why is Wednesday pronounced as wensday???

Question

are you telling me that it should be pronounced as written?? I heard a English teacher (NATIVE)correcting a child when he pronounced it as written...

Answer 1

The written records show that the history of this word was rather messy. Apparently the pronunciation varied through the centuries and from one dialect to another. (And to this day there are some dialects in which the 'd' can still be heard. Some of this is documented in the Oxford English Dictionary.)

A couple of obervations and suggestions:
1) SPELLING
We retained the spelling with 'd' either because dialects that pronounced it were dominant (or at least 'won out' on this point) OR from the desire of teachers and grammarians to preserve some of the ROOT form of the word ("Wodens-die" and the like) even when it was no longer pronounced (something scholarly sorts have OFTEN done, at times even inserting unpronounced letters "back" into words they believed had come from a particular root). OR maybe is was some of each.

But though the "d" won in the SPELLING fight, "wensday" won the PRONUNCIATION battle.

2) PRONUNCIATION
At least one of the written forms listed in the OED is wendesdei (from ca. 1275). This inversion of letters (called "metathesis") to simplify the pronounciation is another common occurrence in spoken language. Compare the word "comfortable" which is widely pronounced as "comfterbl" or even [losing the r entirely"comtubl"].

Notice that these sorts of changes -- loss of middle sounds, esp. vowels (called "syncope" or "elision") and metathesis -- are very common in the UN-accented syllables of longer words.

At any rate, a pronunciation "Wendesday" > "Wendsday" is very easy to understand. And note that if you can scarcely hear a difference between "wends" and "wens". That's because the d an z-sounding s are both voiced AND pronounced at the same point in the mouth. [Cf. how "scents" and "sense" sound the same, despite the T in the first.]

Answer 2

It was originally Wodnes daeg (old English, descended from Germanic) - named after the Germanic God Woden (Odin). The change in the pronounciation and spelling would have been gradual, but one can easily imagine it quite easily becoming Wod'nsday - not a million miles away. I assume that the odd spelling came about because people were still pronouncing the D in the letter when spelling was standardised. This sort of thing is quite common and its use in poetry is often used by linguists to discover what words used to rhyme with each other and therefore how they were pronounced. For instance in Shakespeare's first sonnet the words die and memory rhyme - making it plausible that memory used to be pronounced with the y as a Y or I; not an E

Answer 3

For the same reason that "nuclear" is pronounced as "nucular," "ask" is pronounced as "axe," "height" is pronounced as "heith," and many more. People are sloppy in their pronunciation or havbe never been taught better.

After a while the new pronunciation is accepted but the old spelling often remains....this has been happening to the English Language since the Battle of Hastings in 1066.

Answer 4

The normal pronunciation in standard British English is /wensdei/ or /wendsdei/. A few (older) speakers say /wednsdei/. This pronunciation will die out quite soon.

You asked why ... this is how it happened:

/wednesdei/ > /wednsdei/ (by elision of unstressed /e/) >
/we(n)nsdei/ (by progressive assimilation of [d] to [n]) >
(in some varieties) /wendsdei/ (by epenthesis of [d] to facilitate transition between [n] and [s])

Answer 5

Just like with other words, people get lazy & start pronouncing words differently than the original.

Answer 6

Not by me - I pronounce it WED_NES_DAY.

Others don't for the same reason why people say SAM-WIDGE for sandwich. It's easier to say.

Answer 7

Thats a mis-pronunciation. It should be wed-nez-day.

Answer 8

Isn't it actually Woden's Day?

I usually call it "very late Tuesday". :)

Answer 9

wedding next day?

Answer 10

because there cool like that