Wednesday

Was this word ever pronounced as ''Weddens day'' or has it always been ''wenz day''?

"Wednesday" was probably pronounced the way it looks (wed-nes-day) back in Shakespeare's day.

wodanesdag (Germanic)
wodnesdaeg (Old English)
wodnesdae or wodnesday (Middle English)
woansdei (Frisian)
woendsdag (Dutch)

It appears that at some forgotten point in time, Wednesday began to be pronounced similar to the way it's pronounced in Dutch or Frisian ("n" before "d"), but for some inexplicable reason the spelling wasn't altered to reflect this change.

Not only in Wednesday, but German owns English anyday

It seems like sometime maybe not even that long ago it used to be pronounced as [wed..nzdei] by a few British speakers.

WHAT the heck is ".."?

It's a schwa, SagaSon....you should know since you're always talking about it.

It comes from Woden's day. Woden was a Pagan deity.

I'm glad your on the topic of the pronounciation of wednesday. I've got to explain this to a 1st grader. How would you explain it? I was thinking that if one does pronounce it as wed nz dei, but says it faster and faster, it eventually sounds as wensday. Is it just a part of our faster paced culture?

Oops that should have been a you're instead of a your. My apologies.

Wednesday comes from "Woden's Day". Woden was an Anglo-Saxon god.

Oh, you know how some words in the English language with a schwa sound before the ''l'' spell it as ''le'' instead of ''el'' and some words spell schwa before ''r'' as ''re'' in British English [not in American English except for ''acre'']. Well it seems like the word ''Wednesday'' did the schwa before ''n'' like that. As ''ne'' instead of ''en'' and that it was once pronounced as [wed..nzdei] and then was shortened to two syllables [wenzdei] but the spelling never changed.