Definition:
The act or manner of speaking a word. See also:
Etymology:
Examples and Observations:
From the Latin, "to announce"Examples and Observations:
- "[T]he most common of all complaints to the BBC concerns the topic of pronunciation. And sloppy speech is the charge most often cited. . . . In almost every case the words called sloppy are in fact perfectly normal pronunciations in everyday speech, and everyone uses them. They include such forms as Feb'ry for February, lib'ry for library, Antar'tic for Antarctic, as'matic for asthmatic, twel'ths for twelfths, patien's for patients, reco'nize for recognize, and so on. It's very difficult in fact to say some of these words in their 'full' form--try pronouncing the second t in patients, for example. . . .
"Most listeners give just one reason for their complaint: a letter is there in the spelling, and so it should be pronounced. This is another example of the widespread belief . . . that speech is a poor relation of writing. We always need to remind ourselves that speech came first, in the history of our species, and that we all learn to speak before we learn to write. . . . We also need to remember that pronunciation patterns have changed radically since the days when the spelling system was laid down. English spelling hasn't been a good guide to pronunciation for hundreds of years."
(David Crystal, The English Language. Penguin, 2002) - "There is a great deal of evidence that native speakers rely very much on the stress pattern of words when they are listening. In fact, experiments have demonstrated that often when a native speaker mishears a word, it is because the foreigner has put the stress in the wrong place, not because he or she mispronounced the sound of the word."
(Joanne Kenworthy, Teaching English Pronunciation. Longman, 1987)
Pronunciation: pro-NUN-see-A-shun
