As common as the word ‘politics’ is, the tendency for many people to mispronounce it is high. All you need to say is poliTIS, and we usher you into the hall of those who phonologically murder it. By saying poliTIS, you have left out the K referred to in the title of this lesson. The pronunciation is like politiKs, not poliTIS.
Note that there are three syllables in ‘politics’, the distribution of which is also a little dramatic. This is in the sense that it is not PO-LI-TICS but POL-I-TICS. This further shows that the way a lot of people articulate it is suspect. But our focus is on the third syllable where the K issue arises. Many pronounce the letter C as S, but it is a hard consonant that should come out as K. So, again, the right pronunciation is politiKs, not poliTIS.
Ironically, the C in ‘politician’ does not sound like that. It is transcribed as and comes out as the SH we have in shop, ash, thrash and what we have in in elctriSHian (electrician), academiSHian (academician) and optiSHian (optician). So politician is simply like politiSHian.
MathematiKs
There are many other words where C becomes K in pronunciation. These, interestingly, include ‘phonetics’ itself, which is phonetiKs, not phoneTIS. What about Mathematics? Surely not MathemaTIS! So, you should stop saying ‘We have MathemaTIS because what you have is MathematiKs:
I don’t know much about phoneTIS. (Wrong)
I don’t know much about phonetiKs. (Correct)
Many people believe that MathemaTIS is a difficult subject. (Wrong)
Many people believe that MathematiKs is a difficult subject. (Correct)
She does not know much about the eTIS (ethics) of the profession. (Wrong)
She does not know much about the etiKs of the profession. (Correct)
The title of the course is KineTIS (Wrong)
The title of the course is KinetiKs (Correct)
In earlier classes, we had established the same K in the pronunciations of inspect, respect, suspect, accept, access etc:
inspect: inspeKt
respect: respeKt
accept: aKsept
access: aKcess
except: eKsept.
