The palatalization tag has no wiki summary.
21
votes
4answers
3k views
Why are “sugar” and “sure” pronounced with an SH?
As far as I know, those are the only two. They should be pronounced Soogher and Soor, shouldn't they? I looked them up on Dictionary.com, and their etymologies reveal no trace of an SH, except where ...
14
votes
2answers
775 views
Why is “str” sometimes pronounced as “shtr”? [duplicate]
Possible Duplicate:
Pronunciation of voiceless alveolar fricative /s/ as ʃ (/sh/) in slang?
My understanding was that the cluster "str", for example in "stress", is usually pronounced ...
13
votes
2answers
229 views
What’s going on with “drink > drench”? Is it like “passage > passenger”?
Edit: I am looking for a particular linguistic term for this process (which here uses terminal palatalization to indicate such) of turning passive verbs like drink into active verbs like drench. I ...
12
votes
7answers
3k views
How do I spell the truncation 'Cas', as in 'Sports Casual/Sports Cas'?
How do I spell the truncation 'Cas', as in 'Sports Casual/Sports Cas'? It may be UK only, and may have been spawned by Alan Partridge. Cash/Cas are not right.
*As in a slang term, "he was acting all ...
9
votes
4answers
3k views
Why is “liquorice” pronounced (or spelt) so strangely?
Liquorice is pronounced ˈlɪkərɪʃ. But every other word I can think of ending with -ice is pronounced differently (such as police or rice). How did liquorice get such a strange pronunciation, or ...
9
votes
3answers
835 views
What rules of English allow the first t in “patient” to make an sh sound?
What rules of the English language allow the first t in patient to make an sh sound?
Why is it /ˈpeɪʃənt/ and not /ˈpeɪtənt/? Are there any other words where t behaves in this way?
7
votes
4answers
2k views
“zh” vs. “j”. Are these pronounced in the same way?
I've seen some Chinese words like "YUEZHONG". Also in some other languages like Persian and Arabic I've seen words written with "zh". Are these two sounds pronounced in the same way? Is there any word ...
7
votes
6answers
976 views
What is the origin, and correct spelling of, “shtook”?
I quite frequently use a word that sounds like "shtook", to mean, trouble with the law or other authorities, as in, "You'll be in dead shtook if you do that" or "you'll be in real shtook if you don't ...
3
votes
2answers
157 views
Palatalization of the initial “s” in words starting with “st-”
Sometimes I hear native speakers pronounce the s at the beginning of a word as [ʃ]. For example, straight as [ʃtreɪt], or struggle as [ʃtrʌɡl]. It sounds like German words.
Is it a certain English ...
3
votes
1answer
692 views
Pronunciation of voiceless alveolar fricative /s/ as ʃ (/sh/) in slang?
Observed some words get pronounced with a /sh/ rather than /s/ in certain situations.
Stripes as "Shtripes" (from some "The Wire" episode)
Screw it as "shcrew it" (from a rap song)
In both ...
1
vote
1answer
112 views
't' pronounced as 'ch'
In some words, the pronunciation of t is actually closer to ch, as in fortune.
Is this is a recognized phenomenon in English pronunciation? Does it have a name? What other prominent examples can be ...
0
votes
1answer
85 views
What is the proper way to spell “inspiraysh”?
I've noticed a trend among "younger people" to shorten words by simply cutting the ending off.
For example, instead of inspiration they might say something like inspiraysh.
What is the proper way ...
