A Break from Politics,

But something that I find equally as annoying.

On Twitter the other day I posted a tweet about how embarrassed I was with myself for questioning my own usage of "then" vs "than". There are some times where I literally have to stop and think about which rule applies. Of course it is even more annoying when I read something and I can tell that someone has made the error, why is it so hard for me to not see it so obviously in myself?

One thing that I have always prided myself in is the ability to trust my ear when I'm not sure which form to use. I remember taking AP Literature my senior year of high school and being told that it's becoming harder and harder to do so because of the atrocious butchering of what most consider "standard" English. Even though I have taken a more descriptive approach at our grammar system, as a future educator I want to be able to model what kind of language I want to see from my students in the classroom.

I understand that I have studied more language than the average American ever will in his or her life, but I don't attribute my ability to remember which forms of "there/they're/their" to my extensive studies. My extensive studies have just provided me with an answer as to WHY I don't struggle making the distinction.

I pronounce each of the forms slightly different. In the case of "there/they're/their", it's a matter of how much of a diphthong I put on the vowel sounds. "There" has essentially no diphthong, "their" has more of one, and "they're" almost is like making the word two syllables with "they-re". It's these tiny distinctions that I am able to know which one I am wanting to use in my sentences.

With that being said, this explains why I struggle with my "then/than"s. When I say the sentence either in my head or out loud, I find I have the most trouble knowing which form to use when I can't distinguish what vowel sound I just made. They are starting to sound very similar in my head and to my ear, and it's messing with my written language.

And that pisses me off! haha

I know if I look at vowel sound shift, I can see that in today's accepted pronunciations, the two sounds are becoming more and more alike, and part of me wouldn't be surprised if in 50 years the two words become more or less synonymous. Which would be sad, but not too surprising. I also know that the -en and -an sounds in French are extremely similar, where they are often given the same symbol in IPA.

So I can rationalize why I do what I do, but it doesn't make me feel any better for doing it :P