I’ve only heard “REH-spit.”
BTW, there’s no such thing as a “true sound,” but there is usually a standard-pronunciation-for-certain-groups-of-people-speaking-in-certain-situations-in-certain-places-in-a-certain-time-frame.
I see your point. I think reh-spit is favoured by Americans and, weirdly, the upper-class English.
I’ve only known it as REHS-spite.
Gawd. Lucky we don’t have to have old people conversations. You say ‘tomayto’ I say ‘tomahto’…let’s call the whole thing a piece of fruit.
“Tomahto? A fruit?!” 
Of course it is, y’ pork chop 
Meanwhile, Merriam-Webster gives “ree-spite” as another variant (with “reh-spite” being chiefly British.) I’ve only ever heard “reh-spit.”
Careful, you don’t want to start a “proper way to pronounce Euridyce” flame war. (My first exposure to the name was Cocteau’s Orpheus so I’m hopelessly stuck with the modern French pronunciation.)
I took my hearing dog everywhere and I would tell him to “Sit” while I was checking out or at the bank . I notice people looking at me like :eek: ! So I asked my daughter what does it sound like when I saw “sit” my daughter said it sounds
like “shit!” LOL! I always had trouble saying words that start with ‘s’ .
My dad was from Russia and he use to give me ‘speech lessons’ . Dad would have me count to ‘3’ and he would say “one, two, tree !” Then have me count to ‘3’ and I would say one, two, tree !" Dad would say “Good girl!” My older sister and brother would be dying from LOL so hard ! To this day I still say “tree” for ‘3’ and speech lessons didn’t me . Thanks dad ! :smack:
…give us a break already!
I did some contracting for NASA and we worked with ephemeris tables. The plural is ephemerides. I did not know that word and when I looked it up and pronounced it out loud according to the dictionary (eff-a-MER-ra-dees) an older co-worker was shocked. He had always said e-FEM-a-rides.
Your co-worker was “right,” and the dictionary was “wrong.” 
Why would the stress (eh-FEM-e-ra) change in the plural? We change stress in English to convert verbs to nouns or vice versa (re-JECT vs. RE-ject, say), but not when pluralizing. If it were a common plural word that had lost its original association with Greek, okay, maybe (sort of like how we can treat “data” as singular now), but it isn’t, and it hasn’t.
ETA: Your co-worker was right about the stress, but wrong about the pronunciation of the last part of the word. I say it should be “ih-deez.” Now I see the connection you were making with “antipode.”
I wonder how Ryan Phillipe says it.
There were a school and a park in Sacramento called GAY-thee, but they were named after a different person, and have since had their names changed after the original person’s racist background was revealed.
My personal favorite is from a commercial that ran a few years back. The guy talked about buying a bedroom suit rather than a bedroom suite. I can’t believe a professional actor would get that wrong.
That seems to be the normal Southron pronunciation. When I was stationed in Montgomery, Alabama, the furniture store ads drove me crazy with that pronunciation.
But then, the supposedly highest-class restaurant in Montgomery, the Elite Cafe, was pronounced EE-light
I don’t understand. Palette and palate are pronounced identically.
Yeah, here there’s no distinction between the two vocally, as far as I’ve heard. And looking online on Merriam-Webster, it’s showing the same pronunciation for both.
Or maybe the complaint is that the expression is “what’s on your plate today?”