All Questions
Tagged with vowels pronunciation-vs-spelling
41 questions
0
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1
answer
457
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Why does "broad" not rhyme with "boat"?
The word "broad" is pronounced /brɔːd/ (some US accents: /brɑːd/) instead of */brəʊd/. The spelling -OA- somehow suggests that these words are closely related and/or were pronounced the same ...
user387044
2
votes
0
answers
232
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Words Starting With the Vowel "I" [closed]
The word of the day in Merriam-Webster's daily post was "Itinerant."
Words that start with the letter "I" most often have a short, or informally, a soft vowel sound, if two ...
- 59
0
votes
1
answer
2k
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What’s the rule for the sound of the letter A in the middle of three-letter words?
How do you actually pronounce A when it's in the middle of a 3 letter word like mac or rap?
I hear many Americans say those words with a clear AAA sound, like the AA sound of the start of the word ...
- 1,193
1
vote
2
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1k
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Why are river and sliver pronounced with a short vowel, but rover and slider pronounced with long vowels?
Why are river and sliver pronounced with a short vowel, but rover and slider pronounced with long vowels? Is it because the latter two examples are words made by attaching the -er suffix to an ...
- 23
4
votes
1
answer
187
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"An Universal Etymological English Dictionary". Why "An Universal"?
My question is not about the general usage of a/an, so, I believe, it is not a duplicate one. It is specifically about the title of the dictionary An Universal Etymological English Dictionary ...
- 8,523
2
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2
answers
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Are there words other than "friend" where "ie" is pronounced as /ɛ/ ("short e")?
Are there any words in English other than friend where the spelling "ie" corresponds to the "short e" sound /ɛ/?
- 1,442
2
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1
answer
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Why is the spelling of "company" different from the pronunciation?
My students regularly pronounce the word "company" with [o] in the first syllable.
Why do we pronounce [ʌ] in this syllable? but write "o"?
Thank you.
user292343
107
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7
answers
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Why is Nike pronounced "naikee" and not "naik"?
A word ending with e usually doesn't have a vowel at the end like bike and strike, so why is Nike different?
- 1,193
3
votes
1
answer
762
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What's the history of the English letter "Y" as a "sometimes vowel"?
Wondering when and why historically the Anglo-Saxon letter "Y" became a (part-time) vowel substitute for the letter "I", leading to "gymnasium" instead of "gimnasium" or "cyanide" instead of "cianide" ...
10
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3
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Difference between /ʌ/ and /ə/ in English IPA
If someone who is a linguistics expert could explain this to me in a way I can understand, I'd really appreciate it. I get that /ʌ/ is used on stressed vowels and /ə/ on reduced vowels, but they sound ...
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2
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Why is "country" not pronounced like "count-tree"?
Why is country pronounced /ˈkʌntɹi/ and not /ˈkaʊntɹi/ ?
- 736
2
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2
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What effect do neighboring vowel-letters have on the pronunciation of the letters "sc" in a word?
Consider these words, with standard pronunciations from Oxford
Dictionaries Online using in the worldwide-standard International
Phonetic Alphabet:
conscious, pronounced /ˈkɒnʃəs/
eschew, pronounced /...
- 53
11
votes
2
answers
1k
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Did the non-standard pronunciation of “gold” as "goold" come from an Old English sound change?
John Walker in his Critical Pronunciation Dictionary (1791) transcribes the pronunciation of the word “gold” as
go¹ld, or go²o²ld
which in modern transcription equates to /goʊld/ or /guːld/.
He ...
- 84.5k
2
votes
1
answer
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Rule for the pronunciation of the letter O as /ʌ/ vs. /ɒ/
If the letter o in a word is pronounced as a monophthong, it will fall
into two types:
pronounced as /ʌ/ as in color ("/kʌlə/")
pronounced as /ɒ/ as in lock ("/lɒk/")
What I would like to ask is ...
- 273
1
vote
3
answers
2k
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What is the word for the double vowel in "coordinate"?
The word coordinate has two vowels in it, that would ordinarily make the /u/ sound. Probably because of the word's etymology (Latin co- (“together”) + ordinare (“arrange”)) it is not pronounced as ...
- 7,135
6
votes
1
answer
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Why is "salient" pronounced with a "long a" sound?
The word salient is pronounced with a "long a" sound; Wiktionary gives the US pronunciation as /ˈseɪ.ljənt/, /ˈseɪ.li.ənt/. Is there any reason why the vowel letter here receives its "long" ...
- 84.5k
1
vote
1
answer
3k
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Why is the word "bread" pronounced "bred"?
Why does it have an A in the word if you don't pronounce it? It's pronounced with a short e (/ε/) and I want to know why. Why?
- 13
4
votes
1
answer
1k
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Name for letter U in words like 'suede' and 'penguin'
What is the letter U called when it says the /w/ sound in words like suede and penguin? I've read that y and w are semivowels but the U in suede and penguin doesn't really conform to the definition of ...
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1
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When did "legend" stop being pronounced "LEE-gend"?
Nowadays, we pronounce the word legend as "LEDGE-end" (IPA: /ˈlɛdʒənd/). But it looks like at least some people used to pronounce "legend" as "LEE-gend." In A General Dictionary of the English ...
- 84.5k
0
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1
answer
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Why do people write "Hellooo" instead of "Heeello" to show a prolonged sound? [closed]
I'm not a native English speaker, so I don't know what to search for on Google and similar.
In chats I often read words like 'helloooo', or 'sureeee'. And as I understood it, it's meant to mimic the ...
- 21
3
votes
1
answer
1k
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How do you look up what lexical set a word belongs to?
(I mean phonological lexical sets, if that wasn't clear.)
How do you look up what lexical set a word is in? Is there any sort of open database anywhere?
Like, say I have the LOT/CLOTH merger, and I ...
- 386
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3
answers
4k
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Why are "suffice" and "sufficient" pronounced so differently?
Today I heard somebody use a form of the verb "suffice" (which means "to be sufficient") pronouncing it like the verb "surface" without an r (and where that "a" makes more of an "i" sound). This ...
- 3,574
2
votes
1
answer
389
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Why are there two sets of vowels in English? [closed]
I'm a native Spanish speaker and I've been learning English for many years. They always taught us that there are two sets of vowels and we learned how to use them mostly by reading and practicing, no ...
- 21
11
votes
2
answers
8k
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Is there any rule for pronouncing words beginning with “re-”?
It’s hard for me to guess how to pronounce words beginning with re- correctly.
Sometimes it is /rɛ/ as in reference, but sometimes it is /ri/ as in report.
Is there any rule about this?
- 213
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3
answers
17k
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How to pronounce "aa" vowel pair? [closed]
The word in question is "thraal", a species from the Dr. Who universe (http://tardis.wikia.com/wiki/Thraal) and coincidentally also a species from the Transformers universe (http://tfwiki.net/wiki/...
1
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2
answers
5k
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How to tell how a vowel should sound like in words?
Why does the 'A' in the word "cat" sound different to 'A' in the word "car"?
If I want the 'A' in a foreign name like 'Pardis' to sound like the 'A' in cat, how should I write it?
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1
vote
3
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Is there a rule for how to pronounce words such as "dance", "prance", "castle"?
Is there a grammatical rule for the pronunciation of words such as dance, castle and prance? I believe the British English pronunciation is "ah", while in American English it is a short "a" sound.
- 21
6
votes
3
answers
27k
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The pronunciation of "ate"
I was talking to some friends and I said "I ate (/et/) chocolate yesterday...". Then my friend corrected me: "you ate (/eit/) chocolate...". I repeated my sentence with the /eit/ pronunciation and we ...
- 93
9
votes
2
answers
1k
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Why doesn't the silent "e" work on "infinite"? [duplicate]
Why doesn't the silent "e" work on the word "infinite"?
What I mean is, why does mate have a long "a", but infinite has a short "i"?
- 207
0
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3
answers
5k
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Why are we supposed to say the “a” as an “e” in “any” and “many”?
I speak Australian English, but I seem to pronounce the words many and anything differently from how the vast majority of people here do so.
I pronounce it using an a sound rather than an e sound ...
- 9
5
votes
0
answers
209
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Why do you write "receive" with "ei" but "retrieve" with "ie"? [duplicate]
Possible Duplicate:
Why is it true that “I before E, except after C”?
Both words are similar in pronunciation but different in spelling. Why is it that receive is written with ei but retrieve has ...
- 151
0
votes
1
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6k
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/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 ...
37
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10
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36k
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How are 'marry', 'merry', and 'Mary' pronounced differently?
The way I pronounce these words is the same. Similarly for other words like these: I pronounce ferry and fairy the same, carrot and caret. Yet, dictionaries show different pronunciations for these ...
- 68.9k
2
votes
2
answers
8k
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Why does a silent "-e" at the end of a word lengthen vowels?
There's a common pattern in English spelling where "short" vowels are pronounced as "long" vowels with the addition of a silent "e" at the end of the word.
E.g.
bit → bite
mat → mate
pet → pete
Is ...
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7
votes
2
answers
41k
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Any rule for pronouncing “e”?
I hear three different sounds for the letter e in precious, bean, and Peru.
Is there a rule that covers the different pronunciations that a written letter e can represent in speech?
- 767
4
votes
7
answers
18k
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Why is "go" spelled with the same vowel as "do" and "to" since it is pronounced differently?
These two-letter words ending in -o are pronounced with the vowel /oʊ/: bo, go
ho, jo, lo, no, so, and yo whereas do and to are pronounced with the vowel /uː/. Is there an explanation for the ...
- 161
13
votes
3
answers
66k
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Why do people pronounce "Naomi" as "Niomi"?
The Wikipedia page for "Naomi (given name)" says once said "pronounced nay-oh-mee" which is how I pronounce my daughter's name, but quite often people pronounce it "nigh-oh-mee" (that is, with a long "...
- 243
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3
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6k
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What is the overlap between "Y" and "I"?
My son and I were reciting the Spanish alphabet recently. "Y" is i griega, which means "Greek i." This got me thinking about the English letter Y and its function in our alphabet.
All of the words ...
- 27.9k
13
votes
4
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Why doesn't "ninth" have an "e", like "ninety"?
Is it just because "ninth" has only one syllable? That wouldn't make sense, though, because saying "NINE-ith" wouldn't be worse than saying "NINE-e-tee". If we were used to "nineth", we would have ...
- 57.8k
3
votes
3
answers
4k
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Why do "able" and "haste" have long a's?
(There are others, such as table, paste, and baste.) The rule I've heard is that a vowel is made long when succeeded by a consonant and then another vowel. Some words treat double consonants as a ...
- 57.8k
26
votes
4
answers
5k
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Why do written English vowels differ from other Latin-based orthographies?
Written English vowels differ from other Latin-based orthographies. Consider what the written vowels in the romance languages represent. Also, for example, consider this simple comparison between a ...
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