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In response to
"if they're gonna spell it Derby, then dammit they should pronounce it Derby -- nm"
by
prayformojo
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hmm, according to the internets...
Posted by
x (aka dmuck)
Sep 27 '14, 08:48
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" It's the result of the same process (that is, erroneous pronunciation) whereby "learn" becomes "larn" in some (very) nonstandard American dialects. One feature of uneducated speech in England around the 1800's was a tendency to pronounce the "er" sound of words like "clerk" as the "ar" sound of "clark". The phenomenon was sufficiently widespread that the English novelist Henry Fielding used pronunciations like "sarvis" for "service", "sartain" for "certain", and "parson" for "person" in the speech of characters meant to seem vulgar or unintelligent. Due to the overwhelming influence of such people in England (that is, the uneducated), these previously unacceptable pronunciations eventually became standard for some words, like Derby, Berkeley, and clerk...
Source:
J.C. Wells, Accents of English "
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Responses:
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