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I came across this word in the answer provided by Robusto for the question about Thank you.

Because the last e in service is not pronounced, I thought it should be deleted when service is appended by able.

I guess the reason for serviceable may be related to the fact that the i in service is pronounced as [ɪ] but not [aɪ].

However, I am not sure, and I would like to know the reason behind that.

Community
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2 Answers2

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The c is pronounced like k except when it comes before i or e: then it is pronounced like s. In service, c comes before e, so that it is pronounced s. If we add -able, we should normally remove the e, as you said; but then we'd get servicable. Because c before a is pronounced k, the sound of the word would change profoundly; that is undesirable, which is why we add an extra e: serviceable. The same applies to g: change => chang-able => changeable.

Cerberus - Reinstate Monica
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Because "servicable" would be pronounced with a hard c.

James McLeod
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    So what? So there's your answer, @Dante Jiang. And to @James McLeod, +1 from me. – Robusto Feb 28 '11 at 03:13
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    I thought the same thing, pronounced it "Servik-able" when I tried to say Servicable. – Brett Allen Feb 28 '11 at 03:13
  • @James McLeod, @Robusto, so, the reason is that if I suffix a word, I should not change the original pronunciation? –  Feb 28 '11 at 03:17
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    In English, there are few absolute rules, but I can't think of any case where the "s" sound like at the end of "service" is changed into a "k" sound by a suffix. – James McLeod Feb 28 '11 at 04:42
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    @Dante Jiang: unfortunately, it's not as simple as that. When a suffix derived from Latin is added, it can change both vowel and consonant sounds ("urbane" <=> "urbanity"; "electric" <=> "electricity"). When a native English suffix is added (such as "-able") this is less likely to happen. Of course this is not a great deal of help for a foreign leaner of English. – Colin Fine Feb 28 '11 at 14:59
  • @Colin: Well put (I assume that by "native" you mean "that is or was once productive in English": as we all know -able is derived from a Latin suffix too). – Cerberus - Reinstate Monica Feb 28 '11 at 17:12
  • @Cerberus: good point. I'm not sure what I mean. "-able" feels English in a way that "-ity" doesn't, but as you say they're both from Latin. Perhaps it's that "-able" gets added to both Latin and English roots, but "-ity" hardly ever to English ones. – Colin Fine Feb 28 '11 at 18:32
  • @Colin: That is a sound marker. The difference is that -able can be used, or was once used, in actual English to create new words, whereas -ity is felt to be a truly Latin suffix, i.e. you could not use it to create a new word in English. Because it is traditionally not used to create new words in English, you would not find it attached to Germanic roots. It is still felt to be truly Latin as a suffix, even though I believe some modern vogue words have in fact started to use it in English. – Cerberus - Reinstate Monica Feb 28 '11 at 18:42