No Stupid Questions

4075 readers

84 users here now

There is no such thing as a Stupid Question!

Don't be embarrassed of your curiosity; everyone has questions that they may feel uncomfortable asking certain people, so this place gives you a nice area not to be judged about asking it. Everyone here is willing to help.

ex. How do I change oil
ex. How to tie shoes
ex. Can you cry underwater?

Reminder that the rules for lemmy.ca still apply!

Thanks for reading all of this, even if you didn't read all of this, and your eye started somewhere else, have a watermelon slice 🍉.

founded 3 years ago

MODERATORS

admin@lemmy.ca

Why don't we voice the first R in "surprise"? (slrpnk.net)

submitted 4 days ago by Nemo@slrpnk.net to c/nostupidquestions@lemmy.ca

39 comments fedilink hide all child comments

What distinguishes it from the R is "surplus", for example? In both cases it's followed by a P and another semiglide.

Apologies if this pronunciation is regional to the Western Hemisphere, but I'm very curious regardless.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] AnarchoEngineer@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 3 days ago

I’m from the western hemisphere too and I’ve probably said it both ways. I feel like when it is said sarcastically like “what a surprise” the cadence feels better without the /r/ but when saying it without sarcasm the sound is there like “that’s surprising” definitely has the /r/ sound.

A similar letter that gets dropped in rural western America is the /t/ sound when it is preceded by another consonant. Like “mountain” is often said “moun’in” but it’ll still be there if the emphasized syllable is after it like “maintain” is pronounced correctly.