For an experienced broadcast journalist in my 27th year covering the D.C. area for WTOP, this time of the year is always humbling.
Sure, I put on my “good team player” hat, but at 11:59 p.m. on Jan. 31, the reality hits — I can’t say February very well.
It’s the most wonderful time of the year — the chance to hear my friend @dimitriWTOP pronounce ‘February’ perfectly. pic.twitter.com/e9MGQXNtTx
— Neal Augenstein (@AugensteinWTOP) February 2, 2023
Many of us say FEB-yoo-airy, rather than gracefully touching on the “R” as WTOP anchor Dimitri Sotis does.
But in February 2023, I was determined to learn why I, and so many of us, mispronounce February.
So, I contacted a trusted professional — speech-language pathologist Cathy Runnels, of Accent on Speech. She worked with me back in 2000 to help me get rid of a lifelong lisp — but that’s another story.
There are a lot of reasons February is tough to say, with “Sotisian” magnificence: “First, you have a word with a lot of R’s in it,” Runnels said.
And that’s where the problem starts.
In phonology, there’s a phenomenon called dissimilation. Bottom line, when there are two R’s in a word, we tend to drop the first one — think of how kids often say library as “LI-berry”
Runnels said it takes a lot of work to say the first R in February.
“With the B sound, my lips are closed,” Runnels said. “But only slightly because they have to open back up, if I’m going to say that next syllable, which is the ‘ru.'”
And then there’s all the stuff the tongue has to do.
“WIth the ‘er’, the back of the tongue has to go back. It actually lifts from the floor of your mouth and moves backward. Then your lips need to purse to shape that sound further,” Runnels said.
Getting to the bottom line requires little examination of the phonemic chart: “It’s just easier.”
Runnels said that it is not surprising so many people say Feb-yoo-ary.
“I was thinking of how we learn the months of the year. It’s usually in a rhyme,” Runnels said. “In ‘Jan-yoo-ary, Feb-you-ary,’ they both sound very similar.”
So, while my parents may have delighted in teaching me the months in sing-song, it’s taken me 63 years to come to grips with my sub-standard February.
Should I learn how to say February like Dimitri?
Runnels assures me that “both you and your colleague’s ways of saying it are very accepted.”
I asked Dimitri how he happened to say February so perfectly.
“It was a teacher — Mrs. McDougal, who taught kindergarten and first grade at Burris Lab School in Muncie, Indiana,” Sotis said. “She taught us the months of the year, and would stop the whole class if she heard anybody, saying ‘FEB-yoo-ary’ — and correct them, with the then-proper ‘FEB-roo-ary.'”
Shame is a powerful teaching tool, eh, Dimitri?
Runnels seems to suggest it’s not worth obsessing over my lack of first “R” in February, and that I can get by with “yoo” rather than “ru.”
“It’s easier for the mouth to position itself, especially for someone like you who has to speak very rapidly at times,” Runnels said. “You’re a broadcaster, and you just can’t go word by word — people are listening for the idea.”
