this post was submitted on 12 Mar 2024
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With words starting with "un" you can figure out pronunciation by removing the "un" and see if the rest of the word is it's own word which means the opposite. "animous" is not a word so you would use the long "u" sound in "unanimous". Same for uniform or university. But not unironic or unintentional.
Through that logic I'd always figured unanimous stems from "without animosity" and the word animous just got lost to time, which would make un-animous the more sensible pronunciation. But it seems that while they do share a common etymology, it's not "un" as in negation, but rather "un" from "unus" meaning one, with both sharing "animus" meaning mind.
I also found out that animous used to exist as a synonym for animus at one point.
The moral of the story; the only thing more 'absurd' (read: perfectly explainable, we're just silly creatures) in linguistics than pronunciations...is etymology.
Foiled again by swipe typing
Yes that may be the reason why that difference exists.
The usefulness of that tip is limited when encountering new words for the first time though.
If I don't know unanimous, chances are I don't know if animous exists either.
Edit: Also there is understand, which starts with un- although there is no 'derstand'.
One could argue "understand" is more clearly two words stuck together than others mentioned.
Not that the two words combine meaningfully to create the new word!
Most radiology teachers want to be unionized.
Explanation: That’s both union-ized, for part of a union, or un-ionized, for not ionized
That said, that’s a really good way to describe the difference. If you’re a native speaker, you’ve got really good insight (your native language has a lot of blind spots, where you know what is right, but not why), and if you’re not, then your English is really good!
Thanks. I am a native English speaker. I just hate how inconsistent it is so I try to think up as many rules as I can to apply some kind of logic to it.
That’s very uncommon for native speakers, so good job! You’re probably a good person for language learners to be around :)