Spoiler, A Lert

This is something my brain often does: it will separate the syllables of words that begin with sound "uh" as represented by the letter a, like alert, or again, or ahead, or askew.  It will assume that the letter a in the word is actually an article & will try to make sense of the word in that context.

For example, the phrase "Full speed ahead!" will seem, if I am exhausted or otherwise not paying attention, to be saying, "Full speed, a head!"  This will confuse me.

Or as the title of this blog piece seems to say: there's a lert named Spoiler.  But what's a lert?

I know from my readings in etymology that there's a linguistic term, called rebracketing (also called misdivision), in which words like "napron" & "nadder" become, because of how people decide to pronounce them, "an apron" & "an adder."  One word that goes the other way is "notch" - it used to be "an otch."  But it happens more often that the consonant is lost from the word, not that a consonant is gained.  (Not a gain! my brain says.)

But my brain is practicing a sort of rebracketing & the interesting thing is that most of the words - unlike alert - are words in their own right, like gain, head, & skew, with the a added as a prefix.  That might be the reason my head does that.

I remember when I was learning the days of the week, it helped me to learn to spell them to pronounce them, in my head, how they were spelled.  So Wednesday, which is normally pronounced Whensday, became, to me, Wed Nes Day in my brain.  My head still pronounces it that way.  I'm sure I sometimes will say it that way.

When I was young & my brain was limber, I could hold those words separate & know they were still the same word.  As I age, I think those mind-shortcuts are slowly unravelling up there, with consequences like this one: when someone says "the door is ajar," I have to rally myself to remember that that means it's partially open - not that someone has replaced my front door with the biggest mason jar I'll ever see.