By Contractions, Vowels

Anonymous wrote:How's is pronounced . Traditionally, the RP pronunciation has been /haʊsIz/, although I suppose some speakers equate the vowel sound with that of 'beat' (half-long) these days. I was trying to be brief and therefore didn't go into details. How's and house are different in that...

did contracts to 'd informally after sentence-initial question words, especially those that end in a vowel sound. you need not follow. How'd he do that? Why'd she want it? Where'd they stay? I'm not aware of cases where, in a question-word + 'd contraction, the 'd means would, but one...

Thank you very much for your replies.But I noticed some strange things: CalifJim wrote:I don't make any change in the OO sound in you, you've, or you'd.Really? I thought "you" was not usually "yoo" (oo like in "too"). I also recently opened a thread about the pronunciation of "you" and "do". I...

>> Otherwise word pairs like fool and full or pool and pull would be pronounced virtually the same. <<Full and fool are merged in parts of Pennsylvania and Indiana.>> In the case of the R's, the effect is not restricted to contractions like we're and you're: beer, poor....

So that only happens when an L sound (He'll, We'll) or R sound (We're) follows, right? That means "He's" is always "heez", "We'd" is always "weed"... right?Yes. And I don't make any change in the I sound in I, I'm, I've, I'll, or I'd. But just as the /i/ becomes half-tense before R (and to...

Hi, yes, there are books that deal with stress, intonation, and pronunciation. I've read "American Accent Training" by Ann Cook. There's really a lot of stuff in that book (and on the 5 CDs). I haven't tried any other books anyway, so I can only tell you about that one. It treats American...

Jargonaut wrote:Remember that while we call words like "the" and "an" (or "a" in this case as the "n" is dropped when before a vowel sound) articles, they are limiting adjectives. "The" is a contracted form of the demonstrative "that", and "an", or "a", is a contracted form of "one" (from the...

I'll bet you did not hear "What is it mean?" No way! What you heard was "What's it mean?" where "what does" is contracted to "what's" - a contraction only used in very informal situations. Note that the sound "s" after "what" can have several meanings: "What's it mean?" 's = does "What's the...

Hello Xpi0t0s I have some sympathy with your line of argument, and think your friend should be soundly scolded. To judge by the road signs local councils put up in my area, contraction is pretty much a free-for-all. It seems to depend on the point at which the sign-maker suddenly realizes he's...

It's known as the grocer's aspostrophe: sandwich's = sandwiches. The apostrophe (') represents the vowel "e". If the writer/speaker wasn't sure if s/he should add -es or -s to form the plural, s/he found an ingenious way around it by using an apostrophe instead, and that process wasn't just...