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Does anyone here have vehicle-smoothing?
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I have ["vi:.I.k5=]. All the British dictionaries that I've seen list only the unsmoothed pronunciation, but I've read that there are some British speakers who have much more extensive smoothing than what's listed in today's dictionaries - for example, in words like "mower" and "Malaya". So I think some speakers probably would have smoothing in "vehicle".
Also of note is the pronunciation of "vehicle" by some North Americans - I think mostly in the Southern US - as something like ["vi:%hIk5=].
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What's vehicle-smoothing? Elision of the "h"?
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<<in words like "mower">>
I have [mOr\] for "mower" and I'm American, not British.
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Vehicle-smoothing would be the compression, or smoothing, of the bisyllabic sequence [i.@] in "vehicle" into a centering diphthong [I@]. In faux-netic British English, I suppose this could be rendered as "veerkel".
In modern RP - as defined by today's British dictionaries - this kind of smoothing only occurs, to my knowledge, in the words "idea" (and derivatives), "real" (and derivatives), and "theatre", but not in "vehicle".
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I have [Vi:Ik=5] for "vehicle".
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I've never heard of it in 'vehicle' but I have heard of it in 'mower'.
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(I probably should have written [i.I] for that sequence in my last post.)
<<I have [mOr\] for "mower" and I'm American, not British.>>
The kind of smoothing that I was thinking about was from RP ["m@U.@] to something like ["m3@]; but yes, I think what you have could be called smoothing as well.
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Now that I think about it, all of the other instances of smoothing that I've heard about ("idea", "theater", "mower", "Malaya") seem to involve a schwa as the second vowel, whereas "vehicle" tends to have [I] in the second syllable for most speakers. So maybe this would inhibit smoothing in "vehicle" for speakers who otherwise have quite progressive smoothing?
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<<"idea" (and derivatives), "real" (and derivatives), and "theatre">>
Those actually have three different vowels for me.
"idea" [aIdI@]
"real" [rI5]
"theater" [Ti:I4=r\]
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Wells mentions smoothing for /aI aU eI @U OI/ followed by a vowel, as in 'tire' [ta:]~[ta@], 'tower' [tA:]~[tA@], 'player' [ple:@] 'going' [g3:IN], annoying [@nO:IN] (the last is rarer than the others). It can also apply to /i: u:/, especially for speakers who have [Ii, Uu] 'seeing' [sI:IN], 'fluent' [flU:@nt]. This sequence can also undergo syllabicity loss and be identified with /I@ U@/: 'be a'='beer', 'do a'='dour'.
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Yeah, "real" seems to be an especially variable word. I think originally it had ["ri.@5], which, at least in traditional RP, got smoothed to ["r\I@5] and remained distinct from "reel" ["ri:5]. In American English, most speakers have come to use a monosyllabic pronunciation like ["ri:5] or ["r\I5]. I've read that a lot of British English speakers today (perhaps most) now pronounce "real" homophonous with "reel".
Myself, I have:
idea [aI"di:.@] or [aI"dI@], sort of variable
real ["r\i:5]
theater ["Ti:.@.4@`]
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>><<in words like "mower">>
I have [mOr\] for "mower" and I'm American, not British.<<
I have such smoothing, but only in certain circumstances which does not include "mower". It only occurs when an intervocalic obstruent is elided before /@r/, /@l/, /@n/, or /@m/. In everyday speech very often the resulting sound is nonsyllabic (rather than syllabic as usual) and rather the vowel preceding the elided consonant is lengthened. If the elided obstruent is fortis the resulting vowel is long; if the elided obstruent is lenis the resulting vowel is overlong. It results in pronunciations such as:
"what're" [wV:R]
"over" [o::R]
"water" [wQ:R]
"matter" [mE{:R]
"rather" [RE{::R]
"that'll" [DE{:M] or [dE{:M]
"middle" [mI::M]
"little" [M\I:M]
"fiddle" [fI::M]
"metal' [mE:M]
"redden" [RE~::n]
"hidden" [hI~::n]
(For some reasons I cannot think of any examples ending in /@m/, even though they certainly exist.)
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>>Yeah, "real" seems to be an especially variable word. I think originally it had ["ri.@5], which, at least in traditional RP, got smoothed to ["r\I@5] and remained distinct from "reel" ["ri:5]. In American English, most speakers have come to use a monosyllabic pronunciation like ["ri:5] or ["r\I5]. I've read that a lot of British English speakers today (perhaps most) now pronounce "real" homophonous with "reel".<<
The dialect here actually does not merge "real" and "reel" when in careful speech and when otherwise stressed, distinguishing them as [Ri:M:] and [Ri:M_^], but in unstressed everyday speech inconsistently merges them as [Ri:M_^].
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H is not silent in my pronunciation of Vehicle
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