What are the "new" pronunciations for these? I'm a native speaker and I'd pronounce them the way you've indicated is "older".
The way I hear them here in the North (of England), from most common folks, is Of-Ten, An-th-ony (with TH from "the"), and Tor-Toy-s. The T in "often" can be very short but it's definitely there.
Out of curiosity, is it definitely the voiced TH from "the," rather than the unvoiced TH from "thing?"
In the US the spelling pronunciation of Anthony is by far the more common (at least in my experience), but I've never heard it with a voiced TH.
For what it's worth the Oxford English Dictionary lists /ˈtɔːtɔɪs/ ("TAW-toice") and /'tɔːtɔɪz/ ("TAW-toiz") as alternate pronunciations in British English. This appears to be the result of a revision made to the entry sometime after 1989. (The public-facing revision history is not very precise.)
You're implying that traditional, complex, and arbitrary pronounciations should be considered "smarter" than logical, simpler, and hence modern ones because...?
Pronounciation is a inherently classist concept; the harder you make it, the more you entrench classism and intolerance into society. Regardless of the motivation for such correspondents to use a modern form, I personally would applaud it as progress, rather than sneering at it.
"I personally would applaud it as progress"
One man's progress is another man's regress. Maybe it's the result of the "Hooked on Phonics" generation having grown up.
Yes, but I'm not a native speaker, so I have the privilege of seeing the matter from a more neutral perspective. And what I see, when it comes to pronounciations, is that traditionalism is largely illogical, and maintained simply as a way to signal exclusion. It looks harmless on some levels (i.e. figuring out whether somebody is "local" by the way they pronounce certain topological names), but more often than not it's just used to discriminate between education-rich and education-poor, which then translates into straightforward classism where educational systems are deeply and fundamentally classist (like in England or the US).
> Those would be more inclusive and modern pronunciations?
Yes.
> One man's progress is another man's regress.
For sure. After all, a few Catholics were ecstatic when pope Benedict XVI reinstated and promoted saying mass in Latin, effectively trying to revert a century of progress. But fighting actual and logical progress tends to be a losing proposition in the long run, and that particular movement kinda died off quickly.
I'm unsure of the difference between the old and new here. Does anyone pronounce the "l" in "falcon" by touching their tongue to the roof of their mouth?
I pronounce the "l" similarly in "fault", which is kind of "fau-t".
(If you're just referring to the "a" sound, like the a in "fall" vs "fat" then that's a different question, but I think quite regional.)
I'm near the Missouri/Arkansas border, for what it's worth.
Both L sounds involve raising the tongue, but with the light L the tip of tongue approaches the alveolar ridge (the part of your gum just behind your top row of teeth), while with the dark L the tip of the tongue does the same thing, but the back of the tongue simultaneously rises towards the soft palate (this is called "velarization", and it's the same gesture that accompanies lip-rounding to form a W sound). There may be further differences depending on accent, e.g. in Cockney accents the tongue-tip gesture of dark L is lost completely so that dark L becomes a fully-fledged vowel, and it might even acquire lip-rounding and merge with W. Other accents have lost the distinction as well and generalized either light L or dark L to all positions (e.g. Scottish English tends to use dark L everywhere).
In the older pronunciation of "falcon", there's no L there at all, light or dark. It was borrowed from Old French "faucon", and the L was restored in spelling via Latin influence in more or less exactly the same way as the B in "debt".
Hell, I'm pretty sure captain falcon in smash brothers also has a hard L in "falcon punch!"
It's "Karen" in normal conversation, but if she brought storebought cookies to the potluck it's "Kar-in-nuh", with the emphasis on the last syllanble.
In my head, these are called "spite syllables" :)
That would usually be coupled with a very veiled reference to how she put in the minimum possible effort while indirectly insulting her entire bloodline: "Oh, don't you just feel for Karen? I don't know how she gets anything done with those kids of hers."
Alternatively, if the speaker wants to embarrass her in front of someone with a higher social standing; "Karen, these cookies are just the best thing ever! What do you put in these to make them so good?"
Hah. Where I live this would mean they have marijuana in them.
Growing up somewhere with a strong accent (the Ozarks), I often find myself in the position of knowing exactly the right word to use in a situation, but having never heard it spoken aloud. I've always intended to learn how to use a phonetic alphabet (e.g., IPA) but haven't had an easy path to it.
Yes, though some speakers use an S rather than a Z sound (think "choice").
I have only heard these pronunciations from British speakers.
I look forward to hearing that from Zoomer college students any time soon then.