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In some podcasts (it seems the speaker was from California) I heard that the word "especially" was pronounced with "ks" sound like "ikspeshally".

What was it likely to be, personal way of pronouncing this word or a local dialect?

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7 Answers

up vote 2 down vote accepted

I live in Idaho and I hear people pronounce especially this way all of the time.

More often than not (at least around here) it gets pronounced either "ex-specially" or "eck-specially" or "eg-specially". There are many people here who have their own dialect.

Don't even ask me about "creek" and "crick"...

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O.o, I'm so sorry...Seriously, I'm pretty liberal when it comes to pronunciation, but why would people pronounce letters that aren't there?? – kitukwfyer Aug 11 '10 at 23:36
Thanks for the info, I think that the speaker was maybe raised in Idaho and only later moved to California – rem Aug 12 '10 at 15:50
@kitukwfyer - Actually, I suspect that ignorance is partly to blame (ie - mispronounce it because they actually think its spelled that way)... who knows though. – Jagd Aug 12 '10 at 15:52
3  
@kitukwfyer: remember that it's spoken language that is primary, at least in native speakers. So it's not "people pronounce letters that aren't there", but the other way round: the spelling does not reflect the actual pronunciation (in that dialect). As soon as you put it that way, it's obvious that this is nothing special (and not just in English, I might add). And no matter how much time you give it, spelling might or might not adapt to the pronunciation. (On the one hand, we no longer write thrid, we actually write third; on the other hand, we still write women rather than wimin.) – RegDwighт♦ Jul 13 '11 at 11:04
@Regdwight Haha, yeah. This one just caught me off guard because I'd never seen/heard it before and because I've been learning words from books years before I heard them for quite some time. Still, that comment is pretty empty-headed in retrospect. I should probably get out more. X) – kitukwfyer Jul 13 '11 at 18:34
up vote 6 down vote

I checked more than 10 dictionaries and the pronunciation of "especially" is given as:

/ɪˈspɛʃ(ə)li, ɛ-/

It's probably the personal way of pronouncing that word for the relevant person, which seems wrong to me.

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up vote 4 down vote

I was born and raised in California. I've spent time in many different Californian locales, and I have never heard that pronunciation.

I think the speaker misspoke or was trying to be cute.

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up vote 2 down vote

I've heard that pronunciation from people with Appalachian roots, but I think it is rare there. The same people tend to pronounce "nuclear" as "nucular", so the pattern seems to be to convert unusual (for the dialect) diphthongs to something more natural.

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up vote 1 down vote

I was raised in California and have heard that occasionally. I do not think it is a regional dialect in the sense that there is some part of California in which everyone speaks that way. It's more likely to be a social dialect of some kind.

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up vote 0 down vote

Pronunciation of "especially" is: /ə ˈspɛʃ li/ or /iˈspeSHəlē/.

Listen pronunciation from BeeDictionary or Google Dictionary

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up vote -1 down vote

Sounds like a mash-up with words like "exclusively", "exceptionally", etc.

That kind of thing happens a lot.

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