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I met a person who pronounced "livelihood" like "lifelihood".

Is there a some kind of dialect like this?

Maybe I just misheard her pronunciation.

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  • Where is the person from? Is she a native speaker?
    – user24743
    Commented Nov 26, 2015 at 12:54
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    I'm voting to close this question as off-topic because the OP is not providing any details based on which we need to answer the question.
    – user24743
    Commented Nov 26, 2015 at 14:52
  • @Rathony She was Australian. It seems like that was just my misheard. thanks.
    – ironsand
    Commented Nov 28, 2015 at 9:58

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I never encountered the word 'lifelihood' (pronunciation). Likely misheard (or the speaker pronounced 'wrongly') because /v/ and /f/ are both labiodental consonants.

Labiodental consonants are articulated with the lower lip and the upper teeth.

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    Since /f/ is a voiceless labiodental fricative it seems somewhat plausible that there might be an accent where a non-initial voiced labiodental fricative becomes voiceless. The other possibility might be a non native speaker of a language where "v" is pronounced /f/ such as German. I believe that in the 'allo 'allo series at least some of the German accents had the property of turning voiced labiodental fricatives to voiceless ones even in word initial situations.
    – DRF
    Commented Nov 26, 2015 at 14:20
  • @DRF, Yes, this is possible, and was possibly read and pronounced in German. (Awaiting ironsand's answer to Rathony's questions)
    – shin
    Commented Nov 26, 2015 at 14:38
  • @DRF +1) I suspected it (German, Austrian, maybe Russian?), too. But who knows. It is difficult to answer this question without knowing the person's nationality unless we have members from all the countries in the world. I voted to close it.
    – user24743
    Commented Nov 26, 2015 at 15:08
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    My native British dialect pronunciation results in these two sounds being so similar as almost being indistinct to a non-native ear. We usually switch to standard English when speaking to a non-native speaker to avoid precisely this problem.
    – Brian Tompsett - 汤莱恩
    Commented Nov 26, 2015 at 15:30

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