A question for British speakers: How do you pronounce schedule?

[SanVito]

I say shedule, but often feel like an outlier here at work, where most other people seem to say skudjule.

This is in SW England, for the record. I do feel there’s a slight generational shift, which I guess could be US influence? Perhaps US tv features more high powered business meetings than UK ones.

[SciFiSam]

I usually say skedule, but wouldn’t bat an eye at shedule. UK here, and age 44. I think people have used both pronunciations forever, and the only place I’ve ever heard people saying it’s different is in linguistics books in the 90s, where most of us students were a bit baffled at the idea that we would never have heard the word schedule pronounced with a sk sound, and discussions since then.

@Filbert

I say both ‘schedule’ and ‘garage’ both ways.

With ‘schedule’ I don’t think there’s any real pattern, with ‘garage’ I’ll usually refer to place where people store junk and could theoretically park a car as a ‘garridge’ and the place where one purchases fuel for the car (also often known as a garage here) as a ‘garahje’, but I’m not all that consistent.

Which “both ways,” though? I’d lay a bet that, if you’re English, you never say garage like Americans do. I bet you never say the second g in garage like a ʒ, the sound in bourgeois. The stress is changed, but the first vowel is not (it’s still æ like in RP cat), but the second g is always like the j (dʒ) in judge.

@markn_1

My 1933 edition of the OED also gives the sh- pronunciation first, and marks the sk- pronunciation as “U.S.”.

Slight tangent, it actually gives two UK pronunciations, differing in the final vowel, “SHED-yool” and “SHED-əl”, the latter rhyming with “medal”. I don’t recall ever hearing anyone, British or not, using the latter pronunciation.

@markn_1

Hm, I don’t hear a pure /d/ followed by a vowel in her pronunciation. It sounds more like /dj/ (SHED-yool) or /dʒ/ (SHEJ-ul) to me. The OED’s pronunciation would be like the end of “medal” or even “kettle”.

Agreed. It’d be like it rhymed absolutely with pedal. It doesn’t.

[Gyrate]

It depends on where you went to shool. [sic]

Annoying, when I moved to the UK I started pronouncing “harass” as “HAR-ras” and “controversy” and “con-TRO-versy”, whereupon many newsreaders promptly switched to the American pronunciations of both.

[the_bing]

I say shed-yule.
Because i’m an English pedant.
And i’m always correct.

[Mk_VII]

I’ve known people in the office to use either. ‘Sked-dool’ is more common here than it used to be.

[Author_Balk]

@Green_Bean

It was only recently that I discovered Levon wasn’t counting his money in a garret by the motorway.

I actually like “garret” better here - Levon would have more to count if he had a cheap garret instead of a pricey garage.

Many years ago I was trying to figure out what the word was in the song. I played it over and over and never got it. That evening I went to a dance and met someone from England. In the conversation she said garriage. I had never heard it pronounced that way before. I realized that was the word I was trying to figure out earlier that day.