A note on pronouncing the word "shew"

[Vort]

FYI, the word "shew", common in the KJV Bible, is merely a Jacobian English spelling variation of the word "show". The two words are pronounced the same. So however you pronounce "show" is how you should pronounce "shew" -- which I would guess is not the way any of us pronounce "shoe", though that appears to be the way many Jacobean-era English who lived near London pronounced it.

 

Apropos of nothing. I learned that in grad school a couple of decades ago, and thought it worth passing on.

Edited October 3, 2015 by Vort

[jerome1232]

I've always had a delima when I hit that word, I also had an internal monologue that carried on after I hit it.

Sometimes I'd go with show, sometimes with shoe. I really didn't know, but know I do.

Thanks Vort!

Edited October 3, 2015 by jerome1232

[Guest LiterateParakeet]

Very cool. I will pronounce it correctly for now on, but you now everyone listening is going to assume I said it wrong, LOL.

[pam]

Thanks.  I've always pronounced it as shoe.  Now to change my way of doing it.  :)  Ugh I hate change.  haha

[David13]

We always thought it funny that Ed Sullivan said shew.  We said show.

Shoo.  Shoe.  No, I can't spell it phonetic.

dc

[The Folk Prophet]

Unlike Pam, I will doggedly continue to purposefully pronounce it "shoe" with a very distinct w (tight-lipped oo) at the end.

[Guest MormonGator]

Thanks! I have a few words I've only read and can't pronounce. It's such a pain!  I want to sound urbane and intelligent then I mispronounce "Pyrrhic" at parties. People laugh at me. 

[Vort]

You mean it isn't PEER-ik?

[mordorbund]

So it's this:

 

 

Not this:

 

[Guest]

Vort, my man.  You are a fountain of information and I learn something new everyday.

 

I, of course, thought shew was the past tense of show as in knew is the past tense of know and drew is a past tense of draw, so of course, I pronounce shew like knew or drew...

 

Now I know.

[Blackmarch]

FYI, the word "shew", common in the KJV Bible, is merely a Jacobian English spelling variation of the word "show". The two words are pronounced the same. So however you pronounce "show" is how you should pronounce "shew" -- which I would guess is not the way any of us pronounce "shoe", though that appears to be the way many Jacobean-era English who lived near London pronounced it.

 

Apropos of nothing. I learned that in grad school a couple of decades ago, and thought it worth passing on.

too late for me lol.

mine is an ewww with a sh at the front of it....

[Vort]

Sometimes I'd go with show, sometimes with shoe. I really didn't know, but know I do.

 

I laughed at your rhyme, but I never gave you props. Consider your props given.

[lonetree]

In my first year university classics class, our professor wrote 'shew' on the blackboard and a student asked him what it was pronounced like. He basically said it was the same as 'show'. Doesn't sound very amusing, but the prof was a big hulking guy with an gently profane approach and thick Irish accent-think he got his degree from Trinity College Dublin. Anyway, thanks for reminding me of that. :) 

[zil]

While we're here, who invented this language?!  With that "ew" on the end, shew should clearly be pronounced like shoo, and so should shoo and shu (my we're redundant); but an e on the end makes the previous vowel long, so shoe should be pronounced show (and so needs an e, making it soe, or we'll have to start pronouncing it suh, and I'm not sure what to do with sew and sue); and show should rhyme with ow(,) and how.

 

And what's up with "rhyme" anyway!?

 

I'm pretty sure the French have something to (tew) do (due) with all this. :)

 

PS: Which should come first when asking an exclamatory question, the ? or the ! ?

[cdowis]

Ye Old Shoppe -- THE old shop.

 

Learned -- learNED (adj)

[zil]

Isn't it "Ye Olde Shoppe"?  (which would have to be pronounced "shope"?)

 

We could follow the English and just go with learnt (though I'm not sure why we need that "a" in there... maybe for the Canadians ::running away:: ).

[Jamie123]

Another thing about the KJV is that when a word is written in italics like this it does not mean that reader should stress the word. It means (so I understand) that the word was inserted by the translator and does not appear in the original Greek/Hebrew.

[Jamie123]

You mean it isn't PEER-ik?

 

Thanks! I have a few words I've only read and can't pronounce. It's such a pain!  I want to sound urbane and intelligent then I mispronounce "Pyrrhic" at parties. People laugh at me. 

 

I always pronounced Pyrrhic to rhyme with "lyric" - maybe I've been saying it wrong all these years.

 

It wouldn't be the first time: for years I only encountered the word "paradigm" in print, and had I ever been called upon to say it I would have probably said something like "para-dijum". A colleague of mine was surprised when I told him how Persephone was pronounced (he had always imagined it was "Persi-fone"). My father tells me that when he was young he used to talk about "Jung" (as in Carl Jung, but pronounced with a hard J) and people would have no clue what he was talking about.

 

On the other hand, what about "quixotic"? For years I imagined that was pronounced "Kee-hotic" (I knew how "Don Quixote" should be pronounced because of the song by Nik Kershaw). I was surprised later to learn that it was actually "quicks-otic".

 

P.S. Another word is "Vigenère". About 3 years ago I was called upon to teach cryptography - a subject I then knew almost nothing about, so I had to bury myself in books for a few months learning about one-time pads, block ciphers and elliptic curves. The first year I taught the class I had no idea that Vigenère is pronounced "vision-air", so I told the students all about the "vig-ner-aye" cipher. Luckily none of them knew how it was pronounced either so I got away with it! 

Edited December 4, 2015 by Jamie123

[Vort]

Ye Old Shoppe -- THE old shop.

 

I have been told that this spelling is due to early typefaces lacking the Old English letters thorn (Þ) and eth (ð), both of which represented the sounds we now use "th" to write. So the letter Y was used in words that required thorn/eth, maybe because it was thought to be visually similar. Lowercase thorn (þ) does bear some resemblance to lowercase y, but to me it looks more like a lowercase p.

 

Learned -- learNED (adj)

 

Which is to say, if you are saying that "the professor learned" something, learned is one syllable (/ˈlərnd/), while if you are talking about "the learned professor", learned is two syllables (/ˈlərnəd/).

[Backroads]

I don't pronounce words in my head when I silently read... this is good for when I must speak the word.

[Jamie123]

I have been told that this spelling is due to early typefaces lacking the Old English letters thorn (Þ) and eth (ð), both of which represented the sounds we now use "th" to write. So the letter Y was used in words that required thorn/eth, maybe because it was thought to be visually similar. Lowercase thorn (þ) does bear some resemblance to lowercase y, but to me it looks more like a lowercase p.

 

I've read about that: Greek has the letter "theta" which is supposed to make the same sound as the modern English "th" but Latin has no equivalent and the first printing presses were designed to print Latin. It had supposedly not yet occurred to anyone to use "TH" to represent the "thorn" rune.

 

Until recently that puzzled because "TH" does sometimes appear in Latin : like "thema" (horoscope) and "theatrum" (theatre), but Ilately discovered that the T and H in those words would originally have been sounded separately: t'heatrum or t'hema.

 

But I'm still not totally convinced because Latin has many borrow-words from Greek in which theta has become "TH": like "theologos" (theologian) or the name of the Roman emperor Theodosius.

 

Maybe in Classical times the Greeks would have pronounced theta as "t'h" but it seems unlikely: the "th" sound comes so natural that it's hard to believe no one in those days used it. 

Edited December 4, 2015 by Jamie123

[lonetree]

Just a question: hasn't the new edition of the LDS KJV changed 'shew' to 'show' -and 'bason' to 'basin' among others-? I don't have a copy here but thought I saw something about it.

[Vort]

 

It wouldn't be the first time: for years I only encountered the word "paradigm" in print, and had I ever been called upon to say it I would have probably said something like "para-dijum".

 

I remember a tape I listened to on my mission, a recording of a then-popular lecturer at LDS firesides, which included him talking about a "puh-RID-uh-gum". I had no idea what he was saying. Years later, I realized he was trying to say "paradigm", but apparently had never heard the word pronounced in spoken form (or didn't realize that was the word he was hearing).

 

A colleague of mine was surprised when I told him how Persephone was pronounced (he had always imagined it was "Persi-fone").

 

Imagine my surprise at learning that Epiphone guitars are "Ep-i-fohn", not "e-PI-fohn-ee".

 

My father tells me that when he was young he used to talk about "Jung" (as in Carl Jung, but pronounced with a hard J) and people would have no clue what he was talking about.

 

Ah, yes. Carl, distant cousin to Brigham.

[Guest]

I remember a tape I listened to on my mission, a recording of a then-popular lecturer at LDS firesides, which included him talking about a "puh-RID-uh-gum". I had no idea what he was saying. Years later, I realized he was trying to say "paradigm", but apparently had never heard the word pronounced in spoken form (or didn't realize that was the word he was hearing).

 

Mrs. Carb is very well read.  She has read more real (non-fluff) books than almost anyone I know.  But she doesn't really engage in conversation much, nor does she listen to speeches as much.  So if we're reading together, I found that she has perfect understanding of meanings and definitons. But she mispronounces almost every non-common word.

[Guest]

Many reading the Bible and believe Sabbath and Sabaoth are the same word?