Why is Christina Perri pronouncing "closer" as "cloSSer"?

Question

In this song at 0:58, Christina Perri pronounced the word "closer" with an S sound: clo[s]er

I have always pronounced and heard it with a Z sound. Is the pronunciation of "closer" in this video specific to her accent? It is strange.

Answer 1

Christina Perri pronounces it correctly and that's not restricted to American English. As far as I know, the pronunciation of closer (adj) with an /s/ is the correct pronunciation in almost all varieties of English.

Pronunciation of close (verb)

I think you're confusing close (adj) and close (verb). The verb close is pronounced [kləʊz]—with a /z/.

Pronunciation of close (adj)

The adjective close, its comparative and superlative are pronounced with an /s/:

• close → [kləʊs]
• closer → [ˈkləʊsə]
• closest → [ˈkləʊsɪst]

Pronunciation of closer (noun)

There's also a noun 'closer', which is pronounced with a /z/ sound: [ˈkləʊzə]

Clo[s]e enough to clo[z]e the door???

Both the 'close's in the sentence above are pronounced with a different sound. The reason for this idiosyncrasy is...... (welp, don't get me started on that) Old English's fricative voicing.

There were three fricative phonemes, /f, θ, s/ in Old English. Old English had a phonetic property called fricative voicing, whereby fricatives—s, f, þ ~ ð¹—became voiced when they were flanked by vowels or a vowel and another voiced consonant². The realisations [f - v], [θ - ð] and [s - z] were allophonic. It was the only way to get [z], [v] and [ð] because Old English didn't have phonemic [z], [v] and [ð].

• Wolf was wulf and it would've been pronounced [wulf], wolves was wulfas and would've been pronounced something like [wulvɑːs].
• House (noun) was hūs and would've been pronounced [huːs], house (verb) was hūsian and would've been pronounced something like [huːziɑn] (I'm not sure though).
• Bath (noun) was bæþ and pronounced [bæθ], bathe was baþian and would have been pronounced [ˈbɑ.ði.ɑn].

As you can see, Old English was a heavily inflected, but a very phonetic language.

• Close (verb) was clȳsan and was pronounced [ˈklyː.zɑn], phonetically.
• close (adj) was clȳs, pronounced [klyːs], phonetically.

There are many other examples such as grass graze, glass glaze, belief believe, life lives, leaf leaves, wife wives, knife knives, bath bathe, breath breathe, north northern etc etc.

The endings were later on lost and the voiced sounds remained.

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<sup>1. In Old English, the letters þ and ð were used indiscriminately by Old English scribes to represent the th sound.
2. The fricatives [s, f, þ ~ ð] were voiceless elsewhere; at the start or a word, end of a word, and adjacent to a voiceless sound.</sup>

Answer 2

You may be confusing two words that are spelt the same.

• "Closer" (adj), meaning something that is more close (near), has an 'S' sound.
• "Closer" (noun), meaning something or someone that closes (shuts), has a 'Z' sound.

Note also that there is a difference in the way words are pronounced when they are sung. When singing, we break up words on the vowel sounds because you cannot 'hold' a consonant. Instead of "close-ur" it would be "clo - sur". This results in it sounding a little different to how it would be pronounced in speech. In fact, if you look at sheet music that contains lyrics, the words are often shown broken up as they are meant to be sung.