The "How Do You Pronounce X" Thread

[Travis B.]

stent

I was amused to hear my late husband use /stɪnt/ because I assumed it was a pronunciation he picked up from my pin-pen merged speech, but recently I saw a non-native speaker use the spelling "stint", which makes me wonder if the variant with /ɪ/ is more widespread than I thought.

The pin-pen merger is so alien to the dialect here that I have a hard time picturing stent being pronounced with /ɪ/ - I firmly pronounce it as /stɛnt/ [sʲtʲɜ̃ʔ(t)].

However, the shift of /ɪl/ [ɪ̈ɯ̯]~[ɪ̈ːɯ̯]~[ɘɯ̯]~[ɘːɯ̯] to /ɛl/ [ɜɤ̯]~[ɜːɤ̯] is another story... it was seriously until I was well into adulthood before I realized that most people didn't pronounce Illinois with /ɛl/, and I am very familiar with /ɛl/ in milk -- that is how my mother has always pronounced it and how I would probably pronounce it if I wasn't thinking-- even though if you asked me to pronounce the word I would probably pronounce it with /ɪl/ just under the influence of Standard English.

[jal]

I was amused to hear my late husband use /stɪnt/ because I assumed it was a pronunciation he picked up from my pin-pen merged speech, but recently I saw a non-native speaker use the spelling "stint", which makes me wonder if the variant with /ɪ/ is more widespread than I thought.

Could be contamination with the more common word "stint", assuming it's a homonym?


JAL