The "How Do You Pronounce X" Thread

[anteallach]

juvenilia:
[ˌdʒʉvɘˈnɪliə]

That supposedly normative pronunciation you mention (from Wiktionary?) seems very wrong, looking like an excessive classicalization by someone who loves Classical Latin vowel lengths too much. As if from the same kind of person who'd pronounce Cicero with /kɪk/ while speaking English. Surely the normative pronunciation is with /ɪ/, /dʒuvəˈnɪliə/, as both J.C. Wells in his Longman Pronunciation Dictionary (page 414) and dictionary.com say.

I don't think "juve-KNEE-lia" is actually based on Classical Latin vowel quantities ... English speakers just seem to have a certain tendency to use /iː/ instead of /ɪ/ in words with this kind of spelling pattern. Compare the /iː/ which can be heard (although I prefer to use /ɪ/) in Parisian, aphrodisiac, pedophilia—the latter two would be "false quantities" if the length of the vowels in Ancient Greek ἀφροδῐσῐᾰκός and φῐλῐ́ᾱ had any relevance to the English pronunciation phenomenon, but I don't think that it does.

I don't recall hearing FLEECE in any of those; I'm used to KIT. Is FLEECE there an American thing?

[Znex]

I don't recall hearing FLEECE in any of those; I'm used to KIT. Is FLEECE there an American thing?

Maybe, but I would use FLEECE as an Australian. It might be a specifically BrE thing?

[Linguoboy]

What about austerity and severity? I have /eː/ there too. (Well, I perceive it as /eː/ because /eː/, /æ/, and /ɛ/ merge completely[*] before /r/ IMD.)

[*] Always I have taught myself how to produce /ær/ for personal names which require it.

[Rounin Ryuuji]

What about austerity and severity? I have /eː/ there too. (Well, I perceive it as /eː/ because /eː/, /æ/, and /ɛ/ merge completely[*] before /r/ IMD.)

So you perceive it as the face vowel? I've always thought of it as the dress vowel, probably because I pronounce it qualitatively as [ɛː].

[Travis B.]

What about austerity and severity? I have /eː/ there too. (Well, I perceive it as /eː/ because /eː/, /æ/, and /ɛ/ merge completely[*] before /r/ IMD.)

[*] Always I have taught myself how to produce /ær/ for personal names which require it.

I am the exact same way about austerity and severity, and this is too because I have a complete merger of historical /eər/, /ɛr/, and /ær/ as what I perceive as /er/, which I realize as [ɛ̝ʁˤ]~[e̞ʁˤ] (the vowel here is just slightly more open than my native /e/). Note, though, that this only applies to those vowel-rhotic sequences as inherited, because I often realize every as [ɜːʁˤi(ː)], because the interceding /v/ prevents the merger. Like you, I have taught myself to pronounce /ær/ distinctly from /ɛr/ and /eər/ when I so desire, as [ɛʁˤ] in my case, but this is specifically a learnèd pronunciation, and I only do so for words, particularly names, just like you, that I specifically have learned have /ær/ and is not normally used for words that historically had /ær/ in a more general fashion (even if I can tell they had /ær/ from the orthography).

[Estav]

What about austerity and severity? I have /eː/ there too. (Well, I perceive it as /eː/ because /eː/, /æ/, and /ɛ/ merge completely[*] before /r/ IMD.)

[*] Always I have taught myself how to produce /ær/ for personal names which require it.

I have the marry-merry-Mary merger and definitely pronounce austerity with the merged vowel, which I would identify as /e/.* For severity, I consider pronouncing it with /e/ to be correct, but I can imagine myself using /i/ if I were tired or distractedly reading it: as a less common word, I can envision it potentially being subject to interference from severe. It's a word that I think is probably not much used as part of my active vocabulary.

So you perceive it as the face vowel? I've always thought of it as the dress vowel, probably because I pronounce it qualitatively as [ɛː].

*I'm not sure I can say what I perceive the merged non-high front vowel before /r/ as phonemically. Phonetically, it sounds to me something like [eə̯], being closest to the value of /e/ that I use before /l/ (in words like fail, pale) or the value of /æ/ that I use before a nasal (in words like pan, pang, ham; also, as the result of syllabic contraction, in words like crayon and Graham). It therefore sounds a bit different from DRESS to me; some of this is probably length (I'm pretty sure DRESS is shorter), but some I think is also quality (possibly my DRESS, aside from being lower, is a bit more back in quality). It certainly also sounds noticeably different to me from the [eɪ] that I use for /e/ elsewhere (e.g. in paint, paid, pave) but since they do not contrast, and since they are contracts to they're /ðer/ and there will can I think contract to /ðel/, I find it appealing to analyze [eə̯] before /l/ and /r/ as an allophone of /e/ (realized elsewhere as [eɪ]). But this is a conscious analysis and not some kind of intuitively felt identification: I don't really know how I would have identified the vowel sounds of my accent if I were not aware of linguistics.

[anteallach]

Being British, I don’t have the marry/merry/Mary merger, and I have DRESS (or MERRY) in both austerity and severity. I’m not aware of other pronunciations of either in normative BrE.

[jal]

Interesting, I (a non-native speaker) assumed and used /I/ because of severe /s@vI@/.


JAL

[Znex]

Being British, I don’t have the marry/merry/Mary merger, and I have DRESS (or MERRY) in both austerity and severity. I’m not aware of other pronunciations of either in normative BrE.

Same for me, in AuE.

Interesting, I (a non-native speaker) assumed and used /I/ because of severe /s@vI@/.

The vowel change is the result of trisyllabic laxing as far as I know.

[Linguoboy]

What about austerity and severity? I have /eː/ there too. (Well, I perceive it as /eː/ because /eː/, /æ/, and /ɛ/ merge completely[*] before /r/ IMD.)

So you perceive it as the face vowel? I've always thought of it as the dress vowel, probably because I pronounce it qualitatively as [ɛː].

As I discovered when I learned German, my /eː/ has a low starting point. I often perceive German /eː/ as overlapping with my /iː/. (When I lived in the Southwest, I remember being told "Guter Dialekt!" due to my pronunciation despite the fact that my target was normative Standard German. Eventually I decided to lean into it.)

[Rounin Ryuuji]

As I discovered when I learned German, my /eː/ has a low starting point. I often perceive German /eː/ as overlapping with my /iː/. (When I lived in the Southwest, I remember being told "Guter Dialekt!" due to my pronunciation despite the fact that my target was normative Standard German. Eventually I decided to lean into it.)

I have a similar experience (my dress and face vowels are probably [ɛ e̞ɪ] at the highest, hearing a German pronounce Gluten, I perceive as if it were *Glutien, and French déforme sounds sometimes like *diforme; I don't, however, have trouble distinguishing them terminally in French, for whatever reason).

[Travis B.]

What about austerity and severity? I have /eː/ there too. (Well, I perceive it as /eː/ because /eː/, /æ/, and /ɛ/ merge completely[*] before /r/ IMD.)

So you perceive it as the face vowel? I've always thought of it as the dress vowel, probably because I pronounce it qualitatively as [ɛː].

As I discovered when I learned German, my /eː/ has a low starting point. I often perceive German /eː/ as overlapping with my /iː/. (When I lived in the Southwest, I remember being told "Guter Dialekt!" due to my pronunciation despite the fact that my target was normative Standard German. Eventually I decided to lean into it.)

In my careful speech /æ ɛ eɪ/ are very close together, as [ɛ ɛ̠ e̞]. In my everyday speech they are somewhat more distinct, with DRESS being retracted to [ɜ]. And I too perceive StG /eː/ as being similar to my /iː/, and depending on the exact speaker I will perceive it as akin to either a very high /eɪ/ or a low /iː/.

[Moose-tache]

The other day I met yet another (Caucasian) North American with an exceptionless FEEL-FILL merger. I have a feeling that this sound change is going to become almost universal in NAE within a few generations.

[Rounin Ryuuji]

I didn't think it was all that uncommon.

[Travis B.]

The other day I met yet another (Caucasian) North American with an exceptionless FEEL-FILL merger. I have a feeling that this sound change is going to become almost universal in NAE within a few generations.

This is the first time I have even heard of this merger.

[Richard W]

The other day I met yet another (Caucasian) North American with an exceptionless FEEL-FILL merger. I have a feeling that this sound change is going to become almost universal in NAE within a few generations.

This is the first time I have even heard of this merger.

I've seen it noted as a distinction that Cockneys could easily hear, but didn't make.

[Travis B.]

I personally often lax the /iː/ in really to [ɪ], but it still does not merge with my /ɪ/ because that is centralized to [ɘ].

[Moose-tache]

How would you gloss these words phonetically?
peel
pill
pull

[Rounin Ryuuji]

peel ['pʰij.jəɫ]
pill [pʰɪɫ~pɪəɫ]
pull [pʰʊɫ]

[bradrn]

peel [pʰiɰ ~ pʰijŭ]
pill [pʰɪɰ ~ pʰɪw]
pull [pʰʊw]
also: pool [pʰuːw]