How should one pronounce, "minestrone" in English? I was at an Italian restaurant (US) and ordered "min eh stron ee soup" and my friend told me that's wrong… that the ending "e" is silent. They said it's pronounced, "min e stron". What is correct?
Learn English – How to pronounce, “minestrone”
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Wednesday - I've always remembered how to spell this by saying WED NES DAY or "WEDDING'S DAY", but it's primarily pronounced wenz day or wenz dee. I searched several references, and found only a small set of people who include the "wed" sound, saying "wednz day":
- IPA: /ˈwɛnzˌdeɪ/ (AmE) /ˈwɛnzdeɪ/ (BrE)
- http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/american_english/Wednesday?q=wednesday has an AmE say "wenz day" or "wenz dee".
- http://www.forvo.com/word/wednesday/#en (Note that of all sample pronunciations, at this time only one, by TopQuark (Male from United Kingdom), says "Wednz day".
- http://www.howjsay.com/index.php?word=wednesday&submit=Submit has an BrE speaker suggest either "wenz day" or "wednz day" -
Pizza Most Americans pronounce it like "Pete's a good guy" or technically:
Some people might say pee zza because that's how it looks or their parents and friends said it or they think it sounds Italian (it doesn't).
When it comes to radio shows, announcers are trained to enunciate, over-pronounce, or stress words in special ways that emphasize clarity over absolute correctness; it might not even be precisely the correct pronunciation. So if you listen to radio announcers, you can sometimes hear non-typical pronunciations.
Information on pronunciation of minestrone has been moved here: How do you pronounce, "minestrone"?
This is a tricky question, because the answer from a pure phonetic perspective doesn't match the perception of most native English speakers. (Either British or American.)
In the phonological perception of native English speakers, the three allomorphs of the plural -s suffix are /s/, /z/, and /əz/. /z/ occurs after the final /l/ of 'apples', making singular /'æpəl/ into plural /'æpəlz/. As a native speaker of American English, I thought this was the whole story until I studied phonetics. If you ask other native English speakers, they will most likely agree that 'apples' ends with a /z/ sound.
From a pure phonetic perspective, the actual pronunciation of word-final /z/ in English often has very little voicing. This is surprising if you're expecting /z/ to be voiced and /s/ to be unvoiced. Since word-final /z/ may have very little voicing, as an English learner you might mistake it for /s/.
In typical speech, a big phonetic difference between word-final /s/ and /z/ is in the length of the syllable. Syllables ending with /s/ or another unvoiced obstruent are pronounced with a much shorter vowel, compared to syllables ending with /z/. In other words, native English speakers would only perceive a word like 'apples' as ending with /s/ if the pronunciation of the preceding /əl/ were very short.
Best Answer
Ministrone is an English loan word from Italian. Italian language courses teach the Standard Italian pronunciation in which almost all letters are vocalized except silent h. (So for example, "bella" is pronounced "bel la", not "be la".) So minestrone is pronounced "min eh stron ee" or "min eh stron eh".
However, many people in America pronounce it "ministrohn" (silent e), and this is also ok, as that's how it's pronounced in some Italian dialects. In fact, this type of pronunciation (dropping ending vowels, especially for foods) was popularized during the long running HBO series, "The Sopranos". (See Why do The Sopranos leave off the last vowel in Italian words?)
But those who insist that "ministrohn" is the only proper pronunciation don't know what they're talking about. From a linguistic perspective, neither pronunciation is "the one and only correct way" or "wrong", they're just different.
Here's a good article from the The New York Times: You Say Prosciutto, I Say Pro-SHOOT, and Purists Cringe.
For general reference, see https://www.google.com/search?q=italian+drop+final+vowel.
keyword: minestrone soup