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Hypercorrection comprises four linguistic phenomena:
- an elaborate, prescriptively based correction of common usage, often introduced in an attempt to avoid vulgarity or informality, that results in wording commonly considered clumsier than the usual, colloquial usage.
- usage that many informed users of a language consider incorrect, but that the speaker or writer uses through misunderstanding of prescriptive rules, often combined with a desire to seem formal or educated.
- usage which is correct in another language but is not required in English. Examples include myself, yourself, himself which obtain in Irish and German for instance but not in the more casual English.
- (also called overcompensation): the effect that a student of a new language learned that certain phones of his or her original language are wrong in the studied language, but has not learned exactly how to distinguish them.
In English
Unlike some other languages, such as Italian ( Accademia della Crusca), French or Spanish, English has no single supreme authoritative body that governs whether any given usage will fall into the category of correct or incorrect. Nonetheless, within certain groups of users of English, some of which are quite large, certain usages are indeed considered either (1) unduly elaborate adherence to formal rules instead of rules of popular, widespread, or common usage, or (2) mis- or ill-informed changing of correct, but seemingly informal, usage into wording that is incorrect but seemingly formal.
Preposition at the end of a clause
There is an anecdote mistakenly attributed to Winston Churchill as replying to a hypercorrective memo with the phrase "This is the sort of English up with which I will not put" or a similar construction. This is an example of hypercorrection used as parody: Churchill went beyond creating a grammatically correct sentence to mock the elaborate refusal to end a clause in a preposition (or insistence on placing the preposition before the relative pronoun); he treated the adverbial particles up and with as prepositions. They are actually part of the phrasal verb put up with (which derives from the Irish idiom cur suas le), and their placement before put is extremely unusual.
Prescription against such constructions as "Where is the party at?" is not necessarily related to the prescription against using a preposition to end a sentence. The adverb where in such questions usually means "at what place", making the final at redundant.
Personal pronouns
Jack Lynch, assistant professor of English at Rutgers University, describes another example of hypercorrection:
- We're taught as children—and beginning English learners are told—"You don't say, 'Me and you went to the movies'; it should be 'you and I.'" And a lot of people, therefore, internalize the rule that "you and I" is somehow more proper, and they end up using it in places where they shouldn't—such as "He gave it to you and I," when it should be "He gave it to you and me."
The rule is that the pronoun that would stand in isolation is the one to use: if "I went to the movies", then "You and I went to the movies"; if "He gave it to me", then "He gave it to you and me".
Similar confusion between subject and object pronouns occurs with the relative/interrogative pronoun who and whom. As cases are dying out in English, many native speakers no longer understand the distinction between the subject "who" and the object "whom". Again, it is easy to remember proper usage by comparing the forms of "who/whom/whose" with those of "he/him/his".
- He is someone to whom I owe a great deal. ("I" is subject, "whom" (relating to "he") the object)
- He is someone who is a great guy. ("who" is subject of the side clause)
- He is someone whose help I appreciate. ("whose" is adjunct to help, the side clause's subject)
On the basis of this confusion, a speaker might make hypercorrections.
- He is someone whom is a great guy.
Another form of pronoun hypercorrection seems to originate in the speaker's or writer's desire to appear educated or refined rather than in understanding of the usual usage of pronouns; this hypercorrection is the use of reflexive pronouns in places properly occupied by other pronouns. The reflexive pronouns in English are myself, yourself, thyself, himself, herself, itself, oneself, ourselves, yourselves, and themselves. (Thyself has been disused, except by Quakers, for centuries) Reflexive pronouns are properly used when the direct or indirect object of the verb is the same noun as the subject: for example, in "She dresses herself", the same person is designated by she in the subject and by herself in the object. Hypercorrection includes all non-appositive uses of the reflexive pronoun (1) as subject and (2) as object when the object is not the same person or thing as the subject. For example,
- "Pat and myself went shopping" should be "Pat and I went shopping". The person designated by myself is in the subject, and so is properly designated by I.
- "Sam wants to give yourself a gift" should be "Sam wants to give you a gift". The person designated by yourself is not the same person as the one designated by Sam, and so is properly designated by you.
- "Joe likes myself and Alex" should be "Joe likes me and Alex" (or Alex and me). The person designated by myself is not the same person as the one designated by Joe, and so is properly designated by me.
(Appositive use of reflexive pronouns is not hypercorrection: e.g., "I, myself, went shopping", "Sam gave you, yourself, a gift", "Joe heard me, myself, in the kitchen", and "The students, themselves, are intelligent". Reflexive pronouns used this way are called intensive pronouns and are grammatically appropriate.)
Spelling
Hypercorrection can also affect spelling. For example, in standard English the word "its" (belonging to it) has no apostrophe, for "it's" is a contraction of "it is". Some people are therefore careful to spell the possessive of "one" without an apostrophe, as in "It is sometimes best to keep ones thoughts to oneself", though standard usage is "one's". Similar mistaken pedantry may lie behind the common misspellings of "till" as "'til", and "round" as " 'round" when the word "round" is used with the same meaning as "around".
Phonemes
Hypercorrection also occurs when speakers with non-standard accent backgrounds, in altering their speech to make it more similar to a form considered standard, duplicate certain sound shifts not only where those shifts are appropriate in mimicking the target accent, but also in similar but inappropriate areas. For example, speakers who ]], so that the t of waiter and the d of wader have the same sound, may, in an attempt to formalize, pronounce lady as laty ().
Overcompensation can occur with an among speakers trying to ensure pronunciation of d in and, and with the participial -en suffix among speakers hoping to ensure pronunciation of g in the -ing suffix.
Many English speakers take unnecessary care to mispronounce "espresso", a coffee brewing technique developed in Italy, as "expresso" (despite the fact that Italian has no "x"). This may be hypercorrection, or it may be simple confusion with the English word "express". This also happens with the word "escape", which many people turn to excape, perhaps because they associate ex- to mean "out from" (which it does, in Latin). In the movie Idiocracy, the form excape has apparently become standard.
Plurals
Another area of hypercorrection involves Greek- and Latin-looking words like octopus. The spurious plural octopi likens the octopus to Latin nouns of the Second Declension that form plurals in -i. (Were there actually a classical plural of octopus, it would be octopodes.) Words such as rhinoceros, status, census, omnibus (which in Latin is the dative plural of omnis), and ignoramus (which in Latin is a plural, first-person form of a verb) are sometimes inflected in the same way, although some much more commonly than others; none of these examples' sources would be inflected in that way in Latin or Greek. Virus sometimes gets the pseudoclassical plural form virii, which presumes Latin *virius. An even less sensible plural is penii (for singular penis; the true Latin plural is penes), which is not uncommon in Internet speak. Occasionally, one sees similar plurals for non-classical words, such as caucus and walrus, or invented words such as conundrum.
All of these words take the regular English inflection in -s or -es, but a few of the hypercorrected forms have passed into such common usage as to be considered acceptable by some, despite their origins.
It is unclear how much words like penii are used as wordplay. Donald Trump would, on the reality TV show The Apprentice, often refer to the contestants as his apprenti. It is assumed that Trump actually knows that the plural of apprentice is apprentices and not apprenti. An old joke involves a slightly tipsy professor who orders a martinus instead of a martini, because "If I wanted more than one, I would ask for it in the plural."
Yet more hypercorrection deals with the pronunciation of the -es plural forms of certain English nouns. Although the most common way of pluralizing a noun in English is to add -s or -es to the end of the singular form, there are many exceptions. One such exception involves some words whose singular forms end in -is and the plurals of which are formed simply by the replacement of -is with -es: e.g., crisis and crises, or neurosis and neuroses. The standard pronunciation of such plurals has the final syllable equivalent to the sound of the English word ease . Yet some speakers use the same ease pronunciation for the -es endings of nouns whose plurals are formed in the ordinary way, by the addition of -es: e.g., processes (plural of process). The correct pronunciations of words such as processes and biases have the final syllable equivalent to that of houses and witches: /ɪz/.
Room for confusion exists in some homographic plurals, where the final "-es" pronunciation depends on the word's meaning. For example, axes is pronounced for the plural of axis, but for the plural of axe. The pronunciation of bases similarly depends on whether its singular is basis or base. Hypercorrective replacement of with in plurals may result partly from confusion over these homographs.
Semantic hypercorrection
An example of hypercorrecting a word rather than a pronunciation is found when law students—who have absorbed the idea that one should always say "British" rather than "English" (e.g., "the King of England"), so as not to exclude Welsh, Scots, Northern Irish, etc.—balk at using the term "English law". However, legally this term is quite correct, since Scotland, the Isle of Man, and (to a lesser extent) Northern Ireland have legal systems separate from that of England and Wales. It is correct, in some cases, to speak of "British law", but usually "English law" will be more accurate (unless the topic of discussion is Scottish, Manx, or Northern Irish law).
Hyperforeignism
When pronunciation and spelling of foreign loan words are erroneously based on rules that apply to other foreign words, but not to those in question, the phenomenon is called hyperforeignism. The following are examples.
French words
Non-native French speakers may erroneously omit the last consonant in Vichyssoise /z/, in the chess term en prise, and in prix fixe. Those who know a little French omit the final s in fleur-de-lis although it is pronounced by the French, as well as in many French proper nouns such as Saint-Saëns, Boulez, and Berlioz, among many others which do not adhere to standard rules of French pronunciation. Similarly, the phrase "coup de grâce" is often mispronounced by omitting the final consonant "s", which is actually pronounced in French (see also entry coup de grâce).
Forte, meaning a person's strong point, is now usually pronounced with two syllables, under the influence either of the Italian musical term forte or of the many French loan words ending in é. This meaning was originally a metaphor drawn from fencing: the forte of the blade is its thick part, and the foible is the thin part. (In fencing context, it is still pronounced "fort".) The term is derived from French, where the equivalent word, in both the "strength" and the fencing meanings, is spelled fort and pronounced , i.e., with a silent t.
Many native speakers of American English pronounce the word lingerie as , excessively depressing the first vowel to sound more like a "typical" French nasal vowel, and rhyming the final syllable with English ray, by analogy with the many French loanwords ending in -é(e), -er, -et, and -ez. A closer English approximation of the native French would be .
Those who know a little French pronounce words such as Sartre as /sart/, although the French actually pronounce a short voiceless after the t. This even extends to words such as Louvre, which among some English speakers becomes /luv/.
Jejune or dʒi'dʒuːn] is often taken to be a French word and pronounced 'je jeune' although it is in fact Latin in origin.
Spanish and Italian words
The English pronunciation of the French -ez has been misapplied to Ruy López, the name of a Spanish priest used eponymously in chess, more properly approximated . Similarly, enchilada can be heard as .
Some English-speakers pronounce machismo as on the analogy of other learned or foreign-derived words in which ch is rendered in English: for example, architect, or masochism. The Spanish ch in machismo is properly pronounced in the same way as ch in English chair . In the surname Chavez the ch is often mistakenly given a "sh" sound.
Regarded as especially undesirable is pronouncing word with a semi-English, semi-foreign pronunciation at the same time. Some English-speakers wanting to sound Spanish have been known to pronounce junta like "hunte(r)".
The word mezzo is pronounced in Italian, but, in musical context (mezzo soprano, mezzo forte), is often rendered or by speakers from other linguistic backgrounds. (In Italian, "z" is indeed pronounced "ts" in some words, but "mezzo" is not one of them.)
English-speakers often pronounce Italian bruschetta with a "sh" instead of a "sk", through misunderstanding of the role of "h" in Italian or pronouncing the "sch" cluster as if it were German. The "sch" in Maraschino and in the brand-name Freschetta get the same treatment. Conversely, prosciutto is often mispronounced with "sk" instead of "sh" - whence the waiter's rule of thumb that prosciutto and bruschetta should always be served together to tourists to avoid a scene.
Similarly the z in (Spanish) chorizo or Ibiza is often pronounced with a "ts" instead of a "th" (as it is in Castilian Spanish - giving rise to the increasingly common English pronunication "Ibeefa") or "ss" (as it is in Southern Spain and South America - and, indeed, in Eivissa), possibly by confusion with Italian or German.
Also, many non-Spanish speakers attempt to sound more Spanish by pronouncing Barcelona as 'Barthelona'. In fact, in the local language of Catalan, the 'c' is pronounced as an 's' and even non-Catalan speaking Spaniards will pronounce it as such. The same can be said of 'Valencia', which is always pronounced 'Valensia' and never 'Valenthia'.
Greek words
The word aphelion can be hypercorrected to "ap-helion" by analogy with its antonym perihelion, but it is correct to take the "ph" as an "f" sound as usual, because the ap(o)- becomes aph- before a vowel with rough breathing (transliterated as "h") — the Greek is ἀφήλιον. Ironically, despite all of this tedious nit-picking about Attic sandhi, it turns out that the actual Ancient Greek pronunciation of "ph" or "φ" was probably an aspirated bilabial stop, which sounds nearly identical to the English "p." However, "φ" is traditionally pronounced like "f" in English (and most other modern languages). This brings up the question of how closely one is to look back at the phonological rules of foreign languages for guidance on the "correct" pronunciation.
Due to the fact that American English spelling has, in many cases, dropped a vowel from many Greek diphthongs, hypercorrection will often occur in some words of Greek origin but not in others from the same root or diphthong. For example, one will hear "pediatrician/paediatrician" and "orthopedic/orthopaedic" pronounced differently form "pedophile/paedophile" (Greek παιδί), and "phoenix" pronounced differently from "Edipus/Oedipus". On the other hand, no English variant of these words even closely approximates the original Ancient Pronunciation, but rather can imitate the guesses of Renaissance Greek scholars.
Words from Asian languages
Some English-speakers (including the BBC radio news) mispronounce Beijing with /ʒ/, even though the Mandarin Chinese sound represented by the j in Pinyin is closer to the English j (that is, /ʥ/). Similarly, the j in the name of the Taj Mahal is often rendered /ʒ/, though a closer approximation to the Hindi/Urdu sound is /ʤ/. (J in most other Roman-alphabet spellings of words associated with languages of India is best approximated /ʤ/.)
Another example is the pronunciation of Punjab as ; in the Anglo-Indian spelling convention, Hindi's neutral vowel is represented by the letter u with a sound similar to that of the u in English cup .
Diacritics
Hypercorrection arises in the use of diacritics in words from foreign languages. For example, habañero peppers is a misapplied analogy with jalapeño; the standard Spanish spelling has no tilde—habanero. The Italian word grande is sometimes spelled grandé by English-speakers—in some cafés, for example. It is also possible that the acute accent is used specifically to induce readers to pronounce the word at least semi-correctly, as instead of or . Unintentional misuse of diacritics should not, however, be confused with intentional misuse, or use without concern for traditional function, as in the heavy-metal umlaut.
Hyperforeignism for comic effect
Use of the ironic term "par-tay" for "party" is a hyperforeignism that mockingly reverses the tendency to pronounce French-derived words ending in "-ée" (eg, "enchantée" is ɑ̃.ʃɑ̃.te) to rhyme with English "see" rather than "say".
The silent 't' in "report" in the title of the parody pundit show The Colbert Report is a hyperforeignism used for comedic effect. It is also an allusion to the actual English word (which is a French loanword) "rapport" (pronounced "ra-pour") meaning "close personal relationship."
In Oxford during the late 1980s it was common to hear the bookshop Blackwells referred to as something akin to "Blah-wées" on the logic that the clutter of consonants sounded far too low born for an Oxford institution. Similarly certain newly genteel South London suburbs were jocularly re-named "Clahm", "Ba-TER-zee-a", "St. Ockwell" and the like. More recently, the North London suburb of Crouch End, known for its upmarket brasseries and well-heeled population, has been dubbed 'CrOOsh-ON' in the French manner.
The name of Target stores in both Australia and the U.S. is pronounced by some in a tongue-in-cheek manner as tah-ZHAY (IPA: ) because "French" clothing is perceived as "fashionable," although if it were actually a French name, a proper Francophone pronunciation would be tarh-ZHEH (IPA: ), with a uvular 'r' and an unaspirated 't'.
In other languages
West South Slavic languages
The syllables je and ije appear in Croatian, Bosnian, and Montenegrin speech where Serbian has only variation in quality (length of the vowel) of e. Not every Serbian e becomes je or ije like in the other West Balkan countries. Serbian speakers may hypercorrect their dialect by either undersupplying or oversupplying the jes and the ijes.
Russian language
In native Russian words, most consonants undergo palatalization before so-called "soft vowels" (or one could say these vowels are written after palatalized consonants). However, many loanwords in Russian (mostly coming from English and French) that contain the Russian letter "е" (IPA:/e/, /ɛ/ or /ə/), do not follow this rule, because the letter э, representing a nonpalatalized e, is only supposed to be written either at the beginning of a word, or after another vowel (as in Aeroflot). Here are some examples:
- business → бизнес
- interview → интервью
- modern → модерн
- energy → энергия
- cocktail → коктейль
- model → модель
- chaussé → шоссе
- café → кафе
However the bold consonants in these words are sometimes palatalized by native speakers, which is regarded as a solecism and a shibboleth. Other loanwords with this feature, such as tennis (теннис), have been more firmly embedded in native Russian speakers with non-palatalized pronunciation, and are almost never mispronounced. Other loanwords swing both ways, such as sexual (сексуальный). However, sources may vary depending on their level of prescriptivism. Examples of hyperforeignisms are found in Russian when loanwords (commonly older loanwords) contain consonants that should be palatalized. Yet some speakers, emphasizing the foreign quality of the word, do not palatalize them. For example: theme (тема), technical (технический), text (текст), museum (музей), gazette (газета) and effect (эффект).
Chinese languages
Modern Cantonese is currently undergoing a phonological shift, one of the changes being the dropping of the initial ng- (IPA: /ŋ/) consonant to a null initial. For instance, the word 牙 (ngaa4, meaning "tooth"), ends up being pronounced aa4 (Note: Cantonese romanization provided using Jyutping). Prescriptivists tend to consider these changes as substandard and denounce them for being "lazy sounds" (懶音). However, in a case of hypercorrection, some speakers have started pronouncing words that should have a null initial using an initial ng-, even though according to historical Chinese phonology, only words with Yang tones (which correspond to tones 4, 5, and 6 in Cantonese) had voiced initials (which includes ng-). Words with Yin tones (1, 2, and 3) historically should have unvoiced or null initials. Because of this hypercorrection, words such as 愛 (oi3, meaning "love"), which has a Yin tone, are pronounced by speakers with an ng- initial, ngoi3.
Speakers of some accents of Mandarin, particularly in the south of China and in Taiwan, pronounce the retroflex initials zh-, ch- and sh- as the alveolar initials z-, c- and s-. Such speakers may hypercorrect by pronouncing words that should start with z-, c- and s- as if they started with their retroflex counterparts.
In Taiwan, under the influence of Taiwanese (Min Nan), many people pronounce the initial f- as h-, and often hypercorrect by pronouncing the initial h- as f-. This is also noticeable in the Hakka population, where many words that begin in h- in Mandarin and Taiwanese begin in f- in Hakka. (Examples: 火, 花)
German
In German, the dialect spoken in the city of Düsseldorf and its surroundings heavily features the front 'ch' sound (aka the "ich sound", ) where standard German calls for the 'sch' sound. Speakers with this accent would say 'Fich' instead of 'Fisch' (fish), and 'Tich' instead of 'Tisch' (table). This is due to a hypercorrection of the Rhineland accent prevalent in that area of Germany, an accent that often replaces the front 'ch' sound with the 'sch' sound. Attempting to avoid this error, speakers of the Düsseldorf accent hypercorrect it to an abundance of 'ch' .
Another example is use of the genitive case where the dative case is required. Colloquially, the genitive is often dropped in favor of the dative even if correct grammatical usage demands the genitive. Because language critics deride such substitution, many German speakers use the genitive even with prepositions that actually demand the dative (e.g., entgegen, entlang, gegenüber), seemingly under the false impression that the genitive is always right and the dative is always wrong, or at least that the genitive is a better form of the dative.
Hebrew and Yiddish
Careful Hebrew speakers are taught to avoid the colloquial pronunciation of בדיוק (bediyyuq, "exactly") as . Many speakers accordingly pronounce להיות (lihyot, "to be") as if it were spelled "lehiyyot" (), though there is no grammatical justification for doing so.
Hypercorrection can work in both directions. It is well known that the vowel kamatz gadol, which in the accepted Sephardic pronunciation is rendered as /aː/, becomes /ɔ/ in Ashkenazi Hebrew (and therefore in Yiddish). Many older British Jews therefore consider it more colloquial and "down-home" to say "Shobbes", "cholla" and "motza", though the vowel in these words is in fact a patach, which is rendered as /a/ in both Sephardi and Ashkenazi Hebrew.
The consistent pronunciation of all forms of kamatz as /a/, disregarding katan and chataf forms, could also be seen as a hypercorrection, when Ashkenazic Hebrew speakers attempt to pronounce Sephardic Hebrew. (e.g. צָהֳרָיִם, "midday" as "tzaharayim", rather than "tzohorayim" as in standard Israeli pronunciation; proper Sephardi pronunciation is "tzahorayim")
Other hypercorrections occur when speakers of Israeli (based on Sephardic) Hebrew attempt to pronounce Ashkenazi Hebrew. The month of Shevat (שבט) is mistakenly pronounced "Shvas", as if it were spelled *שְׁבַת. In an attempt to imitate Polish and Lithuanian dialects, kamatz (both gadol and katan), which would normally be pronounced /ɔ/, is hypercorrected to the pronunciation of cholam, /ɔj/, rendering גדול ("large") as goydl and ברוך ("blessed") as boyrukh.
Latin
In the Middle Ages, the spelling of Latin was simplified in various respects: for example, ae and oe became e, and ch became c. Occasionally these changes were reversed, and e and c were sometimes expanded to ae (or oe) and ch, even when such spelling contradicted Classical Latin. For example, caelum was contracted to celum and re-expanded to coelum. These spellings are often preserved in English derivatives, including et cætera and et coetera (occasionally found as variants for et cetera); foetus (originally fetus); lachrymose, from lachryma (a false Hellenisation, originally lacrima, "a tear"); and schedule, from schedula (originally scedula).
Swedish
An example of hyperforeignism in Swedish is the common use of "chevré" in "chevré" for "chèvre cheese", which is quite different from the original French "chèvre". (Possibly by (false) analogy with the Swedish "grevé" cheese .)
Similarly "Entrecôte", is also often spelled "Entrecoté", yet more often than not pronounced without the ending "t" sound. (Prudery may be a factor here, since the Swedish word "kåt" (sounding similar to "côte") means "horny".)
Norwegian
The French "Entrecôte" and "Pommes frites" more often than not is pronounced without the ending "t" sound.
Bulgarian
In standard Bulgarian and in the eastern dialects, the old yat letter is pronounced as я ("ya") when stressed and the following syllable does not contain the vowels и ("i") or е ("e"), and pronounced as е in all other cases. But in the western dialects it is always pronounced as е. Attempting to speak correctly, some speakers from Western Bulgaria mispronounce many words containing the yat letter - голями ("golyami"), желязни ("zhelyazni"), бяли ("byali"), видяли ("vidyali"), спряни ("spryani"), живяли ("zhivyali") instead of големи ("golemi"), железни ("zhelezni"), бели ("beli"), видели ("videli"), спрени ("spreni"), живели ("zhiveli"). This trend is especially common with past participles such as видяли.
See also
Notes
- Willson, Kenneth (1993). The Columbia Guide to Standard American English. Columbia University Press.
{{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter:|coauthors=(help) - Interlanguage Phonology Sources of L2 Pronunciation "Errors", by Michael Carey
- www.voanews.com
References
- Labov, William. 1966. "Hypercorrection by the Lower Middle Class as a Factor in Linguistic Change". In Sociolinguistics: Proceedings of the UCLA Sociolinguistics Conference, 1964. William Bright, ed. Pp. 84-113. The Hague: Mouton.
- Joshua Blau, On Pseudo-Corrections in Some Semitic Languages. Jerusalem: Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities 1970.