It’s well known that “Febuary” is a common pronunciation (and spelling – 706 million hits on Google, but with multiple warnings about “Did you mean to search for February?”), but it’s by no means the only English word that tends to lose an r or /r/. Usually it occurs when two /r/ phonemes start consecutive syllables: arbitrary, contrary, deteriorate, library, literary, as well as February, but there are cases where a syllable intervenes between the two /r/s: secretary, veterinary.

After February, secretary must be the word in which this phenonemon caused the most complaints at my time at the BBC, when any perceived ‘dropped’ /r/ would bring letters on to my desk. And yet veterinary is accepted without question by almost everybody when it is pronounced /ˈvet(ɪ)n(ə)ri/. No one ever complained about it in my 23 years of answering such letters.

What I notice is that if the two /r/s are in adjacent syllables, it is the second that is dropped (e.g. deteriorate > ‘deteriate’), whereas if there is a greater distance between them, the first one disappears (’Febuary’, ’secketary’, ‘vetinary’). In the case of meteorological, either the /r/ or the first /l/ can go, but more often it is the /r/, leaving /miːtiəˈlɒdʒɪkəl/ – rather than */miːtiəˈrɒdʒɪkəl/.

I don’t know of an explanation for this, but perhaps someone else can supply one.

Following on from my last post, with /jʊ/ words being fronted and confused with /ɪ/ words, I’m reminded that a few years ago, a TV programme included a demonstration of falconry, and the expert said she used a /lɜː/. The interviewer was clearly puzzled by this, and asked for an explanation. It turned out that the falconer was talking about a lure. Then last week, I heard the same pronunciation used in the word allure: /əˈlɜː/. John Wells’ Longman Pronunciation Dictionary, 3rd edition has lure /ljɜː/, commenting that 17% of John’s informants used this pronunciation, but neither /lɜː/ nor allure /əˈlɜː/. Presumably he still considers it non-standard, and judging by the reaction of the TV interviewer, it is sometimes difficult to understand even in context. /jʊə/ words have generally become /jɔː/, as /ʊə/ has increasingly become /ɔː/, but I have also heard /pjɜː/ and /kjɜː/for pure and cure (John has the first of these, but not the second), so it could be that lure and allure are developing in two ways simultaneously: losing /j/ to become /lɔː/ and /əˈlɔː/, and alternatively keeping the /j/, but centralising the whole vocalic complex, and then losing /j/, and becoming /lɜː/ and /əˈlɜː/.

As an afterthought, has anyone heard /ˈplɜːrəl/ for plural? And how many other /jʊə/ words are developing in these parallel ways?

Jack Windsor Lewis has pointed out that I was originally mis-reading the Longman Dictionary, and I have changed the wording accordingly. My thanks to Jack for his close attention to detail!

In his post of 27 November 2008, John Wells mentions the substitution of ‘-uous’, ‘-ual’ for ‘-ious’ and ‘-ial’ in the pronunciation of these two words. There is a more widespread confusion in the minds of English speakers about words ending in -ious, -ial,  -iary, -uous, -ual and -uary (and probably -iate and -uate, although I have no examples to hand).

I have recently heard judiciary pronounced /dʒʊˈdɪʃʊəri/, sumptuous as /ˈsʌmpʃəs/ and sexual as /ˈseksjəl/.

I think the problem lies in the pronunciation of the -u- in those words that have it in the spelling: /jʊ/. The yod tends to palatalize the preceding fricative (/s/ > /ʃ/) or plosive (/t/ > /tʃ/ and at the same time to front the following vowel, so that /ʊ/ moves towards [ʉ/ or [ɨ]. This leads to the only remaining distinction being between the /ʃ/ and the /tʃ/. John says that the OED pronunciation given for rumbustious, ending /-tiəs/ “sounds very prissy”, and I agree with him. However, celestial, with an ending in the same category, does not sound at all prissy to me when pronounced /səˈlestiəl/.

Narrowing down the endings to those with -ti-, the regular treatment is to pronounce the two letters together as /ʃ/. This occurs in almost all the words ending -tion, for example (there is one exception where the fricative is always voiced: equation /ɪˈkweɪʒən/, and one partial exception: transition, which many people pronounce with a voiced fricative: /trɑːnˈsɪʒən/ – I think this would be the pronunciation of transcision, but then I’m not an RP speaker). There’s also consortium, which is usually pronounced /kənˈsɔːtɪəm/, but which Leon Brittan (British Home Secretary at the time of the Westland scandal in the mid-1980s) notably pronounced /kənˈsɔːʃəm/. The plural, consortia, is more often pronounced with the /ʃ/ than is the singular, although this is still probably a minority pronunciation. Nasturtium (garden plant) and inertia regularly have the fricative /ʃ/.

Going back to rumbustious and nuptial, the first “needs” the /t/ to be retained, or we end up with /s/ followed immediately by /ʃ/, which would turn into /rʌmˈbʌʃəs/. It is then being compared with, and pronounced by analogy with, tempestuous and contemptuous. Nuptial is presumably being pronounced by analogy with virtual and mutual. The preceding /p/ is not a factor, since we have captious, which at the moment at least, is not becoming “captuous”.