Dot Wordsworth

Machinations

issue 20 April 2013

Ian Hislop mocked Stephen Mangan, when he put in a turn as the man asking the questions on Have I Got News For You last week, for saying ‘masination’ (for machination), but Hislop himself used the unjustified modern pronunciation ‘mashination’. The version with ‘mash-’ is not known for sure until 1961, although a book published in 1931, The BBC’s Recommendations for Pronouncing Difficult Words (which I recommend to Mr Hislop) stipulates the traditional pronunciation (‘makination’). This suggests that people were already going wrong in those days. Pronouncing the first syllable as ‘mash’ came about through the influence of machine.

Pronouncing words that we have only seen in print is a problem for us all. I can understand people ignorantly pronouncing machismo as if it were a Scottish surname ‘MacIsmo’. I am less sure why they pronounce Che, the pet name of Ernesto Guevara, as if it were an abbreviation of Cher.

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