2723: The Pronunciation of ‘Often’ Jun 4, 2024

‘Often’ is one word, with 3 forms, sort of. Plenty of words are pronounced different ways by different people, though usually it identifies a dialect or sociolect. Here it identifies an interesting pattern, not tied to any particular group of people. Originally, the word was just ‘oft’, and still appears this way sometimes, especially in combination (e.g. ‘an oft-cited source’). This then joined the ranks of other -ten verbs where the -T- is not pronounced, like ‘listen’, ‘soften’, ‘fasten’, ‘christen’ and ‘moisten’, of which all have the T pronounced without the ‘-en’ ending except ‘list’ which isn’t used anymore outside of the now-dated ‘listful’.  

Back to ‘often’, which may be the only one where pronouncing with or without the /t/ would be acceptable. This is because the more historically common way to say it was with the /t/, and it is only more recently that it is articulated like ‘soften’ which is now favored in formal settings, but given how recent that is, the version without a /t/ sound is still prevalent. 

There will be more on this—and why those T’s became silent—tomorrow.