FWIW, I pronounce the first r in February.
Yes of course. As any Neil Diamond fan knows, that should be brang.
LOL! A Dave Barry fan, perhaps? 
You’re my kinda gal Carina42. 
I’ve noticed that the majority of folks pronounce it “feb-yew-wair-ee”. And by “the majority of folks”, I mean “me”.
Looks like it’s destined for IMHO.
So let me get my two cents in…
I say Feb-yoo-air-ee, even though I know it’s wrong and I should try to pronounce the R more often.
quote:
Originally posted by CalMeacham
I was brung up to pronounce the first “r”, and it bothers me when announcers on TV DON’T. Mrs. Cal pronounces both "r"s , as well.
Brung?!? Ackkkkkkkk!
This was, I hope, a humorous response to my humorous post. Otherwise, I will be forced to explain the concept of “humor”. With many digressions involving Top Gun and the Holy Roman Empire.
Gosh. We seem to be the minority. That’s how I pronounce it, too, after a childhood of being chastised by Mom for saying it “Feb-you-air-ee,” which is how my husband pronounces it. Of course, he also says “sim-you-lar,” so it’s not as though he can be regarded as an expert.
“February is pitiless, and it is boring. That parade of red numerals on it’s page adds up to zero: birthdays of politicians, a holiday reserved for rodents, what kinds of celebrations are those? The only bubble in the flat champagne of February is Valentine’s Day. It was no accident that our ancestors pinned Valentine’s Day on February’s shirt: he or she lucky enough to have a lover in frigid, antsy February has cause for celebration, indeed.”
“Except to the extent that it ‘tints the buds and swells the leaves within,’ February is as useless as the extra r in its name. It behaves like an obstacle, a wedge of slush and mud and ennui, holding both progress and contentment at bay.” - Tom Robbins, ‘Jitterbug Perfume’
Sorry. I read this thread just before going to bed and finishing the book… there is no such thing as coincidence
February 14 was the second day of Parentalia called the Lupercalia, which honored Juno-Lupa the she-wolf goddess, since a she-wolf raised Romulus and Remus, the founders of Rome. Young priests wearing goatskins ran from the Cave of the Lupercal around the Palatine by way of purification, flapping women on the way with the FEBRUA, a goatskin strap that was to make them fertile.
February 15 was the third day of Parentalia and the second day of Lupercal, the Day of Juno Februata the Fructifier. Boys drew girls’ names from a box and were paired with them until the next Lupercalia. This practice is the root of the custom of Valentine Cards drawn from a box. In Medieval times St. Valentine’s Day was when the birds paired. A sweetheart of the day was chosen by lot, and messages were sent back and forth between them, which anticipated our Valentine’s Day cards (again).
There were one or two Sts. Valentines, one beheaded by the Emperor Claudius II the Goth in the year 269, and the other beheaded by Placidus, a prefect.
Hmmmm, a dictionary, a very handy invention:
Feb•ru•ary \¸"fe-b(y)e-'wer-e, "fe-bre-\ noun pl Feb•ru•ar•ies or Feb•ru•ar•ys [ME Februarie, fr. OE Februarius, fr. L, fr. Februa, pl., feast of purification] (bef. 12c)
: the 2d month of the Gregorian calendar
Usage
****Dissimilation may occur when a word contains two identical or closely related sounds, resulting in the change or loss of one of them. This happens regularly in February, which is more often pronounced "fe-b(y)e-'wer-e\ than "fe-bre-'wer-e, though all of these variants are in frequent use and widely accepted. The \y\ heard from many speakers is not an intrusion but rather a common pronunciation of the vowel u after a consonant, as in January and annual.
©1996 Zane Publishing, Inc. and Merriam-Webster, Incorporated. All rights reserved.
Over the last year or so I’ve noticed virtually everybody at NPR saying “Feb-roo-airy” (I’m a “yew” kind of guy myself). It’s as though everybody got a memo…
As someone born in that month that is at once the shortest and the most changeable in its duration (and perhaps its weather), I can say that I, like several other posters here, was raised to pronounce its name “FEB-roo-air-ee.” To me, pronouncing it “FEB-yoo-air-ee” is like pronouncing the word “library” as “lie-berry.” It bugs me to hear people say it that way, esp. on TV and on the radio. But apparently, I’m in the minority, and the dictionary lists that r-less pronunciation first.
Has the whole world gone crazy?
Where I’m from (NYC) people tend to chop up words mercilessly. I have heard and used both “feb-yewairy” and feb-rary. See, I get a choice of with or without the first “r”.
I’ve always thought the difference between “Feb-yu-ary” and “Feb-ru-ary” is like the difference between “ofTen” (t pronounced) and “offen” (t not pronounced). I remember a teacher in high school saying that the t in often is silent when pronounced correctly (in American English, anyway). Since then I have always felt like people who insist on pronouncing the t are the same kind of folks who insist that the new century begins on January 1, 2001: correct, perhaps, but not a whole lot of fun at a party.
Except of course that in the case of pronouncing “often,” they are wrong. And by extension I have always viewed people who insist on pronouncing the r in February the same way.
Now…how about “Wednesday?” Does anyone out there insist on pronouncing the “dn” the proper order, in honor, of course, of the great Norse god Woden…
Those priests…always smoking something.
In sign language we only use the F & drop the rest of the word
You mean, it isn’t “Febberee” ?
Guess it isn’t “Weh-juns-day” either.
No wonder they look at me oddly here up North
Hey Handy, that’s great information. I wish I posted something like that.
Oh wait, I did.
I’ve pronounced it FEH-brew-airy ever since I spelled it wrong in a grade school spelling bee (I missed the first R).
You guys, this thread (which has one foot in IMHO) made me query myself as to how I pronounce it.
I couldn’t answer!
Whether I come up with the one-r or two-r version, I can’t be sure that I wasn’t swayed by other people’s responses. I hadn’t thought about it before reading this thread. Now I just don’t know what to say. I’ve pretty much managed to avoid saying it out loud, considering there’s less of it than any other month.
But there is a phonetic precedent for changing /r/ to /j/. (That’s the IPA /j/, pronounced “y”.) In Burmese, the letter r is always pronounced y. That’s why they’re trying to get everyone to say “Yangon” instead of “Rangoon.” In the Burmese alphabet, there’s a letter for r and a separate letter for y, but they’re both pronounced y. So, you ask, what’s up with the name “Myanmar” that they’ve been pushing along with “Yangon”? Well, the dirty little secret is: there is no r at the end of the original Myanmar! They just put it in for shits ‘n’ grins. The same with “Burma”: the native name is actually Bama. I guess they inserted the r in it to tell it apart from (Ala)bama.
Lord, I miss ol’ 'Bama again
And I think it’s a sin.
I recently taught myself to read Burmese, and found that the name of the country is really spelled Mranma. Apparently, long ago the Burmese r really was pronounced /r/, but it’s shifted over the years, as it did in February.
At any rate, I am rock-solid certain that I do clearly pronounce the -ary as two syllables. To collapse down one of the syllables, I have never heard of this before.