Midwifery schism!

[FredPuli43]

Why do we pronounce midwifery 'midWIFFery' and not 'midwife-ree', 'midwife-ery' or even 'midwivery'?

And I was taught that the word schism was 'sizm' [ the 'siz' sounding as in 'scissors'], but there seemed to be no logic to that. Why that pronunciation?

[anneasquith]

pronounced. midwiffery

[Quizmonster]

The change in the pronunciation of 'midwifery' seems to have occurred over the past 20 years, Fred. In the print version of the OED (1980s) the two pronunciations offered were wiff and wife. The more recent, obviously, online OED offers only wiff; however, there are still two versions, as the stress may be put on the first OR second syllable, thus MIDwiffery or midWIFFery. Only Americans nowadays, it seems, still have midWIFEry.

Re schism, both print and online OED versions still offer sizm or skizm, so use whichever appeals to you. I recall an American comedian suggesting that we Brits said shedule rather than skedule because that is how we were taught to say it in shool!

[Jonathan-Joe]

In a word derived from another, the pronounciation of the root part is often different from the original. When the word is longer, we tend to make the vowels shorter so the syllables flow more easily. Say "photograph" then "photography" - the pronounciations of the "o"s in the two words are quite different.
I think the same process is applied to "midwife" and "midwifery" and we just accept that the link to the the root word "wife" is weakened.

[Quizmonster]

Very true, Jon, but I cannot recall a time when there WASN'T a difference between the central letters 'o' in the words photograph and photography. I can, however, easily recall the wiff/wife dichotomy, which simply reinforces my point that dropping one variant is very recent.

[Old_Geezer]

May not be a wife anyway so bit of a misnomer.

[nescio]

Old Geezer,
the "wife" in midwife refers to the woman giving birth.
Midwife means someone who is with a woman (who is giving birth0

[jno]

she still may not be a wife, though. But midgirlfriendery is a bit of a mouthful, and as for midonenightstandery...

[sandyRoe]

I'm surprised that a wiff of pedantry hasn't developed in this thread.

[jno]

incidentally, I've always said skizm and hadn't heard of sizm. Perhaps it is influenced by schizophrenia? (Please don't tell me that should be sizzo...)

Scissors have always been sizzers - the "C" was added to the spelling by mistake by classicists, but has never been pronounced.