Peter Viney's Blog

Note: The original article used the Times Roman Phonetics font to represent sounds. This won’t work online (unless the article is a pdf, which is a hassle). So I’ve transcribed the unstressed sound as /di/ to rhyme with we / pea / he. I’ve transcribed the stressed sound as /day/ to rhyme with say / pay etc.

We were writing the Student Activity Book for The Wrong Trousers video. With video courses, you do the script first, record it and write from the finished video. In this case we had to rewrite and simplify the existing script as an ELT version to fit the same mouth movements as the animation. The first episode is concerned with Gromit’s birthday present, and the word birthday appears four times. There’s also a calendar which appears on screen with the usual abbreviations, Mon – Tue – Wed etc. So, days of the week seemed a good teaching point. Pronunciation, we thought. Let’s do a quick stress exercise on Monday, Tuesday etc with the /di / ending. Then we listened to Peter Sallis, the actor who plays Wallace in both the original and the ELT version. Wallace doesn’t say /di/, he loudly and clearly in Peter Sallis’s Yorkshire accent says /day/. Right. Scrap that exercise. Then we thought about it, was the exercise worthwhile in the first place? If a large number of native speakers say /day/, why harass foreign learners into saying /di/? Especially as /day/ is clearer for a listener.

Fast forward a few years. We were recording the audio for In English Starter. It was just a simple repetition of the days of the week. The actor started out Monday, Tuesday … with day as /di/. We stopped her. ‘Actually, we’d like Monday, Tuesday …’ with /day/. The actor and the producer had recorded for many ELT courses. This was the first time they’d been asked for /day/ instead of /di/. There is something called actorspeak. Actors never pronounce the ‘t’ at the end of restaurant. Some of them add a ‘g’ sound. There are words they are taught to say ‘properly’. Days of the week and restaurant are prime examples. We had been listening out for restaurant for weeks. Most people have a t sound at the end. Another actorspeak word  is medicine, which actors pronounce as med-sin, but many people pronounce as med-i-sin.

We started listening out for /di/ and /day/. We recorded ourselves. Karen and I both say /di/most but not all of the time, but we both went to selective grammar schools in the south of England. I was born in Bournemouth, Karen in Cheltenham, though she moved to Belfast when she was a few weeks old. When she came back to England, her Belfast accent was so strong that she was given elocution lessons to eradicate it so that the rest of the class could understand her. She went on to study drama, and was taught actorspeak. So we’re both southern English /di/ sayers. But we are in a small minority. We made notes one evening on TV programmes and counted twenty-six /day/ to two /di/. One of the /di/ examples was weatherman Carl Tyler who managed to say Friday with a /di/ and Saturday with a /day/ in the same sentence.

Then we listened to a few songs. All of these have the/day/ sound:

Yesterday all my troubles were so far away …

(The Beatles)

Yesterday don’t matter ‘cos it’s gone … Goodbye Ruby Tuesday …

(The Rolling Stones)

Monday, Monday, so good to me …

(Mamas and Papas)

Sunday morning …

(Velvet Underground)

We’re all going on a summer holiday …

(Cliff Richard)

Holiday … Celebrate …

(Madonna)

Today’s your birthday …

(The Beatles)

It’s Saturday night and I just got paid …

(Elvis Presley)

While I’d admit that Paul McCartney had to rhyme yesterday with away, The Beatles consistently use /day/. There’s a fair British / American mix, though I’d also admit that British singers tend to adopt American pronunciation. We noticed that /di/ appears with some speakers in compounds (birthday cake, Tuesday night) but that they then use /day/ in a final position:

I’ve bought a birthday /di/ cake for her birthday. /day/

But does it matter in the slightest if both are /day/? I think not. Extrapolate to all those other textbook pronunciation exercises on weak forms. Students need to hear and recognize them, but it’s unlikely that they’ll use them in their own speech, and as non-native speakers, their use of the stressed version will add clarity.