From: utzoo!watmath!bdfinch
Newsgroups: net.nlang
Title: "re: often"
Article-I.D.: watmath.2995
Posted: Mon Jul 12 10:16:26 1982
Received: Mon Jul 12 23:17:46 1982
References: watmath.2989

yes, pronunciation of 'often' as 'OFF-ten' is a blunder. if i am not
mistaken, 'often' was at one point spelled 'offen', but some 'scholar'
somewhere down the line made the mistake of converting the second 'f'
to a 't', and it stuck. there is no historical basis for pronouncing
the 't', people do it because they think it sounds ritzy.