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Many words have lost phonemes (consonant or vowel sounds) somewhere in their histories. Sometimes, this changes the standard of pronunciation. For example, the silent k at the start of many words in the English language was originally pronounced. However, a word is mispronounced if a phoneme is omitted when it is not normally pronounced that way.
Excluded are the numerous spellings which fail to make the pronunciation obvious without actually being at odds with convention: for example, the pronunciation / s k ə ˈ n ɛ k t ə d i / [1] [2] of Schenectady is not immediately obvious, but neither is it counterintuitive.
Normally, pronunciation is given only for the subject of the article in its lead section. For non-English words and names, use the pronunciation key for the appropriate language. If a common English rendering of the non-English name exists (Venice, Nikita Khrushchev), its pronunciation, if necessary, should be indicated before the non-English one.
The words given as examples for two different symbols may sound the same to you. For example, you may pronounce cot and caught , do and dew , or marry and merry the same. This often happens because of dialect variation (see our articles English phonology and International Phonetic Alphabet chart for English dialects ).
Words most likely to retain the accent are those atypical of English morphology and therefore still perceived as slightly foreign. For example, café and pâté both have a pronounced final e , which would otherwise be silent under the normal English pronunciation rules
Pronunciation is the way in which a word or a language is spoken. This may refer to generally agreed-upon sequences of sounds used in speaking a given word or language in a specific dialect ("correct" or "standard" pronunciation) or simply the way a particular individual speaks a word or language. [1] (Pronunciation ⓘ)
A word like immediately, for example, is variously pronounced by Americans as: ihMEEdeeuhtlee; uhMEEdeeuhtlee; eeMEEdeeuhtlee; The Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary suggests the first pronunciation. Similarly, this pronunciation markup guide will choose the most widely used form. NOTE: This guide is designed to be simple and easy to use.
A heteronym (also known as a heterophone) is a word that has a different pronunciation and meaning from another word but the same spelling. These are homographs that are not homophones . Thus, lead ( /ˈlɛd/ the metal) and lead ( /ˈliːd/ a leash) are heteronyms, but mean ( /ˈmin/ average) and mean ( /ˈmin/ intend) are not, since they are ...