"Often" Pronunciation

How do you pronounce it?
Off-ten? Or off-in?

 

Off-ten

 

X2

 

off-ten

 

Really depends on how backwoods you are..

 

people across the pond say off in

 

"across the pond"

 

off-tin

 

Hey now... Ain't gotta be backwoods, even tho I may be I've got plenty of city friends that still say offin

 

[FONT=&quot]Touché [/FONT], good sir...[FONT=&quot]touché. [/FONT]

 

Exactly

 

I don't use the word that off-ten.

 

i didn't know an irish potato was pronounced "irish" until i was probably 11 or 12. always thought it was an "arsh potato" haha.

 

I must preface this as I live in a very rural area in the deep south....

The question is unclear in that lacks specific situational examples for which the actual annunciation may be applied and therefore can not be accuratley answered by myself (or any of several people I know).

Example:

If I were to assume I had consumed no mind altering liquids I would, in the majority, pronounce it off-ten. At some level above the standard "0.08" I might pronounce it off-in.

 

According to dictionary.com

of·ten   [aw-fuhn, of-uhn; awf-tuhn, of-] so anyway is correct. You probably have to go to the origin of the word (germanic, latin, etc...) to get the true pronunciation.

Edit:

Origin:
1300–50; Middle English oftin, variant before vowels of ofte oft

Pronunciation note
Often was pronounced with a t -sound until the 17th century, when a pronunciation without the  [t] Show IPA came to predominate in the speech of the educated, in both North America and Great Britain, and the earlier pronunciation fell into disfavor. Common use of a spelling pronunciation has since restored the  [t] for many speakers, and today  [aw-fuhn] and  [awf-tuhn] [or  [of-uhn] and  [of-tuhn]] exist side by side. Although it is still sometimes criticized, often with a [t] is now so widely heard from educated speakers that it has become fully standard once again.

 

Ouften

Hillbilies

 

Back in the dark ages (1950s) when I went to school, my English teachers insisted the "t" was silent in "often." But pronunciations seem to change with popular usage. When I started engineering studies, the profs let us know that the first "g" in the prefix "giga" was pronounced "j" as in "gigantic." Go into a store now and ask for a 16 "jigabit" memory card and the sales clerk probably won't know what you are talking about.

 

Onother one that bugs me.

An Historic event sounds clumsy but that's what we always hear.

It sounds right with a silent H but since most here pronounce the H why not A Historic event?

I go with and without the T in often, depends.

 

"Off-in" slightly more frequently, probably. But I tend to switch back and forth on this one because I've never been sure what the "correct" pronunciation is. Mom grew up largely in the South and says "off-in," dad is from northeastern Ohio and says "off-ten" so that's probably where I got confused.

 

This.

I was brought up speaking it incorrectly so I USUALLY avoid the uncomfortable word