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The pronunciation of the vowel of the prefix di-in words such as dichotomy, digest (verb), dilate, dilemma, dilute, diluvial, dimension, direct, dissect, disyllable, divagate, diverge, diverse, divert, divest, and divulge as well as their derivational forms vary between / aɪ / and / ɪ / or / ə / in both British and American English.
Many of these are degenerations in the pronunciation of names that originated in other languages. Sometimes a well-known namesake with the same spelling has a markedly different pronunciation. These are known as heterophonic names or heterophones (unlike heterographs , which are written differently but pronounced the same).
Throughout Wikipedia, the pronunciation of words is indicated using the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). The following tables list the IPA symbols used for English words and pronunciations. Please note that several of these symbols are used in ways that are specific to Wikipedia, and differ from those used by dictionaries.
In Dutch, the letter combination sch represents at the beginning of a syllable, and [] at the end. However, most English speakers pronounce Dutch words such as Rooibosch and veldschoen with /ʃ/, more closely following the pronunciation rules for German spelling.
Reading by using phonics is often referred to as decoding words, sounding-out words or using print-to-sound relationships.Since phonics focuses on the sounds and letters within words (i.e. sublexical), [13] it is often contrasted with whole language (a word-level-up philosophy for teaching reading) and a compromise approach called balanced literacy (the attempt to combine whole language and ...
Some words contain silent letters, which do not represent any sound in modern English pronunciation. Examples include the l in talk , half , calf , etc., the w in two and sword , gh as mentioned above in numerous words such as though , daughter , night , brought , and the commonly encountered silent e (discussed further below).
When dictionaries give alternative pronunciations, they may mean that people disagree. For example, some people pronounce bath /bæθ/, with the vowel of bat, while others with the same accent pronounce it /bɑːθ/, with the vowel of bra. This is the kind of difference celebrated in "You like to-may-toes; I like to-mah-toes". On Wikipedia, we ...
The following table shows the 24 consonant phonemes found in most dialects of English, plus /x/, whose distribution is more limited. Fortis consonants are always voiceless, aspirated in syllable onset (except in clusters beginning with /s/ or /ʃ/), and sometimes also glottalized to an extent in syllable coda (most likely to occur with /t/, see T-glottalization), while lenis consonants are ...