 | American and British English pronunciation differences: Encyclopedia II - American and British English pronunciation differences - Affixes
American and British English pronunciation differences - Affixes
American and British English pronunciation differences - -ary -ery -ory -bury -berry -mony
Where the syllable preceding -ary,-ery or -ory is stressed, AmE and BrE alike pronounce all these endings /əɹi(ː)/. Where the preceding syllable is unstressed, however, AmE has a full vowel rather than schwa: /ɛɹi/ for -ary and -ery and /ɔɹi/ for -ory. BrE retains the reduced vowel /əɹiː/, or even elides it completely to /ɹiː/. (The elision is avoided in carefully enunciated speech, especially with endings -rary,-rery,-rory.) So military is AmE /'mɪlɪtɛɹiː/ and BrE /'mɪlɪtəɹiː/ or /'mɪlɪtɹiː/.
Note that stress differences occur with ending -atory (explained above) and a few others like capillary (included above). A few words have the full vowel in AmE in the ending even though the preceding syllable is stressed: library, primaryA2, rosemary. Pronouncing library as /'laɪbɛɹi/ rather than /'laɪbɹɛɹi/ is highly stigmatized in AmE, whereas in BrE, /'laɪbɹiː/ is common in rapid or casual speech.
Formerly the BrE-AmE distinction for adjectives carried over to corresponding adverbs ending -arily, -erily or -orily. However, nowadays most BrE speakers adopt the AmE practice of shifting the stress to the antepenultimate syllable: militarily is thus /ˌmɪlɪ'tɛɹɪliː/ rather than /'mɪlɪtɹɪliː/.
The placename component -bury (e.g. Canterbury) has a similar difference after a stressed syllable: AmE /bɛɹi/ and BrE /bɹɪː/ or /bəɹɪː/. The ending -mony after a stressed syllable is AmE /moʊni/ but BrE /mənɪː/. The word -berry in compounds has a slightly different distinction: in BrE, it is reduced (/bəɹiː/ or /bɹiː/) after a stressed syllable, and may be full /bɛɹiː/ after an unstressed syllable; in AmE it is usually full in all cases. Thus, strawberry is BrE /'strɔːbəɹiː/ but AmE /'strɔbɛɹi/, while whortleberry is BrE /'wɔːtlbɛɹiː/ and similarly AmE /'wɔɹtlbɛɹi/.
American and British English pronunciation differences - -ile
Words ending in unstressed -ile derived from Latin adjectives ending -ilis are mostly pronounced with a full vowel (/aɪl/) in BrE but a reduced vowel /ɪl/ or syllabic /l/ in AmE (e.g. fertile rhymes with fur tile in BrE but with turtle in AmE). This difference applies:
- generally to agile, docile, facile, fertile, fissile, fragile, futile, infertile, missile, nubile, octile, puerile, rutile, servile, stabile, sterile, tactile, tensile, virile, volatile;
- usually to ductile, hostile, (im)mobile (adjective), projectile, textile, utile, versatile;
- not usually to decile, domicile, infantile, juvenile, labile, mercantile, pensile, reptile, senile;
- not to crocodile, exile, gentile, percentile, reconcile; nor to compounds of monosyllables (e.g. turnstile from stile).
Related endings -ility, -ilize, -iliary are pronounced the same in AmE as BrE. The name Savile is pronounced with (/ɪl/) in both BrE and AmE. Mobile (sculpture), camomile and febrile are sometimes pronounced with /il/ in AmE and /aɪl/) in BrE. Imbecile has /aɪl/ or /iːl/ in BrE and often /ɪl/ in AmE.
American and British English pronunciation differences - -ine
The suffix -ine, when unstressed, is pronounced sometimes /aɪn/ (e.g. feline), sometimes /i(ː)n/ (e.g. morphine) and sometimes /ɪn/ (e.g. medicine). Some words have variable pronunciation within BrE, or within AmE, or between BrE and AmE. Generally, AmE is more likely to favour /in/ or /ɪn/, and BrE to favour /aɪn/: e.g. adamantineA2, carbine, crystallineA2, labyrinthine, philistine, serpentineA2. However, sometimes AmE has /aɪn/ where BrE has /iːn/; e.g. iodineB2, strychnineA2.
Other related archives"checked"/"free", "tense"/"lax", American English, Australian English, Boston accent, British English, Calais, Canterbury, Commonwealth English, De Beauvoir, Debussy, Degas, Delacroix, Dijon, Dumas, General American, IPA, Imbecile, Latin, Manet, Mobile, Monet, New Orleans, Northern English accents, Received Pronunciation, Renaissance, Renault, Renoir, Rimbaud, Saint, Scotland, Sir, Yod-dropping, accent, adverbs, allophone, alveolar-flap, back, camomile, centring diphthongs, coalesce, conservative RP, cot-caught merger, elides, eye dialect, father-bother merger, fewer vowel distinctions before intervocalic [ɹ], flapping, function words, homonyms, initial-stress-derived noun, intrusive R, lexicon, loanwords, lot-cloth split, macramé, marry-merry-Mary merger, merger of the relevant vowels, morpheme, often lost, open, phoneme, placename, pour-poor merger, pronunciation, r-coloured vowels, regional accents of English speakers, rhotic, rosemary, schwa, sonorant, stressed, syllabic, the West Country, titles, trap-bath split, triphthongs, vitamin, vowel, weak form, words with different pronunciation reflected in the spelling
 Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Affixes", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki |
