The "How Do You Pronounce X" Thread

[Travis B.]

I pronounce cilantro as three syllables, it seems, but I frequently turn /əl/ into a vocalized /l/ which makes it less clear.

Anyways, I have [səːˈʟ̞ã(n)tʃɻ͡ʁɵ(ː)]~[səːˈɰã(n)tʃɻ͡ʁɵ(ː)]~[sɯːˈʟ̞ãntʃɻ͡ʁɵ(ː)]~[sɯːˈɰãntʃɻ͡ʁɵ(ː)].

[Kuchigakatai]

Today I spent a dumb amount of time trying to determine whether I normally say "cilantro" in two syllables or three. Still not sure.

Definitely three for me: [sɪ.ˈɫɑn.tɹ̱ˁəʊ̯].

My deletion of pretonic syllables goes beyond most other speakers of American English I know. I usually have initial clusters in deleted and Melissa.

In Spanish, I've noticed that I have one word with the initial cluster [st]: the demonstrative este/esta. I usually say [este], but I can use [ste] to add some negative emotion like frustration. Which I find rather weird, as I otherwise don't have any word-initial [sC] clusters in any other words. More recently, I've noticed that Mexican memes sometimes use "ste" or "sste" in a similar way (example: https://i.imgur.com/Ilq1CQc.jpg ). This kind of cluster would be less weird in a central Mexican dialect due to their use of vowel whispering, which makes me wonder whether some of it has been expanding to El Salvador (or whether I got it from watching Mexican TV or what).

[Space60]

American dictionary usually give "bought" and "bore" with the same vowel phoneme, but I would say that for the majority of Americans the vowel on "bore" sounds more like that in "boat" than in "bought", so wouldn't it make more sense to say "bore" has the phoneme of "boat" in most American English not "bought" which for most Americans sounds very different from the "bore" vowel whether cot-caught merged or distinct?

[Linguoboy]

American dictionary usually give "bought" and "bore" with the same vowel phoneme, but I would say that for the majority of Americans the vowel on "bore" sounds more like that in "boat" than in "bought", so wouldn't it make more sense to say "bore" has the phoneme of "boat" in most American English not "bought" which for most Americans sounds very different from the "bore" vowel whether cot-caught merged or distinct?

That depends on what your phonological analysis of American English is.

[Space60]

I'm sure if you had "bought" and "boat" written on paper and asked various Americans which word had the same vowel sound as in "bore" most would say "boat", not "bought". There are Americans who use the vowel they have in THOUGHT in "aural" which contrasts with how they say "oral" (the contrast often intentional to avoid confusing the words which can easily be confused) which supports the idea that the vowel in "bore" goes with "boat" in General American, not "bought".

[Pabappa]

That is odd, now that I think of it. I think its to represent the HORSE-HOARSE distinction, e.g. e.g. /hɔs/~/hɔrs/ for horse, but /hos/~/hors/ for hoarse. in America, they merged, but apparently before /r/ they merged to a different vowel than they did elsewhere.
Thus, even though IPA normally doesnt have more than 1 pronunciation per symbol, to make a pronunciation that applies to all dialects we Americans must learn to use [or] for every /ɔr/. (Wikipedia lists Portland, Maine as one of the last holdouts of horse/hoarse distinction, but says by 2013 it was gone even there, which fits with my experience, since I cant remember ever hearing [hɔrs]. )

[Xwtek]

Anyone know how to pronounce implosives? It seems much harder than ejectives. My attempt to pronounce it only results on voiced(creaky?) stop + creaky vowel.

[Raholeun]

Anyone know how to pronounce implosives? It seems much harder than ejectives. My attempt to pronounce it only results on voiced(creaky?) stop + creaky vowel.

Try to pronounce voiced stops as Goofy.

[jal]

Anyone know how to pronounce implosives? It seems much harder than ejectives. My attempt to pronounce it only results on voiced(creaky?) stop + creaky vowel.

I think I do, but have never verified my pronunciation of them with a linguist or native speaker. However, this topic is for asking people how they pronounce certain words, not how to pronounce certain sounds :). I think you should start a new topic for that.


JAL

[Space60]

Anyone know how to pronounce implosives? It seems much harder than ejectives. My attempt to pronounce it only results on voiced(creaky?) stop + creaky vowel.

I think I do, but have never verified my pronunciation of them with a linguist or native speaker. However, this topic is for asking people how they pronounce certain words, not how to pronounce certain sounds . I think you should start a new topic for that.




JAL

I have started a thread for this. If you are having difficulty with certain speech sounds, post there.

[Nortaneous]

American dictionary usually give "bought" and "bore" with the same vowel phoneme, but I would say that for the majority of Americans the vowel on "bore" sounds more like that in "boat" than in "bought", so wouldn't it make more sense to say "bore" has the phoneme of "boat" in most American English not "bought" which for most Americans sounds very different from the "bore" vowel whether cot-caught merged or distinct?

If your analysis has monophthongal GOAT, sure. Mine doesn't, so I'd write it as /ur/ except I think that'd confuse people.

My deletion of pretonic syllables goes beyond most other speakers of American English I know. I usually have initial clusters in deleted and Melissa.

Those are trisyllabic with syllabic /l/ as the first vowel for me - I think I can only drop pretonic syllables if the schwa would be devoiced, like in tomorrow and potato. (But the initial /t/ of tomorrow gets flapped following a vowel, so it can still be trisyllabic. That'd be a funny mutation process for a conlang...)

[Zaarin]

I'm sure if you had "bought" and "boat" written on paper and asked various Americans which word had the same vowel sound as in "bore" most would say "boat", not "bought". There are Americans who use the vowel they have in THOUGHT in "aural" which contrasts with how they say "oral" (the contrast often intentional to avoid confusing the words which can easily be confused) which supports the idea that the vowel in "bore" goes with "boat" in General American, not "bought".

Speaking for myself, /oː/ reduces before /r/, so boat [bəʊ̯ʔ] but bore [bɔɹ̱ˁ]; this is still /oː/ phonemically, though. Bought is [bɒʔ].

[Travis B.]

I have three different vowels here, bought [pɒʔ], boat [poʔ], and bore [pɔ(ː)ʁʷ]; I should note that my vowel in bore sounds closer to my vowel in boat than it does to my vowel in bought.

[Ryusenshi]

The same ambiguity may exist for other pre-/r/ vowels. Is the vowel in NEAR closer to KIT, or to FLEECE? Is the one in SQUARE closer to DRESS, or to FACE?

Pre-/r/ vowels in American English are so weird... it wouldn't be absurd to say that there is a special class of vowels that only appear before /r/.

[Linguoboy]

Pre-/r/ vowels in American English are so weird... it wouldn't be absurd to say that there is a special class of vowels that only appear before /r/.

That’s exactly how the pronunciation guides I grew up with treated them: as a distinct series with their own set of dedicated symbols.

[Travis B.]

Pre-/r/ vowels in American English are so weird... it wouldn't be absurd to say that there is a special class of vowels that only appear before /r/.

That’s exactly how the pronunciation guides I grew up with treated them: as a distinct series with their own set of dedicated symbols.

Some even treat them as special rhotic diphthongs, even though I disagree with this approach because in the English here there seems to be few signs of actual diphthongal-ness (with the only ones I can think of being that /r/ is nasalized by following nasal consonants, as if it were a vowel, and /r/ is labialized when the preceding vowel is rounded).

[Nortaneous]

Some even treat them as special rhotic diphthongs, even though I disagree with this approach because in the English here there seems to be few signs of actual diphthongal-ness (with the only ones I can think of being that /r/ is nasalized by following nasal consonants, as if it were a vowel, and /r/ is labialized when the preceding vowel is rounded).

They break before /l/ just like diphthongs in /j/ - "Carl" is often disyllabic, and I once met someone with the last name Gerl which was universally pronounced /ger@l/. (cf. disyllabic "fail", "feel", "file", "foil" - and PRICE monophthongization blocks breaking)

So I analyze the vowel system as:

æ ɑ e ʌ o i ɚ u (+ eə, marginal south of the Mason-Dixon line or thereabouts)
aj ej oj ij
ar er or ir
æw ʌw uw

/ar or/ should probably be /or ur/ by phonetics - the onset of /ar/ sounds like the realization of /o/, and /or/ is the product of an earlier merger of /or ur/ - but that's unintuitive and doesn't match the inventory of diphthongs in /j/.

This explains why MOUTH, GOAT, and GOOSE tend to front: front/back contrasts are neutralized before /w/, and English only has three vowel heights. It also explains l-breaking - otherwise you'd need two separate rules, one applying to /eː iː aɪ̯ oɪ̯/ and one applying to Vr.

But different dialects of AmE probably have different underlying vowel systems. The traditional length-based analysis might still apply to the Inland North; if it does, that's probably due to continental Germanic influence.

[Travis B.]

In the dialect here V+/r/ does not trigger breaking, even though /ɑr/ does undergo raising before fortis obstruents, like /aɪ/ and /aʊ/, and breaking normally only occurs after /aɪ/ and /aʊ/, and even then is not obligatory. I should note that the monophthong phonemes differ only in tenseness/centralization and not in length, which is allophonic.

An overview of the phonemic system, as I analyze it, of the dialect here is:

/a ɛ e i ɜ ɘ ɵ ɒ ʌ o u aɪ aʊ ɔɪ (ɛr) er ɪr (ɜr) (ɘr) ɑr (ʌr) ɔr ur/ in stressed syllables, plus /ə ər/ and minus /ʌ ɘ/ in unstressed syllables.

/ɛr/ occurs rarely in certain words such as Saturday, /ɜr/ occurs rarely in certain words such as every, /ɘr/ occurs rarely in certain words such as babysitter, /ʌr/ occurs rarely independent of raising of /ɑr/ in certain words such as other. These indicate that the V+/r/ combinations are not true phonemic vowels overall.

MOUTH, GOAT, and GOOSE do not front here in stressed syllables in most people's speech, aside from that GOAT centralizes in unstressed syllables when it does not unround altogether, and GOOSE centralizes adjacent to coronals.

The dialect here is best analyzed as having four vowel heights phonemically, with what is conventionally considered to be "/ʊ/" being best analyzed as /ɵ/, after all it has essentially the same POA as /ɘ/ aside from being slightly further back, and what I previously called [ɵ], an unstressed allophone of /o/, is probably best called [ɞ]. Note that the [ʊ] resulting from l-vocalization, on the other hand, is a true back vowel.

[Vlürch]

1) ascience (and also omniscience)
2) graveolence
3) gaster

1) /əsaɪ̯əns/ just feels right, but I'm not 100% sure if it's correct. I mean, according to Wiktionary omniscience is /ɒmˈnɪʃəns/ or /ɑmˈnɪʃəns/, which sounds totally wrong and I could swear I've only ever heard it as /ɒmnɪsaɪ̯əns/ and the only way I could say it... not that I'd have heard it many times or ever said it out loud, but still.

2) I'd say /grævɪoʊ̯ləns/ even if that sounds a lot like ravioli and I have a feeling it's probably all wrong. Maybe /greɪ̯vəlens/?

3) /gaːstə/ with the first vowel being something between TRAP and PALM.

Relevant to the third word: I've realised that I sit on the fence between British and American pronounciations when it comes to the BATH vowel; it tends to come out as something like [ɐˑ~ɐ̟ˑ~æ̠ˑ~aˑ], although in some words it's at least always almost [æ~æ̠], eg. sample. So, I guess I technically have a TRAP-BATH-PALM split even if it doesn't apply to all words? Also, I think I'm becoming more rhotic again for some reason; father and farther, etc. are still homophones and forcing a difference would make me laugh as if I was Americanning myself to death (or dearth, which is of course how the most American Americans pronounce "death"), but martyr for example would definitely have something rhotic in at least the second syllable, [mɑːtʰɨ̞ɹ̠] or whatever.

Anyway, I'll have to admit that it could just be that my accent is morphing closer to an accent I like rather than an accent that comes naturally, and in the process it starts to come out more naturally.

[Pabappa]

I would just complat-out avoid the 1st word because even a correct pronunciation will sound awkward. Its like Oceania.

I've never heard of graveolence, but I'm with you on sounding it like ravioli except that I'd put the stress on the e. /græ'vi.o.ləns/.

Gaster to me just means melanogaster, etc, so I say it as /gæs.tər/.