7
Grimm's law is at work here.
Grimm's law consists of three parts which form consecutive phases in
the sense of a chain shift. The phases are usually constructed as
follows:
Proto-Indo-European voiceless stops change into voiceless fricatives.
Proto-Indo-European voiced stops become voiceless stops.
Proto-Indo-European voiced aspirated stops become voiced ...
5
With the stress on the second syllable, the line would not scan.
Herein lies the problem. Milton's "blank verse" is notoriously irregular, so much so that whole careers have been spent trying to elucidate the precise rules underlying its metrical structure. Indeed, an important part of Milton's poetic legacy was his challenge to the very idea of a ...
5
Which one is standard depends on which variety of English you speak.
In the U.S., the standard pronunciation is [ɛ]. If you say [bɛt], people would understand you to be saying bet, while if you say [bet], it might be heard as bait (although probably not if the meaning is clear from context).
In the U.K., the standard RP (upper-class) pronunciation used to be ...
3
For me, I might pause, I might carry on without a pause, I might say "dot dot dot" or three short "hmm hmm hmm" to denote that there's an ellipses. For reference, I speak Canadian English, but I hear a lot of Americans doing this too.
2
Just as there are patterns to the stress of words ending in the suffixes -ic and -ious (the stress regularly falls on the immediately preceding syllable for either suffix), there are patterns to the "length" of a single vowel letter before a single consonant letter.
The patterns for vowel length have many more exceptions than the patterns for ...
2
As a native speaker of British English (Surrey), I pronounce all those words with a fronted vowel [ɑ̟]. It's also a bit raised. In fact, all the people around me pronounce them with [ɑ̟]. [ɑː] is considered too "posh" in my neck of woods.
2
In AmE the pronunciation is rather [ɛ]: /bɛd/; in BrE the traditional pronunciation, considered to be RP by some, is [e]: /bed/. However, in BrE regional variants tend towards [ɛ] or are [ɛ]. This can be verified at John Wells Phonetic Blog.
1
You link them together. It took me years to notice this but my English improved a lot thanks to that. Native speakers link everything, watch this
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=beo1mezedJw
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ziKkSig0jM
1
Wrapping up in advance (due to the long text)
"process-eez" might come from the rare plural long u "-us" ending of the Latin u-declension of "processus" (which is just an intransitive participle converted to a noun). Generally, "eez" cases might just flag something special. Finally, it might also just improve the sound ...
1
This answer on ELL has explained the reason why the W is silent in sword but pronounced in swore. That answer is rather long, but I'll simplify it here:
Between 900–1400 AD, there was a sound change through which a W was lost when it was preceded by a [s] or a [t] and followed by a back vowel [ɒ ɔ o ɑ]. [Wikipedia]
The W in two and sword is silent because of ...
1
Sounds like....
The first syllable of worship is pronounced the same way that the
word were is pronounced. In contrast, the first syllable of warship is
pronounced the same way that the word wore is pronounced. Those two
sound-alike words — were, wore — are unlikely to be pronounced the same
as each other in most accents, or maybe in any.
The second ...
1
I'm pretty sure, when I was a kid in Toronto, that we pronounced the word worship like "warship", as in, a ship of war. I'm not sure I have any way to prove that.
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