Questions tagged [pronunciation]
for questions about the sound, stress, or intonation of spoken words.
2,795 questions
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French words: productive pronunciation in present-day English ('faux')
Consider a case like faux:
/ˌfoʊ/ in faux marble or faux pas
/ˌfoʊz/ in faux ami(s).
Therefore, is it productively /foʊz/ before a vowel (French pronunciation rule) in today's English too? Say, in
...
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Loss of /tə/ between nonrhotic and nasal: 'certainly' /ˈsɜ:n.li/
Certainly /ˈsɜːn.li/
https://youtu.be/gV4e9ownkAY?si=cpb0NvcE9YUw2Nza
Bear in mind this is a further step from the common trisyllabic [ˈsɜː.ʔn̩.li] or even [ˈsɜː.t̚n̩.li].
Is this a specific ...
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'Yes'm / yessum' [jaʊm]
Yes'm / yessum! [jaʊm]
https://youtu.be/4NpYYHI7sF0?si=BTRV69_kTjZtV_Sz
/ˈjɛsm/ yes + -'m (a contraction of ma'am, < madam).
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/yes%27m
What phonological processes ...
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Flapped final n: /ɾ̃/
"Why not"
https://youtu.be/BCJvJvczvqk?si=G7MISNhERiBXJETS
(1:51) "grabbing a mic" https://youtu.be/wrsOYUUbR7U
Other than context, how to distinguish them from (nasalized) ...
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Why don’t you [t̠͡ʃə] < (whyn)cha
Shortening of whyncha
Source: the Bluray edition of Goodfellas (1990).
From the full film the following Youtube clip was taken at 0:40:04:
https://youtu.be/gShUU_HKrqg
Does this [t̠͡ʃə] (cha) ...
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'Does that': devoicing [tsaet]
Here are two examples thereof
Does that feel OK, comfortable?
min 09:02:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wdLB3udjOR0&feature=youtu.be&t=530
Does that sound good?
min 1:02 https://youtu.be/...
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How did speakers of Elizabethan English pronounce the a in names like Coriolanus?
I was watching a local production of Coriolanus recently and found the way they pronounced the name seemed strange: CorioLAYnus ... rhymes with "anus" ...
I would have thought it would have ...
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What's behind the mispronunciation of "overarching"?
Listening to Inside Politics Sunday today (10/19/25), I heard a journalist, Astead Herndon, mispronounce overarching with a /k/ instead of a /ch/.
I think there is a recognition that the gerontocracy ...
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Is the /əʊ/ diphthong in “won’t” and “don’t” elided in SSBE/GB speech?
I'm curious about a pronunciation feature I’ve noticed in British English.
Don't you think that the correct pronunciation of words in SSBE/GB—but not so much in RP—such as "won't" or "...
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Why is "chartered" pronounced as "charter-ed" and not "charte-red"? [duplicate]
I am confused about the pronunciation of the word "chartered" / ˈtʃɑːtəd /.
In my understanding, the word is built as:
charter + ed or charte + red
Why in the word "chartered", the ...
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Pronunciation of helenium
Oxford Languages (largely ODE), courtesy of Google, gives
helenium pronounced /hɛˈliːniəm/
noun: helenium; plural noun: heleniums
an American plant of the daisy family, which bears many red to yellow
...
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"Paradigmacity", "paradigmicity": spelling, pronunciation, morphology
There is no trace of either of these word forms in Google ngrams nor in Etymonline (1, 2), but Google Books reveals that there are more than 20 cases of use; I presume that it can be safely accepted ...
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Vowel type for "o" in Cyanocitta
I've been going through the guidelines of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traditional_English_pronunciation_of_Latin to sort out the English pronunciation of Cyanocitta, a biological taxon name, as an ...
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May Latin-derived words be accented on the preantepenultimate syllable?
Concerning the standard English pronunciation of Latin loanwords, the rules for determining which syllable receives primary stress appear to give only stress on the penultimate and antepenultimate ...
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Which parts of the US and when did (some) Americans pronounce "Vicarious" as /vaɪˈkɛɹi.əs/?
Is the i in the first syllable in "vicarious" pronounced as a diphthong or a short vowel?
I would have placed a wager on short because the letter "i" in the words “vicar” and “...
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Why do word beginnings with X take a /z/ sound in English?
I looked at several questions on this site for an answer, but they don't seem to answer my question.
What I want to know is why /z/? Why not another consonant, for which K seems to be a likely ...
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Why is the final "i" of the "-ii" suffix of taxonomic names pronounced long?
It seems fairly well established that for taxonomic names, an -ii suffix is pronounced ee-eye (long e, long i). A specific example is here: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/Sarcopterygii, ...
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Why do words such as 'admirable' and 'preferable' have stress on a different syllable than 'admire' and 'prefer'?
admirable /ˈædmərəbl/, preferable /ˈprɛfrəbl/
admire /ədˈmaɪər/, prefer /prɪˈfər/
However, this shift doesn't happen for other words (e.g. 'avoid'/'avoidable', 'afford'/'affordable', and 'convert'/'...
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"Suburb" uncommon stress pattern, regionalism?
I've very occasionally heard "suburb" pronounced with the stress on the second syllable as opposed to the prevailing pronunciation where it falls on the first syllable. This pronunciation is ...
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337
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The "-ed" consonant blending into another consonant leading to potential past-tense ambiguity
I live in the US so this is mostly directed at American English (and I don't know whether other English-speaking locales have this issue or whether they handle it differently).
In the following ...
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Why do some American speakers have [ʊ] for /ʌ/ before /l/ in words like ultimate and culture?
In several American accents I hear a back, rounded vowel before /l/ in words that dictionaries transcribe with STRUT /ʌ/. For example:
ultimate often as [ˈʊl.tə.mət] rather than /ˈʌl.tə.mət/
culture ...
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Is BrE pronunciation of the word "better" becoming more AmE-ized?
It seems like there is an uptick in AmE accented pronunciations of the word "better" in BrE. This would hardly be surprising with the amount of pure entertainment that is curated in the ...
- 5,435
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130
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How did the first syllable of "merus" get its pronunciation?
According to Merriam-Webster, the biological term merus, which refers to a segment of a crustacean's limb, is pronounced in English as "ˈmi(ə)rəs", i.e., as "MIH-rus", with the ...
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Crustacea pronunciation breaks rule?
According to this web page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traditional_English_pronunciation_of_Latin, in the section "Long and short vowels," it states that any emphasized syllable other ...
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Pronunciation of "routing" [duplicate]
Electronic boards contain traces made of copper, like flat wires, layed on their surface.
The process of designing and choosing the best path for every trace is called routing.
Now, I have a question ...
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'Insert' versus 'Inzert' : the voicing of "s" in "insert"
This evening, one of my sons remarked on the way I pronounce the verb "insert" as /ɪnˈzɜːɹt/, voicing the "s" in the same way as most speakers would pronounce the "s" in ...
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Pronunciation of English 'hiccup': Which syllables takes [k]?
At the time of writing, Internet sources in general, dictionaries in particular, give differing answers to my question. For example, Cambridge dictionaries specify [ˈhɪk.ʌp], whereas Merriam-Webster ...
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Glottal stop after the obstruents
This is my first post here, so if I make any mistakes, please correct me.
At the beginning, I must specify that I mean the Standard Southern British English/General British/modern RP.
I'd like to ask ...
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Chaise(s) longues: pronunciation
According to the Longman Pronunciation Dictionary
The plural chaise(s) longues is pronounced identically with the
singular (late-stressed), or sometimes with added /z/.
How is the plural chaise(s) ...
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Are there any words starting with the letter A or I that also start with a consonant sound (and so should be preceded by "a" instead of "an")?
There are words starting with the letter E, O, or U that also start with a consonant sound (e.g. European, one, user). And so, these words should be preceded by the indefinite article "a" ...
user499756
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1
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My little brother asked me whether in this audio there is one or two words. What do you hear?
He told me there are two different words in this audio but I hear only one word (with two pronunciations): soccer.
It is a question for the native English speakers.
https://youtu.be/1r46hx15jkE
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1
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What is the correct British pronunciation for Glacier
According to the OED, both GLASS-ee-uh and GLAY-see-uh are correct pronunciations of the word glacier in British English (c.f. https://www.oed.com/dictionary/glacier_n?tl=true&tab=pronunciation)
...
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Why isn't the T in "incapacitated" flapped?
Usually, when a T comes between two vowels and is the beginning of an unstressed syllable, it is flapped.
So, both Ts in "incapacitated" meets this requirement: it's between 2 vowels, and &...
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What is the pronounciation of HEIC?
What is the pronounciation of HEIC?
I watched videos where everyone say /aitch e i cee/ but here say /haɪk/. Is the last variant in use?
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How to pronounce name initials?
Initialisms are usually late-stressed, e.g., CIA /ˌsiaɪˈeɪ/, or mph /ˌempiːˈeɪtʃ/
However, I don't know how to pronounce initials from personal names, such as
J.K. Rowling
J.R.R. Tolkien
O.J. Simpson....
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Summarily /səˈmErəli/
According to the LPD, the primary AmE pronunciation of summarily is /səˈmerəli/.
What's the pronunciation of summariness?
edited
There other examples of stress displacement with the addition of ...
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Pronunciation of "cwm" – /kuːm/ vs /kʊm/
The Collins English Dictionary and the American Heritage Dictionary offer
/kuːm/
as the pronunciation of 'cwm', while the Oxford English Dictionary gives
/kʊm/.
Naturally /kuːm/ is probably going to ...
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Does ä sound different in different words?
My dictionary says that a in far and o in flog should have the same sound ä, or IPA's ɑː.
However, to my ears, a in far has a very open-back sound, whereas o in flog sounds more rounded, like o in dog....
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How would "notes" and "thoughts" rhyme back then?
Back when the Great Vowel Shift was supposedly over, William Wordsworth penned the following lines:
I heard a thousand blended notes,
While in a grove I sate reclined,
In that sweet mood when ...
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Are rescind and resend homophones?
Rescind and resend are homophones and easily confused words.
The following sentence uses both words correctly:
Cilla was beside herself with anxiety: had Tyler rescinded his interest taking her to the ...
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How to pronounce the archaic meaning of “mead”?
I know that “mead” is an alcoholic beverage and we pronounce it “miid”. However, what about “mead” as in “meadow”? Would the pronunciation be more akin to meadow or mead?
I ask because in a TOEIC ...
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What's the reason for g-dropping in songs?
Why are g's dropped in songs as in ing->in'? But it seems g's aren't always dropped. When does one sing without dropping g's? I guess it's to make singing easier or smoothen connections between ...
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How should phonetic symbol "tilted t" be pronounced?
The phonetic symbols for the first and second words' "t" are different from the "t" in the third word. What is the difference? How should the tilted "t" be pronounced?
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Can a hyphen be a "letter" in some words?
Someone claims to me that the hyphen in the word "Uh-oh" is a letter, not a punctuation mark, because it represents a phonological instruction (the glottal stop). Is this true? I have never ...
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Is true that English speakers pronounce /i/ as /e/ ~ /ɛ/ when yelling?
As far as I can remember, it is a common practice in songs to pronounce expected /i/ as /e/ ~ /ɛ/. The example that comes to my mind now is Turn me on from David Guetta:
My body needs a hero, come ...
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Relief vs. belief pronunciation
On dictionary.com, "relief" is pronounced "ri-leef" phonetically while "belief" is pronounced "bih-leef." So, there's an h-sound in "belief" that isn'...
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2
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Were double consonants pronounced at some period of history?
One of the things that makes me wonder is why English has double consonants which are pronounced as single, like ‘ff’ (buffer, stiff), ‘ll’ (allow), ‘mm’ (hammer), ‘nn’ (dinner), ‘ss’ (-ness, floss) ...
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"*A* ~10% reduction" or "*AN* ~10% reduction" [duplicate]
I am reading a document related to programming, where a reduction in something is described, and it occurred to me that it was written different than what I would've done it.
The text in the document ...
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3
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Is "parker" ([ˈpʰɑ̈˞kɚ]) a common pronunciation of "parkour" in American English?
I've recently had a small argument with a coworker about the pronunciation of parkour. Neither of us is a native speaker. She seems to believe "parker" (in narrow IPA, [ˈpʰɑ̈˞kɚ]) is the &...
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IPA Pronunciation - what is the difference between ð, θ, and θj [closed]
In what dialects are ð, θ, and θj pronounced differently? My own dialect is a mix of Northern Californian and Midwestern, and I couldn't identify any speech pattern off the top of my head where these ...
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