Pronunciations (was: And how do you pronounce "csh"?)

[Greg Lee]

>From article <2556 at munnari.oz.au>, by ok at cs.mu.oz.au (Richard O'Keefe):
" ...  (The first syllable of "character" does __not__ sound like "care".)

That's true for some English dialects but false for many others.
In my speech, the first syllable of "character" is "char-" and
does sound exactly like "care".

" It's worth pointing out that most of the abbreviated keywords in C ('char'
" is not a UNIX command, it's a C keyword) are not the first syllables of
" their words or not a whole number of syllables of their words.
" 	cha-rac-ter
" 	struc-ture
" 	in-te-ger
"   (type)de-fine
" 	ex-ter-nal
" 	e-nu-mer-ate
" 	con-stant

Except for the case of "de-fine", I believe that these observations
are all incorrect for most varieties of American English.  The
evidence is indirect for most of the cases and would take a while
to discuss, but for the first one, note that "r" is pronounced
with lip-rounding when it is at the beginning of a syllable,
without rounding when it is at the end (most Am. dialects),
and in "character" the first "r" is not rounded.

			Greg, lee at uhccux.uhcc.hawaii.edu