And another pronunciation question, this time for the Brits

[yendi]

So while listening to the Guardian Audio Edition this morning, I heard this article read out loud.

When the reader got to the phrase, "its live-and-let-live mores tower over those of older generations," she pronounced the word "mores" with one syllable, as if talking about Othello and Aaron from Shakespeare's plays, as opposed to the two-syllable term that sounds like a group of eels.

I've always assumed that anyone using one syllable was someone with a reading vocabulary (that is, someone who'd seen the word in print and had no idea how to pronounce it), and the dictionaries all seem to agree with me that it's supposed to be a two-syllable word. But is the one-syllable variant something that's come to be accepted in recent years in some regions and which will soon become acceptable, or was this just a mistake that neither the reader nor the producer of the show caught?

Comments

[fjm.livejournal.com]

More-ays. definitely

But then I once had to give up on the audio book of The Book of Three because despite the intro in which Lloyd Alexander spoke every name of every major character, the reader mangled them all.

[yendi]

Oy. Yeah, I'd have given up on that, too.

[ron_newman]

"more" and "Moor" do not sound the same in my dialect. Are they the same in yours? (Or in standard UK English?)

[yendi]

They mostly do, but I suspect that's regional (I just listened to a podcast where one person really thought the other two hosts were punking him by claiming that "tint" and "tent" were pronounced differently).

[wyyknot.livejournal.com]

You make me think of a long ago Tamson House post in which a British member gave us the pronunciations of Mary, marry and merry. Every one of them was quite different, unlike the American way of making them all sound the same.

I'm listening to all the Harry Potter audio books, and totally enjoying Jim Dale's British version of words like schedule: shedule.

[yendi]

I remember that post!

[ron_newman]

I recall a conversation with Shira a few years ago, where she said that one reason for changing her first name is that she felt almost everyone (including me) mispronounced it.

I simply cannot tell those three M-words apart, even after she tried to demonstrate the difference to me.

[dark-blade.livejournal.com]

Not for me, but I probably give it a more scottish pronunciation since that's who I usually here talking about it.

Well. That and whichever version of The Hound of the Baskervilles we watched in English after reading it.

[cluegirl.livejournal.com]

I have never encountered it as one syllable, even by accident. Always thought it fit nicely into the song:
When you know through and through
Just what you ought to do that's a More...

[yendi]

*snort*

[alexmegami]

I've only ever heard it as one syllable (although I've rarely heard it aloud), but not pronounced like "moor". (SW Ontario Canadian, here.)

[trouvera.livejournal.com]

Fwiw, raised in the midwest, currently living in NYC:

Please sir, I would like some more = one syllable, rhymes with pour.
Parts of Wuthering Heights take place on a moor = one syllable, rhymes with lure
Othello was a Moor = approaching (?) two syllables, moo-er

Another word for a set of personal values and standards is mores = two syllables, sounds like the eel.

[yendi]

See, I hear both versions of "moor" as the same, and further say "pour" and "lure" as rhyming (or "lure" and "lore" as homophonic). I CAN hear the difference when other people say "lure" and "lore," but it comes out the same when I say it.

[jcfiala.livejournal.com]

Reading vocabulary here - I didn't realize Moor and More were different pronunciations, much less More.

[ron_newman]

"I did a poor job of pouring the beer" -- same sound repeated twice, or different sounds?

[jcfiala.livejournal.com]

Same for me - grew up in Maryland, not sure if that's an influence. On the other hand, my wife can't say 'pin' and 'pen' and have them sound different. :)

[silme.livejournal.com]

Ah -- now that reminds me that the British do pronounce 'Maryland' the 'original way'. There isn't any elision of sounds; it's quite distinctly 'Mary land'.

I've lived in England (and taught English :) in England for 13 years now (after having taught the subject for 17 years in the US), and I grew up in Pennsylvania, so that pronunciation threw me at first until I realised what they were doing.

[yendi]

Same twice for me.

[dangerdean.livejournal.com]

Different sounds.

[silme.livejournal.com]

If you lived here and watched the BBC's University Challenge, you'd hear presenter Jeremy Paxman (also a feared interviewer on BBC's Newsnight and author) mispronounce all sorts of words. My favourite was when he said Don Quixote as Don Quixoats, almost as if it's a new breakfast cereal.

John Humphrys, a well-known language prescriptivist (but not a linguist at all), who can be a nasty interviewer with a bad attitude on Radio 4 and presents Mastermind on BBC 2 (it calls itself the toughest quiz show on the planet) also frequently mispronounces words.

As both of them seem to act like know-it-alls, these mispronunciations make me smirk at them and also despair at how much money they make. :(

[ultra-lilac.livejournal.com]

I've never heard it pronounced with two syllables. I would say it as one.

[gwynraven.livejournal.com]

Mores in the sense you're talking about is only ever used in the plural, isn't it? According to the OED (and you had to know I'd go there), it is only ever properly pronounced with two syllables, but 'morees' is acceptable, as well as 'morays'.

[natf.livejournal.com]

I have heard both pronunciations but more-ays (as fjm says) is the correct pronunciation.