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Comment by ilitirit | Hacker News Reader

On a tangential note, one of my pet peeves is the way that many people (mostly Americans?) pronounce words like "processes" as "process-eez".

Words with Greek roots that end in -is or -es generally use the -eez suffix. e.g. analysis -> analyses; thesis -> theses

In the case of Latin, it's -ix or -ex. e.g. index - indices, appendix - appendices.

There are of course exceptions and outliers (suffix -> suffixes; octopus -> octopodes!?), but words like "process" and "bias" do not fall into the categories mentioned, so there's no reason to use the non-standard "processeez" and "biaseez". Unless - IMO - you want to sound like a snob... Think about it - how does one pronounce words like "successes" or "princesses"?

One could argue that language evolves - this is true, but in general language evolves to have simpler rules with fewer exceptions rather than the other way around.

Stop, let's all try to stop the madnesseez.

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Sort of related: I once heard someone pronounce "testicles" like a name of a Greek hero (think Heracles), just for the lulz. I found it hilarious...

Rhyming chipotle with aristotle is another good joke in this vein. You can mangle either one it's hilarious both ways.

Chipotélēs!

That's a really interesting observation.

Notably, it's only the noun plural that becomes "-eez" ("these processes"), while the verb present tense remains "-iz" ("she processes his application").

It seems to be going along with the gradual adoption of "often" with a "t" sound -- "off-tuhn" instead of "off-uhn".

Nobody said it with a "t" when and where I grew up (or on TV that I remember), because obviously the second syllable of "often" was the same as in "soften", "moisten", "hasten", "fasten", "glisten", and so forth. All silent t's.

But now it's at the point where probably a majority of people I hear on television and podcasts, as well as in my personal life, pronounce the "t". But only in "often" -- not in a single one of the other words I listed.

Both "often" and "processes" seem to fall in the category of hypercorrection, where people are trying to sound more correct.

I’ve noticed it too and it seems to be getting more common. I’m pretty sure it’s just hypercorrection.

This may be an attempt to distinguish it phonetically from processORs.

Maybe they were actually saying processees (whom processors act upon).

I've heard both, and the "-esseez" plural just seems less ambiguous on poor videoconferencing lines and recordings. "-esses" is a mouthful to pronounce.

Are we talking about pro-cesses or praw-cesses?

> Unless - IMO - you want to sound like a snob...

Really? I think it's the opposite. One does things like this because one is afraid of being assailed by pedants and made to feel inferior. This is why, I think, I hear people, mostly British, say things like "to so-and-so and I". They're afraid to use the wrong form or the pronoun and be scolded, so they overcorrect.

And about this:

> in general language evolves to have simpler rules with fewer exceptions rather than the other way around.

I don't think that's generally true. Rather, language changes in many ways, but one of them is the accumulation of exceptions to a formerly simple system. This gives us the complex paradigms of "be" and "go", for example.

> One does things like this because one is afraid of being assailed by pedants and made to feel inferior.

Do you pronounce "tortoise" like "bourgeoise" because you don't want to sound inferior?

I jest, but it's like your argument is making my case for me. Replace "snob" with "pedant" to see what I mean.

I enjoy intentionally mispronouncing words to my fiancee, and this one is definitely going into the rotation, so thank you for that! (Now, to figure out how to get "tortoise" into casual conversation.)

One of the comediennes on Wait Wait, Don't Tell Me delightfully pronounced tortoise TOR-toys. Apparently she'd never heard it spoken aloud before.

Let me guess, you’re one of them — those that pronounce “adjective” as aject-ive… :-)

I not sure what you're talking about. I'm referring to things where pronunciation is generally based on the etymology. I don't think the word "adjective" falls into this category. One could perhaps make a case for aluminum vs aluminium (cf: platinum), but those are pretty much different words that refer to the same thing.

"Process-eez" is the same word as "processes" with a pronunciation based on a misunderstanding (presumably) of the etymological "rules".

I don't think it's true that languages get simpler over time.

By and large they do. English, like all indo European languages, used to have many grammatical cases and verb forms. Now we mostly retain cases in pronouns, and most verbs are about two forms per tense.

Latin used to have all its cases suffixes, and today's Romance languages have dropped nearly all of them.

Not a linguist, but I think this is just a matter of proto-indo-european having complicated morphology and its descendants reverting to the mean.

A related reddit thread (I know, I know, sorry): https://old.reddit.com/r/linguistics/comments/o12hy0/instanc...

It's worth noting of course that there is more to grammar than morphology.

English has simple verb and noun morphology, but very complicated syntax and phonology. Hard to say that it’s uniformly more or less complex than Latin.

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