THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, January 28, 1995 TAG: 9501280228
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Column
SOURCE: Guy Friddell
LENGTH: Medium: 59 lines
You may have noticed lately on TV and radio, particularly the talk shows, that the word ``undoubtedly'' is becoming an endangered species.
It is being driven toward extinction by ``undoudably,'' which you won't find in any dictionary. The usurper is an impostor.
It comes about because ``undoudably'' is much easier to say, the four syllables thumping along blap-blap-blap-blap like a flat tire on a road.
It is a lazy way to pronounce the word.
But with ``undoubtedly,'' you just can't mush-mouth along; you must be precise in catching the sharper-edged syllables and stretch the mouth almost to a grimace to sound the third ``-ed'' syllable.
Try it.
I mention this not in a censorious way but simply to keep you informed.
Say ``undoudably,'' for all I care.
The American-English language sweeps along, the Mississippi River at flood stage bearing all sorts of strange freight.
Not much can be done to change it, but it is worth watching.
I skip around among radio talk shows not so much for opinions, which are pretty predictable, as for the way they're expressed.
The other day, a conservative caller, praising Newt Gingrich, declared: ``Newt is not the sort that changes their stripes in the middle of the stream.''
One got a picture of not the customary horses one mustn't change midstream, but rather, of zebras.
By fracturing and then melding two cliches, the caller came up with something rather startling and fresh, though it made no sense.
You may remember some weeks ago, my astonishment at discovering that Chowning's Tavern in Colonial Williamsburg is no longer pronounced ``Chow-ning's''; it has become ``Chew-ning's.''
That, I was told, was the way it was pronounced in Colonial times. And the spelling and pronunciation have persisted among Chewning families in the area.
To my delight, Dr. Ann Johnston has the explanation, with a pleasing fillip in the closing sentence to bring it to our times.
Johnston, the humanities division chairman at Tidewater Community College in Virginia Beach, writes that the variations in spelling/pronunciation reflect a change in English that occurred in early American English.
``During Chaucer's time, the spelling `-ow' reflected two different sounds, which in modern English reflect the sound of the vowel in `boot' and the sound of a diphthong, as in pronunciation of the vowel in `owe.'
``Thus, we have the family pronunciation of `CHEWning,' as well as the `spelling pronunciation' of `CHOWning.' Surely, many of us remember Ed Sullivan's promise of a very good `shew,' which reflects this same situation.''
It certainly offers chow to chew on. by CNB