Peter Trudgill, professor of languages:
... also writes regualarly for the New European paper:
And this week he's written on how words change their pronunciation:
PETER TRUDGILL on why we shorten some syllables and not others, such as in privacy and private.
It is an interesting fact about the English language that we pronounce the word naturwith a long ‘a’ whereas we say natural with a short ‘a’. Similarly, while we say grateful with a long ‘a’, gratitude has a short one.
This same sort of alternation between short and long vowels can be found in many other pairs of words, for example cycle and cyclical, impede and impediment, obscene and obscenity, provoke and provocative, profound and profundity.
Linguists call this particular type of alternation between English long and short vowels ‘trisyllabic shortening’ – alluding to the three (or more) syllables of the longer words in pairs like private–privacy.
This rule means that word forms which consist of two syllables, and have a long vowel, change the long vowel to the corresponding short vowel when another syllable (or more) is added.
Trisyllabic shortening is one of the many rules of English pronunciation which all native speakers know and follow automatically. (It is not one of those invented rules which used to be taught in schools, like “You must not start a sentence with and or but” – no one ever explained why not.)
The shortened syllable syndrome | The New European
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Here's Wikipedia with more:
Trisyllabic laxing - Wikipedia
And the English Wiki:
Trisyllabic laxing - English Wiki
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