Follow/Follee
Wild Word Friday again! Today’s word is FOLLOW, well not really follow, but follee. That’s the way my 91-year-old father-in-law says follow. He also pronounces swallow as swallee and hollow as hollee. As in, “I tried to follee the rabbit into the hollee, but he was gone before you could swallee twice.”
For years I assumed his pronunciation to be one of those childhood aberrations, like pronouncing spaghetti as pasghetti. Until I heard his 92-year-old first cousin also pronounce follow as follee. Ah, we had a family mystery. Why this particular pronunciation? I began to do a little sleuthing and came up with something that amazed me. The Middle English pronunciation of follow is follwe (follwen, to follow). And yes, swallow is swallwe, and hollow is hollwe.
Middle English was spoken between the late eleventh century through the fourteenth century. Imagine! How was such ancient word usage passed down for centuries within one branch of the Yorkshire Harrison family? Living history! I love it!
Q4U: Have you noticed any unusual word usage or pronunciation in your family?
My family has some unusual pronunciations. My father is not a native English speak though he does speak it very fluently. For much of my life I noticed that pronouncing the letter “h” was quite an effort for him. For years I wondered about it, until I realized that in his native language (which is Chuukese) I don’t believe they use the letter “h” or have an equivalent. They pronounce their vowels the same as Spanish speakers– A (is pronounced ah), E (is pronounced eh), I (is pronounced ee), O (is pronounced oh), and U (is pronounced oo). Another similarity is that the “Spanish h” is silent. Could this be somehow connected to the fact that Portuguese Explorers were some of the first Europeans to have contact with my father’s people (this connection because there are many similarities and cognates between Portuguese and Spanish, though I do not know the extent because I only speak some Spanish)? more research is required on this topic, I believe. On my mother’s side, “h” is also pronounce quite peculiarly. It is pronounced the same as Native English speakers, but with a type of suffix, I guess you would call it. I goes something like this “h” (prounounced as a Native English speaker would say it) along with a ” ‘k ” tacked on the end. Only the letter alone (like when saying the alphabet, for example) is spoken this way. Pronouncing it in a word, though, it is used as “normally.” I think this comes from the fact that in my mom’s native language (which is Navajo, though she was raised speaking mostly English) many gluttoral and deep throat sounds are utilized, so pronunciation of some English consonants (which are also common to Navajo) are subconciously associated with other consonants to provide a slightly different pronunciation. Just a couple of unusual word pronunciations in my family.
Yes, Sue……..there were several words that my step-dad, Charlie, said in an ‘old style’ way. Of course, I can’t think of any of them right now 🙂 I didn’t do any research, but once in awhile in a movie set in a previous century I would hear the same word and think ‘ok, that IS how they used to say it’!!!
James: Wow! That is very interesting. I’ve heard the H/K pronunciation among Aleut speakers. It’s interesting how some pronunciations we are taught as children are very difficult to “unlearn” when we learn a second language latter on in life. My brother John came into our family when he was 9 years old. He was born in Korea, and now at age 49 still has some definite oriental pronunciations.
Lynn: I wish we could go back in time to those old Pickford days when the great-greats were still living. My husband’s elderly cousin told him that their grandmother/great grandmother used to scold the children by saying “Ya dinny ken.” – which evidently has some Scots roots and means, “You better not do that!”