Thursday, November 01, 2007

Often: the "t" be silent, yo

This is one of those little pet peeves that I don't voice all that often for fear that the person I'm criticizing will come right back and point out a million grammatical errors that I have committed, but I found a site today that validated my belief, so I'm finally going to come out and say it: often is pronounced "offen." This is one of those things I really remember from 3rd grade, for some reason. The teacher made it very clear to us that the "t" was silent. I think my teacher was the only one to ever teach this, though, because everyone else IN THE ENTIRE ENGLISH SPEAKING WORLD says "off-ten."

Here you go.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Some of those are just crazy! Who says "fillum" for film, honestly?

jeric2003 said...

Language evolves, yo! And I'm only saying that because I pronounce the t. Heheh.

Seriously, you're the first person I've ever heard tell that the t should be silent.

jeric2003 said...

I looked it up too. Seems to be a matter of differences. Lots of websites say that the t can be pronounced, though it was once silent. Some websites say both are acceptable.

At least that site documented my pet peeve of how people pronounce "realtor" as real-a-tor.

Ryan said...

No! The 't' shall be silent forever! No 'updating' the language. I shall not compromise. We must keep our traditions, especially the ones that support my current opinions.

Linda Lyzenga aka honey girl said...

Have Amy tell you of our pakastani cab driver's fascination with the pronunciation of the word in Sacramento - in august of '02.

Linda