I was taught to say "offen" as being more desirable than "often", but lately I hear "often" more frequently than not. But looking Speedwell's list, you can see that most of these dropped letters are the result of it being just too damn difficult to pronounce them, given their placement amongst the vowels and consonants around them. Let's not forget the silent N which is not preceeded by an M in the word "Kiln" granted the N can be either pronounced or not pronounced It's from the Old English "cyln" and before the the latin "culina" kitchen but why on earth would there be the option to prounced the word "kiln" as "kil"?
Name isn't really a precedent, since it's derived from Anglo-Saxon 'nama' from which comes German 'Name'. It's not my list, id, but I'm sure that certain dialects do omit the L members of my family from the Midwest and California speak this way. In others, the L is at least partly suppressed. In case someone might start to suspect that life is more coincidental than it actually is, I feel I must mention that of course old German Nama and Latin Nomen come from the same root.
I don't know where the Germans got it from - it might really go all the way back to the mythical land of Indo-Germany, or maybe they just picked it up from the Romans. Joachim1 Jan Or would you say M is silent?! Then I guess M is silent after all Can't really answer the initial question; I believe all languages pose baffling questions whose answers lie in the distant past.
Diana1 Apr Marta as Anonymous wrote: "Nevertheless the question still remains: why is it phonologically impossible to pronounce 'm' and 'n' sounds side by side? I find that hard to believe since she claims it is impossible, when it clearly isn't. Besides the fact that I can do it, there are languages with words like column that end in pronounced 'mn'. The word for autumn in latin is autumnus. I latin, word order means nothing. It is the endings of a word that tell its part of speech.
The "us" from autumnus just means that it is a noun. When english adopted the word, the ending was not needed because of the use of word order. The "n" was part of the root word. Nicole2 Oct Avrom Jan Slemmet, are you saying that you pronounce the "n" in "column"?
That's interesting, and isn't a pronunciation I've heard of. I certainly don't pronounce it. Although, like the silent "n" in "autumn", the "n" in "column" becomes pronounced if you add an appropriate suffix: "columnar" definitely has both those sounds in there. In fact, I would claim the sounds "mmmmmmm" and "nnnnnnnn" are indistinguishable from each other. In order to tell the difference between "m" and ''n", they must be either preceded or proceded by a vowel.
In order to pronounce autumn and make the "n" sound clear, you would have to pronounce it "au-tum-NUH, putting a schwa at the end. You could choose to do so, but I wouldn't say that that is a normal pronunciation by any standard.
In effect, you would have to add an extra syllable. Now, I know that a bunch of you are going to say "I can tell the difference between 'mmmm' and 'nnnn'", but I say you can't. Here's a test. Try saying "mmmmnnnnmmmmnnnnmmmmnnnn" continuously. Yes, you can make it two distinct sounds, but you can just as easily make it indistinquishable. In any cays you really can't tell which is which, especially considering the normal variation from person to person. The problem is that when you make an m or n sound, all the air is rushing out your nose and resonating in your throat.
The shape of everything inside your mouth has only a slight or possibly no effect on the resonance. You can make any number of shapes with your tongue, teeth, jaw, etc. Depending on whether the back of my tongue is against the roof of my mouth, or my jaw is dropped, I can make a hundred different and distinct sounds but they all sound like mmmmmm, especially to someone else.
Now, you can tell the difference between "ummm" and "unnn" or "maaa" and "naaa", but not between just plain old "mmmm" and "nnnn". Ok, now that I think about it, I will soften my view just a little, as I think I may have contradicted myself.
I did say it is possible to make a different sound for mmm and nnn, although only slightly different. Thus, it is possible to differentiate them when put together. I would still say that the difference is only barely perceptible, and then, only when great effort is taken to create two distinct sounds.
It is no wonder that the n in question is treated as silent. It's almost impossible to make it sound any other way. I added the word almost! Avrom, I don't know if I have ever said 'column' since I live in Sweden and seldom speak English except when at work and then it is mostly computer related, but I would guess if I ever did use it, I probably did pronounce the 'n' since that is how we pronounce the word in Swedish kolumn and I wasn't aware of the 'n' being silent in English.
My point though is still that pronouncing it like colum or columN, is possible, and sounds different, even if slightly. Sometimes apopocation leaves a vestigial final consonant that would have been the first letter of the final syllable in the source language.
Au-tum-nus is the syllabication. Removing the "us" leaves an orphaned "n" at the end. Deprived of its vowel, it's no longer a part of a third syllable and is left hanging as unvoiced orthography. The reason one can't pronounced sequential "m" and "n" in a single syllable is that while both phonemes are nasal, "m" is bilabial while "n" is dento-alveolar.
That requires an occlusion of the air column in switching from one to the other. Bismarck1 Jul Now, I don't find it hard to prononuce a "mn" sequence being a French native speaker, but an English speaker probably does because of phonotactic constraints.
They have different shapes on spectrograms. John4 Sep John, I did soften my position somewhat; however, I would not completely agree with you. They might or might not have different spectrograms depending on how the speaker exaggerates the position of his or her tongue, lips, etc. I can alternate m's and n's with absolutely no discernable difference in sound, or I can do so and make it quite clear that there's a difference. I would say that a spectrograph would show that the "n" may have more energy at higher frequencies than the "m", but only in an imprecise, qualitative way.
Depending on exactly where I put my tongue, I can emphasize any one of six or seven different upper harmonic frequencies. I would put it to you that there is enough difference between speakers, that, hearing any single consonant in isolation, say, from 10 different speakers, it would be impossible to tell the difference.
I think I'll soften my position too! I think I spoke too soon. It does seem to be the transition that distinguishes them. I don't understand what you people are yapping about. You say 'm' with lips closed and tongue lying down. You say 'n' with open lips and tongue up. If you say 'I net him yesterday' everyone will hear 'net' and not 'met', although the sentence suggest it should be 'met'. Likewise people will notice the error if you say 'The met profit is 10 dollars'.
This means there is a difference. End of story. And it doesn't matter if your 'n' sound like my 'm' if you stand upside down and have a finger in your butthole. When you say a sentence it is only your 'n' and 'm' that will be heard, not a combination of my 'm' and your 'n' regardless of where you stick your finger, and then you will hear a difference, if you speak in a normal fashion. We were arguing about where the difference is from an acoustic point of view.
The [n] was removed from a vowel to anchor it, so it went, and the [p] then lost its entire reason for being, so it went too. But the "n" was kept in spelling, because of the obvious connection with "autumnal," even though it was no longer pronounced. The name is thought to originate in the phrase the fall of the leaf , in reference to the time of year when deciduous trees shed their leaves.
The name of its inverse season, spring , is thought to come from the phrase spring of the leaf —the time when everything is blossoming. The name fall was commonly used in England until about the end of the s, when it was ousted by autumn. In the Northern Hemisphere, fall is roughly between August and November, technically lasting from the autumnal equinox around the end of September until the winter solstice around the end of December.
In the Southern Hemisphere, where the seasons are flipped, fall is roughly between the end of March and the end of June. Discover all the facts about equinox vs. The earliest known name for the season in English is harvest. Eventually, the use of harvest as a name for the season fell out of use, instead becoming used for the period when ripened crops are harvested—gathered for processing and winter storage.
The word harvest can also refer collectively to those ripened, gathered crops themselves. Can you quickly tell the difference between a squash and a gourd? Learn more here. Whether you need one-on-one or group study sessions, Dictionary Academy tutoring is custom-fit to meet your learning needs.
Feedback See Today's Synonym. Others are reading. Harper, D. Etymology of autumn. Online Etymology Dictionary. Harper, Douglas. Definitions of autumn.
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