Bronte Follower: Blog

In English, particularly American English, the construction of vowel-consonant-vowel (VCV) somewhere after the first letter of a word generally makes the first vowel long. Contrast that to vowel-consonant-consonant, in which the vowel is short, regardless of whether the second consonant is followed by a vowel, although, beware of digraphs (see below).

You remember short versus long vowels from elementary-school English classes. Right?

The 'i' in 'dime' is long, the 'i' in 'dim' is short. Any vowel sound that does not say the letter's name is not long. While it might not be short, it is NOT long (although the long 'u' is usually 'ooh,' not 'you' or 'yew').

Yes, this is English I'm discussing, and many of its 'rules' have gobs of exceptions, but it's a good rule to know, as it helps solve a lot of spelling conundra. In fact, I'm betting most English speakers have little or no idea why there are so many short English words that end with 'e.' In fact, the entire reason that words like 'bite' and 'dame' have an ending 'e' is specifically so that the previous vowel is 'forced' to be long, otherwise, they're too readily confused with 'bit' and 'dam.' It's, of course, not all that surprising that the 'i' in 'hypocrite' is NOT long. [eye roll]

In 'general,' a word with two VCV constructions, none of the vowels are long. However, in general, the VCV pronunciation paradigm is a useful indicator of how words are spelled.

One of the (many) problems with VCV involves the 'gh' construction in words that acts as another forcing agent to make the vowel before it long, a feature true of all these:

bight, fight, light, might, night, right, sight, tight,
wight.
-----
This is below: Digraphs are two consonants that, together, form a distinct sound different from either component consonant, such as the ending 'ph' in 'digraph.' In fact, I've always been disappointed that the word 'diphthong' describes two vowels combining to form a sound different from either component of the diphthong, despite that 'diphthong' has THREE digraphs in it! Poor planning!

I've recently been finding the adjective "incredulous" used in places where it was obvious that "incredible" was what was meant. While we currently think of "incredible" as a synonym of "wonderful" or "spectacular," the original meaning was "not credible," that is, "not believable," "in-" being a negating prefix, such as found in inoperable, ineffective, and inordinate.

"Incredulous" is an adjective that describes a person or a person's manner and means that the person is unable to believe something said or done.

Ex.: Tracy was incredulous that Frank whipped it out right there in the grocery store.

Physical things cannot be incredulous. Appearances cannot be incredulous. Actions cannot be incredulous.

uploaded last night.

Somehow, I lost an entire paragraph... plus a bit more between finishing the writing and my final edit after which I posted it. The missing paragraph is not all that critical, but I've rewritten it (and the other bit), fixed some other mistakes and some small flow problems, and put the edited chapter in the queue. I've no idea when it will hit, so....

Enrique wondered into the lingerie store and wandered if his girlfriend's mother would object to him buying her daughter a sexy item or two.

Anyone noting a problem in the above -- unless you're Enrique's girlfriend's mother -- may have noted the confusing of two very similarly spelled words that mean very different things. If you ponder what will happen, you are wondering. If you move semi-aimlessly, you are wandering.

Whether authors here and elsewhere use the wrong word due to simple typing mistakes (and as long as one spells it correctly, spellcheck won't catch it) or because they don't know that there are two different words, I find this mistake frequently.

That's all I wanted to say. Thank you for your attention and have a great day!