Somehow I went most of my life not noticing that some people use a short u or schwa where I would pronounce a long u (dipthongy, or like in the Greek letter “mu”). I first noticed it in my California-raised wife, then begin hearing it from other people. I’m not consistently observant enough to tell if this is a mark of certain dialects or if it’s more idiosyncratic.
Anyone have any dope or observations on this?
A few example words off the top of my head: calculate, figure, fury, singular.
I say KAL-kyuh-late, so between your two versions.
I pronouce all of those with the /j/ before the second vowel sound. Incidentally, what you are referring to is called yod-dropping.
There are people who pronounce “fury” like “foory”?
I have the /j/ always in “fury”, and in at least careful pronunciation of “calculate” and “singular”, though it doesn’t sound unreasonable to hypothesize that I may sometimes drop it from those last two words nonetheless. However, I never pronounce a /j/ in “figure” (a la the British style, presumably the result of my parents’ influence).
Same. It’s an unstressed back vowel.
That’s what I’d say too. I would feel that kal-kul-ate sounds slightly odd - American to my ear, like “nucular” for nuclear.
I guess there is room to nitpick based on the etymology. It comes from the Latin word calculus, which would be pronounced kal-kull-us or kal-kool-ooss. So Kal-kul-ate or kal-kool-ate are pronunciations linked to its roots.
I don’t think that is persuasive. We have many Latin-based words whose pronunciations are no longer tied to the roots. If we were so strict, Julius Caesar would be pronounced Yool-yooss Kye-zar.
The “y” sound |j| is now well established in most words like “tube” and “mule”.
I’m with the long u group, with the exception of “figure” which usually ends up “figyur” unless I’m really trying to enunciate.
I think the leading g is what does it - it’s harder to get to a long u after that g, and there just isn’t enough time there to make it worth it unless I’m really trying to be clear and speak slowly.
That one is probably just my wife. It makes her “furry-ous” when I leave the toilet seat up.
For the record, both dictionary.com and Merriam-Webster only give the KAL-kyuh-late pronunciation.
The idiosyncratic terminology in this thread is confusing so let’s standardize:
First of all, there’s the question of whether one pronounces a “y” sound (denoted /j/, in the International Phonetic Alphabet) prior to whatever “u” vowel one makes in these words; consider the difference between “feud” and “food”. Not pronouncing the "y’ sound is called yod-dropping; we may as well call pronouncing the “y” sound yod-pronouncing.
Orthogonal to that is the question of which “u” vowel one then uses: the /ʊ/ of foot, the /u/ of food, or the reduced vowel schwa /ə/ of anatomy. (One might want to distinguish between different reduced vowels, and talk of "schwu"s and such, but let’s not…)
I think the OP’s question was actually the first of these, as to whether people yod-drop or yod-pronounce. It’s not clear to me that all the replies are targetting this first question, though.
calc u late
Interesting. I’m not sure if this is exactly what I’ve been hearing. (I don’t know the phonetic alphabet so I can’t perfectly follow it.) Sounds like Yod-dropping is like “beaut” into “boot”, which would turn calculate from cal-que-late into cal-coo-late and figure into figoor. I’m hearing more like cal-cull-ate and figger.
Maybe what I’m noticing is both: “y” loss and schwa-ification.
The thing that prompted me to post is that I heard Terry Gross on Fresh Air review the book A Singular Woman and it sounded like A Single-er Woman. I would have said “sing-gyewler” where she said “sing-guller”.
Nu- cuh - lar.
Cal-cue-late
fig-yer
fuhr-ee
sin-gu(e?)-ler
I can’t spell it phonetically, but the Scottish way of saying it is the best.
Let me see…
It seems neither
For me, it’s
kalc/uh/late
I somehow sneak that “c.” I’m not good at splitting words into syllables as I don’t learn pronunciation that way (I have to hear the word). But, by saying it slowly, the “kalc” is noticeable. I try your two variations and they seem unnatural to me when I had someone else pronounce them and I tried them.
For a lot of words, that depends on which side of the Atlantic you are on. Many (most?) Americans say “nooz” where we would say “nyooz”.
I agree about that one.
Oddly, my father was born in Galway and lived in Ireland all his life - apart from vacations. He always used the American pronunciation “nooz”. It struck me as strange when I was young - which shows how standard “nyooz” is for us.
He was bilingual, speaking a lot of Irish as a child, and I assumed he ws unconsciously influenced by the pronunciation of the Irish word “nua” (new). I have been told that a lot of American pronunciations are the result of heavy German and Scandinavian immigration. I can’t comment on the accuracy of that.
Americans tend to yod-drop after alveolar consonants (/t/, /d/, /n/) whereas Britons typically don’t. Thus, for “tube”, Americans typically yod-drop while Britons typically yod-pronounce. However, both Americans and Britons yod-pronounce in “mule”, as /m/ is not an alveolar consonant.
[This American usually yod-drops after /d/ and /t/ (in stressed syllables; yod-coalescence instead often occurs in unstressed syllables), but yod-pronounces in many words after /n/; again, presumably the idiosyncratic result of parental influence]