20
votes
Accepted
Proper way to pronounce "Middle of" in GenAm English
While I agree that 'middle of', when spoken in normal conversational English, can be pronounced as 'middluv' (what you're calling a real fast "middle-love"), an even further reduction is possible so ...
- 1,438
7
votes
Proper way to pronounce "Middle of" in GenAm English
You may ask this kind of question but you may not get a direct answer. While there is a kind of "standard" American accent, it varies considerably from person to person depending on how clear their ...
- 87k
5
votes
Accepted
Is 'idea of' pronounced 'idearof'?
Preliminaries
Rhotic & non-rhotic accents: A rhotic accent is one in which the R is pronounced in all contexts (i.e. beginning, middle and end of a word). General American English is rhotic. Non-...
- 17.7k
4
votes
AmEng: Is the T tapped (flap) in the compound noun heart attack?
The /t/ in heart will become a voiced tap in the string heart attack for many speakers of American Englishes. This means that the compound nouns heart attack and hard attack will be homophones. The /...
4
votes
Accepted
What is the correct pronunciation of "don't you"?
First and foremost, there's no 'correct' or 'incorrect' pronunciation. Pronunciation of a particular word varies from speaker to speaker or accent to accent.
All the pronunciations you've given are ...
- 17.7k
4
votes
How to pronounce education?
/ɛdʒuˈkɛɪʃən/ is the way it's pronounced in General American (the standard American accent), and /edjuˈkɛɪʃən/ is the way it's pronounced in Recieved Pronunciation (the standard British accent). I'm ...
- 206
3
votes
Proper way to pronounce "Middle of" in GenAm English
If the speaker isn't too concerned with emphasizing a very specific location, then yes it's essentially spoken as 1 word:
I dunno, it's somewhere in the "middelov" all that junk over there.
If ...
- 2,960
3
votes
Strange pronunciation of 'assume'
As described in this ELU answer, the pronunciation of assume in most British and Australian accents is /əˈsjuːm/ with the /s/ followed by a yod ('y' as in you). There's a tendency to merge an /s/ with ...
- 17.7k
3
votes
Accepted
Casual English: Dropping the The Verb BE
I think this is the pronunciation that is sometimes written "What'cha talking about?" or "Whaddaya talking about?" (depending on the speaker's accent).
If so, I think that most native speakers would ...
- 518
2
votes
How do i know if the word is stressed in English?
You can stress any word, and it will give a slightly different meaning on what you're saying. The most natural stress for example one is on the word travel, and for number two it's accountant. I'm ...
- 4,417
2
votes
Accepted
In the natural way of speaking, How to pronounce "next stop"?
Next stop, /nekst stɒp/
Next stop, /neks stɒp/
The answer to the original poster's question is: Yes, we do say "nex stop".
In example (1) you can see an unnatural pronunciation for the ...
2
votes
Accepted
"What you", "that you", "without you" pronunciations using a "ch" between the words
Short version: In fast speech, T plus Y tends to merge to TSH, spelled CH, because of where they are pronounced in the mouth.
Long version: As Adam hinted, this is really a linguistics question. ...
- 7,236
2
votes
"With the" Does one pronounce both "th" sounds?
I think it depends on the region whether or not someone will say both "th" sounds or not. I'm American and from the Pacific Northwest, and I tend to merge the two words into sounding like this:
...
- 847
2
votes
Accepted
do they sometimes omit the /d/ , /t/ sounds of the -ed ending?
The final -ed would be either omitted or reduced to a vestigial -t in normal speech. The elision between the /z/ and the /s/ can clearly be seen in this spectrum, where the vestigial t can (believe it ...
- 56.2k
2
votes
Is 'idea of' pronounced 'idearof'?
This is called an intrusive R, and occurs in some non-rhotic accents of English, such as standard British English. It would not occur in rhotic accents such as a general American accent.
Basically, ...
1
vote
Spelling for the spoken contraction of "on the"
None of "otta", "shoulda", "kinda", or "sorta" are standard English, althoguh some of them are becoming more commonly used. To the best of my knowledge, there is no standard English contraction for “...
- 32.4k
1
vote
Accepted
Pronunciation of "idea" as "idier"?
It is simply a fact of English pronunciation in certain parts of the world.
In southern England, for instance, there is a regional habit of pronouncing words that end in 'a' to sound like 'er'. So:
...
- 5,494
1
vote
Accepted
They took an umbrella with them. It might rain. Connect these two sentences with the phrase in case
This is one of those questions whose answer might puzzle a great many native English speakers.
In everyday conversation people are as likely to use all three constructions - rained, should rain and ...
- 24.2k
1
vote
Accepted
1
vote
Accepted
It tastes like chicken(pronunciation-unstressed end consonant?)
It can be difficult to hear the two /s/‘s in words ending in /sts/. But even if you can’t hear it, you should think of the second /s/ as being there: it is supposed to be there in the accents that are ...
- 6,642
1
vote
How often do English speakers mishear an important and unimportant?
an and un have distinctly different vowels, and the prosody, the intonation/stress and rhythms, is different as well between an important and unimportant. Perhaps in a noisy room there might be some ...
- 119k
1
vote
Is 'idea of' pronounced 'idearof'?
Eye-dear ov.
Now you have to find out how I pronounce "eye", "dear" and "ov" ...
OK, seriously, idea and idea aren't far off, although I know my pronunciation has a hint of a 'y' between the ɪ and ...
- 940
1
vote
Proper way to pronounce "Middle of" in GenAm English
Go for clear enunciation every time, irrespective of what sloppy native speakers may do. If you're not a native speaker, there's all the more reason to go slowly and enunciate clearly. Give a slight ...
- 21
1
vote
Proper way to pronounce "Middle of" in GenAm English
In normal conversation, the phrases middle of and middle of the are often fused into essentially one spoken word. When this occurs, the of is still pronounced, but the normal schwa sound of the o can ...
- 705
1
vote
Is the /t/ sound in "stopped" not pronounced in "we stopped for petrol"?
This arises when a final consonant is followed by word beginning with an alveolar consonant, for example a "d". Forgive my failure to use phonetic writing, I don't have a phonetic keyboard handy, but ...
- 56.2k
1
vote
What is the pronunciation of "Will you" in fast/connected speech?
Before being able to respond, I would need to know whether or not you are a native English speaker and which region or country you come from. There are several regional variants in English which can ...
- 164
Only top scored, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible