The "How Do You Pronounce X" Thread

[Travis B.]

I'm curious, do you have START in any word spelled with "or" followed by a consonant? I think START in words with "or" followed by a vowel is a bit more widespread than the card-cord merger; it's given as an variant pronunciation in the AHD and MW entries for forest.

What you are referring to is somewhat different, as found in words like forest, Florida, sorry, tomorrow, sorrow, and so on. Traditionally these were actually LOT words, but in much of NAE they have become conflated with NORTH/FORCE (except in the case of words like sorry*, tomorrow, and sorrow); however, these words remain LOT words in much of the East Coast of the US, resulting in pronunciations like Fl[ɑ]rida.

* My dialect is weird because it has s[ɔ]rry when GA has s[ɑ]rry.

[Minjaben]

How do you pronounce beat, bean, bead? I'm interested in the lengths of the vowels, particularly in the word bean. Is bean durationally closer to beat or bead for you? As a non-native speaker I have short vowels in beat [ˈbit] & bean [ˈbin] but a long vowel in bead [ˈbiːd].

In RP bean would be approx. halfway between beat & bead according to this source:

Cruttenden's Gimson (2008 p.95) states clearly "In the other cases the opposition between the member of the pairs is a complex of quality and quantity; and of the two factors it is likely that quality carries the greater contrastive weight. Indeed. in the particular case of the cad/card opposition, both vowels may be equally long." ... He goes on to point out that /iː, uː & ɔː/ before voiceless consonants have approximately the same lengths as /ɪ, ʊ & ɒ/. He also mentions that vowel length before /m, n, ŋ, r & l/ is approximately half of that "before other voiced consonants and before voiceless consonants".

So RP has [ˈbit ˈbiˑn ˈbiːd].

[Xwtek]

Well, which word in English is reduced and what environment is it reduced. All I know is:

1. Some preposition before noun
2. Pronoun adjacent to verbs
3. Possessive pronoun
4. to before verb
5. Definite and indefinite article

It's stressed when

1. In V+PP construction
2. Emphasized

[Travis B.]

I have beat [piʔ], bean [pĩːn], and bead [piːt] in isolation, with beat having a short vowel and bean and bead having approximately equally long vowels.

[Salmoneus]

Vowels in unstressed syllables are reduced.

Syllables are likely to be unstressed when a) they're in unstressed positions within polysyllabic words, or b) they're in unemphasised content words, particularly monosyllables.

Reduction is a continuum, and is often more advanced in b) than in a). For instance, reduction of diphthongs is often avoided in a) - so "iconic" often (for me, usually) has a diphthong, while "I'm" often doesn't. Reduction is also stronger in set phrases and common words.


Vowel reduction can also be accompanied by cluster simplifications, but this is a more irregular process.

And of course, reduction of the b) sort is strongly tied to speaking speed and register. So sequences like "I'm going to the..." may be spoken out fairly precisely in formal, slow contexts, but can blur into almost total sound-blobs in actual casual speech.

[The /aI/ can reduce as an unstressed vowel, and can also just be dropped entirely because utterance-initial pre-stress phoneme sequences are often just dropped; the /m/ can be dropped, sometimes nasalising the preceding vowel, as a cluster-simplification; the /oU/ can reduce; the /I/ can be dropped because English doesn't like hiatus much; the /N/ can be dropped through cluster-simplification (possibly with nasalisation); the /t/ may be flapped or glottalised in various dialects as though not word-initial because 'to' often partially attaches phonologically to the preceding word; the /u/ is almost always at least partly, and sometimes fully, reduced; the /D/ in theory shouldn't be affected, but it's a very weak sound in a very weak word and I think it sometimes is dropped in rapid speech; the /@/ is already reduced, but if the /D/ has dropped it too can drop or turn into some weird diphthong or lengthening of the preceding vowel (hey, reduced "too" has a lower vowel than "the"! Never noticed that! I think it's something odd about 'too', which is why it's so often eye-spelled "ta" (rather than, say, "teh", which is implying a different pronounciation)). It can easily become /g@~?D@/, and probably some people reduce it more than that]


This is just me talking as a native speaker, though. The precise details are probably extremely complicated and discussed at length in very long books.

[jal]

Triggered by this, Shirley vs. surely (I wouldn't have thought they could be homophones).


JAL

[Pabappa]

Airplane didn't invent that joke .... It has quite a long history. They're homophones for me , /'šr.li/...... that's a syllabic R but can't get it to appear on phone kb....
and I have the same syllabic R on "sure" as well unless I'm being unusually emphatic.

[Salmoneus]

Triggered by this, Shirley vs. surely (I wouldn't have thought they could be homophones).


JAL

They're not, usually. However, CURE and NURSE merge in some rural English dialects, and random CURE words merge with NURSE sporadically across America. Apparently, 'sure' is one of the most common examples.

For me, it's plain /SU@li/ vs /S3li/ (though /U@/ is more like [U:] before the /l/]). I can also occasionally pronounce 'sure' as /SO/ (moor-more merger), but I don't think I ever do that with 'surely'.

[Linguoboy]

I can also occasionally pronounce 'sure' as /SO/ (moor-more merger), but I don't think I ever do that with 'surely'.

I've heard AE speakers do that before, but it's definitely a very marginal pronunciation. (Based on its use in period literature, I think it may have been associated with rural Southern dialects.)

[Travis B.]

Apparently in various parts of NAE the moor-more merger is prevalent, but it is not prevalent here (with the specific exception of the pronunciation of Moorland Road here), with there being a clear distinction between [uʁ] (note the tense vowel) and [ɔʁ]. As for surely and Shirley, they are normally homophones here, but in careful speech sure can be [ɕʉ(ː)u̯ʁ].

[Kuchigakatai]

Well, which word in English is reduced and what environment is it reduced. All I know is:

1. Some preposition before noun
2. Pronoun adjacent to verbs
3. Possessive pronoun
4. to before verb
5. Definite and indefinite article

It's stressed when

1. In V+PP construction
2. Emphasized

Are you asking about vowel reduction (which happens in all unstressed syllables including within words, e.g. "construction" has two syllables with reduced vowels) or about clause-level stress between words? "Reduction" is usually used for vowel reduction, but your list suggests you might be thinking about clause-level stress.

It's not just "to + verb" but all cases of preposition + verb that have the preposition unstressed ("in doing so", "by considering us").

Possessive pronouns have unstressed forms (my, her, our) and stressed forms (mine, hers, ours).

I don't really know what you mean by "V+PP" construction. If what you actually meant was "V+Prep" in the sense a phrasal verb with an adverb-like preposition ("go down", "put it on", "give up"), then you're correct, even though I'd say this really falls in a more general "V+Adverb" pattern ("move it upwards", "turn right", "turn it inside out", "I came up with it"). However, if you really meant "V+PP", then this needs to be qualified as the PP is wholly unstressed if the complement is a personal pronoun ("I believe in you", "this matters to me", "if it wasn't for you").

[alynnidalar]

Triggered by this, Shirley vs. surely (I wouldn't have thought they could be homophones).


JAL

On the contrary, I was unaware there are dialects where they aren't homophones...

[Salmoneus]

I don't really know what you mean by "V+PP" construction. If what you actually meant was "V+Prep" in the sense a phrasal verb with an adverb-like preposition ("go down", "put it on", "give up"), then you're correct, even though I'd say this really falls in a more general "V+Adverb" pattern ("move it upwards", "turn right", "turn it inside out", "I came up with it"). However, if you really meant "V+PP", then this needs to be qualified as the PP is wholly unstressed if the complement is a personal pronoun ("I believe in you", "this matters to me", "if it wasn't for you").

Just two small corrections...

- at least IMD, it's "turn it inside out" - the "in" would only be stressed if explaining this to a particularly slow person. This is despite the fact that "inside out" as an adjective is indeed stressed on the first syllable. [which is partly why the stressed form sounds odd to me with the verb, because it sounds like you're asking someone to turn it a particular way, and obviously no amount of turning it can get it inside out. Instead, "turn inside out" is indeed a phrasal verb. I think there's a general rule that the beginning of a multi-word non-verb componant of a phrasal verb is destressed? Eg in the idiom "give up the ghost", 'up' is not stressed. Or the infuriating old cliche, "I ran it up the flagpole" - 'up' is not stressed. But I don't know, I can't think of good comparisons right now.]

- at least ID, it's "if it wasn't for you", although you're quite right about your other two examples. It would sound really odd to me with 'you' destressed. [indeed, 'you' is more stressed than 'wasn't']

[MacAnDàil]

[]

Triggered by this, Shirley vs. surely (I wouldn't have thought they could be homophones).


JAL

On the contrary, I was unaware there are dialects where they aren't homophones...

I know they can be homophones due to Airplane myself, that I still have only seen extracts of.

I pronounce them /ʃɘɹɫe/ and /ʃʉɹɫe/.

[Xwtek]

Well, which word in English is reduced and what environment is it reduced. All I know is:

1. Some preposition before noun
2. Pronoun adjacent to verbs
3. Possessive pronoun
4. to before verb
5. Definite and indefinite article

It's stressed when

1. In V+PP construction
2. Emphasized

Are you asking about vowel reduction (which happens in all unstressed syllables including within words, e.g. "construction" has two syllables with reduced vowels) or about clause-level stress between words? "Reduction" is usually used for vowel reduction, but your list suggests you might be thinking about clause-level stress.

It's not just "to + verb" but all cases of preposition + verb that have the preposition unstressed ("in doing so", "by considering us").

Possessive pronouns have unstressed forms (my, her, our) and stressed forms (mine, hers, ours).

I don't really know what you mean by "V+PP" construction. If what you actually meant was "V+Prep" in the sense a phrasal verb with an adverb-like preposition ("go down", "put it on", "give up"), then you're correct, even though I'd say this really falls in a more general "V+Adverb" pattern ("move it upwards", "turn right", "turn it inside out", "I came up with it"). However, if you really meant "V+PP", then this needs to be qualified as the PP is wholly unstressed if the complement is a personal pronoun ("I believe in you", "this matters to me", "if it wasn't for you").

About V + PP, sorry, I actually meant V+Prep. I thought preposition is abbreviated as P(re)P(osition).

[Space60]

I can also occasionally pronounce 'sure' as /SO/ (moor-more merger), but I don't think I ever do that with 'surely'.

I've heard AE speakers do that before, but it's definitely a very marginal pronunciation. (Based on its use in period literature, I think it may have been associated with rural Southern dialects.)

Among AAVE speakers it is common to pronounce "sure" the same as "show" especially in "for sure" which becomes "fo sho".

[Estav]

Question for American English speakers: does anybody have, or has anybody heard, /or~ɔr/ in flourish? I thought I heard this, but I might have been mishearing /ˈflʊrɪʃ/, a variant Wiktionary lists as a "hypercorrection" (I think it might be more of a spelling pronunciation). (Like trouble and double, the words flourish and nourish historically had "short u"—the same vowel as hurry, flurry—despite the spelling with "ou").

Question for speakers who pronounce both like "bolth" (not necessarily with an actual consonant [l], but with a noticeably different vowel sound that makes it sound like a word with /ol/): do you have the same "ol" sound in any of the following words: supposed moment most decode bone poem moan post boast coast toast? I thought I heard someone use it in supposed and moment, and based on that, I came up with a hypothesis that it might be conditioned by a preceding bilabial consonant. But I'm not sure if that's really correct.

[Zaarin]

Question for American English speakers: does anybody have, or has anybody heard, /or~ɔr/ in flourish? I thought I heard this, but I might have been mishearing /ˈflʊrɪʃ/, a variant Wiktionary lists as a "hypercorrection" (I think it might be more of a spelling pronunciation). (Historically, the words flourish and nourish had "short u" despite the spelling, like trouble or double).

I have /ʊr/, but I have heard /or/, yes. To my ears it comes across as slightly affected.

[Linguoboy]

Question for American English speakers: does anybody have, or has anybody heard, /or~ɔr/ in flourish? I thought I heard this, but I might have been mishearing /ˈflʊrɪʃ/, a variant Wiktionary lists as a "hypercorrection" (I think it might be more of a spelling pronunciation). (Historically, the words flourish and nourish had "short u" despite the spelling, like trouble or double).

/or/ and /ur/ are in the process of merging IMD. Both sound unremarkable to me in flourish. (I'm not sure how I would respond to hearing /or/ from someone who consistently maintains the distinction.)

[Vijay]

I think I have /o/ in flourish at least sometimes.