Talk:Mispronunciation
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Surely one cannot classify malapropisms as examples of mispronunciation, something which is done implicitly by this article; people whose speech is characterized by them do not mispronunce the words in question but mistake their meaning. If they were writing, they would make the same mistakes. KBry 20:39, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
Heh, sorry Tarquin, I knew that really... But I'm sure there must be more wrong with the article than that! I'll have to set Tannin loose on it, to see what he thinks... -- Oliver P. 04:05 Mar 11, 2003 (UTC)
Oh, but Stephen C. Carlson, the bit you changed was precisely the point I was trying to make! (I am referring to the change from "which is incorrect" to "which is considered to be incorrect".) The prefix mis- is used to mean that something is wrong - not merely that some people consider it to be wrong. If mispronunciation were just pronunciation which is considered to be incorrect, then I would have no problem in saying that lots of words are mispronounced, because all it would mean would be that they are disputed. The matter of what is or is not mispronunciation would not then be a contentious one at all... The point is that people who speak of mispronunciation mean that the pronunciation is just plain wrong, end of story. At least, that's what I think they're saying... -- Oliver P. 04:24 Mar 11, 2003 (UTC)
- I wanted to clarify that the term is a prescriptive term, not a descriptive term. If you don't want to imply "merely that some people consider it be to wrong" (and I don't want to imply that either), then one could say something like ... "which is considered incorrect by prestigious speakers" or "by most speakers in a particular social situation" or some such language. Kind of difficult and I'm not completely happy with either. I'm not sure, however, that an absolute opening statement that does not distinguish between prescription and description is the most helpful. SCCarlson
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- Ah, I see what you mean. You're quite right that it was a bad opening! I'll have to come back to it later and fiddle with it some more. -- Oliver P. 04:53 Mar 11, 2003 (UTC)
Don't forget (rough rule of thumb) that US dictionaries are at the prescriptive end of a spectrum, British ones at the descriptive end, and Australian ones somewhat nearer the British than the US end - and none of these are focussing on the same dialect anyway. It means there's a risk of a descriptive error in saying "dictionaries are this much prescriptive", because you may make an accurate description of one particular lot of dictionaries that is not true in general. PML.
