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Thursday, March 29, 2018

Contextual Accent

Most English words (including those with syllables with a coda 'r' (called the magic 'r')) are given an American accent, except:
If stressed, the preceeding vowel is usually pronounced with an open-mid central unrounded vowel. In fact, it is stated by Wikipedia to be more formal than a retroflex mid central unrounded vowel.
Examples: assert, bird, burst, Earth Federation, myrtle, nurse, rehearse, et cetera
However:
Words with weird spellings (with most of them being native Engish words) are given their respective accents, as:
calf, half, halve, laugh, Metcalf, salmon, et cetera and their derivatives (all pronounced with an apparent, Britishoid pronunciation, because I lack mergers like a half-Haff merger and a have-halve merger, otherwise all those words are always pronounced with a short 'a' sound)
Digraphs au and aw are given a British accent.
Certain foreign words (as well as foreign names) are correctly pronounced according to their original language, so the 'r's in names like Renoir represent anywhere from a voiced uvular fricative to a uvular trill, because they are French names.
There are other weird pronunciations as well, because they are based on certain mergers, like the following:
The word colonel is pronounced CORE-nuhl because the first 'l' sounds like an 'r.' However, it is a homophone of the word kernel in a kernel-colonel merger.
Ghoti is realized as FUSH to distinguish it from the word fish, so ghotiolo is pronounced FUSH-ohr.
Ghoughphtheightteau is often realized to be fuff-TAY-toh because the fourth 'h' represents an aspirated consonant, and to prevent it and the word potato from becoming homophones.
Brfxxccxxmnpcccclllmmnprxvclmnckssqlbb11116 is a homophone of the name Albin.

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