Mispronunciations

“Ten-gallon hat”

Foreign Languages, Mispronunciations, Outsider's Perspective

This term has generated at least two plausible speculations about its origin.

Contrary to the first impression at hearing or reading the term, a ten-gallon hat does not hold ten gallons. Such a hat would best befit a clown, not a cowboy.

No, “ten-gallon” does not refer to the internal volume of the hat.

Instead, there are at least two possible origins to the term.

Both origins are from Spanish, both origins relate to distinguishing this type of hat from a sombrero, and both origins represent the effect of an outsider’s perspective in hearing a foreign-language term and corrupting it into something in the listener’s native tongue (in this case, English).

The first possible origin is based on the idea that a “ten-gallon hat” is for the upper classes, in contrast to the lowly sombrero for the lower classes. Upper-class cowboys were considered to be more gallant than commoners. The phrase “so gallant” in English is expressed as “tan galán” in Spanish.

If you “squint your ears” at the sound of “tan galán”, you easily could get “ten gallon” in English.

The second possible origin is based on the fact that a vaquero — Spanish for “cowboy” — would be awarded for cowboy expertise a narrow band, often braided, around the crown of the hat. Ten of these narrow bands on one hat represented the ultimate in cowboy skills. The Spanish word “galón” refers to such a band; “galones” is the plural of this word.

A non-Spanish-speaking, native-English-speaking listener could easily misinterpret “galones” into “gallons”.

The other meaning of “galón” is, in fact, “gallon”, so a native-English speaker with a knowledge of this primary definition of “galón” could easily interpret “diez galones” as “ten gallons” instead of “ten bands”.

“Dipthong”

Mispronunciations, Misspellings, Nouns

I heard someone say this the other day.

Problem:
This is a mispronunciation that often is tied to a misspelling.

Explanation:
The correct noun is “diphthong” — spelled D-I-P-H-T-H-O-N-G — which dates back to the mid-1400s and means a monosyllabic, gliding speech sound that varies continuously but that is considered to be a single phoneme.

The word “diphthong” is formed from the prefix “di”, which means two, and the Greek word “phthongos”, which means voice or sound.

Examples of diphthongs include the vowel combination at the end of “toy” and the vowel combination in “boil”.

I believe that the mispronunciation of “diphthong” could come from misspelling it as D-I-P-T-H-O-N-G because it is extremely rare in English to have P-H followed by T-H.

Or the misspelling of “diphthong” could come from the mispronunciation of it, again because of the rarity in English of having P-H followed by T-H.

The correct pronunciation is obtained by recognizing that P-H in “diphthong” has an F sound.

For fun, I searched Google for each of the following (with the quotation marks, to avoid variations) and got about the indicated numbers of matches:

  • “diphthong” — spelled D-I-P-H-T-H-O-N-G — 224,000 matches
  • “dipthong” — spelled D-I-P-T-H-O-N-G — 25,700 matches

This tells me that Web authors have favored the correct spelling over the incorrect spelling by a ratio of 8.72-to-1, which is not very good.

Solution:
“Diphthong”

“Hyperchondria”

Mispronunciations, Misspellings, Nouns

I hear or see this occasionally.

Problem:
This is a mispronunciation or misspelling of a valid noun.

Explanation:
The valid noun is “hypochondria” — spelled H-Y-P-O-C-H-O-N-D-R-I-A.

This noun means excessive concern about one’s health, especially focusing on symptoms that could be due to cardiac or gastric problems.

The noun “hypochondria” exemplifies the value of knowing the roots of words in the English language.

The “chondria” portion of the noun refers to ensiform cartilage — that is, to sword-shaped or xiphoid cartilage, which relates to the lowermost segment of the three segments that comprise the sternum.

The “hypo” portion of the noun means under or below.

Knowing these two roots makes it easy to understand how the noun “hypochondria” refers in particular to cardiac or gastric problems.

So replacing “hypo” with “hyper” produces a nonsense word. Whatever is over or above the xiphoid cartilage is outside the body and therefore could not refer to gastric or cardiac problems.

For fun, I searched Google for each of the following (with the quotation marks, to avoid variations) and got about the indicated numbers of matches:

  • “hypochondria” — spelled H-Y-P-O-C-H-R-O-N-D-R-I-A — 456,000 matches
  • “hyperchondria” — spelled H-Y-P-E-R-C-H-R-O-N-D-R-I-A — 1,760 matches

This tells me that Web authors have favored the correct word over the incorrect word by a ratio of 259-to-1, which is excellent.

Solution:
“Hypochondria”