Birds and English don’t at all times combine nicely.
As a self-taught birder, I’m accustomed to having my ornithological experience questioned—very accustomed—however instructing English is my occupation. This makes me assured in my understanding of subordinate clauses and punctuation, however that confidence vanishes once I’m reminded of an necessary truth in regards to the language: it’s written and spoken.
Like many birders, I first grew to become aware of all however the most typical yard birds by studying about them. Such birders discover the species talked about in a discipline information or different e book, typically with accompanying photographs or illustrations, and earlier than lengthy they know every hen by identify. It’s solely after they get out within the discipline with different birders that they abruptly understand discipline information entries don’t embrace pronunciations.
The tiny twinge of worry that accompanies talking a hen’s identify for the primary time is one that may be felt even years after the sphere marks have been dedicated to reminiscence. I revisited that worry final spring on a visit to the Pacific Northwest, once I noticed a pair of squat black-and-white alcids diving and resurfacing within the placid waters close to Deception Cross. Although they had been life birds, I knew their species immediately: a pair of winter-plumage Marbled Murrelets.
However once I needed to say “murrelet” aloud to my pal and information Tina, I balked and stated one thing like “mrrrlt.” I used to be seized with panic as a result of I hadn’t actually thought of that first syllable earlier than; does murre have the simple ur sound of fur, or is there extra of a your to it, as in pure? I’d lengthy assumed the previous to be the case, however now that the second of fact was right here, I couldn’t decide to it.
Even now, with a big unabridged dictionary open, telling me to go along with murre as in fur, I really feel unsure. In any case, many English phrases, comparable to route have a number of pronunciations. There are regional variations, too, just like the second a in caramel, which vanishes as you progress north and west. In truth, a dictionary can typically lead me to have even much less confidence that I am saying a hen’s identify proper.
Take, as an illustration, the guillemot. I took French in highschool, so once I see that the guillemot’s identify is a diminutive of the French identify Guillaume (the francophone model of William), I wish to pronounce it with a Gallic aptitude: “GEE ye mo.” It’s the identical method I say guillotine. However, I do know (and my dictionary confirms) that many English audio system don’t pronounce the double L as a Y when discussing beheadings through the French Revolution, so I in all probability shouldn’t be shocked that the seabird is formally “GILL a mott” in English.
Here is one other one: Robyn Hitchcock as soon as sang “On the horizon of the gulls and plovers / She noticed the define of clear lovers.” My Webster’s declares this an ideal couplet, however it additionally says I’m free to rhyme plovers with rovers, which I often do. Why are two variations acceptable? Blame one thing linguists name the Nice Vowel Shift. The o that you simply’d have present in plover in 1300 would have been fashioned again within the throat, making it sound like lover. However inside just a few hundred years, that o moved ahead within the mouth to sound like rover. So, hen names that originated in Europe (together with plover, which comes from Outdated French) can have two or extra English pronunciations, every with a historical past going again centuries.
Are you able to blame a man for indecision?
This difficulty in all probability wouldn’t hassle me so if I had not been referred to as out publicly for mispronouncing an avian identify earlier than: that of the Prothonotary Warbler. Throughout a radio look just a few years again, I discussed how a lot I really like the brilliantly coloured little hen, and some minutes later, the station obtained a name from an Audubon official; he knowledgeable me that I shouldn’t say “professional THON o ta ree,” however somewhat “professional tho NOTE a ree.” I withered behind my microphone and stayed in a state of embarrassment in regards to the topic for a number of days till I returned residence to my dictionary and found that I HAD BEEN RIGHT ALL ALONG.
Not that I maintain any type of grudge in regards to the matter.
However that brings me to my level: It’s, alas, our lot as birders to reside in a state of heightened consciousness, each of the avian life round us and of the chance that another birder will in some unspecified time in the future disagree with us about an ID. (“Sharp-shinned? Naw, that was completely a Cooper’s, dude.”) Thus, on this age of elevated divisiveness, I ask you to assume twice earlier than correcting a fellow birder, to simply accept that there could be multiple appropriate option to pronounce a hen’s identify, and to keep away from making a harsh judgment a couple of speaker who may know a hen intimately, nonetheless she might say its identify.
However please, don’t attempt to inform me it’s “PILE e ated” Woodpecker. Simply, no.
Peter Cashwell is an English instructor, a birder, and the creator of The Verb ‘to Hen’ and Alongside These Strains.
An earlier model of this text contained a photograph of a Gyrfalcon by Darrell Crisp/Audubon Images Awards