destroy me.

No.

Well, that’s good.

It’s always been a little bugaboo that kind of, that’s fur under my saddle.

Yeah, yeah, that’s a good way to describe it.

Well, I thank you for taking the time to talk to me. I appreciate it.

Joel, it was a pleasure.

Have a good day.

All right.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

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