Learn English – Why do “bomb” and “tomb” have different pronunciations

pronunciation

For example, "womb" comes from old English, whereas "bomb" and "tomb" come from old French. I'm not sure what impact etymology has on pronunciation, but I was just wondering if there is any reason in particular for these differences.

Is the explanation as simple as bomb came from later French?

Best Answer

Tomb:

  • c. 1200, tumbe, early 14c. tomb, from Anglo-French tumbe and directly from Old French tombe "tomb, monument, tombstone" (12c.), from Late Latin tumba The final -b began to be silent about the time of the spelling shift (compare lamb, dumb).

Pronunciation:

  • The reason the 'o' is pronounced as [u:] is thanks to the Great Vowel Shift (which began around the 1350's and was more-or-less complete by the 1700's). Most instances of long [o:] (as in 'bone') turned to [u:] (as in 'boon'), among many other changes.

Bomb:

  • 1580s, from French bombe, from Italian bomba, probably from Latin bombus

Pronounciation:

  • Since this word was borrowed after the Great Vowel Shift (which was pretty much complete by the 16th century), the 'o' is still pronounced as /o/ (as in 'bond').

(Etymonline and Quora)

From The Great Vowel Shift:

  • While Chaucer’s pronunciation of the long vowels was quite different from ours, Shakespeare’s pronunciation was similar enough to ours that with a little practice we would probably understand his plays even in the original pronuncia- tion—at least no worse than we do in our own pronunciation!

  • This was mostly an unconditioned change; almost all the words that appear to have es- caped it either no longer had long vowels at the time the change occurred or else entered the language later.

  • However, there was one restriction: /u:/ was not diphthongized when followed immedi- ately by a labial consonant. The original pronunciation of the vowel survives without change in coop, cooper, droop, loop, stoop, troop, and tomb.

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