العربية
中国
Français
Deutsch
Ελληνική
हिन्दी
Italiano
日本語
Português
Русский
EspañolHYPERCORRECTION
(Redirected from Hypercorrect)
'Hypercorrection' comprises four linguistic phenomena:
# an elaborate, prescriptively based 'correction' of common usage, often introduced in an attempt to avoid vulgarity or informality, that results in wording commonly considered clumsier than the usual, colloquial usage.
# usage that many informed users of a language consider incorrect, but that the speaker or writer uses through misunderstanding of prescriptive rules, often combined with a desire to seem formal or educated.[1]
# usage which is correct in another language but is not required in English. Examples include myself, yourself, himself which obtain in Irish and German for instance but not in the more casual English.
# (also called 'overcompensation':) the effect that a student of a new language learned that certain phones of his or her original language are wrong in the studied language, but has not learned exactly how to distinguish them.[1]
Unlike some other languages, such as Italian ( Accademia della Crusca), French or Spanish, English has no single supreme authoritative body that governs whether any given usage will fall into the category of ''correct'' or ''incorrect''. Nonetheless, within certain groups of users of English, some of which are quite large, certain usages are indeed considered either (1) unduly elaborate adherence to formal rules instead of rules of popular, widespread, or common usage, or (2) mis- or ill-informed changing of ''correct'', but seemingly ''informal'', usage into wording that is ''incorrect'' but seemingly ''formal''.
There is an anecdote mistakenly attributed to Winston Churchill as replying to a hypercorrective memo with the phrase "This is the sort of English up with which I will not put" or a similar construction. [2] This is an example of hypercorrection used as parody: Churchill went beyond creating a grammatically correct sentence to mock the elaborate refusal to end a clause in a preposition (or insistence on placing the preposition before the relative pronoun); he treated the adverbial particles ''up'' and ''with'' as prepositions. They are actually part of the phrasal verb ''put up with'', and their placement before ''put'' is extremely unusual.
Prescription against such constructions as "'Where' is the party 'at'?" is not necessarily related to the prescription against using a preposition to end a sentence. The adverb ''where'' in such questions usually means "at what place", making the final ''at'' redundant.
Jack Lynch, assistant professor of English at Rutgers University describes another example of hypercorrection:
:We're taught as children—and beginning English learners are told—"You don't say, 'Me and you went to the movies'; it should be 'you and I.'" And a lot of people, therefore, internalize the rule that "you and I" is somehow more proper, and they end up using it in places where they shouldn't—such as "He gave it to you and I," when it should be "He gave it to you and me."[2]
The rule is that the pronoun that would stand in isolation is the one to use: if "'I' went to the movies", then "You and 'I' went to the movies"; if "They gave it to 'me'", then "They gave it to you and 'me'".
Similar confusion between subject and object pronouns occurs with the relative/interrogative pronoun 'who and whom'. As cases are dying out in English, many native speakers no longer understand the distinction between the subject "who" and the object "whom". Again, it is easy to remember proper usage by comparing the forms of "who/whom/whose" with those of "he/him/his".
★ He is someone to whom I owe a great deal. ("I" is subject, "whom" (relating to "he") the object)
★ He is someone who is a great guy. ("who" is subject of the side clause)
★ He is someone whose help I appreciate. ("whose" is adjunct to help, the side clause's subject)
On the basis of this confusion, a speaker might make hypercorrections.
★ He is someone whom is a great guy.
Another form of pronoun hypercorrection seems to originate in the speaker's or writer's desire to appear educated or refined rather than in understanding of the usual usage of pronouns; this hypercorrection is the use of reflexive pronouns in places properly occupied by other pronouns. The reflexive pronouns in English are ''myself'', ''yourself'', ''thyself'', ''himself'', ''herself'', ''itself'', ''oneself'', ''ourselves'', ''yourselves'', and ''themselves''. Reflexive pronouns are properly used when the direct or indirect object of the verb is the same noun as the subject: for example, in "'''She' dresses 'herself'''", the same person is designated by ''she'' in the subject and by ''herself'' in the object. Hypercorrection includes all non-appositive uses of the reflexive pronoun (1) as subject and (2) as object when the object is not the same person or thing as the subject. For example,
★ "''Pat and 'myself' went shopping''" should be "''Pat and 'I' went shopping''". The person designated by ''myself'' is in the subject, and so is properly designated by ''I''.
★ "''Sam wants to give 'yourself' a gift''" should be "''Sam wants to give 'you' a gift''". The person designated by ''yourself'' is not the same person as the one designated by ''Sam'', and so is properly designated by ''you''.
★ "''Joe likes 'myself' and Alex''" should be "''Joe likes 'me' and Alex''" (or ''Alex and me''). The person designated by ''myself'' is not the same person as the one designated by ''Joe'', and so is properly designated by ''me''.
(Appositive use of reflexive pronouns is not hypercorrection: e.g., "'''I, myself,' went shopping''", "''Sam gave 'you, yourself,' a gift''", "''Joe heard 'me, myself,' in the kitchen''", and "''The 'students, themselves,' are intelligent''". Reflexive pronouns used this way are called intensive pronouns and are grammatically appropriate.)
In such common phrases as "''Talk amongst 'yourselves'''", the reflexive pronoun is used where the reciprocal pronoun is grammatically appropriate. If Sam, Pat, and Joe really talk "among ''themselves''", they are talking ''to'' themselves—i.e., Sam to himself, Pat to herself, Joe to himself. The reciprocal pronoun accurately describes this reciprocral situation: "''Sam, Pat, and Joe are talking with 'one another'''" (or ''each other'') leaves no doubt that Sam is talking with Pat and Joe, Pat is talking with Sam and Joe, and Joe is talking with Sam and Pat.
Hypercorrection can also affect spelling. For example, in standard English the word "its" (belonging to it) has no apostrophe, for "it's" is a contraction of "it is". Some people are therefore careful to spell the possessive of "one" without an apostrophe, as in "It is sometimes best to keep ones thoughts to oneself", though standard usage is "one's". Similar mistaken pedantry may lie behind the common misspellings of "till" as "", and "round" as " 'round" when the word "round" is used with the same meaning as "around".
Hypercorrection also occurs when speakers with non-standard accent backgrounds, in altering their speech to make it more similar to a form considered standard, duplicate certain sound shifts not only where those shifts are appropriate in mimicking the target accent, but also in similar but inappropriate areas. For example, speakers who pronounce both ''t'' and ''d'' as , so that the ''t'' of ''waiter'' and the ''d'' of ''wader'' have the same sound, may, in an attempt to formalize, pronounce ''lady'' as ''laty'' ().
Overcompensation can occur with ''an'' among speakers trying to ensure pronunciation of ''d'' in ''and'', and with the participial ''-en'' suffix among speakers hoping to ensure pronunciation of ''g'' in the ''-ing'' suffix.
In an effort to avoid the perceived vulgarism of "dropping ''H''s", some speakers pronounce the name of the letter ''H'' () as "haitch" ().
Many English speakers take unnecessary care to ''mispronounce'' "espresso", a coffee brewing technique developed in Italy, as "expresso" (despite the fact that Italian has no "x"). This may be hypercorrection, or it may be simple confusion with the English word "express". This also happens with the word "escape", which many people turn to ''excape'', perhaps because they associate ''ex-'' to mean "out from" (which it does, in Latin). In the movie ''Idiocracy'', the form ''excape'' has apparently become standard.
Another area of hypercorrection involves Greek- and Latin-looking words like ''octopus''. The spurious plural ''octopi'' likens the octopus to Latin nouns of the Second Declension that form plurals in ''-i''. (Were there actually a classical plural of ''octopus'', it would be ''octopodes''.) Words such as ''rhinoceros'', ''status'', ''census'', ''omnibus'' (which in Latin is the dative plural of ''omnis''), and ''ignoramus'' (which in Latin is a plural, first-person form of a verb) are sometimes inflected in the same way, although some much more commonly than others; none of these examples' sources would be inflected in that way in Latin or Greek. ''Virus'' sometimes gets the pseudoclassical plural form ''virii'', which presumes Latin
★ ''virius''. An even less sensible plural is ''penii'' (for singular ''penis''; the true Latin plural is ''penes''), which is not uncommon in Internet speak. Occasionally, one sees similar plurals for non-classical words, such as ''caucus'' and ''walrus'', or invented words such as ''conundrum''.
All of these words take the regular English inflection in ''-s'' or ''-es'', but a few of the hypercorrected forms have passed into such common usage as to be considered acceptable by some, despite their origins.
It is unclear how much words like ''penii'' are used as wordplay. Donald Trump would, on the reality TV show ''The Apprentice'', often refer to the contestants as his ''apprenti''. It is assumed that Trump actually knows that the plural of ''apprentice'' is ''apprentices'' and not ''apprenti''. An old joke involves a slightly tipsy professor who orders a ''martinus'' instead of a ''martini'', because "If I wanted more than one, I would ask for it in the plural."
Yet more hypercorrection deals with the pronunciation of the ''-es'' plural forms of certain English nouns. Although the most common way of pluralizing a noun in English is to add ''-s'' or ''-es'' to the end of the singular form, there are many exceptions. One such exception involves some words whose singular forms end in ''-is'' and the plurals of which are formed simply by the ''replacement'' of ''-is'' with ''-es'': e.g., ''crisis'' and ''crises'', or ''neurosis'' and ''neuroses''. The standard pronunciation of such plurals has the final syllable equivalent to the sound of the English word ''ease'' [iːz]. Yet some speakers use the same ''ease'' [iːz] pronunciation for the ''-es'' endings of nouns whose plurals are formed in the ''ordinary'' way, by the ''addition'' of ''-es'': e.g., ''processes'' (plural of ''process''). The correct pronunciations of words such as ''processes'' and ''biases'' have the final syllable equivalent to that of ''houses'' and ''witches'': .
Room for confusion exists in some homographic plurals, where the final "-es" pronunciation depends on the word's meaning. For example, ''axes'' is pronounced for the plural of ''axis'', but for the plural of ''axe''. The pronunciation of ''bases'' similarly depends on whether its singular is ''basis'' or ''base''. Hypercorrective replacement of with in plurals may result partly from confusion over these homographs.
An example of hypercorrecting a word rather than a pronunciation is found when law students—who have absorbed the idea that one should always say "British" rather than "English" (e.g., "the King of England"), so as not to exclude Welsh, Scots, Northern Irish, etc.—balk at using the term "English law". However, legally this term is quite correct, since Scotland, the Isle of Man, and (to a lesser extent) Northern Ireland have legal systems separate from that of England and Wales. It is correct, in some cases, to speak of "British law", but usually "English law" will be more accurate (unless the topic of discussion is Scottish, Manx, or Northern Irish law).
When pronunciation and spelling of foreign loan words are erroneously based on rules that apply to ''other'' foreign words, but not to those in question, the phenomenon is called 'hyperforeignism'. The following are examples.
Non-native French speakers may erroneously omit the last consonant in ''Vichyssoise'' , in the chess term '', and in ''. Those who know a little French omit the final ''s'' in ''fleur-de-lis'' although it is pronounced by the French, as well as in many French proper nouns such as Saint-Saëns, Boulez, and Berlioz, among many others which do not adhere to standard rules of French pronunciation.
''Forte'', meaning a person's strong point, is now usually pronounced with two syllables, under the influence either of the Italian musical term ''forte'' or of the many French loan words ending in ''é''. This meaning was originally a metaphor drawn from fencing: the forte of the blade is its thick part, and the foible is the thin part. (In fencing context, it is still pronounced "fort".) The term is derived from French, where the equivalent word, in both the "strength" and the fencing meanings, is spelled ''fort'' and pronounced , i.e., with a silent ''t''.
Many native speakers of American English pronounce the word ''lingerie'' as , excessively depressing the first vowel to sound more like a "typical" French nasal vowel, and rhyming the final syllable with English ''ray'', by analogy with the many French loanwords ending in ''-é''(''e''), ''-er'', ''-et'', and ''-ez''. A closer English approximation of the native French would be .
Those who know a little French pronounce words such as ''Sartre'' as /sart/, although the French actually pronounce a short voiceless after the ''t''. This even extends to words such as ''Louvre'', which among some English speakers becomes /luv/.
''Jejune'' or is often taken to be a French word and pronounced 'je jeune' although it is in fact Latin in origin.
The English pronunciation of the French ''-ez'' has been misapplied to Ruy López, the name of a Spanish priest used eponymously in chess, more properly approximated . Similarly, ''enchilada'' can be heard as .
Some English-speakers pronounce ''machismo'' as on the analogy of other learned or foreign-derived words in which ''ch'' is rendered in English: for example, ''architect'', or ''masochism''. The Spanish ''ch'' in ''machismo'' is properly pronounced in the same way as ''ch'' in English ''chair'' . In ''machete'' and the surname ''Chavez'' the ''ch'' is often mistakenly given a "sh" sound.
Regarded as especially undesirable is pronouncing word with a semi-English, semi-foreign pronunciation at the same time. Some English-speakers wanting to sound Spanish have been known to pronounce ''junta'' like "hunte(r)".
The word '' is pronounced in Italian, but, in musical context (mezzo soprano, mezzo forte), is often rendered or by speakers from other linguistic backgrounds. (In Italian, "z" is indeed pronounced "ts" in some words, but "mezzo" is not one of them.)
English-speakers often pronounce Italian ''bruschetta'' with a "sh" instead of a "sk", through misunderstanding of the role of "h" in Italian or pronouncing the "sch" cluster as if it were German. The "sch" in Maraschino and in the brand-name ''Freschetta'' get the same treatment. Similarly the z in (Spanish) ''chorizo'' or Ibiza is often pronounced with a "ts" instead of a "th" (as it is in Castilian Spanish) or "ss" (as it is in Southern Spain or South America), possibly by confusion with Italian or German.
English-speakers often pronounce the "i" after "g" in words like ''Giovanni'' and ''Parmigiano Reggiano'', wheras Italians do not, the "i" serving purely to indicate that the "g" is soft, not hard.
The word ''aphelion'' can be hypercorrected to "ap-helion" by analogy with its antonym perihelion, but it is correct to take the "ph" as an "f" sound as usual, because the ''ap(o)-'' becomes ''aph-'' before a vowel with rough breathing (transliterated as "h") — the Greek is αφήλιον.
Due to the fact that American English spelling has, in many cases, dropped a vowel from many Greek diphthongs, hypercorrection will often occur in some words of Greek origin but not in others from the same root or diphthong. For example, one will hear "pediatrician/paediatrician" and "orthopedic/orthopaedic" pronounced differently form "pedophile/paedophile" (Greek παιδί), and "phoenix" pronounced differently from "Edipus/Oedipus".
Some English-speakers mispronounce ''Beijing'' with , even though the Mandarin Chinese sound represented by the ''j'' in Pinyin is closer to the English ''j'' (that is, ). Similarly, the ''j'' in the name of the Taj Mahal is often rendered , though a closer approximation to the Hindi/Urdu sound is . (''J'' in most other Roman-alphabet spellings of words associated with languages of India is best approximated .)
Another example is the pronunciation of ''Punjab'' as ; in the Anglo-Indian spelling convention, Hindi's neutral vowel is represented by the letter ''u'' with a sound similar to that of the ''u'' in English ''cup'' .
Hypercorrection arises in the use of diacritics in words from foreign languages. For example, ''habañero peppers'' is a misapplied analogy with ''jalapeño''; the standard Spanish spelling has no tilde—''habanero''. The Italian word ''grande'' is sometimes spelled ''grandé'' by English-speakers—in some cafés, for example. It is also possible that the acute accent is used specifically to induce readers to pronounce the word at least semi-correctly, as instead of or . Unintentional misuse of diacritics should not, however, be confused with intentional misuse, or use without concern for traditional function, as in the heavy-metal umlaut.
Use of the ironic term "par-tay" for "party" is a hyperforeignism that mockingly reverses the tendency to pronounce French-derived words ending in "-ée" (eg, "enchantée" is ) to rhyme with English "see" rather than "say". A similar example is pronouncing the name of the department store Target as "Tar-zhay", as if it were an upscale French retailer.
The silent 't' in "report" in the title of the parody pundit show ''The Colbert Report'' is a hyperforeignism used for comedic effect. It is also an allusion to the actual English word (which is a French loanword) "rapport" (pronounced "ra-pour") meaning "close personal relationship." The pronunciation of "Colbert" as the French "Col-bear" [kɔl.ˈbɛːʀ] as opposed to the Americanized "Col-bert" [ˈkɔl.bɝt] where the t is pronounced is also a hyperforeignism.
In Oxford during the late 1980s it was common to hear the bookshop Blackwells referred to as something akin to "Blah-wées" on the logic that the clutter of consonants sounded far too low born for an Oxford institution. Similarly certain newly genteel South London suburbs were jocularly re-named "Clahm", "Ba-TER-zee-a", "St. Ockwell" and the like.
The syllables ''je'' and ''ije'' appear in Croatian, Bosnian, and Montenegrin speech where Serbian has only variation in quality (length of the vowel) of ''e''. Not every Serbian ''e'' becomes ''je'' or ''ije'' like in the other West Balkan countries. Serbian speakers may hypercorrect their dialect by either undersupplying or oversupplying the ''je''s and the ''ije''s.
In native Russian words, most consonants undergo palatalization before so-called "soft vowels" (or one could say these vowels are written after palatalized consonants). However, many loanwords in Russian (mostly coming from English and French) that contain the Russian letter "е" (IPA:), do not follow this rule, because the letter э, representing a nonpalatalized e, is only supposed to be written either at the beginning of a word, or after another vowel (as in Aeroflot). Here are some examples:
★ busi''n''ess →
★ in't'erview →
★ mo'd'ern →
★ e'n'ergy →
★ cock't'ail →
★ mo'd'el →
★ chau'ss'é →
★ ca'f'é →
However the bold consonants in these words are sometimes palatalized by native speakers, which is regarded as a solecism and a shibboleth. Other loanwords with this feature, such as te'nn'is (тен'н'ис), have been more firmly embedded in native Russian speakers with non-palatalized pronunciation, and are almost never mispronounced. Other loanwords swing both ways, such as 's'exual ('с'ексуальный). However, sources may vary depending on their level of prescriptivism. Examples of hyperforeignisms are found in Russian when loanwords (commonly older loanwords) contain consonants that should be palatalized. Yet some speakers, emphasizing the foreign quality of the word, do not palatalize them. For example: 'th'eme (), 't'echnical (), ''t''ext (), mu's'eum (), ga'z'ette () and e'ff'ect ().
Modern Cantonese is currently undergoing a phonological shift, one of the changes being the dropping of the initial ''ng-'' (IPA: ) consonant to a null initial. For instance, the word (''ngaa4'', meaning "tooth"), ends up being pronounced ''aa4'' (Note: Cantonese romanization provided using Jyutping). Prescriptivists tend to consider these changes as substandard and denounce them for being "lazy sounds" (懶音).
However, in a case of hypercorrection, some speakers have started pronouncing words that should have a null initial using an initial ''ng-'', even though according to historical Chinese phonology, only words with ''Yang'' tones (which correspond to tones 4, 5, and 6 in Cantonese) had voiced initials (which includes ''ng-''). Words with ''Yin'' tones (1, 2, and 3) historically should have unvoiced or null initials. Because of this hypercorrection, words such as (''oi3'', meaning "love"), which has a ''Yin'' tone, are pronounced by speakers with an ''ng-'' initial, ''ngoi3''.
Speakers of some accents of Mandarin, particularly in the south of China and in Taiwan, pronounce the retroflex initials zh-, ch- and sh- as the alveolar initials z-, c- and s-. Such speakers may hypercorrect by pronouncing words that should start with z-, c- and s- as if they started with their retroflex counterparts. In Taiwan, under the influence of Taiwanese (Min Nan), many people pronounce the initial f- as h-, and often hypercorrect by pronouncing the initial h- as f-. This is also noticeable in the Hakka population, where many words that begin in h- in Mandarin and Taiwanese begin in f- in Hakka. (Examples: , )
In German, the dialect spoken in the city of Düsseldorf and its surroundings heavily features 'ch' sounds where a standard German calls for 'sch' sounds. Speakers with this accent would say 'Fich' instead of '' (fish), and 'Tich' instead of '' (table). This is due to a hypercorrection of the Rhineland accent prevalent in that area of Germany, an accent that replaces many 'ch' sounds with 'sch' sounds, making for a colourful accent often considered simple or vulgar by speakers of standard German. Attempting to avoid this error, speakers of the Düsseldorf accent hypercorrect it to an abundance of 'ch' .
Another example is use of the genitive case where the dative case is required. Colloquially, the genitive is often dropped in favor of the dative even if correct grammatical usage demands the genitive. Because language critics deride such substitution, many German speakers use the genitive even with prepositions that actually demand the dative (e.g., '', '', ''), seemingly under the false impression that the genitive is always right and the dative is always wrong, or at least that the genitive is a better form of the dative.
Careful Hebrew speakers are taught to avoid the colloquial pronunciation of (''bediyyuq'', "exactly") as . Many speakers accordingly pronounce (''lihyot'', "to be") as if it were spelled "lehiyyot" (), though there is no grammatical justification for doing so.
Hypercorrection can work in both directions. It is well known that the vowel ''qamatz gadol'', which in the accepted Sephardic pronunciation is rendered as , becomes in Ashkenazi Hebrew (and therefore in Yiddish). Many older British Jews therefore consider it more colloquial and "down-home" to say "Shobbes", "cholla" and "motza", though the vowel in these words is in fact a ''patach'', which is rendered as in both Sephardi and Ashkenazi Hebrew.
The consistent pronunciation of all forms of ''qamatz'' as , disregarding ''qatan'' and ''chataf'' forms, could also be seen as a hypercorrection, when Ashkenazic Hebrew speakers attempt to pronounce Sephardic Hebrew. (e.g. , "midday" as "''tzaharayim''", rather than "''tzohorayim''" as in standard Israeli pronunciation; proper Sephardi pronunciation is "''tzahorayim''")
Other hypercorrections occur when speakers of Sephardic Hebrew attempt to pronounce Ashkenazi Hebrew. The month of Shevat () is mistakenly pronounced "Shvas", as if it were spelled
★ שְׁבַת. In an attempt to imitate Polish and Lithuanian dialects, ''qamatz'' (both ''gadol'' and ''qatan''), which would normally be pronounced , is hypercorrected to the pronunciation of ''cholam'', , rendering ("large") as ''goydl'' and ("blessed") as ''boyrukh''.
In the Middle Ages, the spelling of Latin was simplified in various respects: for example, ''ae'' and ''oe'' became ''e'', and ''ch'' became ''c''. Occasionally these changes were reversed, and ''e'' and ''c'' were sometimes expanded to ''ae'' (or ''oe'') and ''ch'', even when such spelling contradicted Classical Latin. For example, '' was contracted to ''celum'' and re-expanded to ''coelum''. These spellings are often preserved in English derivatives, including '' and '' (occasionally found as variants for ''et cetera''); '' (originally ''fetus''); '', from ''lachryma'' (a false Hellenisation, originally '', "a tear"); and ''schedule'', from ''schedula'' (originally ''scedula'').
An example of hyperforeignism in Swedish is the common use of "chevré" in "chevré[ost]" for "chèvre cheese", which is quite different from the original French "".
Similarly "Entrecôte", is also often spelled "Entrecoté", yet more often than not pronounced without the ending "t" sound.
The French "Entrecôte" and "Pommes frites" more often than not is pronounced without the ending "t" sound.
In standard Bulgarian and in the eastern dialects, the old yat letter is pronounced as ''я'' ("ya") when stressed and the following syllable does not contain the vowels ''и'' ("i") or ''е'' ("e"), and pronounced as ''е'' in all other cases. But in the western dialects it is always pronounced as ''е''. Attempting to speak correctly, some speakers from Western Bulgaria mispronounce many words containing the yat letter - ''голями'' ("golyami"), ''желязни'' ("zhelyazni"), ''бяли'' ("byali"), ''видяли'' ("vidyali"), ''спряни'' ("spryani"), ''живяли'' ("zhivyali") instead of ''големи'' ("golemi"), ''железни'' ("zhelezni"), ''бели'' ("beli"), ''видели'' ("videli"), ''спрени'' ("spreni"), ''живели'' ("zhiveli"). This trend is especially common with past participles such as ''видяли''.
★ Disputed English grammar
★ List of English words with disputed usage
1. The Columbia Guide to Standard American English, , Kenneth, Willson, Columbia University Press, ,
2. www.voanews.com
★ Labov, William. 1966. "Hypercorrection by the Lower Middle Class as a Factor in Linguistic Change". In ''Sociolinguistics: Proceedings of the UCLA Sociolinguistics Conference, 1964''. William Bright, ed. Pp. 84-113. The Hague: Mouton.
★ Joshua Blau, ''On Pseudo-Corrections in Some Semitic Languages''. Jerusalem: Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities 1970.
'Hypercorrection' comprises four linguistic phenomena:
# an elaborate, prescriptively based 'correction' of common usage, often introduced in an attempt to avoid vulgarity or informality, that results in wording commonly considered clumsier than the usual, colloquial usage.
# usage that many informed users of a language consider incorrect, but that the speaker or writer uses through misunderstanding of prescriptive rules, often combined with a desire to seem formal or educated.[1]
# usage which is correct in another language but is not required in English. Examples include myself, yourself, himself which obtain in Irish and German for instance but not in the more casual English.
# (also called 'overcompensation':) the effect that a student of a new language learned that certain phones of his or her original language are wrong in the studied language, but has not learned exactly how to distinguish them.[1]
In English
Unlike some other languages, such as Italian ( Accademia della Crusca), French or Spanish, English has no single supreme authoritative body that governs whether any given usage will fall into the category of ''correct'' or ''incorrect''. Nonetheless, within certain groups of users of English, some of which are quite large, certain usages are indeed considered either (1) unduly elaborate adherence to formal rules instead of rules of popular, widespread, or common usage, or (2) mis- or ill-informed changing of ''correct'', but seemingly ''informal'', usage into wording that is ''incorrect'' but seemingly ''formal''.
Preposition at the end of a clause
There is an anecdote mistakenly attributed to Winston Churchill as replying to a hypercorrective memo with the phrase "This is the sort of English up with which I will not put" or a similar construction. [2] This is an example of hypercorrection used as parody: Churchill went beyond creating a grammatically correct sentence to mock the elaborate refusal to end a clause in a preposition (or insistence on placing the preposition before the relative pronoun); he treated the adverbial particles ''up'' and ''with'' as prepositions. They are actually part of the phrasal verb ''put up with'', and their placement before ''put'' is extremely unusual.
Prescription against such constructions as "'Where' is the party 'at'?" is not necessarily related to the prescription against using a preposition to end a sentence. The adverb ''where'' in such questions usually means "at what place", making the final ''at'' redundant.
Personal pronouns
Jack Lynch, assistant professor of English at Rutgers University describes another example of hypercorrection:
:We're taught as children—and beginning English learners are told—"You don't say, 'Me and you went to the movies'; it should be 'you and I.'" And a lot of people, therefore, internalize the rule that "you and I" is somehow more proper, and they end up using it in places where they shouldn't—such as "He gave it to you and I," when it should be "He gave it to you and me."[2]
The rule is that the pronoun that would stand in isolation is the one to use: if "'I' went to the movies", then "You and 'I' went to the movies"; if "They gave it to 'me'", then "They gave it to you and 'me'".
Similar confusion between subject and object pronouns occurs with the relative/interrogative pronoun 'who and whom'. As cases are dying out in English, many native speakers no longer understand the distinction between the subject "who" and the object "whom". Again, it is easy to remember proper usage by comparing the forms of "who/whom/whose" with those of "he/him/his".
★ He is someone to whom I owe a great deal. ("I" is subject, "whom" (relating to "he") the object)
★ He is someone who is a great guy. ("who" is subject of the side clause)
★ He is someone whose help I appreciate. ("whose" is adjunct to help, the side clause's subject)
On the basis of this confusion, a speaker might make hypercorrections.
★ He is someone whom is a great guy.
Another form of pronoun hypercorrection seems to originate in the speaker's or writer's desire to appear educated or refined rather than in understanding of the usual usage of pronouns; this hypercorrection is the use of reflexive pronouns in places properly occupied by other pronouns. The reflexive pronouns in English are ''myself'', ''yourself'', ''thyself'', ''himself'', ''herself'', ''itself'', ''oneself'', ''ourselves'', ''yourselves'', and ''themselves''. Reflexive pronouns are properly used when the direct or indirect object of the verb is the same noun as the subject: for example, in "'''She' dresses 'herself'''", the same person is designated by ''she'' in the subject and by ''herself'' in the object. Hypercorrection includes all non-appositive uses of the reflexive pronoun (1) as subject and (2) as object when the object is not the same person or thing as the subject. For example,
★ "''Pat and 'myself' went shopping''" should be "''Pat and 'I' went shopping''". The person designated by ''myself'' is in the subject, and so is properly designated by ''I''.
★ "''Sam wants to give 'yourself' a gift''" should be "''Sam wants to give 'you' a gift''". The person designated by ''yourself'' is not the same person as the one designated by ''Sam'', and so is properly designated by ''you''.
★ "''Joe likes 'myself' and Alex''" should be "''Joe likes 'me' and Alex''" (or ''Alex and me''). The person designated by ''myself'' is not the same person as the one designated by ''Joe'', and so is properly designated by ''me''.
(Appositive use of reflexive pronouns is not hypercorrection: e.g., "'''I, myself,' went shopping''", "''Sam gave 'you, yourself,' a gift''", "''Joe heard 'me, myself,' in the kitchen''", and "''The 'students, themselves,' are intelligent''". Reflexive pronouns used this way are called intensive pronouns and are grammatically appropriate.)
In such common phrases as "''Talk amongst 'yourselves'''", the reflexive pronoun is used where the reciprocal pronoun is grammatically appropriate. If Sam, Pat, and Joe really talk "among ''themselves''", they are talking ''to'' themselves—i.e., Sam to himself, Pat to herself, Joe to himself. The reciprocal pronoun accurately describes this reciprocral situation: "''Sam, Pat, and Joe are talking with 'one another'''" (or ''each other'') leaves no doubt that Sam is talking with Pat and Joe, Pat is talking with Sam and Joe, and Joe is talking with Sam and Pat.
Spelling
Hypercorrection can also affect spelling. For example, in standard English the word "its" (belonging to it) has no apostrophe, for "it's" is a contraction of "it is". Some people are therefore careful to spell the possessive of "one" without an apostrophe, as in "It is sometimes best to keep ones thoughts to oneself", though standard usage is "one's". Similar mistaken pedantry may lie behind the common misspellings of "till" as "", and "round" as " 'round" when the word "round" is used with the same meaning as "around".
Phonemes
Hypercorrection also occurs when speakers with non-standard accent backgrounds, in altering their speech to make it more similar to a form considered standard, duplicate certain sound shifts not only where those shifts are appropriate in mimicking the target accent, but also in similar but inappropriate areas. For example, speakers who pronounce both ''t'' and ''d'' as , so that the ''t'' of ''waiter'' and the ''d'' of ''wader'' have the same sound, may, in an attempt to formalize, pronounce ''lady'' as ''laty'' ().
Overcompensation can occur with ''an'' among speakers trying to ensure pronunciation of ''d'' in ''and'', and with the participial ''-en'' suffix among speakers hoping to ensure pronunciation of ''g'' in the ''-ing'' suffix.
In an effort to avoid the perceived vulgarism of "dropping ''H''s", some speakers pronounce the name of the letter ''H'' () as "haitch" ().
Many English speakers take unnecessary care to ''mispronounce'' "espresso", a coffee brewing technique developed in Italy, as "expresso" (despite the fact that Italian has no "x"). This may be hypercorrection, or it may be simple confusion with the English word "express". This also happens with the word "escape", which many people turn to ''excape'', perhaps because they associate ''ex-'' to mean "out from" (which it does, in Latin). In the movie ''Idiocracy'', the form ''excape'' has apparently become standard.
Plurals
Another area of hypercorrection involves Greek- and Latin-looking words like ''octopus''. The spurious plural ''octopi'' likens the octopus to Latin nouns of the Second Declension that form plurals in ''-i''. (Were there actually a classical plural of ''octopus'', it would be ''octopodes''.) Words such as ''rhinoceros'', ''status'', ''census'', ''omnibus'' (which in Latin is the dative plural of ''omnis''), and ''ignoramus'' (which in Latin is a plural, first-person form of a verb) are sometimes inflected in the same way, although some much more commonly than others; none of these examples' sources would be inflected in that way in Latin or Greek. ''Virus'' sometimes gets the pseudoclassical plural form ''virii'', which presumes Latin
★ ''virius''. An even less sensible plural is ''penii'' (for singular ''penis''; the true Latin plural is ''penes''), which is not uncommon in Internet speak. Occasionally, one sees similar plurals for non-classical words, such as ''caucus'' and ''walrus'', or invented words such as ''conundrum''.
All of these words take the regular English inflection in ''-s'' or ''-es'', but a few of the hypercorrected forms have passed into such common usage as to be considered acceptable by some, despite their origins.
It is unclear how much words like ''penii'' are used as wordplay. Donald Trump would, on the reality TV show ''The Apprentice'', often refer to the contestants as his ''apprenti''. It is assumed that Trump actually knows that the plural of ''apprentice'' is ''apprentices'' and not ''apprenti''. An old joke involves a slightly tipsy professor who orders a ''martinus'' instead of a ''martini'', because "If I wanted more than one, I would ask for it in the plural."
Yet more hypercorrection deals with the pronunciation of the ''-es'' plural forms of certain English nouns. Although the most common way of pluralizing a noun in English is to add ''-s'' or ''-es'' to the end of the singular form, there are many exceptions. One such exception involves some words whose singular forms end in ''-is'' and the plurals of which are formed simply by the ''replacement'' of ''-is'' with ''-es'': e.g., ''crisis'' and ''crises'', or ''neurosis'' and ''neuroses''. The standard pronunciation of such plurals has the final syllable equivalent to the sound of the English word ''ease'' [iːz]. Yet some speakers use the same ''ease'' [iːz] pronunciation for the ''-es'' endings of nouns whose plurals are formed in the ''ordinary'' way, by the ''addition'' of ''-es'': e.g., ''processes'' (plural of ''process''). The correct pronunciations of words such as ''processes'' and ''biases'' have the final syllable equivalent to that of ''houses'' and ''witches'': .
Room for confusion exists in some homographic plurals, where the final "-es" pronunciation depends on the word's meaning. For example, ''axes'' is pronounced for the plural of ''axis'', but for the plural of ''axe''. The pronunciation of ''bases'' similarly depends on whether its singular is ''basis'' or ''base''. Hypercorrective replacement of with in plurals may result partly from confusion over these homographs.
Semantic hypercorrection
An example of hypercorrecting a word rather than a pronunciation is found when law students—who have absorbed the idea that one should always say "British" rather than "English" (e.g., "the King of England"), so as not to exclude Welsh, Scots, Northern Irish, etc.—balk at using the term "English law". However, legally this term is quite correct, since Scotland, the Isle of Man, and (to a lesser extent) Northern Ireland have legal systems separate from that of England and Wales. It is correct, in some cases, to speak of "British law", but usually "English law" will be more accurate (unless the topic of discussion is Scottish, Manx, or Northern Irish law).
Hyperforeignism
When pronunciation and spelling of foreign loan words are erroneously based on rules that apply to ''other'' foreign words, but not to those in question, the phenomenon is called 'hyperforeignism'. The following are examples.
French words
Non-native French speakers may erroneously omit the last consonant in ''Vichyssoise'' , in the chess term '', and in ''. Those who know a little French omit the final ''s'' in ''fleur-de-lis'' although it is pronounced by the French, as well as in many French proper nouns such as Saint-Saëns, Boulez, and Berlioz, among many others which do not adhere to standard rules of French pronunciation.
''Forte'', meaning a person's strong point, is now usually pronounced with two syllables, under the influence either of the Italian musical term ''forte'' or of the many French loan words ending in ''é''. This meaning was originally a metaphor drawn from fencing: the forte of the blade is its thick part, and the foible is the thin part. (In fencing context, it is still pronounced "fort".) The term is derived from French, where the equivalent word, in both the "strength" and the fencing meanings, is spelled ''fort'' and pronounced , i.e., with a silent ''t''.
Many native speakers of American English pronounce the word ''lingerie'' as , excessively depressing the first vowel to sound more like a "typical" French nasal vowel, and rhyming the final syllable with English ''ray'', by analogy with the many French loanwords ending in ''-é''(''e''), ''-er'', ''-et'', and ''-ez''. A closer English approximation of the native French would be .
Those who know a little French pronounce words such as ''Sartre'' as /sart/, although the French actually pronounce a short voiceless after the ''t''. This even extends to words such as ''Louvre'', which among some English speakers becomes /luv/.
''Jejune'' or is often taken to be a French word and pronounced 'je jeune' although it is in fact Latin in origin.
Spanish and Italian words
The English pronunciation of the French ''-ez'' has been misapplied to Ruy López, the name of a Spanish priest used eponymously in chess, more properly approximated . Similarly, ''enchilada'' can be heard as .
Some English-speakers pronounce ''machismo'' as on the analogy of other learned or foreign-derived words in which ''ch'' is rendered in English: for example, ''architect'', or ''masochism''. The Spanish ''ch'' in ''machismo'' is properly pronounced in the same way as ''ch'' in English ''chair'' . In ''machete'' and the surname ''Chavez'' the ''ch'' is often mistakenly given a "sh" sound.
Regarded as especially undesirable is pronouncing word with a semi-English, semi-foreign pronunciation at the same time. Some English-speakers wanting to sound Spanish have been known to pronounce ''junta'' like "hunte(r)".
The word '' is pronounced in Italian, but, in musical context (mezzo soprano, mezzo forte), is often rendered or by speakers from other linguistic backgrounds. (In Italian, "z" is indeed pronounced "ts" in some words, but "mezzo" is not one of them.)
English-speakers often pronounce Italian ''bruschetta'' with a "sh" instead of a "sk", through misunderstanding of the role of "h" in Italian or pronouncing the "sch" cluster as if it were German. The "sch" in Maraschino and in the brand-name ''Freschetta'' get the same treatment. Similarly the z in (Spanish) ''chorizo'' or Ibiza is often pronounced with a "ts" instead of a "th" (as it is in Castilian Spanish) or "ss" (as it is in Southern Spain or South America), possibly by confusion with Italian or German.
English-speakers often pronounce the "i" after "g" in words like ''Giovanni'' and ''Parmigiano Reggiano'', wheras Italians do not, the "i" serving purely to indicate that the "g" is soft, not hard.
Greek words
The word ''aphelion'' can be hypercorrected to "ap-helion" by analogy with its antonym perihelion, but it is correct to take the "ph" as an "f" sound as usual, because the ''ap(o)-'' becomes ''aph-'' before a vowel with rough breathing (transliterated as "h") — the Greek is αφήλιον.
Due to the fact that American English spelling has, in many cases, dropped a vowel from many Greek diphthongs, hypercorrection will often occur in some words of Greek origin but not in others from the same root or diphthong. For example, one will hear "pediatrician/paediatrician" and "orthopedic/orthopaedic" pronounced differently form "pedophile/paedophile" (Greek παιδί), and "phoenix" pronounced differently from "Edipus/Oedipus".
Words from Asian languages
Some English-speakers mispronounce ''Beijing'' with , even though the Mandarin Chinese sound represented by the ''j'' in Pinyin is closer to the English ''j'' (that is, ). Similarly, the ''j'' in the name of the Taj Mahal is often rendered , though a closer approximation to the Hindi/Urdu sound is . (''J'' in most other Roman-alphabet spellings of words associated with languages of India is best approximated .)
Another example is the pronunciation of ''Punjab'' as ; in the Anglo-Indian spelling convention, Hindi's neutral vowel is represented by the letter ''u'' with a sound similar to that of the ''u'' in English ''cup'' .
Diacritics
Hypercorrection arises in the use of diacritics in words from foreign languages. For example, ''habañero peppers'' is a misapplied analogy with ''jalapeño''; the standard Spanish spelling has no tilde—''habanero''. The Italian word ''grande'' is sometimes spelled ''grandé'' by English-speakers—in some cafés, for example. It is also possible that the acute accent is used specifically to induce readers to pronounce the word at least semi-correctly, as instead of or . Unintentional misuse of diacritics should not, however, be confused with intentional misuse, or use without concern for traditional function, as in the heavy-metal umlaut.
Hyperforeignism for comic effect
Use of the ironic term "par-tay" for "party" is a hyperforeignism that mockingly reverses the tendency to pronounce French-derived words ending in "-ée" (eg, "enchantée" is ) to rhyme with English "see" rather than "say". A similar example is pronouncing the name of the department store Target as "Tar-zhay", as if it were an upscale French retailer.
The silent 't' in "report" in the title of the parody pundit show ''The Colbert Report'' is a hyperforeignism used for comedic effect. It is also an allusion to the actual English word (which is a French loanword) "rapport" (pronounced "ra-pour") meaning "close personal relationship." The pronunciation of "Colbert" as the French "Col-bear" [kɔl.ˈbɛːʀ] as opposed to the Americanized "Col-bert" [ˈkɔl.bɝt] where the t is pronounced is also a hyperforeignism.
In Oxford during the late 1980s it was common to hear the bookshop Blackwells referred to as something akin to "Blah-wées" on the logic that the clutter of consonants sounded far too low born for an Oxford institution. Similarly certain newly genteel South London suburbs were jocularly re-named "Clahm", "Ba-TER-zee-a", "St. Ockwell" and the like.
In other languages
West South Slavic languages
The syllables ''je'' and ''ije'' appear in Croatian, Bosnian, and Montenegrin speech where Serbian has only variation in quality (length of the vowel) of ''e''. Not every Serbian ''e'' becomes ''je'' or ''ije'' like in the other West Balkan countries. Serbian speakers may hypercorrect their dialect by either undersupplying or oversupplying the ''je''s and the ''ije''s.
Russian language
In native Russian words, most consonants undergo palatalization before so-called "soft vowels" (or one could say these vowels are written after palatalized consonants). However, many loanwords in Russian (mostly coming from English and French) that contain the Russian letter "е" (IPA:), do not follow this rule, because the letter э, representing a nonpalatalized e, is only supposed to be written either at the beginning of a word, or after another vowel (as in Aeroflot). Here are some examples:
★ busi''n''ess →
★ in't'erview →
★ mo'd'ern →
★ e'n'ergy →
★ cock't'ail →
★ mo'd'el →
★ chau'ss'é →
★ ca'f'é →
However the bold consonants in these words are sometimes palatalized by native speakers, which is regarded as a solecism and a shibboleth. Other loanwords with this feature, such as te'nn'is (тен'н'ис), have been more firmly embedded in native Russian speakers with non-palatalized pronunciation, and are almost never mispronounced. Other loanwords swing both ways, such as 's'exual ('с'ексуальный). However, sources may vary depending on their level of prescriptivism. Examples of hyperforeignisms are found in Russian when loanwords (commonly older loanwords) contain consonants that should be palatalized. Yet some speakers, emphasizing the foreign quality of the word, do not palatalize them. For example: 'th'eme (), 't'echnical (), ''t''ext (), mu's'eum (), ga'z'ette () and e'ff'ect ().
Chinese languages
Modern Cantonese is currently undergoing a phonological shift, one of the changes being the dropping of the initial ''ng-'' (IPA: ) consonant to a null initial. For instance, the word (''ngaa4'', meaning "tooth"), ends up being pronounced ''aa4'' (Note: Cantonese romanization provided using Jyutping). Prescriptivists tend to consider these changes as substandard and denounce them for being "lazy sounds" (懶音).
However, in a case of hypercorrection, some speakers have started pronouncing words that should have a null initial using an initial ''ng-'', even though according to historical Chinese phonology, only words with ''Yang'' tones (which correspond to tones 4, 5, and 6 in Cantonese) had voiced initials (which includes ''ng-''). Words with ''Yin'' tones (1, 2, and 3) historically should have unvoiced or null initials. Because of this hypercorrection, words such as (''oi3'', meaning "love"), which has a ''Yin'' tone, are pronounced by speakers with an ''ng-'' initial, ''ngoi3''.
Speakers of some accents of Mandarin, particularly in the south of China and in Taiwan, pronounce the retroflex initials zh-, ch- and sh- as the alveolar initials z-, c- and s-. Such speakers may hypercorrect by pronouncing words that should start with z-, c- and s- as if they started with their retroflex counterparts. In Taiwan, under the influence of Taiwanese (Min Nan), many people pronounce the initial f- as h-, and often hypercorrect by pronouncing the initial h- as f-. This is also noticeable in the Hakka population, where many words that begin in h- in Mandarin and Taiwanese begin in f- in Hakka. (Examples: , )
German
In German, the dialect spoken in the city of Düsseldorf and its surroundings heavily features 'ch' sounds where a standard German calls for 'sch' sounds. Speakers with this accent would say 'Fich' instead of '' (fish), and 'Tich' instead of '' (table). This is due to a hypercorrection of the Rhineland accent prevalent in that area of Germany, an accent that replaces many 'ch' sounds with 'sch' sounds, making for a colourful accent often considered simple or vulgar by speakers of standard German. Attempting to avoid this error, speakers of the Düsseldorf accent hypercorrect it to an abundance of 'ch' .
Another example is use of the genitive case where the dative case is required. Colloquially, the genitive is often dropped in favor of the dative even if correct grammatical usage demands the genitive. Because language critics deride such substitution, many German speakers use the genitive even with prepositions that actually demand the dative (e.g., '', '', ''), seemingly under the false impression that the genitive is always right and the dative is always wrong, or at least that the genitive is a better form of the dative.
Hebrew and Yiddish
Careful Hebrew speakers are taught to avoid the colloquial pronunciation of (''bediyyuq'', "exactly") as . Many speakers accordingly pronounce (''lihyot'', "to be") as if it were spelled "lehiyyot" (), though there is no grammatical justification for doing so.
Hypercorrection can work in both directions. It is well known that the vowel ''qamatz gadol'', which in the accepted Sephardic pronunciation is rendered as , becomes in Ashkenazi Hebrew (and therefore in Yiddish). Many older British Jews therefore consider it more colloquial and "down-home" to say "Shobbes", "cholla" and "motza", though the vowel in these words is in fact a ''patach'', which is rendered as in both Sephardi and Ashkenazi Hebrew.
The consistent pronunciation of all forms of ''qamatz'' as , disregarding ''qatan'' and ''chataf'' forms, could also be seen as a hypercorrection, when Ashkenazic Hebrew speakers attempt to pronounce Sephardic Hebrew. (e.g. , "midday" as "''tzaharayim''", rather than "''tzohorayim''" as in standard Israeli pronunciation; proper Sephardi pronunciation is "''tzahorayim''")
Other hypercorrections occur when speakers of Sephardic Hebrew attempt to pronounce Ashkenazi Hebrew. The month of Shevat () is mistakenly pronounced "Shvas", as if it were spelled
★ שְׁבַת. In an attempt to imitate Polish and Lithuanian dialects, ''qamatz'' (both ''gadol'' and ''qatan''), which would normally be pronounced , is hypercorrected to the pronunciation of ''cholam'', , rendering ("large") as ''goydl'' and ("blessed") as ''boyrukh''.
Latin
In the Middle Ages, the spelling of Latin was simplified in various respects: for example, ''ae'' and ''oe'' became ''e'', and ''ch'' became ''c''. Occasionally these changes were reversed, and ''e'' and ''c'' were sometimes expanded to ''ae'' (or ''oe'') and ''ch'', even when such spelling contradicted Classical Latin. For example, '' was contracted to ''celum'' and re-expanded to ''coelum''. These spellings are often preserved in English derivatives, including '' and '' (occasionally found as variants for ''et cetera''); '' (originally ''fetus''); '', from ''lachryma'' (a false Hellenisation, originally '', "a tear"); and ''schedule'', from ''schedula'' (originally ''scedula'').
Swedish
An example of hyperforeignism in Swedish is the common use of "chevré" in "chevré[ost]" for "chèvre cheese", which is quite different from the original French "".
Similarly "Entrecôte", is also often spelled "Entrecoté", yet more often than not pronounced without the ending "t" sound.
Norwegian
The French "Entrecôte" and "Pommes frites" more often than not is pronounced without the ending "t" sound.
Bulgarian
In standard Bulgarian and in the eastern dialects, the old yat letter is pronounced as ''я'' ("ya") when stressed and the following syllable does not contain the vowels ''и'' ("i") or ''е'' ("e"), and pronounced as ''е'' in all other cases. But in the western dialects it is always pronounced as ''е''. Attempting to speak correctly, some speakers from Western Bulgaria mispronounce many words containing the yat letter - ''голями'' ("golyami"), ''желязни'' ("zhelyazni"), ''бяли'' ("byali"), ''видяли'' ("vidyali"), ''спряни'' ("spryani"), ''живяли'' ("zhivyali") instead of ''големи'' ("golemi"), ''железни'' ("zhelezni"), ''бели'' ("beli"), ''видели'' ("videli"), ''спрени'' ("spreni"), ''живели'' ("zhiveli"). This trend is especially common with past participles such as ''видяли''.
See also
★ Disputed English grammar
★ List of English words with disputed usage
Notes
1. The Columbia Guide to Standard American English, , Kenneth, Willson, Columbia University Press, ,
2. www.voanews.com
References
★ Labov, William. 1966. "Hypercorrection by the Lower Middle Class as a Factor in Linguistic Change". In ''Sociolinguistics: Proceedings of the UCLA Sociolinguistics Conference, 1964''. William Bright, ed. Pp. 84-113. The Hague: Mouton.
★ Joshua Blau, ''On Pseudo-Corrections in Some Semitic Languages''. Jerusalem: Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities 1970.
This article provided by Wikipedia. To edit the contents of this article, click here for original source.
psst.. try this: add to faves
Featured Companies
| Uniglobe Alliance Travel Ltd | |
| Vacation By V |
Hypercorrection Videos
 | The Pronunciation of Often |
