Brexit

17/1/2017

I notice that the Wikipedia article on Brexit doesn't yet give pronunciation guidance for this word. Is anyone out there counting how many people say /breksIt/ and how many /bregzit/? I get the feeling that the latter is gaining ground within the BBC.

2 Comments

Joe

20/1/2017 12:45:19 pm

I haven't read any quantitative work on the subject, but two places that are good sources for these types of questions are Language Log and Geoff Lindsey's blog. Sure enough, they both do, with nice insights. Here's the link to Geoff's (which has more detail in the post):

http://englishspeechservices.com/words-of-the-week/breksit-bregzit/

And here's the link to Language Log (which has more comments)

http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=26320

I haven't listened enough to the BBC to pick up a trend, but if /bregzɪt/ is becoming more common, is that because it becomes less of a blend as it becomes an established concept (like brunch?). Then again, Wells showed 55/45 preference for /eksɪt/ over /bregzɪt/ among British speakers so could this just variation that has always been there? How do those same BBC speakers pronounce "exit"?

Peter

20/1/2017 05:10:41 pm

Thanks for the links. Good to know that this is being watched!

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A blog that discusses problems in Wikipedia's coverage of Phonetics

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A blog that discusses problems in Wikipedia's coverage of PhoneticsPeter Roach

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A blog that discusses problems in Wikipedia's coverage of Phonetics

Peter Roach