The "How Do You Pronounce X" Thread

[Linguoboy]

A friend is doing an informal survey about English pronunciation, and needs some additional data.

Interesting choices!

I never would have expected so many "distinct" responses for "son"/"sun". What are they teaching in France?

[Ares Land]

A friend is doing an informal survey about English pronunciation, and needs some additional data.

Interesting choices!

I never would have expected so many "distinct" responses for "son"/"sun". What are they teaching in France?

Done!



As for the choices, it looks like it's aimed at French native speakers? Lots of tense/lax pairs...

Well, in my day, they didn't teach you anything. You kind of had to figure it out on your own, using your (non-native) teacher attempts at RP as a guide. Not very productive but thankfully native English speakers are amazingly forgiving.
I tend to say sun [sʌn] and son sort of like [sɔn] and I have to make a conscious effort to remember the correct pronunciation. (The spelling cum for come used to confuse me to no end...)

[Travis B.]

I did it, and:

More: show

it confused me a bit because a good few of these pairs were ones that very few native English-speakers would either split or merge, or were otherwise highly dialectal (e.g. fir versus fur).

[Zaarin]

I did it, and:

More: show

it confused me a bit because a good few of these pairs were ones that very few native English-speakers would either split or merge, or were otherwise highly dialectal (e.g. fir versus fur).

Likewise. Also:

More: show

dolly versus Dalí may not have been the best choice as most educated English speakers will have the same vowels but a marked stress difference, [ˈdɑɫi] versus [dɑˈɫi] for me. Other choices, as Travis said, would be very much a matter of dialect; e.g., conflating tire and tar in Southern American English or other choices that would only be conflated in non-rhotic dialects.

Looking at the results after I took the survey, I found them quite interesting.

[alynnidalar]

Ooh, I missed that responses were visible. Can someone drop the link? I'd love to look at them.

[mèþru]

More: show

For me, "spear it" and "spirit" have the same phonemes but a distinct pause that easily distinguishes. I don't know whether to answer distinct or identical, but it definitely idsn't any of the other values.

[Space60]

"Fur" and "fir" are only distinct by native speakers in Scottish English. Many of those other pairs are always or almost always either distinct or the same for native speakers.

I saw the results for the survey. Interestingly, the majority who took the survey said "bury" and "berry" were distinct. Most native speakers say these words the same way, I have read though that some dialects give "bury" a spelling pronunciation making it rhyme with "furry".

Someone who made a comment on there said that New Zealanders merge "pin" and "pen", "six" and "sex" etc. This is incorrect. A chain shift occurs. "sex" sounds like how other varieties say "six" and "six" approaches "sux".

[Ryusenshi]

Yes, the survey is mostly aimed at French native speakers, but it's also interested in some native shibboleths. Yes, many of those pairs are merged by almost all native speakers, this was on purpose.

More: show

About son / sun: I don't remember ever hearing a teacher saying "beware, some words with the letter O have the sound of short U instead". I figured it out way, way later. It's hard for French speakers to hear the STRUT vowel correctly (it's in the middle of a triangle made of our /a/, /ɔ/ and /œ/), so we tend to follow the spelling: /œ/ when it's short U, /ɔ/ when it's written O (as in brother, mother, come....). And sometimes it can end up as /a/ when the spelling is really unhelpful, as in one or does.

About fir versus fur: it's known as a distinctive sign of Scottish accents. But it's also an interesting test for non-natives: I have often heard fir (or similar words) pronounced like fear. Very common words like bird or girl are usually correct, but many non-native fail to generalize the pattern to other ir words.

About bury / berry: in this video, James Rolfe says he's always pronounced /'bʌri/. But he comes from Philadelphia, where there is a possible merger of ferry and furry: that may have influenced it, even if he doesn't seem to have the merger otherwise.

[Ryusenshi]

Results for the pronunciation poll:
http://www.madore.org/~david/weblog/d.2 ... 08-29.2618

[alynnidalar]

Quite interesting! Thanks for the link.

[Travis B.]

"Fur" and "fir" are only distinct by native speakers in Scottish English. Many of those other pairs are always or almost always either distinct or the same for native speakers.

The fir-fur-fern merger is also incomplete in some Irish English dialects.

[Space60]

How do you pronounce "clothes"? I say it like the verb "close".

[Travis B.]

How do you pronounce "clothes"? I say it like the verb "close".

For me the two are homophones as /kloʊz/. I would expect that to be typical of most English-speakers aside from those who have a spelling pronunciation.

[Space60]

How do you pronounce "clothes"? I say it like the verb "close".

For me the two are homophones as /kloʊz/. I would expect that to be typical of most English-speakers aside from those who have a spelling pronunciation.

However when "clothes" is a verb "it clothes me." I do have a /D/.

[Travis B.]

How do you pronounce "clothes"? I say it like the verb "close".

For me the two are homophones as /kloʊz/. I would expect that to be typical of most English-speakers aside from those who have a spelling pronunciation.

However when "clothes" is a verb "it clothes me." I do have a /D/.

Well when you ask someone how they pronounce "clothes", they would typically think of the noun, as that is not a typical usage.

[mèþru]

/kloʊðz/
I think it is more common than not where I live to pronounce the /ð/

[Space60]

Where did the "nucular" pronunciation of "nuclear" come from? Merriam-Webster has been criticized for listing it in their dictionary at the "nuclear" entry.

Your pronunciations of "often" and "nuclear" are wrong! How can you say they are correct?

We do not list either the pronunciation of often or the pronunciation of nuclear as "acceptable"; we merely list them as commonly used pronunciations. Both of those pronunciations are preceded by the obelus mark \ ÷ \ (which looks like a division sign). This mark indicates "a pronunciation variant that occurs in educated speech but that is considered by some to be questionable or unacceptable." We are definitely not advocating that anyone should use those pronunciations or that they should abandon the others that are regarded as more acceptable.

Many people object to those pronunciations of often and nuclear on the basis that they do not conform to the spelling of the word. However, to say "the word is spelled (x), and therefore should be pronounced (y)" doesn't make any sense. Spelling is not a legitimate basis for determining pronunciation, for the following reasons:

English spelling is highly irregular. For example, "move", "dove", and "cove" are spelled similarly but pronounced differently. Likewise, "to," "too," and "two" are spelled differently and pronounced the same.

English spelling is frequently based on factors besides pronunciation. For example, the "c" represents three different sounds in "electrical", "electricity" and "electrician", but is spelled the same in all to show that the words are related.

Most importantly, spoken language is primary, not written language. Indeed, only spoken language can be truly considered "language." Writing is a collection of symbols meant to represent spoken language. It is not language in and of itself. Many written languages (Spanish, Dutch, etc.), will regularly undergo orthographic reforms to reflect changes in the spoken language. This has never been done for English (the spelling of which has never been regularized in the first place), so what we use for written language is actually largely based on the spoken language of several centuries ago.
All of the entries in our dictionary (including their pronunciations, meanings, etc.) are based on usage. We have an extensive collection of files which date back to the 19th century. Language is changing all of the time in all respects, and any dictionary which purports to be an accurate description of the language in question must be constantly updated to reflect these changes. All words were pronounced differently at some time in the past. There is simply no scholarly basis for preferring one pronunciation over another, and the term "correct" pronunciation doesn't mean anything objectively. To not list all pronunciation variants would be irresponsible and a failure of our mission to provide a serious, scholarly, record of the current American English language.

[Vijay]

George W. Bush?

[alynnidalar]

It's just epenthesis of a vowel into the consonant cluster /kl/, isn't it? (followed by a reduction of the final vowel, I suppose)

[mae]

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