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The audio clips at ODO do not vocalise any sound resembling a 't', and the IPA contains no 't':

BrE /ˈkrɪsn/ ;   NAmE /ˈkrɪsn/

The 't' in 'christen' and 'hasten' (mooted by this comment in a deleted question),
was it ever pronounced?

What formal linguistic concepts or terms describe this phenomenon? I read this (Why is the 't' in 'nextdoor neighbour' usually silent?...) and this (Why does English spelling use silent letters?).

tchrist
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    Here are two related questions you might want to take a look at: http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/244716/describing-the-phonetic-interaction-between-the-f-and-the-t-in-often, http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/20550/in-what-dialects-does-often-rhyme-with-soften – herisson Jul 05 '15 at 19:14

2 Answers2

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It's associated with the `Great Vowel Shift'. I found this on Hartford Courant, citing a letter from James McCawley (professor of linguistics at the University of Chicago at the time, I think currently acknowledged as the expert in his field) in a letter to language columnist William Safire (also highly regarded, but not really in the same league)...

As for the silent "t" in Christmas, McCawley explained that the "t" was once pronounced in words such as "Christmas," "glisten," "listen," "mistletoe" and "soften." (The pronunciation of the "t" in "often" by some speakers today is a remnant of this practice.)

But during the 1600s, the "t" sound was dropped whenever it was preceded by a spirant (a fricative consonant such as "s" or "f") and followed by a sonorant (a voiced consonant such as "l," "r," "m" or "n").

I really don't think I could add anything to such an eloquent summary.

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FumbleFingers
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  • Good and helpful answer!! –  Jul 05 '15 at 19:11
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    @Josh61: Our resident "Grand Master" John Lawler was kind enough to give me his "spare" copy of McCawley's definitive The syntactic phenomena of English (the one he used to lend out to ill-prepared/impecunious students when he was still actively lecturing). That was over three years ago, but there haven't been many weeks when I haven't dipped into it since then. I'm sure the only reason I find it fairly hard going is because it covers a lot of ground, not because his style is "abstruse" in and of itself. – FumbleFingers Jul 05 '15 at 19:23
  • (okay - I'll come clean. Other reasons include the fact that I'm not exactly Einstein myself, I'm not getting paid to learn it, and I don't have any exams to pass! :) – FumbleFingers Jul 05 '15 at 19:26
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    I used McCawley's book several times as a course text, and I wrote out reference answers to all but the last few exercises. I love the book. In my experience, though, students don't like it very well. As McCawley admits at one point, he is not very good at dumbing things down. It's a linguists' text. – Greg Lee Jul 05 '15 at 19:48
  • @Greg: Well, "my" copy is very well cross-referenced - it's not quite as good as HTML text with "click thru" links to basic definitions for potentially unfamiliar terminology, but it usually seems to me all the required information is in there somewhere. It's just incredibly dense, because he virtually never repeats himself or uses two words where one will do. – FumbleFingers Jul 05 '15 at 19:59
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    Since the question mentions "formal linguistic concepts", I don't think we should leave the answer at McCawley's informal statement of the sound change responsible for the loss of "t". ... – Greg Lee Jul 05 '15 at 20:20
  • (cont.) ... Formally, phonologists don't state such phonological changes in terms of specific sound segments, like "t", but rather in general, articulatory terms. In fact, as stated, this sound change seems to violate a principle called the law of similarity. When a contextually restricted change like this affects a certain sound, it must also affect other sounds that are more similar to their contexts. Here, since "t" is not a sonorant consonant, it cannot be affected by this change before sonorant consonants unless sonorant consonants are also affected, other things being equal. – Greg Lee Jul 05 '15 at 20:21
  • (cont.) ... So I suspect that McCawley's statement is formally flawed (though good enough for Safire, I'm sure). – Greg Lee Jul 05 '15 at 20:22
  • @Greg: Do I detect a slight slight aimed in the general direction of Safire, te he? I think he does English a great service by encouraging laymen to take an interest in things like etymology (but I freely admit he's more of a columnist targeting people like me, not really an academic likely to be providing seminal texts for the real pros! :) – FumbleFingers Jul 05 '15 at 22:15
  • @sumelic: The Hartford Courant link in the answer is entitled `Vowel Shift' Affects Christ Mas [sic] Pronunciation, so that's a clue. I suppose the vowel in *Christ* shifted to rhyme with words like *glisten, listen, mistletoe* where the 't' was already silent, so it got dropped in *Christmas* by association. Or perhaps all (or many) words of that general type were liable to undergo the same change at the same time. I'm afraid I don't know to that level of detail. – FumbleFingers Jul 21 '15 at 01:56
  • ...I'm not going to wade through it all, but there's probably more stuff relevant to the issue in Describing the phonetic interaction between the F and the T in often. – FumbleFingers Jul 21 '15 at 02:16
  • @FumbleFingers William Safire was primarily a speechwriter and political columnist, but his 'On Language' column was, though famous, a side interest. Though he was not an academic linguist, he was scholarly respected authority on language usage. – Mitch Aug 04 '15 at 12:47
  • @FumbleFingers Can you add to your answer an answer to the OPs question about terminology for labeling the phenomenon you and he describe? – Mitch Aug 04 '15 at 12:48
  • @Mitch: But I don't know the relevant terminology - for either the specific change (loss of 't' sound) or the more general case (all change of pronunciation over time). The only thing I know in this general area is the Great Vowel Shift, which is at the very least "temporally" related to OP's point (but notwithstanding the title of my link to McCawley's letter, it's not obvious that the two changes are causally linked). If you know more than me please either add a comment or edit the answer to include anything relevant on that front. – FumbleFingers Aug 04 '15 at 13:39
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In words like chriSTeN, to pronounce three consonants such as stn which are all near the same place of articulation, is a lot of articulation work. So it is natural that such a difficult consonant group is simplified. Stn is generally pronounced as /sn/, just a simplification of articulation.

rogermue
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