Over-Enunciating

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hey, Martha, this is Asher Streets from Madison, Wisconsin. How are you doing?

Hello, Asher. I’m doing well, and you?

Good, thanks.

Well, hello, Asher. Welcome to the program.

Hey, great. Thank you.

Yeah, so my question for you is sort of a broad topic on what is acceptable nowadays, especially in broadcasting, in terms of elisions and contractions where dropped letters and syllables are occurring.

And I have two examples. One is about sort of the digression or devolution of the word probably, where if you actually say the full number of syllables, it sounds very stuttery. And so there’s sort of four versions that I’ve heard, probably, probably, probably, and pry.

So on the farthest end, when people say a sentence, I’ll probably go, you understand what they’re saying, but you’ve dropped quite a few letters and syllables out.

And the other one is the want to, where if you actually say it with the schwa between the two Ts, it sounds sort of forced and robotic.

And I heard actually that on an announcement on NPR once where it was want to, and I thought, well, that sounds kind of stilted.

And then I also heard on another broadcast somebody say, wanna?

And I thought, well, that kind of sounds a little too far in that direction.

So I guess I’m wondering, you know, those two examples, what do you think?

And just in general, what’s really acceptable nowadays?

Oh, you can hear me sigh because it’s a really big question with a really big answer.

I’m going to try to stick to some of the more clear-cut aspects of it.

Well, I’ve noticed two other pronunciations of probably that you didn’t list.

Probably and probably.

Probably?

Probably, yeah.

You can hear that all the time.

They all come fairly naturally out of the mouth one way or the other, and you do get what’s intended.

But to stick to wanna, and wanna is part of a family of words like gonna, short for going to, and don’t know, for short for don’t know, and gotta, short for got to.

All of these are part of a family of contractions that are, they’re not part of standard English, that is capital S, standard capital E English, but they are a core part of standard, lowercase s, informal English.

They are well chronicled over the history of English.

They are a natural part of speech.

They are a natural part of dialogue in books.

They appear in every medium over as long as the written history, you know, in modern written history, I should say.

They’re pretty standard stuff.

The question that you’re asking really boils down to what is the register in which you choose to speak?

What is the style of your mode of presentation?

On the air.

On the air.

Even in real life.

Just talk about it.

Juana is perfectly fine when you’re talking to your friends.

Right.

I think his question is about broadcast, though.

Right.

But I just want to lead up to the broadcast and say, well, what are you listening to?

If you’re listening to Marketplace, it’s one thing.

If you’re listening to Tom and Ray, it’s another.

Right?

Yep.

Yep.

They’re casual.

And even though we are supposed to speak perfect English on this program, and believe me, my email tells me that every week, we don’t necessarily because we are informal on this program.

If we were speaking to, as I always say, the president or the queen or the head of General Motors, which would require formal speech, then we might speak, we might say want to, even if it sounded stilted or pretentious.

And you mentioned that.

I mean, it’s kind of a trap, right?

If you over articulate, you sound like a faker.

You sound like a phony.

What I’ve thought over the years is, you know, at some level it sounds pretentious or robotic or haughty, but at the same time you don’t want to be too flippant.

Right.

And what’s the right elocution? And I’ve come across that in, I’ve sung in choirs for a number of years, and some directors want you to pronounce every letter correctly, but especially when you sing in English, it sounds really stupid to sing a spiritual where you’re singing Watcher.

And don’t want to go.

I just heard a man at the San Diego, the world-famous San Diego Zoo the other day.

He was with his family.

We were in the reptile part of the park, and he kept correcting his family in kind of an awkward way.

They would say, look at the turtle, and he would say, oh, yes, look at the turtle.

Right.

Turtle?

Turtle?

Nobody says turtle.

There may be a T there, but in English, we do what’s called flapping that T.

We turn it into a D sound, just like we do with butter, not butter.

Asher, I don’t know if we’ve helped or not.

Have we?

Or we’ve at least commiserated.

You know, so my takeaway is tailoring it to your audience, yet understanding that pronouncing every syllable and letter perfectly is going to set yourself up for some sort of ostracization of some kind.

Bingo! Bingo!

Can we steal that?

Can we put that on our website?

You’ll be taped to the flagpole.

Asher, I hope you give us a call again when you’ve got another question, all right?

Absolutely, I will. Thanks a lot.

Thanks. Bye-bye.

Take care.

Bye-bye.

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