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It has seemed to me that the accent in "pastoral" and "electoral" has shifted quite rapidly, from PAStoral to pasTORal and from eLECtoral to elecTORal. But recognizing that my perception of rapidity may be wrong, I consulted a couple online dictionaries, not for what they thought was "correct," but for what they thought people were saying. Dictionary.com lists only the first version of each word. Merriam-Webster lists both pronunciations for each word, but gives pasTORal second and labels elecTORal nonstandard. I take this to mean that the pronunciations that sound right to me are older and were current in the general population whenever these dictionaries were last updated.
So probably there are many folks around who changed the way they pronounce these words. Is language change so insensible to you that you just didn't notice? Did you change because you deliberately change to whatever you most hear? Or did you just give up for fear of being odd or unintelligible? As I may soon have to do. But can I really make myself say "Beethoven's PasTORal Symphony?"
So probably there are many folks around who changed the way they pronounce these words. Is language change so insensible to you that you just didn't notice? Did you change because you deliberately change to whatever you most hear? Or did you just give up for fear of being odd or unintelligible? As I may soon have to do. But can I really make myself say "Beethoven's PasTORal Symphony?"
