The "Financial" Split

At New York University's Business School, nearly every time I ask someone what they're majoring in, I get the same response:

I'm majoring in Finance.

And this response is to be expected given the school's very close proximity to Wall Street. But what really catches my attention isn't the name of the major–it's how students pronounce it.

Nearly every student I've talked to pronounces finance with the "long i" diphthong sound [aɪ] as in my and fine. This is also the way I grew up saying it. It's the pronunciation heard in casual speech and from high school teachers across the country.

But once I got to NYU, I couldn't help but notice that many of the older speakers, from professors to working professional guests, said the word differently. They said fin-ance.

Like fin, as in shark fin.

Weird, right?

At first, I thought I was hearing things–the difference in pronunciation really is subtle. Aside from a shift in syllable stress, the two pronunciations are distinguished only by the shortening of the diphthong [aɪ] to the monophthong [ɪ], as in "bit."

But as I dug deeper, I realized that I wasn't hearing things. Anecdotally, it seems that the shark fin pronunciation of finance is correlated with age and status. Older, more established speakers are more likely to use it. Most of the business students I've talked to in an informal survey agreed: The fin pronunciation feels overly formal and possibly pretentious if the wrong person uses it.

So, when I first met a French international student (who later became one of my good friends), the way he introduced himself as a fin-ance major didn't sit right with me. It's completely fine and acceptable if a professor or a CEO says it that way, but not if you're introducing yourself as a fin-ance major and don't even know what EBITDA stands for.

Is this a British thing?

Across internet forums, I've noticed that some speakers assume the fin pronunciation is common in Britain. This perception likely stems from an American tendency to associate the "British accent" with high social class. But this assumption is wrong.

While fin-ance does appear in some academic contexts, British speakers, like Americans, typically use fine-ance in conversation. The association between the fin pronunciation and British English is likely a result of misconstruing academic speech as British English.

Even though the fin pronunciation isn't necessarily always used in British English, it shares similar features with British pronunciations in the context of American English. It has this aspect of overt prestige, a sociolinguistic phenomenon where individuals align their speech patterns to appear more socially valuable.

This is probably why high-class individuals from professors to executives skew towards the fin pronunciation–in prestigious fields like academia and corporate leadership, the vowel shift's effect can be influential.

A Linguistic Shift

I asked one of my business professors about her usage of the word and she told me that, as a student, she used the fine pronunciation. After becoming a professor, however, she started mixing in the fin pronunciation in her lectures and solely uses fin when speaking with Finance professionals.

It's also possible that this change happens for reasons beside social value. Proximity to the Finance department naturally aligns their speech habits, and professors who shifted to raise their credibility may linguistically influence others through constant exposure.

The professor I spoke to also mentioned how the fine pronunciation came more naturally in casual speech. This reveals that for many, the adoption of fin could be an example of code-switching, or shifting your speech patterns when talking to different groups of people. For example, a speaker can utilize both pronunciations of the word, but be more inclined to use fin in more academic situations and fine in more casual speech.

But my professor isn't alone in adopting the fin pronunciation. In fact, there seems to be an international trend in academics that’s pushing for this pronunciation.

An International Difference

A 2018 study by Louisiana State University found that top academics with an undergraduate education outside of the United States used the fin pronunciation at a noticeably higher rate than the fine pronunciation. Among those using the fine pronunciation, 44 out of 45 earned their doctorate from the States

This finding is in contrast with professors with a US education, where fine was slightly more common. However, professors remain more likely to use the fin pronunciation than the average person.

It's possible that this difference stems from the desire for non-US institutions to teach the most prestigious variants of English, even down to these specific phonetic differences.

This possibility may explain my friend's pompous pronunciation; he grew up learning the fin pronunciation, whereas my American peers use the fine pronunciation because that's the variant they hear the most in daily conversation.

Looking Forward

Interestingly, the study finds that the fin pronunciation may continue to gain popularity even in general American speech. As more international students like my French friend enter the American linguistic marketplace, they bring with them the variant of English they were taught. And, as language naturally evolves over time, it’ll be interesting to track further developments in the pronunciation of finance.

Who knows? Maybe in the future, there will be more fin-ance majors.