KNOW YOUR ENGLISH

How is the word ‘Wednesday’ pronounced? (R. Sashi Kumar, Mysore)

English is a funny language in that there is no one to one correspondence between spelling and pronunciation. The spelling of a word doesn’t always tell us how the word is to be pronounced. English has forty four sounds, but it has only twenty-six letters to represent them. When you ask someone how many vowels there are in English, they normally say, ‘Five — a, e, i, o and u’. But the problem is, English has twenty vowel sounds, and we use these five letters of the alphabet to represent them. As a result, the same letter is used to represent several different vowel sounds. This explains why the ‘a’ in ‘cat’, ‘calf’ and ‘address’ are pronounced very differently.

In the case of ‘Wednesday’, many people in our country tend to pronounce the ‘d’ in the word; native speakers of English, however, do not pronounce this letter. For them, the word consists of only two syllables, not three. The ‘wedn’ is pronounced like the word ‘when’, and the following ’s’ sounds like the ‘z’ in ‘zip’ and ‘zoo’. They pronounce the word ‘wenz-day’ with the stress on the first syllable. It comes from the old English ‘Wodenstag’ meaning ‘day of Woden’. In Norse mythology, Woden or Oden was the god who created the earth and the first human beings. Ever since the mid 1960s, this day has been frequently referred to as ‘hump day’. Wednesday comes in the middle of the week; when we complete our work on this day, we are over the hump — it is a downhill ride to the weekend.

What is the difference in meaning between ‘foreword’ and ‘forward’? (L. Mythili, Nellore)

The ‘fore’ in ‘foreword’ and ‘for’ in ‘forward’ are pronounced the same — they are pronounced like the word ‘for'. The ‘or’ in ‘word’ rhymes with ‘heard’, ‘bird’ and ‘curd’, whereas the ‘ar’ in ‘ward’ sounds like the ‘a’ in ‘china’. In both cases, the stress is on the first syllable. A ‘foreword’ is what we usually find in a book; it is a short introduction to the book written by someone other than the author. Not all books have a foreword. What the author usually writes as an introduction is called a ‘preface’.

It would be great if you could get Patterson to write the foreword to my new book.

‘Forward’ in the opposite of ‘backward’.

Anju leaned forward and whispered something in her friend’s ear.

Is it okay to say ‘boarding and lodging’? (K. Naresh, Trichy)

This is an expression frequently used in India to refer to a place which provides both accommodation and meals. People in Britain, however, prefer to say, ‘board and lodging’, and not ‘boarding and lodging’. Nowadays, ‘bed and board’ has become much more common. Americans prefer ‘room and board’. The important thing is that no one says ‘boarding’. ‘Board’ in this context refers to the meals provided when you stay somewhere.

The board and lodging for the week came to nearly thirty thousand rupees.

I guess since the university has invited me, they’ll take care of bed and board.

“My spelling Wobbly. It’s good spelling, but it Wobbles, and the letters get in the wrong places.”

-AA Milne

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