Much of what Donald Trump says is incoherent and simplistic -- his sentences run on and on, he uses fifth-grade vocabulary, he repeats and contradicts himself endlessly. But the one thing that really made him an object of derision was his use of the word "bigly."
It turns out that Trump isn't saying "bigly." He's trying to say "big league." The problem is that he's pronouncing "big league" incorrectly, which makes people hear it as a different word.
Standard American English has a rule for pronouncing vowels when they appear before a voiced consonant at the end of a word. A voiced consonant is spoken with vibrating vocal cords; an unvoiced consonant is not. These generally come in pairs: for example, "d" is voiced and "t" is its unvoiced partner. Other voiced/unvoiced pairs are b and p, g and k, v and f, z and s, the "th" in "that" and the "th" in "thin," the "ch" in "church" and the "j" in "jerk," the "sh" in "shut" and the "s" in "measure."
Now for that rule: when a root word ends in a voiced consonant the vowel preceding it is doubled in length. This is not at all obvious, even though we speak English all the time. I didn't realize this myself until I studied Japanese, which uses double-length vowels in any position in a word, treating single- and double-length vowels as completely different sounds.
You can hear the difference by comparing English words that differ only in the voicing of the final consonant. For example, bed and bet, ride and write, rod and rot, fad and fat, bid and bit, and league and leak. If you pronounce "bed" with a single-length "e", it's harder to distinguish from "bet."
When Trump says "big league" he usually does so very quickly, with two shorter vowels, instead of two longer vowels. Americans are used to hearing those long vowels before voiced consonants at the ends of words. When Trump incorrectly uses shorter vowels our brains try to interpret the sounds using the standard pronunciation rule, and we come up with "bigly."
Additionally, Trump constantly uses "big league" as an adverb (modifying a
verb), and since most adverbs end in -ly, the usage doubly reinforces the "bigly" interpretation of the sounds.
Why does this pronunciation rule exist? Doubling the length of the vowel disambiguates the final consonant, providing more time to hear that it is voiced. Not all dialects of English use this rule: in several UK and Irish dialects vowels aren't doubled before final voiced consonants.
Russian and German, on the other hand, always devoice final consonants. In many German cognate words the change is reflected in the spelling. Bed is "Bett," God is "Gott," bread is "Brot." I'm guessing that the American doubling of vowel length before final voiced consonants is partially a result of hypercorrection from German and Slavic immigrants to emphasize the voiced consonant. It's "bed" not "bet," you lousy kraut!
Why does Trump use "big league" as an adverb so much? Is it a real estate thing? A New York thing? A rich guy thing? "Big league" is usually used as a noun, such as "Playing in the big leagues." Most people going for a sports-related adjective would use "major league," such as "major-league yabbos" (from a scene in Animal House).
But then Trump is little-league presidential candidate, isn't he?
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