After several weeks writing about old words that are dying out, let me talk about one that was dead and buried, but, god-like, rose from the grave to live among us once again. Actually, it’s not a word, but rather the pronunciation of that word. So here’s the question for you: do you pronounce the “T” in “often” or is it silent? Both pronunciations are widely used today and both appear in dictionaries. But is one more correct than the other?
To answer that, let’s go back to 1880. In Gilbert and Sullivan’s “Pirates of Penzance,” — which I had the privilege of directing at both High Mowing School in Wilton and the Raylynmor Opera Company in Keene — the pirates are all orphans and have a soft spot in their hearts for other orphans. So when they’re about to run off with the daughters of a certain Major-General Stanley, there is this exchange:
Maj. General: Have you ever known what it is to be an orphan?
Pirate King: Often.
Maj. General: Yes, orphan. Have you ever known what it is to be one?
Pirate King: I say, often.
Maj. General: I don’t think we quite understand one another. I ask you if you have ever known what it is to be an orphan and you say “orphan.” As I understand it, you are merely repeating the word “orphan” to show that you understand me.
Pirate King: I didn’t repeat the word often … I repeated it only once.
Those who pronounce the T must wonder why there is any confusion, because those two words don’t sound alike at all. But if you drop the T in “often” and with loss of R in “orphan” in British or New England English, presto — they both become “offen,” and the pun is clear. It’s also clear that everyone must have said it that way in 1880 or it would not have succeeded as a joke. In fact, dictionaries do not record the pronunciation with T as standard until fairly recently. It’s an upstart that is spreading rapidly on both sides of the Atlantic.
“Often” was not in common use until the 16th century. Before that, people used “oft.” The -en ending may have been added because of the influence of its opposite in meaning, “seldom,” which originally ended in N. In the 17th century, the “T” was squeezed out into oblivion after F or S and before -EN, the memory of it lingering only in the spelling. This disappearing-T act was performed by all words of this type, like “listen,” “hasten” and “soften.” The same sound change occurs before L in “castle,” “whistle,” “wrestle,” “hustle” and its boon companion “bustle” — all happily T-less for centuries. You can sometimes hear an erroneous T in “pestle,” but that’s guesswork — pronouncing as spelled for this uncommon word. Why would the T-pronunciation creep back in only for “often,” a word we hear constantly and which at one time everyone pronounced as “offen”?
I think the clue lies in the Dunning-Kruger effect, which says that people with a little bit of knowledge sometimes start thinking they know everything and end up making mistakes. I can only imagine that around 1900, some teacher somewhere — perhaps a choir director — said to themselves, “By golly, there’s a T in there! I better start pronouncing it,” and passed it on to their students, who passed it on to theirs. Like a snowball down a mountain, year after year, it collected more and more adherents — perhaps those fearful of seeming uneducated who hypercorrected their pronunciations in a misguided attempt to emulate their “betters.” Why “often” and not “listen” or “fasten”? We’ll never know. It’s a great mystery, buried in the past.
So here we are, saddled with two pronunciations. I would say that almost 80% of young actors I see in films or series use the T on both sides of the Atlantic. It’s an amazing comeback after 400 years in the tomb of lost consonants. Not just a revival — a resurrection.
But for me, hearing that T in there is like having a pebble in my shoe. I wince when I hear it and long to extract it and send this usurping revenant back to its well-earned grave so that the true pronunciation may proudly take its place beside its only kinsman “soften” in the rhyming dictionary.