Pronunciations you had to unlearn

[Rounin Ryuuji]

Also their derivatives, decrease, increase, release, which follow after them. There's also house, which varies depending on whether it's a noun or a verb (I'm surprised it didn't end up houce), moose, goose, loose (but lose has [z]), noose (-oose seems to more regularly have [s], where -ease is a lot more variable); of course, choose is a very common word and has [z].

[Raphael]

Oddly enough, for me, personally, syllable-final [s] and syllable-final [z] are almost allophones anyway.

[ava]

On the other hand, police is pretty much universally monosyllabic for me, which I thought was normal until people assured me it wasn't.

You pronounce it like "please"?

"Please" has /z/, not /s/.

As a USAmerican raised Catholic, trisyllabic "Catholic" sounds as affected as "sophomore".

It's definitely not affected, but I am from the UK and not the US so that might have something to do with it.

[Travis B.]

Oddly enough, for me, personally, syllable-final [s] and syllable-final [z] are almost allophones anyway.

Normally for me, coda /s/ and /z/ are distinguished solely by preceding vowel length (short for /s/, long for /z/) except for final /z/ followed by a word starting with a vowel in the same utterance, where then it may be voiced.

[Linguoboy]

It's definitely not affected, but I am from the UK and not the US so that might have something to do with it.

It's quite common that a pronunciation which is widespread in the UK sounds affected to USAmericans. I don't think there are many cases where the opposite is true (though I have heard that some UK-speakers feel this way about h-less "herb").

[Moose-tache]

It's definitely not affected, but I am from the UK and not the US so that might have something to do with it.

It's quite common that a pronunciation which is widespread in the UK sounds affected to USAmericans. I don't think there are many cases where the opposite is true (though I have heard that some UK-speakers feel this way about h-less "herb").

Based on what features Brits exaggerate when affecting an American accent, I would say that the features that sound affected to them include:
1) vowel nasalization
2) overly clear or enunciated long vowels and diphthongs (e.g. the PRICE vowel ending in a semivowel /j/ rather than the more common UK /I/)
2b) this sometimes includes evaggerated mid vowel breaking in, for example, the GOAT vowel, but this is mostly restricted to making fun of American southerners
The funniest thing for Brits to say in an "American accent" seems to be "I like the sidewalk." Never fails to get a laugh. Curiously, I rarely hear Brits exaggerate rhoticity when making fun of American English, even though it is objectively silly how many times we say /r\=/.

[Kuchigakatai]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J1tjMUqEehY
"I like sidewalks" (1 min 39 sec)

[Travis B.]

It's definitely not affected, but I am from the UK and not the US so that might have something to do with it.

It's quite common that a pronunciation which is widespread in the UK sounds affected to USAmericans. I don't think there are many cases where the opposite is true (though I have heard that some UK-speakers feel this way about h-less "herb").

Based on what features Brits exaggerate when affecting an American accent, I would say that the features that sound affected to them include:
1) vowel nasalization

I must admit that the English here is prone to aggressively nasalize vowels - all vowels before nasal consonants except for [nː mː] derived from /dn bm/ are at least lightly nasalized (even if the nasal is elided), and coda /n/ and /ŋ/ before fortis plosives have a strong tendency to be elided altogether, but in the process strongly nasalize the preceding vowels.

2) overly clear or enunciated long vowels and diphthongs (e.g. the PRICE vowel ending in a semivowel /j/ rather than the more common UK /I/)

Here the non-diphthongal "long" vowels are all very clear and monophthongal, but the diphthongal "long" vowels, particularly PRICE and MOUTH, are quite open and prone to raising.

2b) this sometimes includes evaggerated mid vowel breaking in, for example, the GOAT vowel, but this is mostly restricted to making fun of American southerners

That is not applicable here at all.

The funniest thing for Brits to say in an "American accent" seems to be "I like the sidewalk." Never fails to get a laugh. Curiously, I rarely hear Brits exaggerate rhoticity when making fun of American English, even though it is objectively silly how many times we say /r\=/.

I too would expect Brits to exaggerate American rhoticity, considering just how stupidly rhotic most NAE varieties are; I too don't get why they don't.

[Linguoboy]

Based on what features Brits exaggerate when affecting an American accent, I would say that the features that sound affected to them include:

We may be using different definitions of "affected". I intended it in the sense of "simulated in order to impress". That is, the listener's impression is that you don't natively speak that way and have consciously adopted this pronunciation in order to sound more posh. A good example is my pronunciation of "basil". I grew up saying /ˈbæz.əl/, but most North Americans say /ˈbeɪ.zəl/ and I think at least some of them think I've adopted the "English" pronunciation in order to sound better-than. (At the pizza place near campus, they actually correct me; when I order "b[æ]sil" for my pizza, they say, "Oh, you mean 'b[eɪ]sil'?")

[Travis B.]

Based on what features Brits exaggerate when affecting an American accent, I would say that the features that sound affected to them include:

We may be using different definitions of "affected". I intended it in the sense of "simulated in order to impress". That is, the listener's impression is that you don't natively speak that way and have consciously adopted this pronunciation in order to sound more posh. A good example is my pronunciation of "basil". I grew up saying /ˈbæz.əl/, but most North Americans say /ˈbeɪ.zəl/ and I think at least some of them think I've adopted the "English" pronunciation in order to sound batter-than. (At the pizza place near campus, they actually correct me; when I order "b[æ]sil" for my pizza, they say, "Oh, you mean 'b[eɪ]sil'?")

To me /ˈbeɪ.zəl/ is the herb and /ˈbæz.əl/ is the character from Fawlty Towers.

[Rounin Ryuuji]

Based on what features Brits exaggerate when affecting an American accent, I would say that the features that sound affected to them include:

We may be using different definitions of "affected". I intended it in the sense of "simulated in order to impress". That is, the listener's impression is that you don't natively speak that way and have consciously adopted this pronunciation in order to sound more posh. A good example is my pronunciation of "basil". I grew up saying /ˈbæz.əl/, but most North Americans say /ˈbeɪ.zəl/ and I think at least some of them think I've adopted the "English" pronunciation in order to sound batter-than. (At the pizza place near campus, they actually correct me; when I order "b[æ]sil" for my pizza, they say, "Oh, you mean 'b[eɪ]sil'?")

To me /ˈbeɪ.zəl/ is the herb and /ˈbæz.əl/ is the character from Fawlty Towers.

I never knew people said the name of the herb with /æ/, though my pronunciation is actually /'bei.səl/ (phonetically roughly: ['bej.səɫ]), making it homophonous with basal.

[Travis B.]

We may be using different definitions of "affected". I intended it in the sense of "simulated in order to impress". That is, the listener's impression is that you don't natively speak that way and have consciously adopted this pronunciation in order to sound more posh. A good example is my pronunciation of "basil". I grew up saying /ˈbæz.əl/, but most North Americans say /ˈbeɪ.zəl/ and I think at least some of them think I've adopted the "English" pronunciation in order to sound batter-than. (At the pizza place near campus, they actually correct me; when I order "b[æ]sil" for my pizza, they say, "Oh, you mean 'b[eɪ]sil'?")

To me /ˈbeɪ.zəl/ is the herb and /ˈbæz.əl/ is the character from Fawlty Towers.

I never knew people said the name of the herb with /æ/, though my pronunciation is actually /'bei.səl/ (phonetically roughly: ['bej.səɫ]), making it homophonous with basal.

To me basil (the herb) and basal are homophones, but both have /z/ rather than /s/.

[Rounin Ryuuji]

Maybe mine's some sort of odd regional reading pronunciation or something?

[Travis B.]

Maybe mine's some sort of odd regional reading pronunciation or something?

Just checked, and basal can have either /s/ or /z/ actually.

[Rounin Ryuuji]

Maybe mine's some sort of odd regional reading pronunciation or something?

Just checked, and basal can have either /s/ or /z/ actually.

I meant for basil; my grandmother (who had a marked regional pronunciation) and mother (who is from Michigan, and has a fairly "General American" form of pronunciation) had [s] there, but it seems [z] is more normative.

[zompist]

\A good example is my pronunciation of "basil". I grew up saying /ˈbæz.əl/, but most North Americans say /ˈbeɪ.zəl/ and I think at least some of them think I've adopted the "English" pronunciation in order to sound better-than.

I say /ˈbæz.əl/, and I grew up in the Chicago suburbs. I don't think it comes up enough for me to have an idea how other people say it. The AHD and M-W, both American dictionaries, list /ˈbæz.əl/ as the primary pronunciation, while Wiktionary opines that North Americans say /ˈbeɪ.zəl/.

"Basal" however is /ˈbeɪ.səl/.

[Ryusenshi]

When I was a kid, there was a button called RESET on my NES. I pronounced it /rɛˈzɛt/. It took me a long time to find the correct pronunciation /riːˈsɛt/.

Related: as a kid, I thought the labels made in China, made in Japan were some sort of international code. I was disappointed when I realized it was just English.

[Ares Land]

TIL -- by A.Z Foreman that brothel is pronounced with /θ/. I didn't expect that!

[Kuchigakatai]

TIL -- by A.Z Foreman that brothel is pronounced with /θ/. I didn't expect that!

That really surprised me when I learned about it too. One day I realized I didn't know the vowel value of the -o-, and when I looked up whether it had /ʌ/ or /ɑ/, I saw it had /θ/ and went "wtf!?!?".

Regarding learning words with unchecked <o> (in spelling, in some sense), I wrote a rant about it a couple years ago...

There is no remedy to knowing "monkey" has the "cut" vowel and "donkey" has the "lot" vowel except looking them up, and looking up more words, and yet more words after that.

Wait, what?
*looks it up*
Curse you, English!

Indeed.

In general, when it comes to English pronunciation, you should be careful of any stressed <on ov> sequence. This is because in the Latin script of the late Middle Ages, the sequence <un> was indistinguishable from <nn uu nu>, so in late Middle English writers preferred to replace <un> with <on> at least in words that didn't come from Latin (like "monkey"). Regarding <ov>, the letter <v> didn't exist in the middle of a word at the time (it was a mere variant of <u> in word-initial position, as in <vnity> = unity), and as "uv" was actually <uu> and easily confusable with <un nn nu>, it was replaced by <ou> as well (now evolved to <ov>).

So this is the reason why "monkey, money, honey, none, done, one, come, won, son, London, month, Monday, wonder, wonderful, to love, to shove, shovel, dove (the bird, not the North American past tense of "dive"), glove, to hover, to covet, coven, cover, (un,dis,re)cover, oven, slovenly" have <o> even though they all have the "uh" /ʌ/ vowel.

Contrast these with the likes of "phone, baloney, she drove, North American English he dove (British/Australian he dived), over, woven, supernova, Moldova, macaroni, bonus", which do have /oʊ/.

By analogy with "done", this was extended to "doth" /dʌθ/. Pretty recently, also colloquial "gonna" /ɡənə/ (/ˈgʌnə/ when rarely stressed), but beware "wanna" and "gotta" are /ˈwɑnə ˈgɑɾə/, southern England /ˈwɒnə ˈgɒtə/, the latter often [gɒʔə].


While we're at it, I would like to add that in general you should be especially careful about a stressed <o> in what looks like an open syllable (if only in spelling), whether in the second-to-last or third-to-last syllable, as in "sofa, profit" /ˈsoʊfə ˈpɹɑfɪt/ or "biology"). In second-to-last open syllables, stressed written <o> is simply the most treacherous of all vowels, and in third-to-last syllables it's treacherous in relation to other words of the same stem.

Compare "photo" /ˈfoʊtoʊ/ with /oʊ/ and photography with /ɑ/ (southern England /ɒ/). The "photography" /ɑ/ is due to the general pattern of words stressed on the third-to-last syllable, as there was a shortening in Middle English that made any long vowels there become short, which means they usually have a descendant "traditional short vowel" today. Compare the suffix -ology [ˈɑlədʒi] and words like "curiosity, autonomy, mediocrity" and "fidelity /ɛ/, Sicily /ɪ/, normality /æ/". This is why "nature" has /eɪ/ but "natural" has /æ/ (the latter was [ˈnæ-tʰju-ɹəl] in late Middle English, now /ˈnætʃɹəl/). Photography is a recent late 19th-century word, but the pattern still applies. Exceptions that occasionally pop up like "amenities" /əˈminɪtiz/ (S. England /i:/) usually get corrected over time, so "amenities" now usually has /ɛ/.


Just take the above as random advice from a war veteran to another war veteran.

Yeah, I remember the time when I realized how treacherous English orthography is and started looking every single word up in the dictionary, whether I know it or not. If I saw a word and didn't have a firm memory of ever looking it up before I would look it up. All those infinitude of familiar words pronunciation of which I've assumed over the years (and assumed wrong, as it turned out)...
Yet it still holds a few more surprises up its sleeve. And it's usually the simplest and most innocent looking words that trip you up.

You can imagine how traumatized I was when, after more than a decade studying English, I learned that "of" is actually pronounced /əv/, with a /v/ spelled <f>. I could not believe my eyes when I saw that in a dictionary.

I guess I could blame my English teachers and the EFL "communicative" culture at large for having never taught me a single thing about English pronunciation. Not like the teachers knew much anyway, whether they were native or not. I remember when, four or five years into studying English in El Salvador, I noticed I couldn't make sense of the vowel of "the", and I asked a teacher if the sound was "like (Spanish) A or like (Spanish) E", and then the teacher gave me a non-sensical answer. "It's a sound that doesn't exist in Spanish" would have been good enough. To think of all the pain that caused me years later...

This is why I also say non-native learners should insist that mis-pronouncing words should be basically acceptable, at least until English speakers get to fix their truly cursed writing system. Half-assedly retaining ambiguous late medieval spellings while expecting learners to pronounce everything correctly is a ridiculous thing to do, but here we are.

Another good one is "butcher", which has /ʊ/. Also true of "butch".

[Linguoboy]

When I was a kid, there was a button called RESET on my NES. I pronounced it /rɛˈzɛt/. It took me a long time to find the correct pronunciation /riːˈsɛt/.

Most people I know say /ˈriːsɛt/.