We’ve all heard somebody on the news talking about the priminister at the generelection. It’s because they’re in a hurry, so words get run together. We all do it in normal conversation – things like I’ll be back, bacon neggs.
There are some long words that lose whole syllables as a matter of course. People say vetinarian instead of veterinarian, respitory instead of respiratory. Homogenous is just about accepted as a synonym for homogeneous, and it’s not exactly surprising that a reporter faced with the phrase quantitative easing comes out with quantitive.
Going the other way, coverage of the Cleveland child abuse scandal in 1987 featured the word dilatation, which I took to be an incorrect form of dilation. My paper dictionary has it as the preferred word, which seems daft, considering the normal way we play with Latin words in English, but dilation is definitely the commoner.
Does any of this matter? Most of the time, not much, though it would be depressing if people were to become incapable of using the full words, in writing particularly (or particuly as you sometimes hear).
A closely related observation is the increasing disappearance of the letter r in words such as brought. For some time, this was the only example I noticed (and Sebastian Faulks wrote about it a few years ago in the Observer), but the movement appears to be accelerating. I’ve heard boardcasting and infastructure, perlifically for prolifically, and many more.
Again, this is rather lazy, and it could become confusing when people move from simply reading the word without the r to wondering why the letter is there on the page at all. In the case of bought/brought, however, there is a difference of meaning. These are two different words which can often be used correctly in the same context to mean different things. I heard someone respond to the observation that she had bought some items with a rather acerbic “Yes, I bought them and brought them.”.
