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.