How should we pronounce 'router'?

[frazerd]

In the world of PC's and computers I am constantly told about 'routers' but find 2 different pronunciations abound - rowter and rooter. Are both correct?

[Booldawg]

rooter in the the UK and rowter in the USA. I work with Americans and I always cringe when they say 'rowt' or 'rowter'.

[jackthehat]

Rooter is 'English', if you like
Rowter is more 'American'...............(esp. Canadian, they pronounce 'route' as 'rowte')

Mine is a rooter..............:o)

[jno]

I wonder how Australians say it, consdiering what they think a root is...

[fredpuli47]

Americans commonly pronounce route 'raut/rowt' as well as 'root' .Which is used may be regional or personal practice. British English has it as 'root' .Unless you want to sound American 'router' is 'rooter' because it's something which provides a route. The carpentry tool, router, is pronounced 'rauter' in British as is the obsolete word router for someone who takes part in a rout , a form of riot. (The tool is from rout 'to dig out' and the rioter from rout meaning a disorderly mob, not from 'route', which explains the different pronunciation )..

[Quizmonster]

Our word, route, meaning a way, first appeared in English in the 13th century and for the next half millennium here in British speech it was pronounced rowt. The Americans were the people who KEPT the original sound and WE who changed it! Perhaps THEY should be cringing when they hear US use the root pronunciation, eh?

[jno]

Quizmonster, why did the English pronounce it rowt if it came from French? Perhaps the French pronunciation at the time was also rowt but the word appears to have come from rute, which looks as if could have only one sound (apologies for my total lack of Old French, though).

[fredpuli47]

Trust you to notice that QM ! [rolls eyes]. Can't help it if some Americans prefer the obsolete pronunciation . Not all do. Some have progressed.Some, on the other hand, say 'gotten' and 'faucet' so they may be beyond help.

[Quizmonster]

Yes, J, it came from Old French rute but the usual spelling here was rout and so pronounced. It retained that sound until at least the early 19th century, as certain poems from the time make clear...ie they wouldn't have rhymed if pronounced root.

I wanted to make the point, Fred, that some of us seem to delight in claiming to be horrified by American spellings and pronunciations. One of the classics is aluminum. That is the name Humphry Davy gave the blessed stuff - after toying with alumium - and it was only the editor of a British scientific journal who decided it really had to be aluminium with an extra 'i'. If the guy who discovers something isn't allowed the right to give it a name, who on earth is?
Again the Yanks stuck with the original only to have Brits constantly whining about it!

[Quizmonster]

Oh, I meant to add, Fred, that as kids in the north-east of Scotland...many decades ago in my case!...we used 'gotten' all the time! "Hiv ye gotten 'e new Beano?" Today's youngsters up there may very well still do so, I don't know. The point is that 'gotten' was certainly in daily use in Britain within living memory.

[jno]

thanks, Quizmonster. Does this suggest the French pronounced it rowt too? I imagine in those days - unless it was an especially scholarly word, which it may have been - the pronunciation, rather than the spelling, would be the first element to cross the Channel?

[Booldawg]

Quiz is right. Several years ago I read a very good Bill Bryson book whereby he goes in depth into loads of words that Americans have kept the originally pronunciation of and the British have changed.

It is beleived that the American accent was how we spoke around the time of the Pilgrim Fathers and we've changed our accent in an attempt to 'posh' ourselves up, This is due to a more rigid social class system which existed in Britian up to not many years ago.

[heathfield]

The Americans changed their pronunciation in or around the 1960s. Up until then the word 'route' was pronounced 'root'. Proof of the 'root' pronunciation occurs in Nat King Cole's 1946 hit record '(Get your kicks on) Route 66'.Later cover versions of the song stuck to Cole's pronunciation. Present-day Americans are generally surprised when this is pointed out to them.

[brionon]

Who are yoy asking ? That's the question. There is NO Official English !

[fredpuli47]

The Americans may not have changed their pronunciation of route after 1960.It may simply be that some use one pronunciation and others the other and that has been so for the last 200 years or more. Being America, nobody worries !

[jno]

big country, America, with different pronunciations - like Britain (though generally less marked, despite the much larger spread and population). In Alaska I've heard buoy pronounced booey - nowhere else.

[heathfield]

Jno - every Louisana red-neck I've ever met while working offshore says 'booeey' for 'bouy'. They also talk about being 'on tpwer', meaning 'on tour' as in 'tour of duty'

[heathfield]

Oops. For 'tpwer', read 'tower'. All thumbs today. ;-)

[sophie_1003]

With regards to wireless routers (I say root by the way as rowt really annoys me, even if it was the original way!) is 'rowters' being used because America had the technology before it came to Britain and therefore when it was sold over here it was by Americans who pronounced it 'their' way and this just spread? Just a theory!

[AlBags]

But "roWter" is the correct pronunciation for the woodworking tool.
"roOter" is universally accepted now as the networking device.