That pronunciation thing

[chickenfeet]

Medicine

The two syllable med'sun is pretty much confined to the UK and isn't particularly common even there. Dying out in favour of pronunciation driven by orthography? Will med'sun soon seem as archaic as sowjer?

Schedule

It appears that the long standing American myth that Canadians say shedule is false. That is the dominant, but by no means universal, British pronunciation. Canadians, like Americans, say skedule.

Slough

There seems to be a strongly held view that the pronunciation depends on whether one is shedding skin, sluff, in a bog, slow or slew, or preparing to bomb a railway town, slow. No obvious regional patterns are apparent.

Waistcoat

Weskit is a minority usage but it doesn't correlate with med'sun and it's distribution appears to be random. The usage is attested from Paris to Seattle.

Tomato

Predictably Brits and Antipodeans say tom-ah-toe or tom-ah-ter while North Americans say tom-ay-toe.

Subsidence

This one seems to be entirely random.

Comments

[forthright.livejournal.com]

I was very surprised how many people picked sub-SIDE-ence, given that every other '-idence' noun (evidence, residence, providence, evidence, etc.) stresses the first syllable. I don't think I'd ever used the word, but it was perfectly obvious to me how I would pronounce it should I encounter it.

[anneth.livejournal.com]

re. "schedule" - most Americans of my acquaintance (west coast or upper midwest/Chicago area) pronounce it "skedjul," with two syllables, though I've also heard (don't know where) "sked-u-ole" or "sked-ju-ole" with three syllables.

Another interesting pronunciation difference I've run across: "height." Most people I know pronounce it "hite" but an exboyfriend and several of his peers from the western Sierra Nevada mountains in central CA pronounce it "heith."

A third: "often." I pronounce it "offen," a la my parents (born on the east coast; mom raised in souther CA by midwestern parents, father raised on the east coast and eventually raising me in southern CA via rural Ohio.) My half-siblings by my father's first marriage (in rural Ohio) pronounce it "of-ten," as does the ex from the CA mountains. Perhaps the 't' is a rural signifier, or a U/non-U sort of symbol?

Oh, some Americans pronounce tomato "tuh-may-toe" rather than "toe-may-toe" or "tom-ay-toe."

This is fun!

[shezan.livejournal.com]

... and I've always heard SUBs'dence in my head...

[piratehead.livejournal.com]

I've heard both skedule and shedule in Toronto. Normally, shedule seems to be a common pronunciation of Anglophones fromm outside of Toronto, except for BCians, whose pronunciations I find rather closer to US than Ontario or prairies, to say nothing of east coasters.