Silent F in [Fifth]

[henh...@gmail.com]

The second f in "fifth" --- the first pronunciation given in M-W dictionary is the one that omits it.


i've never known that anyone pronounced it as [Fith] ! wow!

[henh...@gmail.com]

> The second f in "fifth" --- the first pronunciation given in M-W dictionary is the one that omits it.
>
> i've never known that anyone pronounced it as [Fith] ! wow!

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/fifth#Pronunciation

/fɪfθ/
/fɪθ/
/fɪft/

Pronunciation
(UK, US, standard) enPR: fĭfth, IPA(key): /fɪfθ/
Audio (US) Duration: 1 second.0:01 Rhymes: -ɪfθ

(UK, US, informal or dialectal) enPR: fĭth, IPA(key): /fɪθ/
Rhymes: -ɪθ
Audio (US, informal) Duration: 2 seconds.0:02

(UK, US, dialectal) enPR: fĭft, IPA(key): /fɪft/ ------------------- i hear that in Ireland, folk can't pronounce the TH θ sound.

[Dingbat]

On Monday, December 11, 2023 at 10:53:55 AM UTC+5:30, henh...@gmail.com wrote:
> The second f in "fifth" --- the first pronunciation given in M-W dictionary is the one that omits it.
>
> i've never known that anyone pronounced it as [Fith] ! wow!
>

Elision. I didn't know it was common enough to make it the top pronunciation.

In Indian English, Five is open pronounced like Phi (the Greek letter in English pronunciation)
and Eleven is often pronounced like Leven.

[Hibou]

I knew that pilots used to pronounce 'five' as 'fife', but I didn't know
they still did:

"And five is pronounced with a second 'f' in place of the 'v,' because
the normal pronunciation of five is easily confused with 'fire,' a
command to shoot, which the military felt undesirable" -
<https://www.aopa.org/news-and-media/all-news/2022/october/flight-training-magazine/ol-aviation-lingo>

<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NATO_phonetic_alphabet>

If the films of the period are to be trusted, during WW2 the Royal Navy
said 'Shoot!' for 'Fire!', I suppose to avoid confusion with fire as
conflagration. But then, there are apparently subtleties I never dreamed
of...

<https://www.shipsnostalgia.com/threads/fire-or-shoot.25635/>

[lar3ryca]

On 2023-12-13 03:14, Hibou wrote:
> Le 13/12/2023 à 03:10, Dingbat a écrit :
>> On Monday, December 11, 2023 at 10:53:55 AM UTC+5:30,
>> henh...@gmail.com wrote:
>>> The second f in "fifth" --- the first pronunciation given in M-W
>>> dictionary is the one that omits it.
>>>
>>> i've never known that anyone pronounced it as [Fith] ! wow!
>>>
>> Elision. I didn't know it was common enough to make it the top
>> pronunciation.
>>
>> In Indian English, Five is open pronounced like Phi (the Greek letter
>> in English pronunciation)
>>   and Eleven is often pronounced like Leven.
>
> I knew that pilots used to pronounce 'five' as 'fife', but I didn't know
> they still did:

Yes, they still do, but only in the military (at least in Canada). When
I took my flying lessons, 'five' was pronounced as non-pilots would, but
'nine' was pronounced 'niner' to avoid mistaking it for 'five'.

> "And five is pronounced with a second 'f' in place of the 'v,' because
> the normal pronunciation of five is easily confused with 'fire,' a
> command to shoot, which the military felt undesirable" -
> <https://www.aopa.org/news-and-media/all-news/2022/october/flight-training-magazine/ol-aviation-lingo>
>
> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NATO_phonetic_alphabet>
>
> If the films of the period are to be trusted, during WW2 the Royal Navy
> said 'Shoot!' for 'Fire!', I suppose to avoid confusion with fire as
> conflagration. But then, there are apparently subtleties I never dreamed
> of...
>
> <https://www.shipsnostalgia.com/threads/fire-or-shoot.25635/>
>

--
Wikipedia is the first place I go when I'm looking for knowledge… or
when I want to create some.
— Stephen Colbert

[S K]

Goras (or your beloved "Anglophones") don't care about indian english, Mallu English or your English.
You look so pathetic seeking attention like this.

By the way has your guru, the curse on the newwsgroup, gone to the kibbutz in the sky?

[Athel Cornish-Bowden]

On 2023-12-13 17:58:24 +0000, lar3ryca said:

> On 2023-12-13 03:14, Hibou wrote:
>> Le 13/12/2023 à 03:10, Dingbat a écrit :
>>> On Monday, December 11, 2023 at 10:53:55 AM UTC+5:30, henh...@gmail.com wrote:
>>>> The second f in "fifth" --- the first pronunciation given in M-W
>>>> dictionary is the one that omits it.
>>>>
>>>> i've never known that anyone pronounced it as [Fith] ! wow!
>>>>
>>> Elision. I didn't know it was common enough to make it the top pronunciation.
>>>
>>> In Indian English, Five is open pronounced like Phi (the Greek letter
>>> in English pronunciation)
>>>   and Eleven is often pronounced like Leven.
>>
>> I knew that pilots used to pronounce 'five' as 'fife', but I didn't
>> know they still did:
>
> Yes, they still do, but only in the military (at least in Canada). When
> I took my flying lessons, 'five' was pronounced as non-pilots would,
> but 'nine' was pronounced 'niner' to avoid mistaking it for 'five'.

I seem to recall from a swimming tour to the Netherlands and Germany in
1961 or so that in public announcements by loudspeaker in Germany zwo
is used instead of zwei to avoid mistaking it for drei.

>
>> "And five is pronounced with a second 'f' in place of the 'v,' because
>> the normal pronunciation of five is easily confused with 'fire,' a
>> command to shoot, which the military felt undesirable" -
>> <https://www.aopa.org/news-and-media/all-news/2022/october/flight-training-magazine/ol-aviation-lingo>
>>
>>
>> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NATO_phonetic_alphabet>
>>
>> If the films of the period are to be trusted, during WW2 the Royal Navy
>> said 'Shoot!' for 'Fire!', I suppose to avoid confusion with fire as
>> conflagration. But then, there are apparently subtleties I never
>> dreamed of...
>>
>> <https://www.shipsnostalgia.com/threads/fire-or-shoot.25635/>


--

Athel -- French and British, living in Marseilles for 36 years; mainly
in England until 1987.

[Phil]

In the Signals section in school CCF I was taught to use "fife" for
five, "niner" for nine", and "sevEn" (second syllable stress) for seven.
Presumably the first two were to maximise the difference between five
and nine, but I don't remember why seven was stressed that way.

--
Phil B

[Athel Cornish-Bowden]

eleven?

[Phil]

Should always be "one, one". Likewise ten should always be "one, zero".

--
Phil B

[Garrett Wollman]

In article <ulbsld$3hiu$1...@dont-email.me>,

Hibou <vpaereru-u...@yahoo.com.invalid> wrote:
>Le 13/12/2023 à 03:10, Dingbat a écrit :
>> On Monday, December 11, 2023 at 10:53:55 AM UTC+5:30,
>henh...@gmail.com wrote:
>>> The second f in "fifth" --- the first pronunciation given in M-W
>dictionary is the one that omits it.
>>>
>>> i've never known that anyone pronounced it as [Fith] ! wow!
>>>
>> Elision. I didn't know it was common enough to make it the top pronunciation.

[Google Groups is filtered from my server so I'm replying a bit
downthread.]

One that was new to me until I started hearing[1] British announcers
on international sports is pronouncing "sixth" as /sIk/ "sick".
(Maybe there's the barest trace of a /T/ coda but sports venues are
noisy places.)

-GAWollman

[1] NBC used to own the rights to pretty much all international sports
in the US, but after the 2021 and 2022 Olympics were ratings bombs
they stopped airing most of them and closed down the channels on which
they were distributed. In some cases they still have the rights but
choose not to broadcast some or all of the events. The result is that
we get the international ("neutral country") international feed, which
almost always has commentary from Brits or Australians depending on
which hemisphere the event is being held in. Some of them are much
better than the NBC announcers, some of them are quite a bit less so.
--
Garrett A. Wollman | "Act to avoid constraining the future; if you can,
wol...@bimajority.org| act to remove constraint from the future. This is
Opinions not shared by| a thing you can do, are able to do, to do together."
my employers. | - Graydon Saunders, _A Succession of Bad Days_ (2015)

[lar3ryca]

On 2023-12-13 12:23, Athel Cornish-Bowden wrote:
> On 2023-12-13 17:58:24 +0000, lar3ryca said:
>
>> On 2023-12-13 03:14, Hibou wrote:
>>> Le 13/12/2023 à 03:10, Dingbat a écrit :
>>>> On Monday, December 11, 2023 at 10:53:55 AM UTC+5:30,
>>>> henh...@gmail.com wrote:
>>>>> The second f in "fifth" --- the first pronunciation given in M-W
>>>>> dictionary is the one that omits it.
>>>>>
>>>>> i've never known that anyone pronounced it as [Fith] ! wow!
>>>>>
>>>> Elision. I didn't know it was common enough to make it the top
>>>> pronunciation.
>>>>
>>>> In Indian English, Five is open pronounced like Phi (the Greek
>>>> letter in English pronunciation)
>>>>   and Eleven is often pronounced like Leven.
>>>
>>> I knew that pilots used to pronounce 'five' as 'fife', but I didn't
>>> know they still did:
>>
>> Yes, they still do, but only in the military (at least in Canada).
>> When I took my flying lessons, 'five' was pronounced as non-pilots
>> would, but 'nine' was pronounced 'niner' to avoid mistaking it for
>> 'five'.
>
> I seem to recall from a swimming tour to the Netherlands and Germany in
> 1961 or so that in public announcements by loudspeaker in Germany zwo is
> used instead of zwei to avoid mistaking it for drei.

I heard that often in my two years in Germany, but I'm not sure of the
source. It may have been on TV. I always thought it was a dialect.

--
I own the world's worst thesaurus.
It's not only awful, but it's awful.

[Bertel Lund Hansen]

lar3ryca wrote:

> I heard that often in my two years in Germany, but I'm not sure of the
> source. It may have been on TV. I always thought it was a dialect.

DWDS says nothing about dialect. It just says:
Bedeutung
wird häufig, besonders am Telefon, für »zwei« gebraucht,
um Verwechselungen mit der Zahl »drei« auszuschließen

is often, especially on telephone, used for "zwei" to avoid

mistaking it for "drei".

DWDS = Digitales Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache
(digital dictionary of the German language)

https://www.dwds.de

--
Bertel, Denmark

[Silvano]

Bertel Lund Hansen hat am 13.12.2023 um 23:31 geschrieben:

+1

[Peter Moylan]

On 14/12/23 05:23, Athel Cornish-Bowden wrote:
>
> I seem to recall from a swimming tour to the Netherlands and Germany
> in 1961 or so that in public announcements by loudspeaker in Germany
> zwo is used instead of zwei to avoid mistaking it for drei.

I remember hitting a related problem in Antwerp where I had to hold up
fingers (and risking giving offence) to break the ambiguity. The words
for "two" and "three" are quite distinct in standard Dutch, but almost
identical in the Antwerpse dialect.

Now that I'm doing Irish lessons, I'm finding that I can't hear any
difference between "máthair" (mother) and "m'athair" (my father).

--
Peter Moylan http://www.pmoylan.org
Newcastle, NSW

[soup]

On 13/12/2023 09:14, Hibou wrote:
> Le 13/12/2023 à 03:10, Dingbat a écrit :
>> On Monday, December 11, 2023 at 10:53:55 AM UTC+5:30,
>> henh...@gmail.com wrote:
>>> The second f in "fifth" --- the first pronunciation given in M-W
>>> dictionary is the one that omits it.
>>>
>>> i've never known that anyone pronounced it as [Fith] ! wow!
>>>
>> Elision. I didn't know it was common enough to make it the top
>> pronunciation.
>>
>> In Indian English, Five is open pronounced like Phi (the Greek letter
>> in English pronunciation)
>>   and Eleven is often pronounced like Leven.
>
> I knew that pilots used to pronounce 'five' as 'fife', but I didn't know
> they still did:

It also helps the distiction over a (perhaps 'dodgy' radio link.
Was taught (as an air cadet) that it was oneA and niner .

> "And five is pronounced with a second 'f' in place of the 'v,' because
> the normal pronunciation of five is easily confused with 'fire,' a
> command to shoot, which the military felt undesirable" -

and on some ranges it is not pronounced at all so countdowns go
ten, nine, eight seven, six, , four, three, two, one firing now firing
now.
no idea why they say "firing now" twice.
>