Fith??????

Gretchen

So I was reading this article, and apparently, according to Merriam-Webster, the most correct pronunciation of the word "fifth" is "fith" .

WTF?? I have ALWAYS pronounced that second f. Am I looney? 

What about y'all? 

Starmie

I'm with you Gretchen, never heard such a thing!

jeepcurlygurl

I say Fith. I just figured it was a regional pronunciation (like crick instead of creek).

Lotsawaves

I'm the same way Gretchen.  I never heard of this.  I am still trying to understand aks for ask.

Starmie

^Oh, that drives me mad!

Gretchen

RE: "aks" vs "ask"..... do a search on it.  It's actually quite fascinating.... the former is older than the latter, if I recall correctly. I read a book a hundred years ago.... "The Story of English" and it talked about the origin of "ask".... I think it actually started out in middle English as "aks" or "ax"

From Smithsonian magazine: 

"“The people who use the ax pronunciation are using the pronunciation that has been handed down, in an unbroken form, for a thousand years,” says Jesse Shiedlower from the American Dialect Society to NPR.

“It is not a new thing; it is not a mistake,” he says. “It is a regular feature of English.”

Sheidlower says you can trace “ax” back to the eighth century. The pronunciation derives from the Old English verb “acsian.” Chaucer used “ax.” It’s in the first complete English translation of the Bible (the Coverdale Bible): ” ‘Axe and it shall be given.’

"Scissors" is another word that got changed along the way. It was originally spelled without the "c" and some knucklehead added it in there and it stuck.