Search | Home | FAQ | Links | Site map | Book Store | New | Ask Us | Theory | About |
Curmudgeons' CornerCurmudgeon Malcolm Tent gets it to a TIf you read the TOWFI blog (I only read it occasionally; everyone seems to have a blog and I simply don't have the time or inclination to read every one of them every day!) then you may have come across the discussion of what I call the intrusive t. It's like the intrusive r of non-rhotic speakers. You know what the intrusive r is, I'm sure. It's the addition of an r between a word that ends with a vowel and another that begins with a vowel, as in "America-R is a great place to go on holiday." An extreme example would be Mike Myers' English child character Simon saying "drawRing". Anyhow, adding a t to the end of words, which seems to be on the rise, is like the intrusive r, but apparently has a different cause. The intrusive r is added to ease the flow of speaking and avoid a glottal stop between, in the above examples, the final a in America and the initial i of is, or between the vowel sound of -aw- and the i in drawing. But that t added to the end of across or wish is beyond me. What are these people thinking? Surely they can spell wish and across and see that there is no t in those words. I simply can't see how that t aids in speaking and avoids glottal stops or the like. What Melanie and Mike have dubbed hypertauism seems to me like hyper weirdness. Stop it, people! Drop those t's! |
Have you heard or read similar or equally distressing usages? Read this before commenting on this week's Curmudgeons' Corner |
Comments,
additions? Send to Melanie & Mike: melmike@takeourword.com
DO NOT SEND QUERIES TO THAT ADDRESS. Instead, ASK
US.
Copyright © 1995-2006 TIERE
Last Updated
01/31/06 06:54 PM