Linked Questions

4 votes
3 answers
470 views

Pronunciation of Edinburgh

Why is the Scottish capital Edinburgh pronounced as Edinbruh? It is not clear to me why the letter "u" is silent, so that the "b" is followed directly by the "r". Then a ...
0 votes
1 answer
64 views

"bus" and "cut" pronounciations? [duplicate]

So there are words that use "bus" but where this group of letters is pronounced differently: busy - "bizzy" bus/bust - "bas/bast" Case 2: Similarly with "cut" ...
4 votes
2 answers
23k views

Sounds of the letter a

How can I know, precisely, when to differentiate the sounds of the letter a, like in: apple and vault?
1 vote
0 answers
1k views

Why so many words in English are pronounced different from their spelling? [duplicate]

As a non native English speaker, I am astonished at the amount of English word pronounced different from their spelling. For instance, 'Would' is pronounced like 'Wood', 'Whole' is pronounced like &...
7 votes
3 answers
7k views

Why are the words "lose" and "choose" written differently and pronounced the same way?

I do know that there isn't only one pronunciation for syllables, and I also know that there isn't only one way to write a phoneme, but this intrigues me a lot. Lose is spelled with only one O, and it'...
11 votes
4 answers
22k views

Why does "ow" have two different sounds

Why is it that the "ow" in now makes the /aʊ/ sound while "ow" in snow makes the /oʊ/ sound? Has this always been, was it spelled differently and then changed, or was it spelled this way but the sound ...
8 votes
3 answers
16k views

Why is "door" pronounced with an "o" sound and not a "u"?

Why is door pronounced as in 'o' not as in 'u' ?
16 votes
1 answer
21k views

Why is "blood" pronounced the way it is?

I mean, why isn't it pronounced "blue-d" rather than "blud". And this applies to "flood" too, but not "glood" or "clood" I imagine.
0 votes
1 answer
6k views

/u/ and /uː/ in pronunciation

What is the regularity of appearance of /uː/ and /u/ (or /ʊ/ in RP)? How can I be most sure deducing from spelling alone, that, say, "ooze" is pronounced /uːz/ and "wool" as /wul/? I know that English ...
4 votes
2 answers
559 views

Words that result from a gradual distortion of other words

Among others, I've heard the following words and their supposed origins: Beef: Comes from the french word "boeuf". Marmelade: Contraction of "Mary" and "malade" according to some story about a doctor ...
1 vote
0 answers
91 views

Reason for ambiguous pronunciation [duplicate]

Possible Duplicate: Why do written English vowels differ from other Latin-based orthographies? I noticed that in English some words that have the same letters (except for the first), have a different ...