Because the god Wotan would get mad.
And that’s a god you don’t want mad at you.
Why can’t we just pronounce it “wed-nes-day”?
We need house by Wed-nes-day or no deal!
Why can’t we just pronounce it Wodan’s Day?
I do!
Because it’s Odin’s day (sometimes spelled Woedin’s day)
So it would be pronounced Voedin’s day?
Be the change you want to see in the world. Languages are meant to be fluid evolving constructs anyway.
Wendsday
Whenstay
Whenzdae
It’s the day you marry your Nintendo
Is it Feb-ruary or Feb-uary? Because I prefer -uary, and what is this “ru”?
We started pronouncing it Febuary instead of February to match January. From Wiktionary:
The pronunciation of the first r as /j/ has come about by dissimilation and analogy with January. In the UK pronunciation /ˈfɛb.ɹi/ (*Febry) the sequence /ɹə.ɹi/ in /ˈfɛb.ɹə.ɹi/ (*Febrery) is simplified to /ɹi/ by haplology.Also, we should bring back the Old English solmōnaþ (“mud month”).
This type of analogy is specifically called series contamination, where items that frequently are pronounced together in a series affect each other. Also happened in proto-Germanic with the ‘n’ in ten, from the ‘n’ in nine (and in the opposite direction of Latin novem and decem; cf. nonus “ninth” to see the original ‘n’).
Also probably at least partially responsible for the pronunciation of Wednesday seen in the meme, based on Tuesday.
Edit: “ten” is not an example. See below for explanation.
Is the n in Germanic words for ten not just a reflex of m in PIE *dekm̥t?
Ah, yeah, quite possibly, good catch. I suppose it could be either assimilation to final -t before it dropped off, or final nasal merger to -n, a la Greek. I’ll check and report back.
Edit: Yeah, you’re probably right that it’s not series contamination, and is instead just assimilation. Ringe’s “From PIE to Proto-Germanic”, pg. 81, has the regular outcome of syllabic sonorants as *uX, so -um-, -un-, -ul-, -ur-.
So, while we’d expect dekumt and humda for “ten” and “hundred” (and may indeed have gotten them at some intermediate stage), we instead get tehun and hunda, making this pretty clearly regressive nasal assimilation of place. Note, e.g. *smH- ‘summer’ giving OE “sumor” instead, so when not before another consonant we don’t see the assimilation.
That’s what I get for doing off-the-cuff etymology, I suppose.
