The Strength Question.

[Colmc54]

For over 50 years living in the UK I have been pronouncing strength as 'strenth'. Recently on BBC 4 I have heard the Open University people saying strength with a hard 'g' between the 'stren' and the 'th'.

Have I been guilty of mispronunciation all these years?

[Neocubes]

Yes, it has a G for a reason :P

[Buenchico]

The OED doesn't attribute a particularly hard 'g' to it.

It states that the word is made up of four parts, thus:
str as in 'straw'
ɛ as in 'pet' or 'ten'
ŋ as in the 'ng' found twice in 'singing' or the 'ng' sound in 'think'
θ as the 'th' sound in 'thin' or 'bath'.

[Svejk]

Strenth for me. And I was born here and is a genius..

[naomi24]

To answer this I had to say the word 'strength' aloud several times. Lucky no one's watching! :o)

Yes, there's a definite 'g' in it.

[Svejk]

If I heard someone pronouncing the G in strength I'd put my drink down and move quietly away.
Mind you, I am in Wales and we speak proper here.

[naomi24]

But Svejk, I'm posh. ;o)

[Tilly2]

How do you say length then?

[naomi24]

If you're talking to me, Tilly, there's a 'g' in that too.

[Tilly2]

Sorry, naomi. Yes, I was asking you. I should have used your name. I find it really difficult to pronounce the 'g' in strength and length. I can't think of any more examples at the moment.

[Calibax]

Yes, I would pronounce the 'ng' im strength and length
and the F in Fifth and twelfth which many leave out.

[mikey4444]

I've never really thought about it before but I always use a semi-hard g.

[beso]

In it sposed to be "strenf"? ;)

[modeller]

Is it a North South thing ? Not including London where many have such an aversion to 'th' and 'g's , that they substitute them for 'f' and 'k'.

[Mosaic]

Languages evolve constantly and this is just one example.

Another recent one that I have noticed is 'protest' and 'appeal' being used wothout a qualifying 'against' or 'at'. It's irritating but I reckon it's here to stay.

[jomifl]

I had a colleague from Liverpool who sometimes pronounced 'g' as a 'k' ie. 'somethink' so it isn't a particularly London thing. I also had a London born colleague who said 'strenth' & 'lenth' which always sounded strange to me as he was the only person I can remember omitting the 'g' although I was raised in cockneyland.

[ludwig]

The G isn't hard as such, but is included as per buenchico's extract from the OED..

// ŋ as in the 'ng' found twice in 'singing' or the 'ng' sound in 'think' //

To say 'strenth' is just wrong I think. Like pronouncing TH as F.

Yeh I know language evolves blah di blah blah, etc etc.

[pixie373]

I pronounce it as "ng", so not hard, but it's there.

[ToraToraTora]

there is no hard g but it's there, say "streng" followed by "th" but with no gap.

[dunnitall]

Yes it like length should be s t r e n g t h... Sorry but that's how it should be..all letters sounded.

[jake-the-peg]

Love the way everybody justifies pronounciation based on the way something is written!

There's a g in sign too!

I wonder how they pronounce knight and aisle? perhaps they have a 'pneumonic' that gives them the 'knowledge' to 'condemn'

Think I'll stop now!

For it to be a mispronounciation there would have to be a right way and a wrong way to pronounce it and frankly that's really a matter of the number of people using one pronounciation.

If you're the only one - you're wrong!

But I don't think you are.

Some laguages have handy accents to tell you how to pronounce words but we don't have those in English - I think from what I've heard Hungarian is so heavilly accented that there really is a right way to pronounce pretty much everything

But that would be so dull!