Illogical thing about one commonwealth spelling

"Pronounce" and "pronunciation" don't sound alike. They're spelled as they sound.

Nup not really.
Pronounce sounds like pr[]naunts
Pronunciation sounds like pr[]nuntsiaysh[]n

Pronounce = pri(:)nauns
Pronunciation = pri(:)ni(:)nsi:eiS[]n

Nearest I could get to my own pronunciation of these words using ASCII. Being Scottish I emphasise the "r" a bit more than the English do.

there are lots of illogical things in english, easy to pick them all up when you're not a native english speaker. Look at Christmas and Christchurch... same thing at the beginning hey... but pronounced differently.
Greetings from Warsaw :-)

Hi Anna......welcome to the EU...great to know you are contributing to this forum. I agree with you..English is very illogical but as a native speaker I do not notice it as I grew up with it, of course. I cannot readily explain the difference in the example you gave and there are lots more. So you find it easy to pick out these inconsistencies? That's good, but perhaps remembering them is not quite so easy? That horrible "OUGH" combination of letters always come to mind....various pronunciations. I have seen witten Polish and with the combination of letters you have I don't think I would ever be able to master the language..well, the pronunciation at least. Maybe it is easier than it looks..I may try to learn it one day.

Thanks Damian for:
a/ your note
b/ warm welcome to the EU
You are correct when I talk with people about inconsistencies in English they do laugh a lot as most of them just do not realize that. It is easy to pick them out as when you learn foreign language you try to think logically as this way it should be easier for you to remember all these things. This is why when I said "Christchurch" the way you say Christmas, my Aussie friend said "what???"... Had many funny situations really (or with names of cities).. well I am from Warsaw and one of my ME colleagues asked once "anna is Warsaw called Warsaw as this city "saw the war")... very interesting thought! But it is not :-)
Polish is horrible to learn. Best way is to just come over here and listen to people speaking, you wouldnt be able to learn this just at school from books as our grammar is just impossibly difficult - every single thing changes depending on the context.
But well..Good Luck..if you need help just ask :-)
Ania.

Jim, If you're going to say ''It's more logical to have "jeweller" plus the suffix "-y" than pretend it's a whole new word.'' then you might as well say the same thing about ''pronunciation''. You might as well say it's more logical to have ''pronounciation'' because of ''pronounce'' despite the pronunciation of the word. Americans spell ''jeweler'' and ''jewelry'' as ''jeweler'' and ''jewelry'' is because of the pronunciation. Why do we about spell ''pronounce'' as ''pronounce'' but spell ''pronunciation'' as ''pronunciation''? Jim, Is ''pronounciation'' more lgoical then ''pronunciation'' because it's spelled ''pronounce''?

Spellings,

Take a look at the origins of the words:

PRONOUNCE: http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=pronounce

PRONUNCIATION: http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=pronunciation

The "ou" seems to come from the Middle English whereas the Latin word only has the "u."

Anna..thanks for your offer of help should I decide to learn Polish. I am not surprised when you say it is difficult....just looking at placenames on the map of Poland gives me that impression. Hey, you would think the same of some of our names as well...if you ever come to the UK I would love to show you round and show you many place names that are not at all pronounced the way they are spelt! Just one example..there is a place in England called Happisburgh. It is pronounced "Haysbruh". Yeah. illogical....