How do you pronounce "Harassment"

[Emily_Litella]

What about plain old harass? I pronounce it ha - RASS, I would never say HAIR - ass

[Darren_Garrison]

Okay, now why do you pronounce a word, but it has a pronunciation? What happened to the frigging “o”?

[Sangahyando]

@Hari_Seldon

It’s similar to the plural of house. I grew up in Philly, where houses (actually housez) is standard, but practically everywhere else they use the irregular houzez and I use either and do not even hear the difference any more.

@pulykamell

Huh. I never noticed that. The “s” is always voiced at the end, but the “s” in the middle can go either way. I think I usually say it with an unvoiced “s”, but now that I think about it, it seems like in slow or deliberate speech, I say “howsez,” but in rapid or spontaneous speech, it comes out more like “howzez.”

@TriPolar

I probably say ‘houZeZ’ every time. I kind of think that it’s really ‘houSeS’, and that’s with much more S than Z at the end, but it’s coming out houZeZ every time. On the other hand, I never thought ‘housed’ could be pronounced any way but ‘houZed’.

Sorry to be a boring Brit: but as regards the plural of “house”, I’ve never heard anything over here, but “houzez” – would appear to be here not “irregular”, but standard. Although in the grand scheme of things, there’s no absolute “right / wrong” about pronunciation – any way other than “houzez”, of saying the word for more than one dwelling-unit, feels grotesque to me. (We say “house”, singular, with S not Z; and as per TriPolar, we pronounce “housed” as “houZed”.)

(And the whole “-meter” thing, is starting to make my head spin :dubious: !)

[Ulf_the_Unwashed]

Em-PHA-sis on second syl-LA-ble.

[SCAdian]

I would no say kl-LOM-eter than I would ki-LOV-olt or ki-LOG-ram – or, for that matter, cen-TIM-eter or mi-LIM-eter.