#101: Some subtle oddities of the word subtle
A silent b , an altered t sound , and a strange history make the word subtle interesting to learn about!
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Transcript
Hi again, and welcome back to Seattle Learning Academy's American English Pronunciation podcast. My name is Mandy, and this is our 101st episode.
Today I'm going to talk about the word subtle , s-u-b-t-l-e. We can use the word subtle to learn a couple of different things about pronunciation, and a bit about the history of English. If you're not familiar with the word subtle, it's a useful vocabulary word to know. It's an adjective that means a very tiny change or small difference. An example sentence is:
There is a subtle difference between the short o and aw sound (short o, aw sound).
The first interesting thing about the pronunciation of the word subtle is that silent b in the middle of the word, s-u-b-t-l-e. Why is that b there? And do any other words follow a similar pattern of a silent b ?
Let's start with why it's there. It's there because, hundreds of years ago, some people who thought they were very smart decided it should be there. According to the Etymology Online Dictionary, the word subtle entered English around the year 1300, from the Old French word sutil . At that time, the letter b was absent from the spelling and everything made sense.
Then, the Etymology Online Dictionary says something that I don't completely agree with. They report that the letter b was added to the word subtle because of confusion with another word, subtile , which we got from the Old French word, subtil .
I can see the relationship between those words, and that is a reasonable explanation. But I think another common theory is also plausible. The word subtle entered the English language during the time of Middle English. By the time early Modern English was born in the late 1400's, Latin had emerged as the language of the educated class and some English words began look more like their Latin origins, even though the words did not travel straight from Latin to English. Many of these words came to English from French; the French speakers, not the English speakers, borrowed the words from Latin. This really messed some words up, because the pronunciation was based on the French pronunciation, and only the spelling became like Latin.
I believe this theory of the Latinizing of the word subtle because that word is not the only word that gained a silent b . Two other words that were messed up by the scholars were the words debt d-e-b-t, and doubt , d-o-u-b-t. Neither of those words have a b sound either.
Encyclopedia.com states that the letter b was not only added back into English, but that French originally also adopted the spelling change. By the 18th century, however, they smartly dropped the silent b in dette , and doute , and decided to begin pronouncing it in subtil . This, I think is where the Etymology Online Dictionary found the confusion with the word subtile . Again, French confused things for English!
Your first lesson of this podcast, then, is that you can be confident in dropping the b sound from the words subtle , debt , and doubt . In fact, pronouncing the b sound is wholly incorrect.
Let's put aside the background of the word subtle and quickly talk about the other interesting aspect of its pronunciation. The letter t of the word subtle is not pronounced as a true t sound . It's pronounced as a quick d sound . Remember, this change happens to the t sound when it occurs after a vowel or r sound and before a vowel, r sound , or l sound . Since the letter b is silent in the word subtle , the t sound now finds itself between the short u vowel sound, and an l sound . This means, that in the North America, that t sound becomes a quick d sound .
Cambridge American Dictionary Online is now my favorite dictionary for checking transcription because they show this altered t sound . For words whose t sound is pronounced as a quick d sound , they provide a symbol of the letter t with a little curved line below it. The Merriam-Webster dictionary does not show the altered transcription, but they do pronounce it that way in the audio file. If only I could find a dictionary that had it all!
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