Pronunciation

[dougo]

To my linguist friends: Doug Hoylman asks, "Why does everyone pronounce this game [Chrononauts] as though it started with 'crow'? Every other English word starting with 'chron'—chronology, chronicle, chronometer, chronic—has a short o." I can't think of a good reason, yet I also pronounce it with a long o. Might it be due to the secondary emphasis on the last syllable? The word chronon is pronounced with a long o as well, but I'm not sure that has common enough usage to matter (and it leads to its own pronunciation question).

Comments

[jfb.livejournal.com]

Huh, it would never have occurred to me to use a long O there.

m-w says chronogram and chronograph can both be pronounced that way, which fits with your secondary emphasis idea.

[lordjulius.livejournal.com]

Steven Pinker would probably have something to say about it. "The Language Instinct" details exactly why we pronounce words in certain ways. For example, all 'reduplication' words/phrases like 'knickknack' always puts the vowel sound pronounced in front of the vocal cavity first, then the vowel sound pronounced farther back. So you will never see a word like 'knackknick' in English (and, I think, any other language).

I think that if you apply Pinker's theories to 'Chrononauts' you will find that because the prefix 'chrono' is relatively uncommon, our mental grammar reverts to a default when trying to pronounce an unfamiliar word. That default is usually a long vowel. If the game were called "Sononauts" I don't think anybody would ever use a long "o" sound for the mono- part.

It's a fascinating book. If you love language you should read it.

[lordjulius.livejournal.com]

er, the 'sono-' part. i had 'mononauts' there at first.

[dougo.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I'm a big Pinker fan. How the Mind Works is great too, and cleared up a lot of my confusion about evolution and cognitive science. Haven't gotten around to picking up The Blank Slate yet.

[dougo.livejournal.com]

"Chronological" seems like a counterexample.

[http://users.livejournal.com/little_e_/]

don't ask me, people yell at me for mispronouncing 'pants'. hell, don't even get me started on the pronunciation of 'pronunciation'.

doesn't help that i hang out with people who randomly pronounce words like other langauges/dialects. like calling it 'aluminium foil.'

[ketzl.livejournal.com]

OK, how do you mispronounce pants?

[http://users.livejournal.com/little_e_/]

p-awn-tz

[emmacrew.livejournal.com]

People tend to pronounce Chronos/Kronos with a long O, though...

[bushmiller.livejournal.com]

it's spelled "Q'onoS," by the way

[emmacrew.livejournal.com]

Mmm, pretty.

[stoneself.livejournal.com]

probably because english dislikes putting bare vowels into words.

'naut' takes the second n, so if 'chron' took the first n, then the middle syllable would be 'o'. english tends not to do this. strip the n from 'chron', and then english tends to shift the vowel.

in chronology, the o takes the l, so it's not bare. similarly for chronometer. that's not a perfect description, but it's close.

[memegarden.livejournal.com]

I pronounce "Chrononauts" with a long first o, and it hadn't occurred to me that was odd, although you're right, it is. I would also put a long o in "Sononauts", which may be even more puzzling. Merriam-Webster says "sonogram" has a short o, and "chronogram" is pronounced with either a long or a short o.

English is actually fairly inconsistent about syllabification and thus about how syllabification affects vowel sounds. One of the things I teach my students when they're learning to read polysyllabic words is to try "flipping" the syllable divisions in a word if their first try doesn't make sense. For instance:

pol-ish (first syllable closed by the l, so short o)
Po-lish (first syllable left open, so long o)

Hey, Doug, we're back to isonyms!