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According to Wiktionary, the word comes:

From French diphtongue, from Ancient Greek δίφθογγος (díphthongos, “two sounds”), from δίς (dís, “twice”) + φθόγγος (phthóngos, “sound”)

Separated into its two logical parts and translated loosely as 'two-sound', it can be compared to any of a variety of other words prefixed with 'di-', such as digraph and diglot, each of which is pronounced with a leading (ironically itself a diphthong) ˈdaɪ, not ˈdɪ.

Why is this word parsed this way? With dissect, for example, it is at least acknowledged that 'dis-sect' is a logical alternative to 'di-s[s]ect', the prevailing pronunciation. With 'diphthong', nobody even seems to ever raise an eyebrow.

Azor Ahai -him-
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aabeba
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    How else do you mean it could be pronounced? Why would anyone "raise an eyebrow" when it's just natural and logical? Can you please expand? – Kris Feb 25 '19 at 10:56
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    When I say it otherwise, people stare. – Greg Lee Feb 25 '19 at 11:24
  • Related (not dupe): https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/103014/pterodactyl-and-archeopteryx-silent-p-vs-voiced-p – James McLeod Feb 25 '19 at 12:03
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    Then you should also say helico-pter – Hagen von Eitzen Feb 25 '19 at 13:26
  • I'm trying now, but I can't seem to pronounce phth at the beginning of a syllable. Maybe that has something to do with it too. – Mr Lister Feb 25 '19 at 13:48
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    @Kris As di-phthong, 'dye-fthong'. – aabeba Feb 25 '19 at 14:05
  • @MrLister I pronounce phthalate with an initial /fθ/ cluster no problem. – Janus Bahs Jacquet Feb 25 '19 at 14:26
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    It's pronounced the way it's spelled!!! – Hot Licks Feb 25 '19 at 20:34
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    (Bear in mind that a "diphthong" is an undergarment worn by an idiot.) – Hot Licks Feb 25 '19 at 23:44
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    "Dis-sect" isn't just acknowledged, it's correct and it isn't an "alternative" to anything else. – Rosie F Feb 26 '19 at 11:54
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    In English, as in Quantum Mechanics, "Why?" is an invalid question :-). The best you can get to an answer is "Because!". – Russell McMahon Feb 26 '19 at 12:05
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    @RosieF, The standard pronunciation is "dye - sect", and is the only pronunciation I remember hearing. The alternate pronunciation is "dih - sect", not "dis - sect", though I haven't heard it that way that I know of. See Merriam Webster for audio. The third pronunciation is just putting the emphasis on the other syllable, which sounds weird to me. – MichaelS Feb 26 '19 at 13:52
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    @MichaelS I was slumming it with respellings using ordinary letters because everyone else was, and I see that, as a result, I've failed to make myself clear. I'm sorry about that. I took aabeba's "dis-sect" as [dɪ'sɛkt], and that's what I was referring to. I know mistaken notions spread; the notion that "dissect" contains the prefix "di-" and should therefore be pronounced accordingly is one such. It seems perverse to label as "the standard pronunciation" one that arises from a mistake, as if some people's pronunciation were non-standard just because they didn't make that mistake. – Rosie F Feb 26 '19 at 14:08
  • @HotLicks That's why it is so unusual!!! – Peter - Reinstate Monica Feb 26 '19 at 14:13
  • The only possibly unusual sound is the hard T. Di is pronounced like the latin prefix for two, ph sounds like both ph in philosophy and the ng does not sound special either. – allo Feb 26 '19 at 15:05
  • @RosieF Note that I called the pronunciation prevailing and not standard. If you ask me, pronouncing disease as /dɪˈziːz/ is less logical than using /dɪs'iːz/ to do so, but here we are today and nobody sounds it that way. – aabeba Feb 27 '19 at 12:59

5 Answers5

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We break diphthong into syllables differently than the Greeks did. We break it diph-thong, whereas etymologically it is di-phthong. Because there's a consonant on the end of the first syllable, it's natural for English speakers to pronounce it with a "short i", /ɪ/.

The same thing happens with diptych, whose etymology is di+ptykha, where ptykha means folds.

terdon
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Peter Shor
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    Thanks. Care to opine on why dissect is pronounced di-ssect, not dis-sect? Any such rule at work here? – aabeba Feb 25 '19 at 14:09
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    @aabeba Dissect can be pronounced either way, and the short vowel is the original; the diphthongal pronunciation presumably came about due to influence from other words with the /daɪ-/ pronunciation. The prefix dis- (short vowel) in both Latin and Greek became dī- (long vowel) before some voiced consonants, which created side-forms with long and short vowels. The long vowel was diphthongised as part of the Great Vowel Shift in English, leaving two identical prefixes pronounced quite differently; it’s not surprisingly that some confusion would ensue. – Janus Bahs Jacquet Feb 25 '19 at 14:32
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    Slightly off-topic, but along the same lines: we break helicopter as heli-copter, when helico-pter would be truer to the Greek etymology. – gspr Feb 25 '19 at 14:39
  • Yes, helicopter is an interesting one. I suppose you can imitate the source tongue to only a degree before you are forced to yield to physiological and practical limitations. – aabeba Feb 25 '19 at 14:48
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    @aabeba It's not a physiological or practical limitation, because presumably Greek native speakers would have been fine with that syllabication; it has to do with our phonotactics. – Azor Ahai -him- Feb 25 '19 at 19:28
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    "dissect" comes from Latin "dissecāre" which contains the prefix "dis-". Not "di-", and not from Greek. "dissect" is pronounced with a short i-sound. Any notion that it's pronounced with /dai/ comes from confusion with words that don't contains the prefix "dis-" (possibly words that contain the prefix "di-"). – Rosie F Feb 26 '19 at 11:52
  • @RosieF I am aware, yet "dye-sect" is the only way I've ever heard it pronounced! (AmE) – aabeba Feb 27 '19 at 12:30
  • @AzorAhai But are why phonotactics observed so stringently? Can they be eschewed in certain cases? – aabeba Feb 27 '19 at 12:32
  • @AzorAhai Is the globalization of English and the intermingling of world languages subverting old phonotactical rules? – aabeba Feb 27 '19 at 12:50
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    @aabeba Because that's what they do. It's far too big of a topic to explain to you here, I was giving you the terminology so you can do some of your own reading. And, no doubt, English phonotactics are being affected by language contact. – Azor Ahai -him- Feb 27 '19 at 17:52
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    @aabeba: not very quickly. Sometime fairly recently, /gw/ has become an acceptable beginning consonant cluster in English, probably due to the influence of Spanish and Welsh. – Peter Shor Feb 27 '19 at 20:19
  • @AzorAhai By the by... Why was my title changed? Was its style too idiosyncratic? – aabeba Feb 27 '19 at 20:34
  • @aabeba I found it to be hard to understand and unidiomatic; although you're welcome to roll it back if you think it was better before. – Azor Ahai -him- Feb 27 '19 at 20:37
  • You did not like the literal use of 'otherwise'? A rare usage, yes. I'm not sure why people don't use it more. It's a shorter, more concise, more elegant word for '[in] another way'. Does its quaintness make it unidiomatic? And 'elsewise'... There's another lovely one. Such a shame that we so restrict ourselves. – aabeba Feb 27 '19 at 20:41
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In words from Greek or Latin, a single vowel letter before a consonant cluster that cannot1 occur at the start of a word tends to take its "short"2 pronunciation. The consonant cluster in the middle of "diphthong" cannot come at the start of a word (whether you pronounce it as /fθ/ or as /pθ/), so the "i" in the first syllable is pronounced as /ɪ/.

The converse is not true: before a consonant cluster that can start a word, a single vowel letter may either be "short" or "long". For example, "diploid" is pronounced with /ɪ/ even though there are words that start with /pl/.

As Peter Shor mentioned, the criterion can also be formulated in terms of syllabification. An "open" syllable ends in a vowel, and a "closed" syllable ends in a consonant. In general, we can say that non-final closed syllables in English tend not to have "long vowel" sounds, although that isn't a firm rule of English phonotactics: there are words like "paraleipsis", where the penultimate syllable is closed and pronounced /laɪp/. This is why I included spelling in the rule that I gave at the start of this answer: it would be possible to have a word pronounced /ˈdaɪfθɒŋ/ or /ˈdaɪpθɒŋ/, but it wouldn't be expected to be spelled with diphth-.

There are different approaches to syllabification, but one commonly used criterion says that a consonant cluster can start a syllable only if it can start a word. This criterion implies that consonant clusters that cannot1 occur at the start of a word like /fθ/ always cause the preceding syllable to be closed. Consonant clusters that can occur at the start of a word, like /pl/, would typically be expected to form a syllable onset when the occur word-medially, but some people would argue that the use of /ɪ/ in the first syllable of "diploid" implies the syllabification dip.loid. It's unclear why diploid would be syllabified differently from diglot.

  1. According to the phonotactic rules for typical English words. Exceptions like some people's pronunciation of "phthalate" do not count. Incidentally, some people pronounce words like "psychic" with /ps/, but /ps/ also does not count as "a consonant cluster that can occur at the start of a word" for the purposes of this rule.

  2. "Short" in the phonological, not the phonetic sense: short a e i o u are the phonemes /æ ɛ ɪ ɒ ʌ/. (In American English, /ɑ/ is used instead of /ɒ/.) An alternative term that has been used is "lax".

herisson
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  • Phonotactics, eh? Are these firm rules, or merely guidelines that indicate which consonant clusters "should be" impossible for natives of a language to pronounce? Is there a descriptivist front I can sign up for to push for a more progressive English language phonetic system? – aabeba Feb 25 '19 at 14:08
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    The consonant cluster /fθ/ can absolutely appear at the beginning of a word, at least to some people: phthalate/phthalic begins with it, as do phthisis (if you don’t pronounce it /ˈtaɪsɪs/, that is) and the perhaps rather recondite Phthiraptera. – Janus Bahs Jacquet Feb 25 '19 at 14:30
  • But not, say, /pt,/ or /pht/? Pteranodon and pterodactyl, come to mind. And is there any reason initial /ks/ (xylophone, Xerox) still clings to that pesky French 'z' sound? – aabeba Feb 25 '19 at 14:52
  • @aabeba: But isn't the French gzeelofon? – Peter Shor Feb 25 '19 at 21:13
  • @aabeba: The spelling-based "rules" that I talk about in this answer are mostly based on the phonotactics of certain historical stages of English. They aren't necessarily linked to whether English speakers find it impossible to pronounce certain sequences of sounds. – herisson Feb 25 '19 at 21:16
  • @sumelic So these rules are as prone to change as ones of grammar or vocabulary? Are they at the mercy of their speakers? I suppose all facets of a language (at least of English, at any rate) are. – aabeba Feb 27 '19 at 12:39
  • @PeterShor You're right... I misread the answer here https://english.stackexchange.com/a/19499/64172. It transitioned from the Greek /ks/ to the French /gz/, but English dropped the /g/ sound. – aabeba Feb 27 '19 at 12:39
  • @sumelic For diploid, might I suggest that it is formed not from di and ploid, but from diplo ('double') and oid ('like')? 'Diplo-oid', as it were. Might that explain the pronunciation? – aabeba Feb 27 '19 at 12:45
  • @aabeba: I think that analysis of the word's structure is correct, but the issue remains of why "diplo" would be pronounced with /ɪ/ instead of with /aɪ/. – herisson Feb 27 '19 at 19:09
  • @sumelic I'd wager--according to my limited expertise--because of how the morpheme diplo is parsed (as a unit); how the word is separated. More likely than not, though, it's happenstance... Again, phonotactics, as you say. – aabeba Feb 27 '19 at 20:32
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Words that do not originate in English does not necessarily follow English pronunciation rules, And diphthong is no difference as well.

Look at the word dilemma - It is pronounced with dih instead of dahy. https://www.dictionary.com/browse/dilemma?s=t

Now look at the verb divulse - it is pronounces with dahy https://www.dictionary.com/browse/divulse?s=t

But the noun divulsion is pronounced with a dih

https://www.dictionary.com/browse/divulsion?s=t

Uhtred Ragnarsson
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φθόγγος, diphthongs [this program will not show the lower case φ]

The φ [or lower case version which I can't get here] was sound PH is Ancient Greek.

It started being pronounced as "an aspirated voiceless bilabial plosive, which was the origin of its usual romanization as ." [phytoplankton] [Wikipedia] That is: fee

In modern Greek you get the f sound: dif-thongos where th is theta and i is like ee is fee. (Sorry, can't do the phonemic rendition).

The syllabification in Greek is: δίφ-θόγγος [deef-thongos]but the pronunciation in English is: dip-thong. And the Greek ph as f sound disappears. Only the spelling remains, like the Cheshire Cat's grin. There is no f sound in English in the English pronunciation of the Greek "transliterated" spelling.

Lambie
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    "Diphthong" may be pronounced in English with either /fθ/ or /pθ/. Dictionaries list both pronunciations. – herisson Feb 25 '19 at 20:25
  • Dictionaries may list it as Wikipedia does A diphthong (/ˈdɪfθɒŋ/ DIF-thong or /ˈdɪpθɒŋ/ DIP-thong. However, if you work with these sounds, no one says: dif-thong. It sounds like a speech impediment that way. There is clearly a syllabic break. Not: di-pthong or di-fthong. – Lambie Feb 25 '19 at 23:02
  • @Lambie: that is a lower case φ. An upper case looks like Φ. There is another way to make a lower case ϕ, but they're really the same letter, like a and ɑ. – Peter Shor Feb 25 '19 at 23:53
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    @PeterShor I know that. I could swear that yesterday, I could not get: φ [or lower case]. I could only get the upper case: Φ. How weird because now it's there. I copied φθόγγος and the φ, LC, came out: Φ, UC. So, now it looks like I don't know the difference and I do. Go figure... – Lambie Feb 26 '19 at 15:01
  • @Lambie That's how I'd do it in the first place. – Kris Feb 27 '19 at 09:37
  • @Lambie What is your source for this claim? Wiktionary lists both pronunciations; M-W lists the one I referred to (fth). I can't say I agree with your sentiment that pronouncing it faithfully to the Modern Greek equivalent at all sounds like speaking with an impediment. – aabeba Feb 27 '19 at 12:43
  • @aabeba: actually, in Modern Greek it begins with a voiced 'th' /ð/, as in there. Which really might sound like you have a speech impediment. – Peter Shor Feb 27 '19 at 13:26
  • @PeterShor You are correct; Greek long ago dropped the hard D. I just assumed this conversation had been confined to the contentious part of the word--the 'phth' portion. Good luck getting English speakers to begin using every di-, dis-, and dia- word with a voiced dental fricative. :P – aabeba Feb 27 '19 at 14:18
  • @aabeba I know that I have *never heard the term diphthong in English (or Spanish or Portuguese, for that matter) pronounced using DIF* throughout a very long career in the language-learning, linguistics and translation saddle. That should be good enough for most people.... – Lambie Feb 27 '19 at 15:59
  • @Lambie Well, you can pronounce it as you wish, but it makes no sense to me to make an alveolar plosive into a dental fricative. – aabeba Feb 27 '19 at 20:39
  • @aabeba Apparently, you don't get the "procedural" issue here.First, you (one) pronounce(s) it and then you describe it phonetically/phonemically....not the other way around,which is your way.... – Lambie Feb 27 '19 at 22:52
  • @Lambie You mean you mispronounce it and then attempt to justify that mispronunciation? How can you pronounce it from text without first analyzing it? – aabeba Feb 28 '19 at 07:12
  • @aabeba Not at all. I mean in phonetics/phonemics/phonology, saying words comes before written representations of them, as any linguist knows. Dictionaries are post-facto records of how they are said. And in my daily work, as a linguist, translator, teacher, etc. I have never ever heard anyone say: dif here. Only DIP-THONG. Get it now? Where do you suppose dictionaries even get their IPA or other phonetic representations of words??? There is no: phth here. There's ph + th and in ph the h is silent. – Lambie Feb 28 '19 at 14:08
  • @Lambie I understood, yes. But the pronunciation would have been distorted by verbal transference; text is a more reliable record of pronunciation. Again, you could, if you wished, pronounce it as ‘doptang’, day, but you would thereby only further deviate from the word’s prescribed phonetics. My question is: why would you do so? A ptong is no pthong just as a pyton is not a python. – aabeba Feb 28 '19 at 14:13
  • @aabeba Distorted by verbal transference? I'm sorry but I really do not think you are a linguist and do not know what you are talking about. I'm done here. :) – Lambie Feb 28 '19 at 14:18
  • @Lambie Of course I’m not a linguist. Am I supposed to be? – aabeba Feb 28 '19 at 14:19
  • No, but then you should defer to those who know more and not keep arguing. – Lambie Feb 28 '19 at 14:25
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In English, as in Quantum Mechanics, "Why?" is an invalid question :-).

If 'dipthong' had been regularly pronounced differently then all the current reasons being given would be invalid, no matter how logical, and another set of different explanations of the other pronunciation, equally logical and, in the current situation, wholly incorrect, would be being offered.

The best you can get for an answer is "Because!"

Russell McMahon
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  • Is it unfair to chart it up to ignorance? In English, a mistake oft repeated ceases to be a mistake, yes, but the acknowledgment at least makes the reality more... palatable. – aabeba Feb 27 '19 at 12:46