DABlog

I’ve noticed that people routinely pronounce “accreditation” as if the first ‘t’ were a ‘d’: accredidation. I’ve been wondering why, and I have a theory.

First, consider that ‘t’ often becomes a ‘d’ sound before ‘ed’. “faded” and “fated” can sound very similar. “imitated” is pronounced more like “imitaded”.

Now, it’s also true that while “imitated” sounds like “imitaded”, no one says “imiDation” instead of “imitation”. Nor does anyone say “visiDation”, “mediDation”, or “cogiDation”. So why “accrediDation”?

The reason, I believe, lies in the past tense form of the word: accredited. In that word, the ‘t’ after the ‘d’ sounds like a ‘d’ (like “imitaDed” and so on). I surmise, therefore, that something along the following lines happens when people pronounce “accreditation”: The brain gets to that first ‘t’ after the ‘d’ and, out of habit born of d-ifying the ‘t’ in “accredited”, pronounces it as a ‘d’.

What the brain doesn’t quite take into account is that there’s a syllable “missing”. If the past tense were “accreditated” instead of “accredited”, then no one’s brain would ever have thought that there were two ‘d’ sounds in a row, and no one would say “accredidation”.

It’s the only theory I can think of that explains why this word alone, among all the -itation words in the language, gets pronounced this way.