I don’t know; I can’t quite figure out what you’re trying to represent with “sek-sual” (oh, for greater understanding of IPA!). Are you contrasting it with “seks-you-al,” which is how I would normally pronounce it?
Yeah, saying it out loud, accent on first syllable sounds right to me, but accent on second is not something that would stick out to me, either. US, Great Lakes accent . For “sexual”, it comes out something like “SEK-shoo-uhl”.
One bizarre pronunciation that caught me off-guard on Youtube last night was “subsequent” pronounced as “sub-SEE-quent.” I don’t think that was the first time I heard it that way, but that’s an odd one.
For a recent mispronunciation, I was pronouncing biopic as BYE ah pic. Even after I found out it Bio-pic
The normal way to say it is sek-shoo-al. Like pulykamell’s pronunciation. The vowels aren’t important, but there’s a “sh.”
Not sek-syu-al. Normal people, in the UK anyway, don’t say it that way.
The flip side:
As a kid, I constantly had bronchial/sinus problems, so I was very familiar with “flem.” Until the first time I saw it spelled out – in my mid-twenties – and bellowed, “fle-gum,” to a room full of people.
To my ear, the distinction between sek-shoo-al and sek-syu-al is so minor as to not be worth noticing.
I know a fellow from Venezuela who pronounces it that way. I just assumed it was a word he had only read, not heard aloud. I thought it was sort of charming. His English is mostly excellent.
epitome
Chamois, forecastle, and victual are pronounced nothing like they’re spelled.
And would someone explain colonel to me?
EDIT: shammy, foke-s’l and vittle. And you know the rest 
.
How about Worchestershire sauce? I probably don’t pronounce it correctly to this day. I say
“WERE-ste-sher”.
Let’s see…according to this, it’s actually “woo-stuh-sher”. I wasn’t too far off, though apparently the only ‘r’ sound is at the end.
???
Sit on my face = shit on my face?
Yosemite
More like ksyit on my face = kshit on my face. Or at least, pretty close.
The new vowel is in between the old “i” and “e,” but closer to the “i,” so more “giniral” than “meneral.”
This is pretty common in many varieties of English. It’s called palatalization.
It’s what makes
tree vary from [tɹi] to [tʃɹi]
or
dredge vary from [dɹɛdʒ] to [dʒɹɛdʒ]
or
words like action have drifted from [æktsiən] to [ækʃən]
Yes, thanks. I was just wondering why Mr. Atoz thought this particular distinction was unimportant.
I suspect there are many similar distinctions that I find unimportant. This just happened to be the one we were talking about.
Got it! Fair enough.
Because it’s common for that cluster of consonants to vary between [sɛksjuəl] to [sɛkʃəl]. In most English usage, it doesn’t make any meaningful difference.
Just like how [tjub] can be [tʃub] and most people won’t notice the difference.
That’s how it was given in the book which told the story I mentioned. Now I wish I could recall the title of that book.
Thanks for pointing this out though. According to an on-line dictionary, it is supposed to be OO-TRA.