The Reason Most People Cannot Pronounce 'February'

[icyfroth]

Here's something to liven the CS forum up a bit. Got to admit it has been a bit boring lately.

FEBRUARY is the most mispronounced month. And that's fair enough: the linguistics are a mess.

As Akira Okrent from MentalFloss.com points out, February is just one of a litany of words where many people blatantly ignore the spelling and pronounce it the way they want.

"We simply do not like to have two r's so close to each other," Okrent wrote, before explaining it is the result of a process called "dissimilation".

In other words, the Rs are just too close. "Dissimilation" isn't isolated to February, either.

Many people say "suprise" when they should say "surprise", "paticular" instead of "particular", "beserk" over "berserk".

Feb-roo-air-ree. Try it and succeed.

Link To Article

[lind9650]

But - the majority of Aussies can correctly say Brewery.

[spotweldersfriend]

Time to exscape this thread before a new colour war breaks out. Don't believe me? Just arks someone.

[icyfroth]

Surely it must be time for another envirement thread?

[cherry*135]

Oxford Dictionary

FEBRUARY

Usage

Note that February is spelled with an r following the Feb-. Precise speakers insist that this r should be pronounced, but this is not easy, and most people replace the r following Feb- with a y sound:Feb-yoo- rather than Feb-roo-. This is now becoming the accepted standard.

[spotweldersfriend]

It's easy really.February comes after Janruary.

[icyfroth]

no need to go beresk over it, Spot lol

[i-once-was-bump]

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@not_an_eloi wrote:

abbrot, it would appear,  can't be bothered to pronounce the location of the winter olympic games, flamin' embarrassment to all australians.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h03eSiZLVnM

sow - chee

http://www.howjsay.com/index.php?word=sochi

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You pickin' on our Priminister?

[lloydslights]

Are you talking about the Priminister of AUSTRAYA?

DEB

[i-need-a-martini]

Watching MKR tonight I noticed that Pete can't promounce the word "Reshtront".

[i-need-a-martini]

And I don't understand how you can possibly pronounce "something" as "somethink"?