The "How do You Pronounce X" Thread

[Imralu]

forward - [foːd] (same as "Ford") or, rarely, [ˈfoːwəd] if there might be any confusion
foreword - [ˈfoːˌwəːd]
forehead - [ˈfɔɹəd] (rhymes with "torrid") or [ˈfoːˌhe̞d], the latter feels awkward to me, like a spelling pronunciation, but I use it especially when talking to non-native speakers, which is most of the time now.

[jal]

Isn't it just a merger of /ie ← e:/ and /ie ← iə^r/?

It could be yeah, but there's not much to be found on the phonological origins of Jamaican, unfortunately...


JAL

[Znex]

forward - [foə̯d̚] (not quite same as "Ford"); ['fo:wəd̚~'fo:wʊd̚] formally
foreword - ['foːˌwøːd̚]
forehead - [fɔə̯d̚]; [ˈfoːˌhe̞d̚] formally maybe, but seems a bit American to me

[linguoboy]

tarpaulin

[Salmoneus]

forward - /fOwUd/
foreword - /fOwUd/ or, to disambiguate from the above, /fO.wUd/, where /./ is an intermorphemic pause
forehead - /fOhEd/
tarpaulin - /tApOlIn/. (tar+paul+in)

[alynnidalar]

tarpaulin

/tɐɹp/

Truthfully, I've never said it aloud, and I'm not sure I've heard it pronounced either. I'm inclined to guess something like /tɐɹˈpɒlɪn/, but I don't know if that's "correct" or not.

[linguoboy]

tarpaulin

/tɐɹp/

Honestly, that would be my answer, too. You can tell how seldom I use the full form by the fact that it's always uncontracted.

[Travis B.]

Same here - [tʰʌʁp]

[Zaarin]

And another for [tʰɑɹ̠ˁp].

[KathTheDragon]

I say it /tɑːp/, /tɑ'pɔːlɪn/

[ˈd̪ʲɛ.gɔ kɾuˑl̪]

How the hell is "Urdu" pronounced? In my head Ipronounce it [ʉːɹdʉː] but I'd like to sound like an Australian and keep this [ʉːɹ] at one time.
EDIT: Not to spam, I found a video where the speaker speaks very bizarrely for me and I suspect it's a very broad AuE, can youse check it? https://youtu.be/nUyLnjgGumg

[Sumelic]

I say /ˈɜrdu/, but that's mainly because I don't naturally have /ʊr~ur/ in my phonemic inventory (e.g. my "poor" is /por/ and my "pure" is /pjɜr]). Phonetically, I dunno: something like [ɝdʉ] or [ɝɾʉ].

[Pole, the]

tarpaulin

/tɐɹp/

/planˈdɛka/ then.

[Vijay]

How the hell is "Urdu" pronounced?

I say [ˈʔʊɾɨd̪u] because that's about as close as I get to pronouncing it the way it would be pronounced by native speakers of that language. If at any point I really felt like I have to for non-South Asians or something, I would say (and perhaps have said) [ˈʔɹ̩dʉw].

I didn't know (or, more likely, I forgot) that tarp was short for tarpaulin. I say [tʰɑɹp̚] for tarp and I guess [tʰɑɹˈpʰɑln̩] for tarpaulin.

[linguoboy]

I say /ˈɜrdu/, but that's mainly because I don't naturally have /ʊr~ur/ in my phonemic inventory (e.g. my "poor" is /por/ and my "pure" is /pjɜr]).

I don't either, but I tend to overpronounce it as [ˈʊɾdu] from being around academics. In more relaxed settings, I'll use [ɝ].

[Znex]

How the hell is "Urdu" pronounced? In my head Ipronounce it [ʉːɹdʉː] but I'd like to sound like an Australian and keep this [ʉːɹ] at one time.
EDIT: Not to spam, I found a video where the speaker speaks very bizarrely for me and I suspect it's a very broad AuE, can youse check it? https://youtu.be/nUyLnjgGumg

I'd say ['ɵːdʉː~'øːdyː] casually, but maybe more like ['ʊə̯dʉː] formally.

And that's not very broad AuE; maybe more like something between General and Broad AuE. The most "weird" thing maybe is he has the classic Australian creaky voice (or whatever it's called) going on, which you tend to come across more in General and the Broader AuEs.

[Travis B.]

I have [ˈuːʁɾʉ̯u(ː)] for Urdu, reflecting the tendency to pronounce <u> in foreign-looking words as /u/.

[linguoboy]

I'm sure we've had these before, but I've been wondering about them lately:

any
many
than

As a pin-pen merged American, I have [ɪ] in all three. They're the only words I can think of where a has this value in a stressed position.

[Zaarin]

any [ɛni]
many [mɛni]
than [ðæn]

I am not pin-pen merged, but I do have an idiosyncratic and inconsistent merger of ɪ > ɛ in a few words: since [sɛn(t)s] (hence homophonous with sense), milk [mɛɫk], and and [ɛnd] (hence homophonous with end) being the most prominent. If stressed, and becomes [ænd], but the others retain [ɛ] unless pronounced very consciously (probably to distinguish since from sense).

[Sumelic]

For me,

• [ɛ] for written "a" always occurs in "any" and "many"
• [ɛ] for written "a" almost always occurs in "catch" and "marshmallow"
• [ɛ] for written "a" seems possible for "than", "am", "shall", but I think it's more common for these to just have a reduced vowel [ə] (or syllabic resonants). The pronunciations with unreduced /æ/ seem a bit unnatural for me when I try to pronounce them.
• [ɛ] for written "a" seems maybe possible for "and" and "can", but I'm not entirely sure. I definitely do use [e̞ə̯] in these some of the time (my realization of /æ/ before nasals) and it doesn't feel odd to me to do so, and of course I also use [ə]/syllabic nasals some of the time in these words.

I can't think of any words where I have merged [ɪ] and [ɛ] except for "get", which can be and probably usually is [gɪt], although [gɛt] is not impossible and doesn't seem that odd to me.

[Travis B.]

any: [ˈɜ̃ːni(ː)~ɜ̃ːːĩ̯]
many: [ˈmɜ̃ːni(ː)~mɜ̃ːːĩ̯]
then: [tɜ̃(ː)(n)~ðɜ̃(ː)(n)]

I always have [ɜ] in marshmallow and Illinois, inconsistently have it in catch, can, and am depending on stress and register, and am used to hearing it in milk but do not use it there myself.

[ˈd̪ʲɛ.gɔ kɾuˑl̪]

only
fool
again
direct
direction
party
four
Cairo
tsunami
lose
loose
ten
teen
kin
good
bald
bold
fork

[Ziz]

only [ˈɵʊ̃n.li]
fool [fu̟ə̯ɫ]
again [ə̆ˈɡɛˑn]
direct [də̆ˈɹɛkt]
direction [də̆ˈɹɛk.ʃn̩]
party [ˈpʰa̱ɹ.ɾi]
four [foə̯ɹ]
Cairo [ˈkʰae̯.ɹɵʊ]
tsunami [su̟ˑˈna̱ˑ.mi]
lose [lu̟ˑz]
loose [lu̟s]
ten [tʰɛ̃ˑn]
teen [tʰĩˑn]
kin [kʰɪ̈̃ˑn]
good [ɡʊˑd̥]
bald [bɑˑɫd̥]
bold [boˑɫd̥]
fork [foˑɹk]

[Sumelic]

only: /ˈonli/; [oˑʊnli]* in broad phonetic transcription; I don't know enough to give a narrow one. Probably the preceding vowel is nasalized, since phonetic descriptions of English that I have read say this is usual, but I have difficulty hearing nasalization on diphthongs. According to Jack Windsor Lewis ("How English is Really Pronounced"), it's usual for this word to be pronounced without [l] when it is not before a pause, but I can't really notice that in my own pronunciation. Definitely there are some things going on with this word in connected speech that aren't in my pronunciation of it in isolation.

fool: /ful/; [fuːɫ] more or less. Another tricky one. Usually my /u/ is fronted and somewhat of a rising dipthong, although I'm unsure of the exact phonetic start and end points. However, the literature says it is common for /u/-fronting to be inhibited before /l/ (especially coda /l/), and I think I can detect this in my own speech. Coda /l/ is dark for me and often has a bit of a schwa-like glide preceding it, but words like "fool" definitely feel monosyllabic to me, not disyllabic (it feels contrastive with "dual", which I do think of as a disyllable). However, as I mentioned recently in the "Incorrect pronunciations etc." thread, I have merged the historically disyllabic rhyme class of "cruel", "gruel", "jewel" etc. into the monosyllabic one of "fool"/"mule"/"stool". (This merger seems to have been influenced by spelling and morphology: as I mentioned, "dual" feels like a disyllable for me, but "duel" feels like a monosyllable). A similar merger in favor of fewer syllables applies to "real", "ideal" vs. "feel"/"meal"/"seal", again with some morphologically influenced exceptions like "peritoneal" (which is more consciously derived from "peritoneum" than "real" is from "res", or "ideal" is from "idea"). On the other hand, I tend to merge in favor of an "extra" syllable in some words with coda /l/ after a rhotic vowel or diphthong.

again: /əˈgɛn/; [əˈgɛ̃ːn] or [əˈgɛ̃ː] in general. Of course, assimilation occurs before bilabial or velar plosives, so there's also [əˈgɛ̃m] in "again but" or [əˈgɛ̃ŋ] in something like, I dunno, "will again go"

direct: /dɪˈrɛkt~dəˈrɛkt~dɚˈrɛkt/, infrequently /daɪˈrɛkt/. Phonetically, the second syllable is something like [ɹʷɛk̚t], nothing of interest really. (There might be some coda glottalization that I'm missing.) The first syllable is tricky. In perception, I mostly have the weak vowel merger, but sometimes I feel like there is a small distinction, at least potentially, between what I'll label /ɪ̆/ and /ɐ̆/ in unstressed syllables. /ɪ̆/ is fronter, and basically corresponds to RP unstressed /ɪ/; /ɐ̆/ is more-or-less RP /ə/, similar to my final vowel in words like "comma" and "coda", but I don't want to use /ə/ because that seems too associated with a "neutral" reduced vowel to me, and there are actually relatively few environments where I feel that /ɐ̆/ occurs compared to /ɪ̆/ (/ɪ̆/ occurs in "roses", "wanted" etc.).

I also sometimes feel like there is a potential small difference between /ɐ̆r/ and /ɚr~ɪ̆r/; for example, "erroneous" cannot have /ɐ̆r/, while "aroma" feels like it might. Another circumstance where /ɐ̆r/ feels possible to me is "corruption" (although /o˞/ and /ɚr/ also seem likely).

Anyway, this really comes down to incomplete neutralization of reduced vowels in English, which I'm sure has been studied by many people. I can't really report my exact phonetic realization, only my perception of it. Further complicating things, my use of /ɪ/ instead of /aɪ/ is somewhat self-conscious, as I tend to think of /aɪ/ in this word as a bit of a hypercorrection (not as stigmatizable as "/aɪ/raq" or "d/aɪ/ssect", but along the same lines). (This perception seems pretty arbitrary, since there are in fact many words that are always pronounced with non-reduced pretonic /aɪ/, including some where it comes before /r/ such as "ironic" and "thyroxin(e)".)

Reduced "/ɪ̆r/" is the only context where I have /ɪr/ with a lax vowel; in words like "Sirius", I have tensed the vowel to /i˞/.

direction: /dɪˈrɛkʃən~dəˈrɛkʃən~dɚˈˈrɛkʃən/**, infrequently /daɪˈrɛkʃən/. Not much more to say that wasn't in "direct". My usual pronunciation probably lacks a phonetic vowel in the last syllable, and uses a syllabic nasal [ʃn̩], but I've never been great at hearing the difference between syllabic resonanants and schwa + resonant sequences.

party: /ˈpɑ˞ti/***; [ˈpʰɑˑ˞ɾi]. I can't really hear a difference betweeen [ɾ] in English and a quickly pronounced [d], but I used [ɾ] in this transcription because that seems to be standard and it's probably more phonetically accurate (even though Spanish [ɾ] doesn't sound quite the same to me)

four: /fo˞/; [fo̞ːɚ̯~fɔː˞] something like that. Feels like a monosyllable to me, but there's definitely a change in the articulation over time that makes it seem more similar to a disyllable than a word like "fat" is. I maintain a contrast between phonemic /o˞/ and /o.ɚ/ (the latter occurs in comparatives like "lower" and agent nouns like "knower"). I don't know the exact articulation of my "r" so I'm just using the rhotacization diacritic.

Cairo: /ˈkaɪro/ [ˈkʰäˑɪɹʷo] or [ˈkʰäˑɪɹʷoʊ]. I'm unsure about how much /o/ is dipthongized for me when it's unstressed. The start of /aɪ/ feels to me like almost the same place as /ɑ/ or the start of /ɑ˞/ (it's definitely closer to these than it is to the "cat" vowel, which I think is something like a true front [a] for me), but maybe it's a bit fronter, so I'm just using [äɪ] here. I can't really hear that the offglide is phonetically [ɪ̯] as opposed to [i̯] or [j] (it basically feels like "coda /j/" to me, at least in the same sense that "bar/bore/bear" have "coda r"), but according to Mark Liberman ("The rɑɪt sɑʊnz"), this is plausible in a contemporary American accent, so I'll just go with it since it's conventional. It feels basically not at all like a trisyllable, unlike "Ireland" which feels very much like a trisyllable.

tsunami: /suˈnɑmi/ [sʉˈnɑ̃ˑmi~sɵˈnɑ̃ˑmi~səˈnɑ̃ˑmi]
lose: /luz/ [lʉːz̊] Final /z/ is at least partially devoiced; /u/ is, as I said, probably slightly dipthongized, but not enough for me to feel like it makes sense to transcribe it as [ʉw] or [ɵw] or soemthing like that. I can't tell to what extent my onset /l/ is "dark"/velarized so I just transcribed it as [l]
loose: /lus/ [lʉs]
ten: /tɛn/ [tʰɛ̃ːn], probably [tʰɛ̃ː] sometimes but I don't feel like elision of the /n/ is as common as for "again" for some reason. Same notes about assimilation apply for /tɛ̃ːm/ "ten beans", /tɛ̃ːŋ/ "ten gourds"
teen: /tin/ [tʰĩːn], assimilation as above presumably can occur (in e.g. "teen boy"), although it feels like it's less likely to occur and doesn't have to be complete (it definitely seems possible to distinguish "teen boy" and "team boy" in careful speech)
kin: /kɪn/ [kʰɪ̃ːn], same assimilation behavior as "teen"
good: /gɵd/ [gɵːd̥] (Unlike /u/, I'm indicating fronting in my phonemic transcription of traditional /ʊ/ because it really doesn't feel at all close to [ʊ] to me)
bald: /bɑld/ [bɑːɫd̥]
bold: /bold/ [bo̞ːɫd̥] I don't really know what to write for the vowel. It's like my vowel in "board", more or less. The coda "dark l" distorts the vowel /o/, making it less obviously a rising diphthong than in words like "bode", but I don't know if it's quite a falling diphthong. So I wrote it as a monophthong.
fork: /fo˞k/ [fo̞˞k]

*I'm using /ˑ/ for stressed vowels before voiced sounds in non-final syllables because I find it harder to hear length/lack of clipping in this context than in monosyllables (where I'm using /ː/). For consistency, I'm always placing the length mark after the nuclear vowel IPA letter
**I don't know whether /ən/ or /n̩/ would be more theoretically accurate for my phonological system, so I'm just using /ən/ in my phonological transcriptions for simplicity
***To me, rhotic vowels seem more like phonemes than VC sequences, so I'm using /˞/ rather than coda /r/. Another possiblity could be /ɚ̯/. These all seem pretty much equivalent to me, though: I find it quite similar to the issue of /ɪ̯/ vs. /i̯/ vs. /j/ for the last part of rising dipthongs.

[Travis B.]

only: [ˈõːʟ̞i(ː)]~[ˈõːɰi(ː)]
fool: [ˈfu(ː)ʊ̯]
again: [ɘːˈgɜ̃(ː)(n)]
direct: [tʁ̩ːˈʁɜʔk(t)]
direction: [tʁ̩ːˈʁɜʔkʃɘ̃(ː)(n)]
party: [ˈpʰʌʁ(ɾ)i(ː)]
four: [fɔ(ː)ʁ]
Cairo: [ˈkʰəːe̯ʁo(ː)(ʊ̯)]
tsunami: [sʲʉ̃ːˈnãːmi(ː)]
lose: [ʟ̞uːs]~[ɰuːs], before a vowel [ʟ̞uːz]~[ɰuːz]
loose: [ʟ̞us]~[ɰus]
ten: [tʰɜ̃(ː)(n)]
teen: [tʰĩ(ː)(n)]
kin: [kʰɘ̃(ː)(n)]
good: [kʊːt], before a vowel [kʊːd]
bald: [pɒːo̯t], before a vowel [pɒːo̯d]
bold: [poːʊ̯t], before a vowel [poːʊ̯d]
fork: [fɔʁk]