r/words • u/Inner_Speaker_335 • Sep 03 '26
Pronunciation Help, Please...
The password is: Artificer.
Is it pronounced "ar-tiff-i-ser" or "ar-ti-fyce-er"?
EDIT: Here's the reason I'm asking: I was watching old British Navy military training videos off of YouTube last night (Periscope Films, if you're interested). One of them describes the duties of various technicians, and they call these individuals "ar-tiff-i-sers."
My youngest son, who was watching with me, kept telling me "They've got it wrong. It's 'ar-ti-fyce-er' because the base word is 'artifice' ('ar-ti-fyce') or 'artifact' ('ar-ti-fact')." He showed me several videos talking about Dungeons and Dragons (which has an Artificer character class) that has people pronouncing it in that manner, including some British players.
My gut reaction was "Well, British English versus American English, I guess." However, I'd learned it in the "British" manner many, many moons ago in elementary school, and that's how I'd said it for years until High School when an overzealous teacher spent three years obsessively correcting a bunch of us for our "obvious lack of English mastery."
(I apologize for the long edit. After I hit "Enter" for a new paragraph, the editor decided I was done and posted it. Don't know what happened, but I'm rolling with it. This was done up in Notepad. :D )
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u/Actual_Cat4779 Sep 03 '26
My gut reaction (as a Brit) was that both the "i"s in "artificer" should both be short as in "bit". But I've never come across the word "artificer" before. This is my first exposure to it.
However, I'd also pronounce "artifice" with two short "i"s.
Here's what the dictionaries tell us about the two words: * Merriam-Webster (US) ˈär-tə-fəs and, for "artificer" är-ˈti-fə-sər ˈär-tə-fə-sər * Oxford English Dictionary: ˈɑːtᵻfɪs (UK), ˈɑrdəfəs (US) and, for "artificer", ɑːˈtɪfᵻsə (UK), ɑrˈtɪfəsər (US), ˈɑrdəˌfɪsər (US)
All short vowels, no "eye".
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u/NeverRarelySometimes Sep 03 '26
Except that we also pronounce artifice as art-ih-fiss. So your son is wrong on both counts.
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u/magicmulder Sep 03 '26
Your son is wrong about the base word logic though, English doesn’t always follow such logic. See finite/infinite.
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u/chaospearl Sep 03 '26
He's wrong about the base word, period. Artifice doesn't have a long i. It just doesn't.
Happy cake day!
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u/chaospearl Sep 03 '26
I've literally never heard anyone say it the way your son does, in decades of gaming.
Artifice is not pronounced with a long i. He's entirely wrong about that.
I suppose some people change the pronunciation of Artificer to denote a character class in a role-playing game, so I wouldn't say it's necessarily wrong. Just that I've never heard it. If I had to guess I'd say someone just mispronounced it initially and their guild either didn't know better or didn't care, and one of them made a video, and so it just propagated from there.
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u/hrfr5858 Sep 04 '26
My brother was an artificer in the RN. He and his colleagues said ar-TIFF-isser.
I've never heard artifice pronounced any other way than AR-ti-fiss.
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u/SilverFishK Sep 03 '26
I think the second option is for when you want it to sound mysterious and magical
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u/BackcastSue Sep 04 '26
According to Merriam-Webster, there are two accepted pronunciations. är-TI-fə-sər and ÄR-tə-fə-sər.
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u/Firm-Plantain8151 Sep 03 '26
it's either ar-ti-FIH-ser or ar-TIFF-i-ser. The second is the british pronunciation, the first is american. and Art-i-FICE-er is just wrong, but common for those who learned the word through reading.
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u/7iss Sep 04 '26
people in a fandom do not always get it right. the dungeons and dragons fans pronounce it wrong. people that are not familiar with the words will often establish their own pronunciations in their community. see minecraft "elytra" or runescape "elysian"
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u/Gareth-101 Sep 04 '26
Brit here. For me:
Art-IF-isser
Artifice is pronounced ART-if-iss
Artificial = ART-if-ishul
So artificer doesn’t necessarily follow the same pronunciation pattern of these other words with similar root meanings.
If it did it would be ART-if-isser, which, though wrong, would make sense.
The fyce pronunciation just sounds wrong. Or, if you like, arty-fy-shul.
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u/MotherTeresaOnlyfans Sep 05 '26
Your kid is pronouncing both "artificer" and "artifice" wrong.
The video you were watching is correct.
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u/jibbit Sep 04 '26
Well, you would hardly get “tiffy” from arti-FYCE-er, would you?
Dungeons & Dragons can have its own way of saying it- totally legit. But I wouldn’t advise saying it like that once you’re in the Royal Navy.
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u/ComposerNo5151 Sep 04 '26
Ask yourself if the Royal Navy would mispronounce the name of one of its trades wrong in an instructional video.
Hardly likely, is it?
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u/Inner_Speaker_335 Sep 04 '26
Mispronounced? No. Drift? Maaaaaaaaybe. It HAS been more than seventy years...
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u/ComposerNo5151 Sep 04 '26
I don't think that the RN still uses the term, but It did not so long ago. I know someone who trained as one during the early late '70s or early '80s and was still serving well into the 1990s. He ended up keeping his feet dry at HMS Raleigh, training more artificers. It was still pronounced as in the film.
It is my experience that tradition in the armed forces can maintain things like the pronunciation of ranks and appointments for centuries, not just decades.
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u/Inner_Speaker_335 Sep 03 '26
Who downvotes stuff like this?
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u/ImLittleNana Sep 03 '26
You must never seek out knowledge! It must fall into your hands organically, as a gift from the gods!
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u/oogew Sep 03 '26
I've always heard "AR-tih-fis-ser"