Pronunciation Musements

Pronunciations of some English words can be unobvious or inconsistent, particularly when encountering the printed form for the first time. My article is primarily about consonant combinations ("consonant blends" and "consonant digraphs"), but also includes related information farther down. "Teaching Blends and Digraphs" differentiates the two combinations.

• consonant blend—"two or more consonants are blended together, but each sound may be heard in the blend"
  Examples include bl, br, cl, cr, …
• consonant digraph—"two consonants stand together to represent a single sound"
  Examples include sh, ch, th, …

Some Consonant Digraphs with Multiple Pronunciations
Three consonant digraphs that can be confusing for determining pronunciations are "ch", "th", and "gh". The examples I list are simple, but I'm sure less familiar words can cause pause.

• ch: chemistry, charm, champagne
• th: thin, then (examples from "Eth, thorn, and ash: they flunked the screen test for our alphabet")
• gh: laugh, night

Numerous words contain "gh", which most frequently don't seem to serve any phonetic purposes. "Laugh" sounds like three letters could take care of the spelling—"laf". Arthur Laffer of Laffer curve fame is a good example of using "laffer" phonetic spelling instead of "laugher".

No "gh" in Laffer Genealogy
My Google lookup session of Arthur Laffer meandered over his genealogy, which goes as far back as the 1600s (Joseph Laufer). His most recent ancestor that was a Laffer was Bartholomew (Bartol) Laffer. Bartholomew's father's surname was Lauffer (Christian Lauffer Sr.). Slogging through text, I encountered a piece of amusement—Peter Piper, not a picker of pickled peppers, apparently. Anyway, "gh" was never part of the surnames.

The site "words with the -gh- letter pattern" provides detailed guidelines and grouped examples about this consonant pair. Another site, with more historical background, is "Pronunciation: How did "gh" at the end of some words become an "eff" sound?"

"ph" Consonant Digraph
Closely related to "gh" digraph for "f" pronunciation is "ph" (examples: photo, phone). "Spelling the /f/ sound with ph" states "The /f/ sound is usually spelled with just f (or ff after a short vowel … but words from ancient Greek use ph." This site provides good lists of "ph" examples and contexts.

Aural Disconnect with Three Consonant Combinations
Two consonant blends and one consonant digraph have always struck me as sounding differently than graphically alleged—"tr", "dr", and "ch". As a native speaker of English, I always felt those combinations sounded like "tchr", "jr", and "tch", respectively. Try pronouncing "trap", "draw", and "choke", and consider if they sound like "tchrap", "jraw", and "tchoke". "How to pronounce the 'ch' sound" provides linguistic details about "ch".)

More Pronunciation Items
Some additional thoughts WRT pronunciations are a few words I've run across that sound differently than I thought they would.

• cupboard—I was surprised it's pronounced "kub-ərd" instead of "cup-board".
• drawer—jroor (C'mon. If you pronounce it as draw-er, it sounds like a non-English speaker pronunciation.)
• iron—eye-yern (Does anyone pronounce it as "eye-ron"?)

More mystery of consonants and their pronunciations in words, depending on nearby letters—

• g: g or j (gang, general)
• c: s or k (ceiling, cake)
• s: s or z (seek, bees)
• f: f or v (off, of)
• h: h or silent (honey, honest)

For a related article about "h", visit "Pronunciations Heck with Hermione and Homage".

Diphthong
Diphthongs and two-consonant digraphs have a similarity: two characters and formation of a single sound. "The Difference Between Digraphs and Diphtongs" states "digraphs are letters and diphthongs are sounds". More specifically, "a digraph is two letters that spell one sound.… A diphthong is one vowel sound formed by the combination of two vowel sounds."

Coincidentally, "diphthong" is a good example word having a pair of consonant digraphs. (BTW, interesting to see the "ng" sound represented by a hybrid symbol. View that symbol and rest of Merriam-Webster's pronunciation key.)

Short and Long oo
While perusing consonant digraphs, I ran across the expressions "short oo" and "long oo". I had not heard of long and short "oo" designations (typical for normal vowels) in my younger years. "Long Sounds of 'oo', Short vs. Long 'oo' Vowel Digraphs" provides word and sentence examples for contrast. For explanations of "oo" and other "o" sounds, visit the encyclopedia.com site.

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Related: "Auther, Authur, Author, Other"

Spoken Out

Pronunciations interest me for how words and names often sound different than their spellings. Even as a native English speaker, I trip up. I've started this article talking about EU (not you) and skipped along names, consonants, words, and contextual pronunciations.

EU
In a TV show about Paris, the narrator pronounced unique as YOO-nik, like the word spelled eunuch. Phonetically related is the name Eunice, a name I heard of at a young age. I heard it as yoo-nis, but thought it would be spelled Unis. If I’d never known the pronunciation of Eunice, I might have thought the name should sound like ee-YOO-nise (long i) or EU-nise.

More observations about name pronunciations

• Basil—if if’s a name, pronounced BAAA-zul. If it’s a spice, pronounced BAY-zul.
• Herb—it it’s a name, pronounced herb. If it’s a spice item, pronounced urb.
• Lincoln (LINK-un) and palm (pom) spell with l’s, but don’t sound with them.
• Bret Favre (farv)
• Bode Miller (BOH-dee)
• Bono—BOH-noh if you're talking Sonny, Cher, or Chaz. BAH-noh if you're talking about the Irish singer.
• Gabriel vs. Gabrielle. The guy's name has a long a, and the woman's name gets a short a. I would think it should sound like gay-bri-ELLE.
• Paul Krugman (long u or short u?), John Boehner (pronounced bay-ner), Matt Groening (pronounced grayn-ing)

More OE pronunciation
Three names with "oe" vowel combinations can seem unpredictable and confusing besides the ones I just mentioned. Why is Joe pronounced joh, but Zoe is ZOH-ee and Chloe is KLOH-ee For that matter, if I hadn’t heard of Chloe, pronunciations could include chloh, shloh, SHLOH-ee, CHLOH-ee, kloh. Hmmm, Joe needs a y for the pronunciation of JOH-ee. Seems the other two names should be spelled Zoey and Chloey.

A segue to CH, a major consonant-pair confuser
While I'm discussing ch pronunciations, I think it must be difficult for people who are not native English speakers to decide on the sound as ch (chair), sh (machine), or k (chemical).

• Melancholy (MEL-un-KAH-lee) looks like it should be pronounced mel-AN-CHO-lee, something related to a pepper.
• Chamomile (CAM-uh-myul) is a tea flavor made from dried flower heads of a particular plant. This word is a minefield for mispronunciation possibilities.
• The ch sound is in truck. I hear the pronunciation as chruk, not truk.

More visual consonant-pair and single-consonant confusers

• I think the combinations can be difficult if the word is not familiar. Is it pronounced like thermometer or there? Think of a thimble there that is close to those thermometers.
• One consonant that stumps me constantly is "g" ("g" or "j" sound)? The other day I saw an ad for Allergan's Allegra. I have no problems with Allegra, but I want to pronounce Allergan with "g" and not "j". General, germ, galaxy, garble, gin
• Another consonant with dual pronunciations is "s" ("s" or "z" sound). State, states, status, statuses.
• Close—"z" sound or "s" sound? Depends on the context. Related: the movie "Closer". Not having seen it or heard the name pronounced, I don't know whether the title pertains to relative distance or something or someone who closes a deal.
• Of, off, oof are three words with two letters in common but pronounced differently from each other Odd that pronunciation of "of" is "ov". Stick an "a" between the letters to get a long "o" pronunciation (oaf).

A meandering to relative speakings
Uncle, aunt, nephew, niece, cousin don't really spell as simply as they sound.

UNG-kul, ant or ont, NE-few, nees, KUZ-un

Anomalous spellings considering the pronunciations

• Knuckle, knee, and knight are odd for starting with k’s.
• Muscle (MUS-sul) actually evolved from mouse, little mouse, which a muscle resembles as a body shape under skin.
• Scissors (SIZ-urz)—Vanna, get me an s. What a strange way to spell the device.
• Iron (I-yern), irony (I-yern-ee) are mystifying because no one pronounces them as I-ron or I-ron-ee. Iran and Iraq sound like they’re spelled. Of course, the pronunciations for residents of those countries wind up with short i’s.

A few town names to try the spelling or pronunciation

• Worcester, Ma (WEST-er)
• Quogue, NY (kwog)
• Phoenix, AZ (FEE-niks)
• Coughran, TX (unsure)
• Manor, TX (MAY-nr)
• Burnet, TX (BURN-et)
• Manchaca, TX (MAN-chak). I want to pronounce it man-CHAK-a. (Now thinking of Chaka Kahn's "I Feel for You" song and lyrics.)
• Pedernales, TX (pur-deh-NAH-less)
• A couple of similar sites that address some Texas town pronunciations, not that I necessarily agree—Rules of Austin, Keep Austin Weird

Different pronunciations depending on context

• read—present tense and past tense verb that are spelled the same but pronounced differently.
• lead—noun and present tense verb. The past tense of lead is led. If attempting to apply similar rules to that rhyming word read, past tense seems like it should be red. But red's a color.
• live—adjective and verb. Pronunciation of long i or short i depends on usage.
• sewer—nouns. Pronunciation of SOO-ur or SOH-ur depends on usage, which I have written about.
• minute—MIN-it or my-NOOT. Odd that it looks like it could be pronounced min-NOOT. Seems like the word should be spelled minit if talking about the time unit.
• woman—weird that the plural form is pronounced wimmin. For that matter, the singular form sounds like WUH-mun, not WOH-man.

Other mysterious word spellings, attributed to French origins
Even though I took French classes in the past, I don't have explanations for some of the following words: soldier (SOLE-jer), colonel (KER-nul), lieutenant (LOO-ten-unt). Hmmm, lieu tenant (an officer in place of a tenant).

While I'm on the topic of military ranks, I'm bringing up private. The private has the lowest rank, yet the word implies choice and control over self-disclosure. On the opposite end of the rank, we have general. A military general is highly ranked. As an adjective, general indicates ordinary status. Exceptions might be if general is part of a proper noun, such as General Electric, General Motors, General Dynamics.

Written words that surprised me when I first heard the pronunciations

• Cupboard (KUB-urd). I want to pronounce it CUP bord.
• Preface (PREH-fus). I want to pronounce it PREE fays.
• Tuberculosis (too-BER-kuh-LOH-sis) looks like it should be pronounced TOO-ber-kol-OH-sis. And it looks like it should mean some sort of potato disease.
• Vacation. The first time I saw it spelled was in the first grade. I had not yet learned about long and short vowels. I immediately spotted "cat". I might have wondered why "tion" was pronounced "shun".

Home and Hermione
I see the word home, and I think homage should sound like HOME-age or home-AZH. The pronunciation is "\ ä-mij, hä-\ ". I mentioned "homage" and other puzzlers in my Hermione pronunciation article a year ago.

Pronunciations Heck with Hermione and Homage

As my occupation (technical writing) is more involved with the written rather than spoken word, I often trip over pronunciations of words that I read rather than speak, particularly non-English names. But even with a name common in England consciousness, one gives me problems in particular—Hermione—for the following reasons.

• The name starts with an "h", a letter that seems to have no logical rules for it getting pronounced or not.
• Syllable accentuation is not obvious.
• The "i" is not obvious for whether it's long or short.
• The second "e" because of the word-end placement seems like it should be silent.
• Possible pronunciations seem to include "HER-mee-own", "HER-mee-one", "her-MY-own-ee" (Bingo!), etc.

Unless I've seen a Harry Potter movie recently—maybe a year since, I forget how Hermione is supposed to be pronounced. Reasonable video resources, besides Harry Potter movies, now include YouTube videos where Emma Watson talks about her character.

Another "h" word (term) that gives me pause is "homage". M-W.com's pronunciation guide shows "\ ä-mij, hä-\ ". There are two speaker icons. When clicked, they sound like "hawm ij" and "awm ij", respectively, to me. Dictionary.com's pronunciation guide shows "[hom-ij, om-]", although there's only one speaker icon. When clicked, I hear what sounds like "hawm ij". I can't help but also consider pronouncing "homage" as "home age" or "ohm age" or "home ij" or "ohm ij".

My feeling is that "h" words come with the unusual pronunciation difficulties particularly for non-native English speakers. Does the "h" get pronounced or not? Seems only experience helps in knowing. Honor? Hour? Hope? History? My efforts to find online pronunciation help regarding "Hermione" and "homage"—my "h" pet words for this article—has yielded a few reasonable resources.

Online Dictionaries

• Merriam-Webster.com: Found "homage", but choked on Hermione.
• Dictionary.com: Found both "homage" as well as "Hermione".
• Howjasay.com: Found both "homage" as well as "Hermione". (Here, "Hermione" sounds like "her MY nee".)

Other Resources

• AT&T Labs Natural Voices® Text-to-Speech Demo: Allows selection of several voices and provides a text box to type or paste up to 300 characters.
• Encyclopedia Mythica's pronunciation guide: Shows alphabetized mythological names with their phonetic pronunciation guide and regional bases.
• Inogolo.com: Found "Hermione", but couldn't find my other "h" word "homage".

Per inogolo's "About" page, inogolo.com is "website devoted to the English pronunciation of the names of people, places, and various things". The result for Hermione provides a link for speech ("Audio Pronunciation"), displays pronunciation ("Phonetic Pronunciation") as "hur-MY-o-nee", and shows the name/word origin.

A topic at WordReference.com Language Forums yielded a commenter's link to AT&T for pronunciations. At the AT&T site, you can select different voices from a drop-down list box, then type or paste text into the text box. You then click SPEAK to hear the text. The American English speakers pronounce Hermione as "her MY oh nee", whereas the British speakers pronounce "HER me on". Other language-speakers have yet other pronunciations. Incidentally, the WordReference forum page shows a paid-ad link for free text-to-speech reader.

Even if I mastered and could continue to remember pronunciations for "Hermione" and "homage", I could never be an news announcer for foreign news. I would have an awful time correctly pronouncing names of heads of states for former Eastern-bloc countries and several Mediterranean-area countries. I'm fine with most British-based and Spanish names, except for Hermione (British by Potter <g>).