Which around these parts, would be pronounced “slew.”
Moderating:
People have opinions about these things. They’re entitled to express them without being subjected to personal attacks. You don’t have to like the answers given, but that doesn’t give you a basis to be a jerk.
Dial it back.
I studied theatre and broadcasting in college (50 years ago) and I took a class in “proper US pronunciation”. I can’t remember the actual name of the class, but this was the textbook.
I don’t even pronounce the same word the same way twice on the same day - for some words like ‘either’ - sometimes it feels like it should start ‘ee’, sometimes ‘eye’.
Same with “neither.” I suspect there’s some rule we’re following that dictates when we use which one, but it’s not obvious to me what it is.
Please move this thread to the pit.
Odds that the person objecting to cee-ment confuses it with concrete no matter the pronunciation?
Better to just call the whole thing off.
I have shared this story many times. Here it is again. While I was working for a small company selling medical sensors and software, I got to speak with a neuroscientist on the phone. I was very curious about his research. He was kind enough to explain it- in ways and terms that I could understand, and to answer a few questions. He was obviously a brilliant man. He spoke in the thickest Canadian accent I have ever heard. Compared to him, Wolverine sounded cultured and refined.
I didn’t judge him on how he pronounced words. I judged him by the content of our conversation and his clear mastery of the subject.
Here in Pennsylvania, we have some things named after the Dauphin. Everybody in the region says “daw finn”. The correct French pronunciation is a lot closer to “doh fan”. I don’t correct people who say “daw finn”. I say “daw finn” because otherwise nobody knows what I am talking about.
Please dont.
It was a good thread, it can be again.
Huh?
I hear in-sure-ants
Or do you mean that in the USA the second syllable is generally stressed? Not the first?
It is pronounced around here- and I guess in England? as close to “slow”- as in “slow horses”.
As I posted before, apparently “Forte” is pronounced one way if it is music, and another if it is your strong point- like fort- but even that is just the most common, not the “RIGHT” way. The pronunciation may be changing over to Fort-tay, who knows? If you say it either way, I will not correct you- ulness you pronounce the music version like 'fort".
If you’re SNL’s Time-Travelling Scott Joplin, the opposite of “forte” is “pee-anny.”
Language experts divide into two camps: prescriptionists and descriptionists. The former tell people how things are pronounced; the latter describe how people pronounce things. Descriptionists hold the upper hand these days.
Pronunciation changes over time and as more people use one, it becomes standard.
An interesting case is “falcon.” In The Maltese Falcon, Bogart pronounces it “FAW-con.” Same with the radio/movie series “The Falcon” of the same era.
Now it’s nearly always pronounced “FAL-con” to put it in line with how it’s spelled.
That’s what I hear as well. The emphasis in all three of Wolfpup’s examples (insurance, infallible, insincere ) is on the second syllable for me, not IN- .
The explanation I’ve heard is that the pre-Georgian pronunciation in England was “neether / eether”, but when the Hanoverians came over, it became fashionable to pronounce that pair of words to match the German pronunciation of “ei” (as in “ein”), so the pronunciation shifted to “niither” / “iither”.
Don’t know if that’s accurate or just a back-formation.
The point was that a common southern American pronunciation does put the accent on the prefix “in-”.
Do you really pronounce “insincere” with the accent on the second syllable? What I usually hear is the primary accent on the third, with a secondary accent on the first.
Where I live, it’s pronounced “wooder.” Like wood, with an “er” attached.
Many years ago, I worked for a small TV station that had a local newscast. (My title was News Director, but I was the street reporter, videographer, writer, producer and co-anchor. I said it was small.)
But I digress. The young lady who did the weather was a local. We tried in vain to break her of “wooder.” That was even worse, because she then overpronounced it as “WAW-turr,” with a very hard “T.” We finally gave up, figuring the number of times she actually had to say the word “water” was so few that it didn’t matter. Besides, everyone in town pronounced it “wooder” anyway.
And there’s never been a fire where I live. There have been plenty of FARS though.
I’ve noticed the word suspect in old crime movies.
It’s pronounced differently but it’s close enough its clearly understood.
I think people worry too much about these things.
I say this as the DIL is trying to convince her twins, Ostrich doesn’t have a “y” after the O.
Now that you’ve asked me, I’m not sure. That often happens to me in threads about pronunciation. 
So weird to talk about how to pronounce words on a text based forum.