How to pronounce "blue" correctly?

Hoefner   Wed Jan 02, 2008 11:16 am GMT
Every dictionary says that the word "blue" pronounces as "blu:" (as in "too"). But every time I listen to a native (no matter British or American), I hear him say "blju:" (as in "you") instead. Why so? How do YOU pronounce this word?
Guest   Wed Jan 02, 2008 11:32 am GMT
I am an American and I definitely say [blu:]. I can't even properly pronounce [blju:].
Travis   Wed Jan 02, 2008 3:09 pm GMT
/lju:/ changed to /lu:/ in most English dialects long ago, and only shows up in some things such as some Welsh English dialects and like.

However, the [ju:] that you refer to hear is really /u:/, but is a synchronic diphthongization of such; the actual phonetic realization of such can range from things like [}_^u:] to [i_^u:], and what you transcribe as [ju:] is most likely [1_^u:] in most cases.
Milton   Wed Jan 02, 2008 3:13 pm GMT
1.

/u:/ is fronted in many accents, for example Estuary English or West Coast US accents (especially California).

2.

As for Canada, parts of US and Eastern England, /ju:/ can be heard for /u/, as hypercorrection (I've heard a newscaster pronouncing Vancouver as Van[kju:]ver )...
Travis   Wed Jan 02, 2008 4:16 pm GMT
>>/u:/ is fronted in many accents, for example Estuary English or West Coast US accents (especially California).<<

Tis true; I myself am just more familiar with dialects in which /u/ undergoes breaking into center-to-back or front-to-back diphthongs in certain environments, such as after coronals, than ones in which it undergoes unconditional fronting.

>>As for Canada, parts of US and Eastern England, /ju:/ can be heard for /u/, as hypercorrection (I've heard a newscaster pronouncing Vancouver as Van[kju:]ver )...<<

Mind you that at least some of these cases are likely actually breaking of /u/ and not hypercorrection.
guest   Wed Jan 02, 2008 4:57 pm GMT
<<Mind you that at least some of these cases are likely actually breaking of /u/ and not hypercorrection.>>

I find hypercorrection to be a joke. My father incessantly tries to correct my pronunciation of "news" and "Tuesday", which he enunciates as "nyews" and "Tyuesday" (having had diction/speech in school as a child), however in casual discourse I always call him out because he doesn't follow it himself.
furrykef   Wed Jan 02, 2008 5:11 pm GMT
Show your father a dictionary.
Travis   Wed Jan 02, 2008 5:27 pm GMT
Heh - that is particularly funny because, if one is a native speaker of North American English, /j/ has been consistently lost in such words in the primary NAE standard variety, General American...
Travis   Wed Jan 02, 2008 5:49 pm GMT
One thing I tend to find funny is that in addition to breaking of /u/ after coronals, the same preceding coronals become palatalized here (and seemingly in many other northern NAE dialects). Thus results in "do" /du/ being pronounced not too far from how "dew" /dju:/ is pronounced in RP - except that "do" never contained /j/ to begin with - which I find amusing for some reason.
Skippy   Wed Jan 02, 2008 6:26 pm GMT
Milton is right... /u/ is fronted (or at least centered) in most dialects of American English... One of my friends from Pennsylvania actually commented to me that my friend who said the word 'food' as it is supposed to sound, /fud/ sounded funny. In California, Texas, and Louisiana (the three states in which I've lived) the tendency would be pronounce it (how it sounds to me) /f{d/ or maybe even /fyd/.
Lazar   Wed Jan 02, 2008 11:57 pm GMT
Well, I don't think any American English speakers would use [y], but some of them would use [}] or [1].
Travis   Thu Jan 03, 2008 5:05 am GMT
>>Well, I don't think any American English speakers would use [y], but some of them would use [}] or [1].<<

Heh - more progressive versions of the dialect here may have ["h3_+:M\y:] for "hello". This seems to actually be a distinct /y/ phoneme which only shows up in "hello", as such is not a predictable sound shift, and in fact only occurs in that word.
Damian in Edinburgh   Thu Jan 03, 2008 9:00 am GMT
The Scottish "blue" more or less rhymes with the French "du"......almost identical vowel sound....short and sharp, and not elongated like it is in England. Other words are similar - eg. "do" or "through"....etc etc....

I loathe the "ough" combination of letters in English - they even look ugly, don't you think? Makes me quite blue just to think about them.....
Guest   Thu Jan 03, 2008 11:07 am GMT
It is pronounced like balloo, but quicker
guest   Thu Jan 03, 2008 3:52 pm GMT
<<I loathe the "ough" combination of letters in English - they even look ugly, don't you think? Makes me quite blue just to think about them..... >>

I actually like them, along with 'igh', 'augh' and the others.

In Scotland, do you still sometimes hear the 'gh' pronounced as the 'ch' in loch?