Vowel Syncope

#linguistics #pronunciation Published: 2022-01-07

Today, I watched two YouTube videos about the loss of unstressed vowel in American English. For example, the word interesting is usually pronounced as /ˈɪntrɪstɪŋ/ (three syllables), not /ˈɪntərɪstɪŋ/ (four syllables). In phonology, this phenomenon is called syncope¹².

I knew that some pronunciations are not really fixed. Looking at the weblio’s entry of the word chocolate, for example, it says the pronunciation is /tʃάk(ə)lət/. But how exactly should we pronounce the sound that is expressed as (ə)? I learned some things from the following two videos, so let me share a bit about them.

First video

English Words You’re Probably Mispronouncing ❌Difficult English Pronunciation | Rachel’s English

She says (1:07):

Native speakers almost always do the short one.

She shows us a lot of examples of syncope. Try reading the following words: family, interesting, comfortable, vegetable, chocolate, favorite, different, camera, catholic, listening, memory, traveling, actually, restaurant, separate, several, temperature, business, every, lottery

According to her, this often happens to the unstressed vowel before the sound /r/, /l/, /m/, /n/, and /ŋ/.

As a result, some words get assimilated and sometimes sound differently, e.g., restaurant /ˈrestərɑːnt/ -> /ˈrestrɑːnt/ -> /ˈrestʃrɑːnt/ (I don’t exactly how to express this though).

Second video

Master the American Accent: Vowel Syncope (aka, Words You’re Saying Wrong!)

She says (1:52):

Sometimes you must follow the vowel syncope pronunciation. Everyone deletes that syllable, so you need to as well. And other times, it can go either way.

In this video, she delves into several words carefully, rather than list many examples.

According to her opinion (and youglish), the unstressed vewel in chocolate and adjective separate is always deleted, while in words such as favorite and interested, it is optional.

By the way

One more thing. When the unstressed vowel in the words like library or probably gets removed, it leads to the two consecutive similar sounds, which sometimes get assimilated. So, probably is sometimes pronounced like /ˈprɑːbli/, and library like /ˈlaɪbri/. This process is called “haplology”³⁴.

I like the following from the Wikipedia:

Linguists sometimes jokingly refer to the phenomenon as “haplogy”.

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