15
It is possible to put the main stress on the first syllable of police in some varieties of English. When the first syllable of police is stressed, the vowel is not a schwa. It is the "goat" vowel or "long o" sound: /ˈpolis/ or /ˈpoʊlis/ (both of these phonemic transcriptions are identical).
There is no way to classify this pronunciation as indisputably "...
12
The "r" sound in American English is often described as a postalveolar approximant (/ɹ̠/) and not a trill (/r/). This means that rather than producing a vibration or trill, air is constricted without vibration. The tongue in this postalveolar position is behind the alveolar ridge, or the left-to-right ridge you feel when you lift your tongue up in the mouth. ...
9
Instead of trying to say "agree" normally, try practicing by saying "ag Ree" as two separate words very slowly a bunch of times. Then practice it more quickly, eventually letting the two parts start to slur together.
8
As a native speaker, I would interpret meaning by context as much as sound. If I heard somebody (apparently) say "The hate of the tower is 300 metres", I would know that they were saying "height". That pronunciation sounds, to me, a southern English/RP speaker, like Irish (particularly Northern Irish), Scottish, or perhaps Newcastle ("Geordie") regional ...
8
The simple answer is that in English, the pronunciation of a name has no definite connection to the name's spelling or etymology.
Nevertheless, here's some background information that may make the variation that you mention less surprising.
In Standard German, "ue" represents the sounds /yː/ and /ʏ/. The usual spelling is "ü"; "ue" is used instead of "ü" ...
6
In US English, anyway, it's a normal "r" sound, with the back of the tongue pulled back in the throat. The tip of my tongue is no different when I say "great" than when I say "rate".
If you are OK producing the "r" at the end of a word like "tiger", try saying "tiger ate" a number of times. Try to merge "tiger" and "ate" and then eliminate the vowel between ...
4
In the UK, where we use a mixture of metric and imperial units* the full form is more common in speech but some abbreviations are used. This usage definitely lies towards the informal end of the scale and relies on a common understanding.
Both km and kg are abbreviated as kay. This is essentially never ambiguous in context - if I lift "40 kay" it must be ...
3
Way too long for a comment, but perhaps useful...
[T]here are languages, such as Arabic, Malay, and Urdu, where /h/ can occur at the end of syllables, e.g., Malay basah /basah/ "wet". Notice that, in analysing syllable structure, we are talking about sounds (phonemes); the spelling is irrelevant. Thus, while many English words end in an h letter, this ...
2
The -ing is not stressed, and it does not affect the stress of the word it is added to. The form it is added to is still has a word end (marked with #).
SPE describes this situation by using a boundary # which appears at the beginning and end of every word and phrase. Two words are ordinarily separated by at least ##, where one # ends the first word and ...
2
It's common to distinguish primary stress from other kinds of stress in English. For example, the word deˈterioˌrate has primary stress on the second syllable but the word deˌterioˈration has primary stress on the penultimate syllable, and secondary stress on the second syllable. In some traditions, the final syllable of "deteriorate" is not considered to ...
2
I don't know for sure, but I'd guess that the [d] in fid'na comes from the [s] in fixing to, the way that the [z] in isn't, wasn't or business can turn into [d] in some accents before the following [n] sound. Something like [ˈfɪksɪntə] > [ˈfɪksnə] > [ˈfɪsnə] > [ˈfɪznə] > [ˈfɪdnə].
If the intermediate pronunciations [ˈfɪsnə] and [ˈfɪznə] exist, that would ...
2
As far as those examples that exist in Michigan, USA, the pronunciation for all three is the same: OH-ree-un, with the emphasis on the first syllable.
The constellation Orion, on the other hand, is pronounced oh-RY-un, with the emphasis on the second syllable.
For reference, I was born in Michigan, and lived there until my late 40's. I lived within 30 ...
2
Different publications use different conventions. If said book uses "ū" to mean the vowel in smooth, i.e. /uː/ or /u/ in IPA-based conventions, and \ü\ in Merriam-Webster, then it is. You can never expect a symbol in one source to represent the same thing in another.
Traditionally, though, "a", "e", "i", "o", or "u" with a macron above it meant "the sound ...
1
Webster's dictionaries started including detailed pronunciation with the 1864 edition, and it looks like they always identified malinger to have a "hard g", rhyming with linger (1864, 1890, 1930). Worcester's dictionaries, however, transcribe it as having a "soft g", rhyming with ginger (1850, 1860).
Early British pronouncing dictionaries from the 18th and ...
1
You might draw a distinction between so-called standard English pronunciation, and variant pronunciations.
Any text book of English as a foreign language (no matter whether British or US or other) will have the same standard pronunciation. But the pronunciation ‘funder’ is common as a local variant, especially for people born in London and the South ...
1
Obligatory "I am not a radio broadcaster" (but I am a native American English speaker)
In all cases, when describing human life spans, I've read and heard this phrase read as:
"Nineteen-ninety-four to present" (or "the present" or "the present day").
Other common options include:
"Born in 1994, currently living"
or
"Born in 1994, not yet ...
Only top voted, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible
