Saturday, September 14, 2013

Pronunciation of letter y: asylum vs syrup



I want someone to clarify if there is a rule about how to pronounce the letter Y



I've read in another stackexchange post that when it is in a Greek-origin word it is pronounced as uh e.g. analysis, paralysis.



However in another Greek-origin word, asylum, it is pronounced as i while the in the latin word syrup it is pronounced as /i/.


Answer



No.




There are no rules for how to pronounce the letter Y -- or rather there are too many rules, and none of them work. Similarly, there are also no good rules for how to pronounce any other letter of the English alphabet. Modern English spelling does NOT represent pronunciation in Modern English.



Rather, it represents one spelling (there were many) for Middle English pronunciation, which got fixed when printing became established in England, right before the end of the Great Vowel Shift. Spelling used to be free, like handwriting is now; but printing froze it, a little too soon to get a good spelling for Modern English. Too bad, but we're stuck with it now.


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