Thread: Help with English pronounciation

Originally Posted by yboivin

The pronounciation of the letter I. I remember someone saying that an I is pronounced diffently wether there a voyel after the I like Pine and pin. Or like visor and victim...

'Pronounciation' is NOT a word. The second 'o' is dropped and the correct word is 'pronunciation'.

Originally Posted by Bruno

My understanding is that there is no simple set of rules to determine pronunciation. I'm sure there are rules, but there are at least as much exceptions as rules.

There ARE rules for English spelling and pronunciation, but almost nobody can keep them all straight so they are rarely taught. We will sometimes hear things like " 'i' before 'e' except after 'c' ", but little more. This is because English is a bit of a bastard language with many influences from Latin, Nordic, German, French and more. The way to know how to spell and pronounce English properly is to know which tradition each word comes from and employ the rules associated with those subsets. This is clearly too much work for a public school English teacher to tackle and so children are expected to learn most of it by rote. In the case of vowels, an easy rule which is often neglected is that a vowel followed by a single consonant will have a long sound (eg. rifle, super) where one followed by a double consonant is shorter (eg. raffle, supper).

THE BEST DICTIONARY to use is the Oxford English dictionary. It is the standard by which all other dictionaries must be measured. It primarily uses the international conventions (which most American dictionaries try to ignore), but will include Americanisms. The 'Concise' edition even contains wonderful etymological information and many instances of first and early usage for all words.

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