Violence pronunciation

Mr. Brown   Mon Sep 24, 2007 10:28 pm GMT
How do you pronounce this word? Do you pronounce it "vie-uh-lence" or more like "vie-oh-lnce"?
Travis   Mon Sep 24, 2007 10:39 pm GMT
I myself pronounce "violence" as ["va:I@:M\1~:nts] (for X-SAMPA transcription information, go to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X-SAMPA ), which would be closest to what you spell as "vie-uh-lence". Note that such pronunciations containing [@] ("uh") are typical of at least North American English dialects.
Travis   Mon Sep 24, 2007 11:21 pm GMT
Whoops, that should be ["va:I@:M\1~nts] above.
Lazar   Mon Sep 24, 2007 11:26 pm GMT
I pronounce "violence" - and "violet" - with two syllables: ["vaI.l@ns], ["vaI.l@t]. I don't know which pronunciation is more common in North American English; for what it's worth, dictionary.com lists only the trisyllabic ones, but m-w.com lists both.

On a related note, does anyone pronounce "Irish" with three syllables, or an initial triphthong? Most British dictionaries that I've seen list ["aI@r\IS]; I pronounce it ["aI.r\IS].
Lazar   Mon Sep 24, 2007 11:33 pm GMT
Oh, as for the quality of the medial unstressed vowel, for those who have it, every dictionary that I've seen - British or American - lists only /@/. /o/ would sound odd to me if I heard it there.
Uriel   Tue Sep 25, 2007 1:48 am GMT
I say "vie-uh-lence".
Travis   Tue Sep 25, 2007 3:25 pm GMT
I myself have ["va:IM\1?] for "violet" and ["@:IR1S] for "Irish". The matter, though, is that the disyllabic version of "violence" is probably just due to elision, whereas the trisyllabic version of "Irish" is probably rather due to a broader application of breaking of vowels before /r/ than in most English dialects.
Mr. Brown   Fri Sep 28, 2007 12:19 am GMT
By the way, spanking is wrong. It wrongly teaches children that violence is the solution to problems, and that if they are angry with someone that they should be violent with them.