Infrastructure has been much in the news lately, because of the bill that has been moving through Congress for months and finally passed last week. As such, lots of people have been interviewed about it, and I've noticed that many of them pronounce the word more like "infastructure". I think these even include many of the government officials who worked on the bill.
Am I just hearing it wrong, or do many Americans have trouble pronouncing that "r"? Is it the same reason that "February" is often pronounced as "Febuary"?
I don't think I've ever noticed the "r" elided in other uses of the "infra" prefix, such as "infrared". But maybe it's due to the different communities of speakers who discuss politics versus science.
Best Answer
I think the main reason for this is optional dissimilation of the sound r in words where it occurs more than once. This also may affect the first syllable of words like berserk, surprise and forward. I give more information in this post: 'Forward' pronounced more often as 'foward'?
In fact, I have noticed that I do hear or use a version of infrared with loss of the first r.
Although this type of dissimilation can potentially affect many words, it is not a regular phenomenon, so I’m not sure to explain why it does or doesn’t occur in specific words for any particular speaker. I also don’t know how many total speakers use a dissimilated pronunciation of “infrastructure”.
I find it implausible that it’s related to the existence of words starting with info-.