aeon.co (13/11/2015) • Why is English so weird… (f2-3)

▤  •  M c W h o r t e r  (2 0 1 5)  •  W h y  i s  E n g l i s h  s o  w e i r d l y  d i f f e r e n t …  •

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And finally, because of this firehose spray, we English speakers also have to contend with two different ways of accenting words. Clip on a suffix to the word ‹wonder›, and you get ‹wonderful›. But – clip on an ending to the word ‹modern› and the ending pulls the accent ahead with it: MO-dern, but mo-DERN-ity, not MO-dern-ity. That doesn’t happen with WON-der and WON-der-ful, or CHEER-y and CHEER-i-ly. But it does happen with PER-sonal, person-AL-ity.

What’s the difference? It’s that -‹ful› and -‹ly› are Germanic endings, while -‹ity› came in with French. French and Latin endings pull the accent closer – TEM-pest, tem-PEST-uous – while Germanic ones leave the accent alone. One never notices such a thing, but it’s one way this ‘simple’ language is actually not so.

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