Finite rhymes with 'my time'. Infinite rhymes with 'minute' (as in seconds, minutes, hours and not minute, micro, small).
Why are i's in finite and infinite pronounced differently?
Pronunciation – Why are Finite and Infinite Pronounced Differently?
phonologypronunciationvowels
Related Solutions
In the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA), finite is /faɪnaɪt/ and infinite is /ɪnfənɪt/.
In case you are unfamiliar with the IPA, "finite" rhymes with "skylight." Both of the vowel sounds are the "long i," as you put it.
You might hear "infinite" pronounced in two slightly different ways. The first way rhymes closely with "run it" (in-fuh-nit) and the second way rhymes more closely with "win it" (in-fin-it). The stress in either pronunciation will fall on the first syllable.
If you are (or are willing to become) familiar with the IPA and its pronunciations, you can find a helpful tool here that transcribes most English words into their IPA form.
𝑇𝐿;𝐷𝑅
'Wind' (n) and 'wind' (v) had the same vowel in Old English. Both had a short vowel /i/ which was lengthened in Late OE due to a sound change triggered by consonant clusters such as /nd, ld, mb, rd/ etc. The vowel in 'wind' (n) got shortened in the seventeenth century for some reasons. The short and long vowels in 'child' and 'children' can also be attributed to the same sound change.
𝐻𝑜𝑚𝑜𝑟𝑔𝑎𝑛𝑖𝑐 𝐿𝑒𝑛𝑔𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑛𝑖𝑛𝑔
By about the tenth century (Late Old English), there was a sound change called Homorganic Lengthening (HL) through which original short vowels were lengthened in certain words in the environment of a following voiced homorganic cluster. To be precise, before a cluster of Sonorant (Nasal or Liquid) + voiced homorganic obstruent.
Homorganic means having the same place of articulation, so vowels before clusters like /nd/, /ld/, /mb/, /rd/, /rn/, /ŋɡ/ etc., were lengthened in certain words. The change also applied to some clusters with /r/ as their first element such as /rd/, /rn/, /rl/, /rð/ (Donka Minkova) so the vowel in words like board, hoard, yearn, earl, earth etc., were also lengthened due to HL.
Examples
- A striking example of HL is the word 'climb': Old English climban and would've been pronounced with a short vowel before HL: /ˈklim.bɑn/, it became: /ˈkliːm.bɑn/1
- 'Ground' was OE grund, pronounced /ɡrund/, it became /ɡruːnd/2
- 'Blind' was OE blind, pronounced /blind/, it became /bliːnd/
- 'Field' was OE feld, pronounced /feld/, it became /feːld/3
Influence of a third consonant
However, the lengthening didn't take place when the homorganic cluster in question was followed by a third consonant. It means HC+C ('HC' being the homorganic cluster and 'C' another consonant) cluster was impervious to HL. This can be illustrated by the following example:
- 'Hound' was OE hund and pronounced /xund/, it became /xuːnd/. 'Hundred', on the other hand, was hundred, pronounced /ˈxundred/, it didn't change because the homorganic cluster /nd/ was followed by a third consonant /r/.
The vowel in 'grind' is long due to HL and that of 'grindstone' (ModE: /ˈɡraɪn(d)stəʊn/) should've been short because the /nd/ is followed by a third consonant, but it isn't. Otto Jespersen says that 'grindstone' was formerly always /ˈgrinstən/ and the long vowel in ModE is by analogy with 'grind'.
This point also accounts for the long and short vowels in 'child' and 'children'.
Child vs children
- 'child' was OE ċild, pronounced /t͡ʃild/, it became /t͡ʃiːld/
- 'children' was OE ċildru, pronounced /t͡ʃildru/, it didn't undergo the sound change because the cluster /ldr/ was impervious to HL.
Don't let the w[ɪ]nd w[aɪ]nd you up
There are different assumptions as to why the vowels in 'wind' (v) and 'wind' (n) are different:
- Donka Minkova says 'the pair wind - wind is a special case, probably best explained on the grounds of homophony avoidance'.
- Jeremy Smith says that this is a sporadic instance of HL where it failed. He goes on to say '[t]his distinction may be the result of a disambiguating choice between variant pronunciations to avoid confusion between two meanings'
- Otto Jespersen says that the noun wind used to have /iː/, but it got shortened by analogy with frequent compounds such as windmill (also OED), window which had short vowels.
- OED and A History of Modern English sounds and morphology by Eilert Ekwall say that the short vowel is due to analogy with windy.
This was a sporadic sound change and only affected certain words. There are many, many words that have a 'voiced homorganic cluster' at the end, yet they have short vowels: band, hand, land, dumb, lamb, sand, send, held, bend, blend, end, rend, send, spend, wend etc. (Minkova)
Notes
- The nasal endings (/ɑn/) were later on lost. The reason 'climb' has /aɪ/ (instead of /iː/) in ModE is because of the GVS.
- /uː/ to /aʊ/ shift is also because of the GVS.
- /eː/ to /iː/ shift can also be ascribed to the GVS.
Abbreviations
- HL: Homorganic Lengthening
- OE: Old English
- ME: Middle English
- ModE: Modern English
- OED: Oxford English Dictionary
- GVS: Great Vowel Shift
References
- A Historical Phonology of English by Donka Minkova
- Modern English Grammar on Historical Principles by Otto Jespersen
- A History of Modern English sounds and morphology by Eilert Ekwall
- Oxford English Dictionary
- Sound Change and the History of English by Jeremy Smith
- Old English: A Historical Linguistic Companion by Roger Lass
Best Answer
Finite is pronounced ['faɪnaɪt] while infinite is pronounced [ˈɪnfɪnɪt]. So why is the vowel in the first syllable of 'finite' different from the vowel in the second syllable of 'infinite'?
OK, it's not because of Trisyllabic Laxing, I made an erroneous assumption which I deeply regret.
The answer is actually simple. As Luigi Burzio explains in Principles of English stress, the reason boils down to English stress patterns.
The diphthong [aɪ] (as in bite) almost never occurs in unstressed syllable. The diphthong [aɪ] has a systematic relationship with the short vowel [ɪ]. This relationship is also reflected in Trisyllabic Laxing; divine-divinity, derive-derivative and in drive-driven etc.
From this relationship, we can infer a general rule of thumb that [aɪ] will only occur in stressed syllables and when that syllable gets unstressed, [aɪ] will shorten to [ɪ].
Now when you prepend the prefix in- to finite, the primary stress moves to the prefix in- because it's a stress-bearing affix.
Another example would be cycle-bicycle:
There are exceptions, however. Luigi Burzio has explained all the rules and exceptions thoroughly in his book. One of the many exceptions is the prefix un- which doesn't take primary stress, for instance, unab[eɪ]ted.
Latinate words in English tend to be stressed on the penultimate (second last) syllable unless that syllable is short, in which case the primary stress falls on the antepenult (third last syllable) but not on preantepenult (fourth last) as far as I know. That's why impossible, implausible, incredible etc., are stressed on the antepenult.