Why is says pronounced sez

It's just that sometimes I soften my z to an s. Maybe it's an individual thing. I only say 'sez', and 'thuh' and 'thee' are NOT interchangable. Thuh is before a consonant, thee is before a vowel. It like the difference between a and an. Maybe this is only in my dialect, but it's 'thee' elephant and 'thuh' shoes, not the other way around. But pompous broadcasting twits, especially across the pond, have never let standard pronunciations get in the way of on-air affectations.

The former appears to have survived as a non-standard dialectal form:. The verb to 'say' is a good example of a mundane verb that is used a lot and that does exceptional things.

Frequency has to be the trigger for the change here. I can think of no other explanation. As in anything we do automatically, we get more efficient, faster and we decrease the size of whatever gestures are involved. Because we say it so often, we opt for a shorter route. Perhaps it's a regional thing?

I once took exception to a journalist saying "thuh" old buildings and "thuh" evening. Don't do that. Let people use their own dialects and accents. Billions of English speakers use that pronunciation. Why bother about pronunciation? I can't stand people saying "between you and I" or writing "It's it's problem.

I say sez , and have always wondered because consonants in the alphabet placed before ay indicate it should be pronounced says : bays, cays, days, gays, jays, lays, pays, rays, ways. The consonant s is the only one different. I say 'says' and I say it all the time. I don't want to say 'sez' when 'says' is perfectly acceptable and also a correct form of this word. Sign up to join this community. The best answers are voted up and rise to the top. Stack Overflow for Teams — Collaborate and share knowledge with a private group.

Create a free Team What is Teams? Learn more. An exhibition at the British Library is set to reignite debate in an area British people love to argue about — correct pronunciation, and how the way we say words is changing.

The accepted view among linguists is that language change is inevitable, and language has always evolved — with records of complaints about the "debasement" of English going back to the middle ages. But that doesn't stop people complaining about the changes that really get their goat. Which pronunciations do you love to hate?