What are the differences between the pronunciation of bidet in American English, and British English?
The last part of the word sounds like the pronunciation of day, in both the cases. I don't understand the differences for the first part of the word.
Are there other words that have the same differences in the pronunciation?
The difference is that with bidet, as also with words like ballet, beret, buffet, café, cliché, and debris, in North America the stress falls on the second syllable, while Britain favors the first syllable in each of those words.
Wikipedia calls this “French stress”, and has quite a long list of these. A few of those are wrong, though, like for example négligée, which is stressed on the first syllable in both but which receives secondary stress at the end in North America.
French has much lighter syllable stress than English does. In French, all the syllables have equal or almost equal weighting, whereas in English almost all words have emphasis on the first syllable (with exceptions, of course, because English is good at pronunciation exceptions).
On neither side of the Atlantic do we pronounce the word as it would be spoken natively: in Britain we ignore the foreign emphasis entirely and stress syllables the same as we would if it were an English word (i.e. put emphasis on the first syllable); whereas in American English the difference (of the foreign word from English) is emphasized, so the emphasis comes on the final syllable: bi-DAY, bu-FAY, etc.
I cannot write faithfully about the British pronunciation.
However, Americans like myself have 18 different pronunciations for the word "bidet".
It is difficult to say with certainty which of the 18 pronunciations appears with the greatest frequency in spoken conversations. I have never conducted a survey on such things.
The pronunciation I am most familiar with, sounds like the sentence "I bid you good day" with the emboldened italicized words deleted. It sounds like "bid-day".
Americans have 7 different vowels which their eyes perceive when writing AEUIOU and sometimes Y
Americans have 8, or more, different vowels which their ears perceive when listening with their ears.
| Ad Hoc Phonetic Spelling | Standard Spelling of Words which Use the Auditory Vowel When Spoken Aloud | Words Spelled Phonetically |
|---|---|---|
| AW | cross, awl, all, brought, call, draw, fall, gone, hall, raw, saw, law | kraws, awl, awl, brawt, cawl, draw, fawl, gawn, hawl, raw, saw, law |
| AH | add, and, bad, band, grand, had, hand, man, plan, stand | ah-d, ah-nd, b-ah-d, b-ah-nd, gr-ah-nd, h-ah-d, h-ah-nd, m-ah-n, pl-ah-n, st-ah-nd |
| EH | any, bed, best, cell, echo, dead, end, bend, send, rend, lend, tend | eh-ny, b-eh-d, b-eh-st, s-eh-ll, eh-ko, d-eh-d, eh-nd, beh-nd, seh-nd, reh-nd, leh-nd, teh-nd |
| UH | above, among, umbrella, come, blood, but, of, oven, under, wonder, sunder, unearth | uh-b-uh-v, uh-m-uh-ng, uh-mbr-uh-ll-uh, c-uh-m, bl-uh-d, b-uh-t, uh-f, uh-v-eh-n, uh-ndur, w-uh-nder, s-uh-nder, uh-n-urth |
| IH | did, grid, hid, if, in, into, is, it, kid, lid, rid, skid, slid, squid, this, which, will, with | |
| OH | bone, bow, grow, home, know, low, no, own, phone, show, stone, tone, tow, zone | |
| EE | agree, be, bead, beam, bee, creed, deep, free, he, key, knee, need, plea, read, reed, sea, see, seed, seem, she, speed, tea, thee, three, tree, we | |
| OO | assume, balloon, bloom, boom, commune, consume, costume, doom, gloom, immune, june, noon, perfume, presume, resume, room, soon, spoon, tomb, tune, whom, womb | |
| AW-EE | buy, die, eye, fly, high, lie, pie, sky, tie | |
| EH-EE | (English able, age, base, pain, rain, sane, lane, brain, cane, day, bay, Lay, May, Nay, Pay, Ray, Say, Way, Yay) (Spanish de, deberes, el, en, encender, entre, es, ver) |
BidetAY or EH-EEThere exist times at which the suffix "det" on the word "bidet" is pronounced such that it rhymes with the following words:
- Bay
- Hay
- Lay
- May
- Nay
- Pay
- Ray
- Say
- Way
- Yay
EHThere exist times at which the suffix "det" on the word "bidet" is pronounced such that it rhymes with the following strings. Some of the following strings are prefixes or post-fixes rather than entire American English words:
- beset
- bet
- cassette
- debt
- forget
- gazette
- get
- jet
- let
- met
- net
- pet
- quartet
- regret
- reset
- set
- silhouette
- sweat
- threat
- upset
- vet
- wet
- yet
Americans, such as myself, sometimes find that the relationship between written vowels and spoken auditory vowels is difficult to comprehend.
There are three ways to choose how to pronounce the left-most vowel "i" in "b I det"
There are three ways to choose how to pronounce the right-most vowel "e" in "bid E t"
There are two ways to choose whether or not to pronounce the letter "t" at the end of the word. Americans who have not been taught how to pronounce French generally do pronounce the letter "t". There are fewer silent consonants in American English than in French.
If we were to try to spell the word "bidet" phonetically, we might have the following bizarre spellings:
| Number | First Vowel | Last Vowel | English-Like Spelling | Spanish-Like Spelling |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | AW-EE | AW-EE | B-AW-EE-D-AW-EE |
BaiDai |
| 2 | AW-EE | AW-EE | B-AW-EE-D-AW-EE-T |
BaiDait |
| 3 | AW-EE | IH | B-AW-EE-D-IH |
Baid(ih) |
| 4 | AW-EE | IH | B-AW-EE-D-IH-T |
Baid(ih)t |
| 5 | AW-EE | EE | B-AW-EE-D-EE |
Baidi |
| 6 | AW-EE | EE | B-AW-EE-D-EE-T |
BaiDit |
| 7 | IH | AW-EE | B-IH-D-AW-EE |
B(ih)Dai |
| 8 | IH | AW-EE | B-IH-D-AW-EE-T |
B(ih)Dait |
| 9 | IH | IH | B-IH-D-IH |
B(ih)D(ih) |
| 10 | IH | IH | B-IH-D-IH-T |
B(ih)D(ih)t |
| 11 | IH | EE | B-IH-D-EE |
BiDi |
| 12 | IH | EE | B-IH-D-EE-T |
B(ih)dit |
| 13 | EE | AW-EE | B-EE-D-AW-EE |
BiDai |
| 14 | EE | AW-EE | B-EE-D-AW-EE-T |
BiDawit |
| 15 | EE | IH | B-EE-D-IH |
Bead |
| 16 | EE | IH | B-EE-D-IH-T |
Bid(ih)t |
| 17 | EE | EE | B-EE-D-EE |
Bidi |
| 18 | EE | EE | B-EE-D-EE-T |
BiDit |
Spanish spelling would be more elegant than American English spelling, except that, in Spain, they rarely use the vowels ih, eh, uh, or ah.
The set of all vowels used in Spain is a proper subset of the set of all vowels used in North America (Canada, the USA, et cetra).
| Ad Hoc Phonetic Spelling | In English? | In Spanish? |
|---|---|---|
AW |
In Vocal/Auditory English | In Vocal/Auditory Spanish |
AH |
In Vocal/Auditory English | rare and uncommon in Vocal/Auditory Spanish |
EH |
In Vocal/Auditory English | Almost always followed by EE in Vocal/Auditory Spanish |
UH |
In Vocal/Auditory English | rare and uncommon in Vocal/Auditory Spanish |
IH |
In Vocal/Auditory English | rare and uncommon in Vocal/Auditory Spanish |
OH |
In Vocal/Auditory English | In Vocal/Auditory Spanish. Spanish writing is o |
EE |
In Vocal/Auditory English | In Vocal/Auditory Spanish. Spanish writing is i |
OO |
In Vocal/Auditory English | In Vocal/Auditory Spanish. Spanish writing is u |
AW - EE |
In Vocal/Auditory English | In Vocal/Auditory Spanish. Spanish writing is ai |
EH - EE |
In Vocal/Auditory English | In Vocal/Auditory Spanish. Spanish writing is e |
