Questions tagged [pronunciation]
for questions about the sound, stress, or intonation of spoken words.
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Pronunciation of "Ine", as the name of the Saxon king in modern English
Ine, also rendered Ini or Ina, (Latin: Inus; c. AD 670 – after 726) was King of Wessex from 689 to 726 (Wikipedia). This is a name still used today, apparently, but I do not find it in the Longman ...
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What's the difference between ɔ & ɒ? [duplicate]
What is the difference between ɔ and ɒ? Would bɔl and bɒl both be "ball"? (I'm talking about in standard American English.)
I saw this similar question but it hasn't had any answers for ...
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Historical pronunciations
Is there a unified resource that gives the pronunciation of an English word according to how those most responsible for establishing its current spelling would have pronounced it?
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Why do we say some initialisms and acronyms as words but not others? [duplicate]
Initialisms and acronyms with vowels can be said as single words. Is there any coherent pattern or convention determining the choice? VIP? LOL? DIY? WAG? For example?
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Is the 't' silent in the word "fasten"? Or is it the 'e'? [closed]
There are mixed answers online. Some say 't' is silent. Others say 'e' is silent.
Dictionaries don't seem to give a consistent pronunciation for this word, so it's hard know what is correct.
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Merriam Webster vs Oxford Languages Dictionary phonetic transcriptions of 'man'
I've noticed that in MW words "now" and "man" have the same middle sound (ˈnau̇ vs ˈman), but in Oxford dictionary these two words have two different sounds (naʊ vs mæn). So which ...
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Where to put breath breaks in
But along the way they may just find out that by analyzing why
something went horribly wrong, they’ve learned a lot.
Source: https://www.snexplores.org/article/really-learn-fail-then-fail-again
When ...
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Is there any historical basis for pronouncing the “Ye Olde …“ with a /j/?
It is my understanding that the article ye as used in archaic spellings such as “Ye Olde Yereminne Shoppe” originates from spelling þe as ye with moveable type when the typeface did not feature the ...
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Why did English take the "mix pronunciations and spellings" route instead of one rule route like French, or separate languages/dialects like Spanish? [closed]
Like the multiple pronunciations of "ough" or different spellings for the same sounds in English I've read come from mixing different dialects into one language. Whereas with French, they ...
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Where is the line drawn between "you're saying the name wrong" and "this is how it's called where I'm from"? [closed]
For example, if you say New Orleans like "New Orleens" it's considered wrong, instead of "New Orlins" (Orleans is pronounced different in France though), or Iran like "I ran&...
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How did "possess" come to have a Z sound for its first double-S?
Simple question. How did the English word "possess" come to have a voiced "Z" sound for the first double-S?
Are there any other words that have this? Doesn't double-S consistently ...
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Eighteenth-century pronounciation of "wax"
In "Against Idleness and Mischief"(1715) ("How doth the little busy bee"), Isaac Watts rhymes "wax" and "makes".
Were these two words pronounced the same at the ...
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Why sometimes acronyms are pronounced as a word and sometimes they are not? [duplicate]
Why is NASA (the National Aeronautics and Space Administration) pronounced as "na·suh" but USA (the United States of America) not pronounced as "u·suh"?
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Pronunciation of naïve? [duplicate]
"Naïve" is confusing to me, the standard UK pronunciation (I don't know IPA, sorry) is "nigh-eve" (nigh like thigh; eve like Steve).
It seems like the spelling would be naiïve if ...
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Do "radiant" and "brilliant" rhyme for the purposes of poetry? Wiktionary says their transcriptions are /ˈɹeɪ.di.ənt/ and /ˈbɹɪljənt/
Is this a dialectal/idiolectal thing, where some merge /i/ and /j/, and others don't? I'm ESL and always thought they're merged until now.
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Is there a term for instances of letter sequences that aren't pronounced as a single sound?
We don't pronounce "th" in "pothead" as a single logical sound, or "ph" (as "f") in haphazard. They are consecutive letters pronounced individually.
Is there a ...
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Disyllabic nouns that differ from their verbs only in which syllable is emphasised [closed]
Some English nouns are identical to their verbs (and their adjectives) both in spelling and pronunciation, for example:
"This is fake"; "to fake"; "this is a fake"
"...
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Super reduced pronunciation of the affix "anti"
Listen to this clip at 00:13 and 00:30, and you will hear the word antihistamine. The pronunciation of anti is super reduced, just like this post described. I think the IPA should be like this: /anə/. ...
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How do you pronounce "trilean"?
Reading an answer on another Stack Exchange site I've discovered the word "trilean", which I had never heard of. I understand its meaning (the context is computer science; boolean logic has ...
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Why does the pronunciation of the prefix en- vary so much?
I want to know the reason for all the different pronunciations of the prefix en- in English words. For example, words like enable, enlarge and endure have the prefix pronounced as /ɪn/, at least ...
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Pronunciation of "genuine" in John Hartford - Steam Powered Aereo Plane
I was wondering whether there's people pronouncing "genuine" like Hartford does in this tune or if it's simply part of the freedom of artistic expression.
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Shwa pronunciation
Is shwa a single sound or can it be used to denote multiple different sounds? I know different people might pronounce the same words differently but that's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking ...
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How to pronounce "Texian"
I am looking for the proper pronunciation of the antiquated word formerly used to describe a native of Texas. The word is "Texian." It was used mostly between 1836 and about 1860 before ...
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Pronunciation difference between "night rate" and "nitrate"
On English allophones on Wikipedia, there is an example of the pronunciation differences between "night rate" and "nitrate",
Night rate: unreleased [ˈnʌɪt̚.ɹʷeɪt̚] (without a word ...
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Apparent trill in the "br" of "bridge"
I occasionally hear "br" in words such as bridge, bring or British, pronounced with almost a bilabial trill.
One example is the word "bring" in The Assumption Song by OneyNG, ...
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Why Some people in American pronounce “with” like “wth”? [duplicate]
Eg. she lives with her parents.
I sounds it like: she liveswther parents.
The “i” in “with” is dropped
I add a audio record of "she lives with her parents.".
https://drive.google.com/file/d/...
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Why is the 'l' in 'technology' the coda of 'nol' and not the onset of 'lo'?
The title says it all. I noticed some dictionaries (for reference Merriam-Webster and Cambridge) describe the word 'technology' as being divided /tekˈnɒl.ə.dʒi/ (or ⟨tech·nol·o·gy⟩). However, in my ...
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How does one show in IPA that the first sound in "get" and "got" is different?
So one has that "get" /ɡɛt/ and "got" /ɡɒt/ are a minimal pair, for it's only the vocalic phoneme which distinguishes them. However, the first sound is not pronounced/articulated ...
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Pronunciation of "substituent": [sʌbˈstɪtʃuənt] or [səbˈstɪtʃəwənt]
Why is "substituent" transcribed in different ways?
Generally, it is transcribed as /sʌbˈstɪtʃuənt/ (As Wiktionary does) But the phonetic transcription given by Merriam-Webster is /...
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Pronunciation of "privacy" in Canadian English
Do Canadians follow the American English pronunciation with the "eye" phoneme or do they tend to stick with the Commonwealth pronunciation, i.e. with the short "i" vowel?
(Sorry, ...
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The letter "a" pronounced as an "e" [closed]
In the English language there are many words where the letter "a" is pronounced as a short (continental European) "e". Or at least very close to it.
However dictionaries point out ...
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In 18th century England, was "eat" the past tense of "eat" and how was it pronounced?
In Boswell's London Journal (1762-3), the author expresses the past tense of the verb eat with the same spelling:
I sat in till between four and five. I then went to Holborn, to a cheesemonger's, and ...
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Does an unstressed 'a + noun' become 'an + noun' in spoken English when the noun starts with an 'h'? [duplicate]
I am what most of the world considers a "non-native" speaker of English. I, however, consider myself a "native" speaker of English because:
I grew up speaking English since birth,
...
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Are ə before l/m/n/r optional?
When looking up the pronunciation for a word like "people" some sources says /pi:pl/ other says /pi:pəl/ (possibly whith the schwa in parenthesis or superscript). I guess both are considered ...
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What are pronunciation options for letter "E" in the word "Enum" (short for "Enumeration")?
Context: enum as an abbreviation/short for enumeration.
This question is about pronunciation of the letter E in enum, not about the num part.
I've heard people say both "æ-num" (like in &...
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Zero-derived nouns in compound verbs
I recently read Wierzbicka 1984 (see Bożena Cetnarowska 1993) and I found this interesting footnote where she points out that some compound verbs of the form have a(n) NP require that the head noun of ...
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Pronouncing a /n/ ending with an extra schwa
I often hear American English speakers pronounce words ending in an /n/ sound with an extra schwa sound after it.
One example:
At the end of a sentence, the word's final N with a preceding vowel often ...
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Is the "u" in "menstruation" fading away?
When I was younger, I think I always heard the "u" in "menstruation" as a distinct syllable with long "u". But these days the "u" is pronounced with very little ...
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Was the silent 'e' in "nine" ever pronounced? In Old English, the word for "nine" was "nigon", with no 'e' at the end
Was the silent 'e' in "nine" ever pronounced? In Old English, the word for "nine" was "nigon", with no 'e' at the end. But, in Middle English, the word for "nine&...
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*an unitary operator* or *a unitary operator*
This is related to the question that I asked in English language and usage community: about whether there is a dialectal difference among the native English speakers in pronouncing the u of words like ...
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*an unitary operator* or *a unitary operator* [duplicate]
The rule that I usually use in such cases is that *an* precedes a vowel sound, while *a* is used before a consonant sound. I understand sound as different from letter - conventionally u would be ...
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Is "bedsit" more commonly primarily stressed on the first or second syllable?
Bedsit is one of those Britishisms that seem mildly extremely amusing (in a way that's not at all intentionally offensive, insulting, derogatory, incendiary) but not too out of the ordinary, so I just ...
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How are decimal numbers read or pronounced in different locales (different decimal separator)?
In the USA we use a period (dot) as the decimal separator. The word "point" is normally used for the decimal separator when reading such a number. For example, a number such as 3.14 would ...
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Gemination of plosives in final positions following a consonant
Whenever a plosive like p,t,k follows a consonant in the final position, it is always released or else it can't be heard at all. For example: lamp, act, thank, etc. Yet in the word lamppost, the first ...
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Right pronunciation of 'the east'? [closed]
What should be the right pronunciation of 'the east'- is it 'di east' or 'da east'??
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Are there any English words where the W grapheme represents a /v/ sound?
I noticed that Wladimir Klitschko's first name is pronounced /ˈvlæ.dɪ.miə(ɹ)/, similar to Vladimir.
It appears the W grapheme is representing the /v/ sound here. This is new to me and I was wondering ...
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Are there any English words where the EA grapheme represents a schwa sound?
There are many graphemes that can represent the schwa sound, several of which start with an E:
EI as in FOREIGN
EO as in SURGEON or DUNGEON
I am curious if the grapheme EA can also represent a schwa ...
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How are words ending with "-edly" pronounced?
I knew that "-ed-" in supposedly and assuredly are pronounced out as a syllable unlike when they don't have "-ly". I found a list of words ending in "-edly" (1), and ...
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Y'all pronounced as "yah"
I grew up in Texas, and I've heard and often said "yah" instead of y'all. I've never seen it listed as an alternative word to y'all.
Has anyone else heard this pronunciation? I cannot seem ...
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Pronunciation of Emma and Emma's
According to Wiktionary, Emma is pronounced as /ˈɛmə/ but I tend to hear it sounding more like /ˈɛmɑː/. However, when it comes to pronouncing Emma's, I hear it like /ˈɛməz/ and I hear a clear schwa ...
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