Pin vs. Pen

Hi, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Lori.

Hi, Lori. Where are you calling from?

I’m calling from North Augusta, South Carolina.

All right. Well, welcome to the show. How can we help you?

Let me just give you a little back history.

I’m originally from Levittown, Long Island, and I moved to South Carolina when I was 14 years old.

I’ve since become an English teacher.

And one of the things that I just always seem to stress with is when I’m teaching the children about pronunciation and phonetics, we seem to not always be on the same page.

And the big question that I had was, for instance, the word pin and pen, P-I-N and P-E-N, most of the Southerners say it the same way, pin and pen.

Right. However, you have the words pit and pet, and they say those differently. So I’m just wondering, where does that come from and what explanation can I give the kids other than it’s a dictionary?

Okay. Wow. This is a big issue. How many hours do you have? Let me see if I can bring this to simple terms for you and give you a few things that you can search for on your own that will fill out the details. Okay?

The first thing that we’re talking about here, just to put a name to it, is what’s called a vowel merger.

This is where two words that are pronounced differently in some parts of the English-speaking world and some other smaller parts are pronounced the same.

And the example you gave of P-E-N and P-I-N, that’s the classic example of a vowel merger.

In fact, almost every time we talk about vowel mergers, like when Martha and I do speeches and Q&As, that’s what we talk about first.

It’s called the pen-pin merger.

Now, and you also are on top of something else here, Laurie, which is important.

You said that all the Southerners that you know say that, and it’s true.

It is one of the dominant characteristics of Southern American speech that they pronounce those words the same.

I mean, we can talk about the words that they use.

We can talk about how they pronounce R’s differently.

We can talk about the speed of their speech.

But that vowel merger is an incredible characteristic that if I hear that in your speech, there’s probably like a 90% chance that you’re from the South.

And then you said pet and pit, P-E-T and P-I-T, right?

Well, these vowel mergers are far more common when there’s a vowel followed by an in.

So this is why when you get a vowel followed by a T, you don’t necessarily get the sounds colliding like that and turning into one homophonic representation of two different words.

Right, right.

So it’s really astonishing here is how consistent it’s been.

And the rise of this vowel merger since basically the middle of the 1900s has been so dominant.

And it’s the most well-studied feature of American dialects as far as I can tell.

Because it’s so common and it’s increasing.

Yeah, and when I say pen, they almost say it like pan.

I just think that I’m saying it so, you know, that it’s so crazy.

And so, yeah, it’s just I’ve never been able to give them an answer.

I mean, I know you only have a certain amount of time, but is there a reason why that happens?

Is it something in the language in the South or what?

There’s two things possible here.

One is the South was settled by a kind of different English speaker than the North was settled.

So the South was settled by a lot of Scots-Irish and some plain old Irish,

And they brought linguistic traditions to the New World that were different than the kinds of people who, say,

Settled in the Northeast or settled in the Great Lakes region and so forth.

So from the very start, the kind of Englishes that were spoken, these two parts of the country

Were very different.

But the second thing that happens, and this is harder to pin down, and we’ve talked about

This before, there are changes that happen because of shifting influences.

I mean, literal influence, cultural, social, political, financial, socioeconomic, educational.

These happen where, let’s say that Martha and I are the only two people that live in

Of town and she gets my respect. I’m going to start speaking like her, even though I may not

Consciously be aware of it.

And over time, more people are going to start speaking like Martha

Because we all owe her our respect.

And she becomes, she’s important to us. She’s the mayor,

Or maybe she’s the grandmother of a very large family.

And in this way, when this happens.

Repeatedly over a long period of time, all this influence trickles down to new generations and it branches out in the friend network and the family network and the working relationship. And before you know it, you’ve got a dialect change.

Okay, okay. Well, that kind of explains it, and I might be able to, you know, tell the kids what’s going on, because they just look at me like I’m crazy.

Yeah, that would be difficult, wouldn’t it, to know what to teach them exactly? Well, there’s another thing happening here, and I wanted to talk to you about, and this is important to teach the kids. They’re not wrong if the dictionary doesn’t have their pronunciation in it. Exactly. There are millions of people in the United States whose pronunciations are legitimate and are not in the dictionaries. Simply don’t exist in there.

They might have a note in the front that says, oh, in the American South, when you see the following pronunciation given in this dictionary, then you should automatically assume blah, blah, blah. But that’s not the same as actually having it on the page with the entry. And I don’t know that there’s a way to fix that. I mean, online there is, but in paper form, it’s just not enough space for that.

That said, so make sure your kids understand, they’re not wrong. It’s just a non-prestige dialect. There are more people who pronounce it the other way. Therefore, the other way is the one that gets put in print.

Okay. All right. Lori, thank you so much for your call. Thanks for hanging on, and thanks for teaching those kids. You’re making the world a better place. Yeah, hang in there. Thank you. Take care now.

Thank you so much, Fran, and thank you, Martha. And keep up with the show. I absolutely love it. Terrific. That’s great to hear, Lori. Thank you so much. Bye-bye. Thank you. Bye-bye.

Well, we know that you have language encounters wherever you go. We know that questions come up. Make a note. Give us a call, 877-929-9673. Email us, words@waywordradio.org.