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This is the correct explanation. I just want to point out that this change in the pronunciation of C before E or I turned out differently in different languages.

In French (and hence English, because we were most influenced by French), it sounds like S.
In Spanish spoken in Spain, it sounds like th as in "thin"; other parts of the Spanish-speaking world also pronounce it as S.
In Italian, it sounds like "ch", as in "violoncello".
The rules for Portuguese pronunciation are too complicated for me to understand.

Edit: I forgot to explain why it was relevant to explain what happened to C before E or I, while the word "Caesar" obviously has an A directly after the C. This is because, quite early on in Latin (around the first century AD, if I recall correctly), the diphthong AE (pronounced like "eye" in English) began to reduce to the letter E. The same thing happened to the diphthong OE (originally pronounced as in "b*oy*").† So C followed by AE or OE is equivalent in later Latin to C followed by E.

†This is why we have such a staggering number of ways to pronounce AE in English. The (Greek) name Aeschylus, for example, is pronounced in English either "EE-skil-uhs" or "ES-kil-uhs". We also have encyclop*aedia and **oe*strus, as just a few more examples.

I'm from North America, Canada to be specific, and I can't spit out the word aluminum in our pronunciation. I'm perfectly find using the European pronunciation though. For clarity

I also can't say linoleum. So I substitute, "that kitchen floor stuff"

(eL oh Q tion) This guy pronounces elocution Although he's not speaking with a standard british accent.

elocution

And for your enjoyment the rain in spain stays mainly in the plain

okay, look, maybe we just have different accents or something? But in a west coast American accent, I can guarantee you they are pronounced the same.

Your pronunciation would imply that "in" and the "Ste" in Steven have the same vowel, yeah? They definitely don't. "Ste" is pronounced with a long "e" (like in beet) while "in" is pronounced with what I would call a short "i" (like the "i" in dip).

"Steven" is pronounced literally like "Steve" followed by "in." But I literally only have to point you to like, this video where Pearl says it that way a kajillion times. And here's a recording of someone saying "in."

So yeah, they're definitely pronounced the same and therefore rhyme.

According to howjsay, it's eh-POH-na.

In case you didn't know, Epona was a protector of horses in Gallo-Roman religion.

For fun I looked up data on that website. Apparently we're supposed to say 'dahta' while the American pronunciation is 'dayta', but I always thought it was the other way round.. maybe the website is wrong sometimes.

The classic way is to learn the roots/prefixes/suffixes of words. Most big words are made up of parts of other words, usually latin, and knowing that will help know which pronunciation to use when regular phonics is ambiguous.

Dictionaries usually have the pronunciation next to the word.

And then there are helpful websites like this one:

http://www.howjsay.com/index.php?word=pristiophoriformes&submit=Submit

For the lazy http://www.howjsay.com/

Awesome tool when premed or in med school, as it has medical terms as well, e.g. hypergammaglobulinemia

Grande is a grave word, the stress is at the bold part: gran-de, and since it ends in a vowel, it doesn't get the accent.

so-fá, ca-fé, and me-nú are all acute words ended in vowels, so they get the accent.

There's only one way to pronounce a written word in Spanish, and also only one way to write a spoken word.

It's not like English where for example read is pronounced differently in past and present tense

Per la pronuncia, come supporto anche per i ragazzi, io uso un validissimo sito: http://www.howjsay.com/. Soprattutto i primi tempi (quando gli studenti mi chiedevano cose assurde sulle pronunce delle parole) mi ha tolto un sacco di dubbi. La difficoltà più grande, tra le parole che elenchi, è sicuramente tra Highland ed Island. Ma la presenza dell'h elimina quasi completamente il problema.

As an English learner, I found the following sites useful to help my pronunciation: http://www.howjsay.com http://dictionary.cambridge.org www.forvo.com Also you can type the word you want to check out its pronunciation on YouTube by doing like this "example pronunciation". Hope they would be helpful!

I'm from the US, and different areas of the US pronounce words differently than others. I've moved around a lot, so I'm not sure where I picked it up.

I pronounce 'but' like the word 'put' with a 'b' at the beginning. Whereas I pronounce 'butt' like the word 'putt'.

Edit: Here's an audio example I found. The second pronunciation is the one I use.

My boyfriend is from Canada, I'm from the Southern US, my mother is from Chicago. We all say "sail", exactly like this.

ed. Also, that's a really useful website if you ever come across an unfamiliar word in a book or something.

Also also, I really enjoyed your phonetic spellings of those accents. I found myself saying them aloud, over and over.

http://www.howjsay.com/index.php?word=circe

http://www.memidex.com/circe#audio

http://www.pantheon.org/miscellaneous/pronunciations.html

I do not disagree with you that the original greek pronunciation is quite different but the point I was making is that clearly the two names, and indeed characters, have similarities. [Spoilers All](/s "In most paintings Circe is surrounded by lions and wolves; I like to think this is reflected in Cersei's Court being filled with people whose loyalty is uncertain and questionable.")

Yeah, it's annoying. The "So" in front of every sentence, the open mouth Cockney "t", pronouncing words like "couldn't" as "couldent".

A lot of it is fun, though, and when you have kids your own language generally changes. I say "totally" sometimes, but not in a headline of a major publication, and certainly not "totally screwed".

If it was Kato I would say keh-toe, since its Keto I say "Key-toe" because that is how the e sounds when it is 2 spaces from another vowel.

How to pronounce Ketogenic

Keto diet comes from Ketogenic

Examples:

"Because" is "bee-cuz" not bey-cuz

"Bedevil" is "Bee-dev-al" not Bey-dev-al

Contractions with two syllables are separated by a consonant. For example, didn't and hasn't. "She'll" is one syllable because it is contracted without a consonant in the middle.

Check out this link. It's pronounced with one syllable as "sheel".

lol, if you say tuck with an american accent it will sound pretty close to swedish tack, if a close-to-rikssvensk spoke it, closer than any other simple word

http://lexin.nada.kth.se/sound/tack.swf http://www.howjsay.com/index.php?word=tuck&submit=Submit

i challenge you to find any other word that is pronounced more similar to swedish tack that has the same simplicity as tuck.

also if you are skåning/göteborgare/norrlänning/dalabo/smålänning/etc etc you are pretty much disqualified if you are compared to how you pronounce "Tack" personally vs actual close-to-rikssvensk pronounciation

(for you americans, the difference in our accents is similar to you going from civilized to "dey terk er jerbs!")

(source, i'm a swede)

Okay, I guess it depends on what you view as the "proper pronunciation". I won't argue that in modern English, it's pronounced the way everyone pronounces it. In it's original form however, "Kaisar" is correct.
It's a bit like having a foreigner over and asking his name. He will pronounce it in his native tongue, whereas you may anglicize it. Since Latin is a dead language now, hardly anyone would still use the "old" pronunciation. I studied Latin however and tend to fall back to that form for these words. Just as is the case with words like déjà vu.

Nps. Our accent is pretty f'ed up. It's like lazy english with very few mouth movements.

For instance, say "arm" now add "car" to the beginning, like "carm". You've just pronounced "calm" in australian :)

edit: Found an example http://www.howjsay.com/index.php?word=calm note how the american way pronounces the L

I looked it up before I made this to make sure. Maybe the way I'm having it pronounced is a less common version. I always thought it was "zei" (rhyming with "eye"). Oh well. :) Everyone should feel free to laugh as if were a goatse joke also.

Howjsay has helped me a lot in learning to pronounce English words. I learned the language mainly by reading, and I often hesitate to say a word for fear of mispronouncing it.

Some websites that might help in the pronunciation of names: https://www.nameshouts.com/ http://www.howjsay.com/

Beyond making videos and comments what are we actually going to do about this?

We are so paralyzed by political correctness we are allowing our sisters and daughters to be raped. Europe is being destroyed before our very eyes

> (Is it Oc-oh-till-oh, or Oc-oh-tee-oh? I've heard both.)

It's "tee-oh" when gringos say it. It's a Spanish word, so it really has more of a "y" sound in there. http://www.howjsay.com/index.php?word=ocotillo

But if you pronounce the "L's" you are definitely doing it wrong.

According to Wiktionary it's sen-TRI-fyoogal or sentri-FYOO-gal.

You can listen to for example here.

HAL-see-on.

Say it in a kiwi accent so the L is soft (kinda like a W), it rolls off the tongue better :P

Btw http://www.howjsay.com is an awesome site that will pronounce words for you if you are unsure, I use it all the time :p

> What is the official way to pronounce Lacunae? (Disclaimer: There are bets on this one.)

Well if you want, there are plenty of official English pronunciations of it, unless you want to know how Somber pronounced it.

(I personally don't like the official pronunciation in the ones I linked because I originally thought it was "LACK-you-nuh", but I mean, there's not much I can do about that)

Haha ... well it's not perfect—French has a lot more subtle (but definite) vowel pronunciations than English-speakers know how to deal with, I find.

The “mē” part is straight-forward enough.

There are very definitely two distinct “t” sounds in the word, because the second one forms the entire second syllable... But saying “hands” (or “tonns”) is actually wrong because the French don't pronounce the last letter in 90% of their words, so “mē TAN·tuh” is getting closer.

The hardest part is conveying the nasal sound of the vowel combination of “ei” that I represent with an "A" there ... There's really nothing like it in English; it's the same sound as “plein” in the common phrase, en plein air.

You kind of make this face when you pronounce it.

Wenn es Zweifel bezüglich der Aussprache gibt, kann ich die Seite howjsay wärmstens empfehlen, dort wird in der Regel auch zwischen britischem und amerikanischem Englisch differenziert. Nur weil etwas nicht dem Standard entspricht würde ich es aber nicht gleich als falsch deklarieren, es gibt in den USA auch genügend Muttersprachler die aufgrund ihrer Region oder ethnischen Zugehörigkeit eine völlig andere Aussprache benutzen und da würde es wohl keiner wagen dies als "falsches Englisch" zu betiteln.

Ich kann verstehen, dass man Spaß daran haben kann pedantisch an der eigenen Aussprache zu feilen (geht mir genauso), aber glaube mir, zu versuchen andere zu verbessern nimmt nie ein gutes Ende. Es kann auch nach hinten los gehen, wenn man zum Beispiel "æməzən" anstelle von "amaˈʦoːn" sagt (die Firma wird in Deutschland offiziell auch deutsch ausgesprochen).

Same here. I still have issues with some words out loud because I'm not a very talkative person. I did find this website which has been a godsend. It will give any pronunciation to any word, just about, and I think it's pretty neat to have that resource available now.

Nope. Just you I'm afraid ...

http://www.howjsay.com/index.php?word=azure&submit=Submit

(I mean I'm sure people who'd never seen the word before probably thought A-zure, but ultimately we have to hate you for being stupid).

It didn't sound odd to me, though I am British English not US English. However, googling seemed to confirm that pronounciation is normal

http://www.howjsay.com/index.php?word=tunisia

http://dictionary.cambridge.org/pronunciation/british/tunisia

have British and US English versions.

I mean, as a Brit I'm struck that Americans often say Aye-rack, where I'd say Ee-rark, or Booodist where I'd use a shorter 'o'. It's pretty moot how to say names other than in the language / form they are originally e.g. Paris or Vienna or Munich when the natives are saying Paree or Veen or Moonchen.

To the people downvoting him, he is technically correct, both methods are acceptable, but not very common for the latter case.

http://www.howjsay.com/index.php?word=what&submit=Submit

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TkzlKEpTvr0

Two examples at least.

Out of curiosity how are they pronouncing it? I only recently found out I was mispronouncing it (as I had only read the name) as TIE-KO instead of the proper TEE-KO

http://www.howjsay.com/index.php?word=lich&submit=Submit

The word "lich" is Germanic and appears in some real English terms (like lichgate); as such, it has an accepted pronunciation.

One of these words is pronounced differently from the other. There's no rule for pronouncing 've'. You've got to be kidding me if you're arguing a fact.

http://www.howjsay.com/index.php?word=should%27ve

I can't answer your first question. In fact, I have heard people use it to describe being pregnant with fertilized eggs. Anyway, in English it's pronounced more like 'gra-ved.' On this page a posh British man will pronounce it for you (click 'sumbit' if he doesn't speak automatically)

...< Luftwaffe is also the generic term in German speaking countries for any national military aviation service, and the names of air forces in other countries are usually translated into German as "Luftwaffe" (e.g. Royal Air Force is often translated as britische Luftwaffe). However, Luftstreitkräfte, or "air armed force", is also sometimes used as a translation of "air force". And because Luft means "air" and Waffe may be translated into English as either "weapon" or "arm", "Air Arm" may be considered the most literal English translation of Luftwaffe (cf. Fleet Air Arm). >...

I just learned from this cool site I just stumbled upon that "ee KAH loo weet" is also a valid pronunciation, and probably it's the one that stuck in my brain because I stayed with a Quebecois man when I was there.

I like passive-aggressive comments.

Maybe I'm deaf but I don't hear a difference between Siemens(I know this the English pronunciation but it's the same in German) and semen.

No one pronounces it as der/durr pepper.

Also, another link

Yet another link.

You are wrong.

I think there's actually supposed to be a significant pause between "orang" and "utan".

Edit: There's a gap in the original Indonesian from which the word is derived so I guess leave a gap or don't depending on how pretentious you want to be.

Am I right in perceiving a [q] in "milked"? I'm distracted by the ending consonant cluster in 'milked', not at all how I'm used to it.

don't have microphone on this pc, tomorrow I'll register the word as i think it should be pronounced (but I alredy tell you that I don't know where the accent is so it may be a little different). How do you pronounce?

btw is thould be like this: http://www.howjsay.com/index.php?word=capicola&amp;submit=Submit thw first word, but the last A is pronounced like the first

I find this surprising. Perhaps you have just never seen the world spelled out before? Here is a recording of the word, perhaps it will jog your memory.

Everyone around here pronounces it roffle-ma-oh (two syllables) and la-ma-oh or le-ma-oh... the last syllable of each pronounced like the Mao in Mao Zedong. Must be the communist burning from within us...

• the princess

• the wedding dress of the princess = the princess's wedding dress (how this would be pronounced in British English)

But some writers would write the last one like this: the princess' wedding dress. This spelling is often debated here. The majority of modern style guides would have you add the "s" to the end, but there are a few that hold to the "s"-less alternative. People like me are annoyed by this, but it doesn't make it an invalid style choice.

• the three princesses (how this would be pronounced in British English)

• the picture of the three princesses = the three princesses' picture

To be honest, on both of those page's pronounciation sound, along with http://www.howjsay.com/index.php?word=hispanic

and

http://dictionary.cambridge.org/pronunciation/english/hispanic

I clearly hear the word with a mute H.

Maybe it's just me, if so, sorry for being such an ass about it.

You know it is commonly mispronounced when you only get to "How to pronounce Bel" and it is the first prompt selection to complete the question. We've got one of those here, too. Bois d'Arc street.

Edit: This website claims "Beaver" to be the British pronunciation.

> You evidently don't know the standard chinese pronounciation

Yes I do. I've lived in Shanghai for half my life.

Maybe it's subjective but listen to this

Then listen to this

I hear no similarities at all, except the n at the end.

Analyzing JorWat

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Butcher vs. anglicisation. It's a fine line, but generally the longer a word has been used in such a way the more likely it is to be considered anglicised. E.g. escalope.

Damn, that's one I just can't help you. I butcher everything french so badly. Trying to give a phonetic spelling in french would not end well... Anyway, here's someone saying khan. Con is said the same way.

I hear "div-ice-ive" mostly here in Australia. A definite short i sound rather than a long e. Seems more consistent with other di-consonant words, dick, dimple, dildo, ditto, dividend, though there are counterexamples that can be said with a dye - diverge, dive, divert, diverse (does the following e modify the i sound?) or dee sound - diva... not really coming up with many examples of di_ sounds that are said "dee" without seeming weird or mistaken.

"div-iss-iv" is not uncommon: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BIePJXm5VOo http://www.howjsay.com/index.php?word=divisive http://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/definition/english/divisive

and makes sense given that the latin root is divisivus or dividere which I'd read as "div-iss-iv-uss" and "div-id-eer"

How to pronounce divice-ive appears to be quite divissive.

http://www.howjsay.com/index.php?word=surface&amp;submit=Submit
Surfess or surfiss but not sirface. They emphasize "face".
They are in fact not correct.
I'm not blaming anyone, it just irks me so much.
I'm sorry.
BTW i saw you got a downvote for a legitimate comment so have an upvote.

Well, your name is the winning one, so that's what we're going with ! :)

(My only real concern is watching people pronounce it. I have a fougère soap already, and despite it being a not that uncommon French word, it still gets butchered. )

In England we pronounce them like this Parrot Paradox Pair.

Not saying that it's more correct or proper or anything, just that's what I'm used to.

These stories are becoming a bit too common for my taste.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Lee_Rigby#Attackers_and_other_suspects

Start practicing, your life is going to depend on it. http://www.howjsay.com/index.php?word=allahu%20akbar

Hopefully your daughter doesn't get raped after the infestation declares Sharia Law, they'll probably make you hang her.

Hum i'm not sure i can explain it very well. Sah-creh seems ok for "sacre". As for "bleu", Since i see it being used frequently, do you know how to pronounce "le" ? It is the exact same sound with a leading B.

Found this site that is close enough. They say it as if there was an accent on sacre so it's not exactly correct but their "bleu" is fine.

Hmm doesn't sound like that to me at all. Try this, which is non-rhotic English RP(plug in both words). I'm pretty sure Aussie accents aren't significantly different on this issue but I don't have a readily available link.

Here are 3 sites saying it rhymes with one:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xOBQMXbiovY

http://www.howjsay.com/index.php?word=verdun

http://www.pronouncehow.com/english/verdun_pronunciation

I did see a couple that said it was verdoon, but none that said it was verdan

Its the way we say it. Because its slang we spell it phonetically. we make the a sound in afternoon sound more broad, instead of like the a in apple. the R comes along with the a. http://www.howjsay.com/index.php?word=arvo

Smythe is usually pronounced sm-eye-th, but not always...and particularly not in America. It could be anything here.

Smythe is the rich version of Smith in the "old country".

It's mascarpone, and it's pronounced like this. I have no idea why in the hell anyone thinks it's spelled or pronounced "marscapone," but it's totally annoying, like "nucular" instead of "nuclear."

edit: Now I feel like I was randomly kind of harsh, so sorry about that, but it's a pet peeve.

I read it as apostolate. It seems a lot of people don't even realize it's a real word.

Here's how you pronounce it, just hover the mouse of apostolate.

Here's more than you care to know about this: The Wiki Page, The Back Story from BTTF and How it's pronounced Evidently it was indeed written Jigawatt in the script as the result of a typo. In that you are correct. The actual word is written Gigawatt and can be pronounced either way.

Nope. Nope. Nope.

A more accurate title for this post would be "TIL a 19th century midwest publication called Reedy's Mirror once stubbornly insisted that 'calliope' rhymed with 'hope' - but they were terribly wrong and nobody in their right mind thinks 'calliope' rhymes with 'hope.'"

As an aside - why do people keep misusing TIL? It's not "Today I guess maybe" it's "Today I Learned" and should be actual facts or trivia, not half-assed or made-up bullshit.

Yes, that is a nice approximation also. I think I can pronounce it correctly even though it has been a long time since I studied German, but I have no idea how to describe the pronunciation. The first pronunciation I found online is incorrect, but this one sounds correct: http://www.howjsay.com/index.php?word=schwarzschild&amp;submit=Submit

It's very subtle.

Dawn

Don

Granted this is with an English accent, but you can notice the difference.

MacMillan, Merriam-Webster, and This Random Site disagree with you. You probably say "Ornj."

Depends if the names been Anglicised. I know a guy whose last name in Koch, a German name, which I would pronounce like "Cough" but with a rough, guteral Germanic "g" on the end, kinda like clearly your throat! He pronounced it "Coke".

So it could be Reich-ley with the Germanic throat clearing or as anye123 and matthank have said if it's been Anglicised.

I can easily see this happening. Not a huge deal in the grand scheme of life, I know, but still frustrating. I'll just be content knowing this and this, and move on.

Note that while the final syllable is often pronounced "toor" by anglophones, it's actually pronounced differently in French.

This page seems to have a fairly accurate audio sample:
http://www.howjsay.com/index.php?word=couture

Aspartame Controversy Pronunciation Your video is bad and you should feel bad

Gauloises cigarettes, I must have sounded like such an idiot

Take a guess on how its pronounced, then click here to find out

At the risk of being accused of being a dick again for pointing people in its general direction, I shall share a site I really like (English not being my mother language and all that): howjsay.com. Hope that helps, man! [](/ok)

I don't want to be the one guy who didn't say it.

Happy Birthday Notch

Are you sure? Googling seems to indicate it's an archaic third person singular version of take (similar to has/hath), but one that would have been distinguished from "takes" in a way we no longer do. OED gives a spelling including a thorn, so I'd have expected it to have the "th" shound. The only pronounciation guides I find seem to agree, though it's possible they are describing the modern way.

(It's worth noting that using "The lord giveth..." quote is potentially incorrect for another reason though: it's usually not phrased as such in the bible, and the quote is generally translated with the past tense, not present . Eg. the KJV version actually has "the LORD gave, and the LORD hath taken away".)

While I agree that Akmed isn't quite right, ahemed is straight-up wrong.

The H is sometimes pronounced as a guttural hrg-like sound. It's pretty hard to do if you've grown up without having any similar sounds in your vocabulary. That's why K is substituted.

There's a guy trying to say it correctly here

It is more like kuh, like I said ... but that's a minor, minor nitpick here. Taking into account it is indeed a French word with a hint of coo mixed with kuh, and the speaker's Tri-state area US accent, it's fine. Relistening to the video again, it's honestly still as much of a "kuh" as "coo" anyway. You're point isn't even a valid one in this case. It's kind of made up, for lack of better words (or maybe it does stick out because you despise this dude or whatever IDK).

Liqueur I would phoneticize as lih-CURE (I have a rhotic accent), though I wasn't trying to correct the phoneticization as I was the confusion of rhotic and non-rhotic accents. I agree with the pronuncation of liquor (liquor is quicker). This is how the second one might be pronounced with a non-rhotic accent.