February 11, 2000

"sh" vs. "s"

It seems that in the last two years or so, news anchors have started to use negotiate with an "s" sound instead of "sh." It sounds affected to me, but perhaps I'm out of touch.

No, no! You're very much in touch with what's going on (the sound "see" replacing "shee") and where it's happening (on radio and television), but it has been happening for far longer than two years and to a larger group of words. According to Charles Elster's The Big Book of Beastly Mispronunciations, the replacement of "shee" with "see" in negotiate, which he himself finds "oh-so-precious," was condemned back in the 1930s by the dictionary editor F. H. Vizitelly (of Funk & Wagnalls New Standard Dictionary), in a lecture to the members of the announcing staff of the Columbia Broadcasting System.

Vizitelly told these 1930s radio broadcasters that "such words as appreciate, appreciation, associate, association, negotiate, negotiation, have been repeatedly mispronounced before the microphone during the past six months." Elster, who is hardly shy about his opinions, grants that "see" is now accepted in associate and association, but roundly denounces it in the other words as "prissy" or "ridiculous." Nor is he complimentary about many of today's broadcasters; he doesn't find them reliable and knowledgeable sources for pronunciations. "If you wouldn't take John or Jane Doe's word on how to pronounce something, why take theirs?"

Undeniably, "s" for "sh" is spreading. You're going to hear it frequently in species (as "SPEE-seez"), controversial ("kon-truh-VUHR-see-uhl"), and oceanic ("oh-see-ANN-ik"). Even President Clinton wants to save "SO-suhl si-KYOOR-i-tee".

It does make one wonder. Do people have a sense that "sh" is somehow a vulgar sound? Does that come from an aversion to "sh" as an assimilated sound for "s"+"y" across word boundaries (e.g., miss you pronounced as "MISH-oo" or "MISH-yoo")? Is there some subconscious association of "sh" with sitcom drunk routines? (Shay, whusha doin' shtandin in the shtreet?) It's hard to pin down a cause when you're smack in the middle of what may be a real pronunciation shift.

Yet, however reluctant some of us may be to accept change, there's nothing permanently sacrosanct about one pronunciation versus another. A majority of dictionary editors in the 1800s preferred "bal-KOE-nee" for balcony, "di-MON-strate" for demonstrate, "TEEN-yuhr" for tenure, and KROK-uh-dill for crocodile. So we can't predict that the sound of "s" where most of us expect to hear "sh" won't predominate in another two hundred years. But for now, "ne-GO-shee-ate," "SPEE-sheez," and "SOE-shuhl" for negotiate, species, and social are a safer bet.

Enid