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Do you put your eggs or your ex in your exit?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 March 2004

MICHAEL BULLEY
MICHAEL BULLEY
Affiliation:
Studied Classics and linguistics at the universities of Edinburgh and London, then spent twenty-odd years teaching Classics in state education in various places in England
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Abstract

THIS ARTICLE is about the pronunciation of intervocalic x in English. I started thinking about it when I realized that in French (a language I am having to improve in, as I now live in France) the x in exercice is pronounced ‘gz’, whereas in the English equivalent it is ‘ks’. In fact, in all French words beginning ‘ex + vowel’ the x is voiced (‘gz’). There are other similar contrasts with English – exécuter, exigence, exosphère. While it might be instructive to compare the pronunciation of intervocalic x among several, or many, connected, or unconnected, languages, that sounds like a long work and I think it is possible to make some sense sticking only to English, with just an occasional glance elsewhere.

Type
Original Article
Information
English Today , Volume 20 , Issue 2 , April 2004 , pp. 63 - 64
Copyright
© 2004 Cambridge University Press

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