I'm confused about how to pronounce -al at the end of the word.
These words end with -al and are pronounced without a "ə" sound.
- dig·it·al /ˈdijitl/
- men·tal /ˈmentl/
These words also end with -al, but are pronounced with a "ə" sound.
- lo·cal /ˈlōkəl/
- glob·al /ˈglōbəl/
- herb·al /ˈ(h)ərbəl/
Why does the first group not have the "ə" sound, but the second group does?
Best Answer
For American pronunciation, both the Oxford dictionary's American pronunciation and the American Heritage dictionary's leave out the /ə/ in words like little, riddle, mantle, metal that I think of as ending /təl/ and /dəl/, but not words ending in other consonants followed by /əl/, like /nəl/, /bəl/, /kəl/. Merriam-Webster uses /təl/, /dəl/ and /nəl/, but uses /əl/ after other consonants; the /əl/ symbolizes the same pronunciation as in Oxford and American Heritage: the /l/ is the nucleus of its own syllable, which contains no vowel.
For British pronunciation, the Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary on-line uses either /l/ and /əl/ for all these words; I think it depends only on the spelling. I believe these are supposed to symbolize the same sound (no schwa). The online global Oxford dictionary seems to use /(ə)l/ for all of these words, meaning the schwa is optional. So presumably the schwa is supposedly left out in RP.
Going to forvo.com and listening to the pronunciation of words, it seems that Americans generally (not always) do put the schwa in after consonants other than /t/ and /d/, but many (not all) Americans leave the schwa out after /t/ and /d/. I'm not a linguist, so I can't say for sure, but I believe these variations are allophonic, meaning that English speakers will perceive them as having the same phoneme. If you leave out the schwa after /t/ or /d/, it is likely you are unaware you're doing so. Don't worry about pronouncing this "right"; you should be understood just as well either way. Even if you're trying to lose a foreign accent, judging from the pronunciations on Forvo, the variation in both native British and native American speakers is large enough that I don't think anybody will notice this. For example, I leave out the schwa after /k/ and /g/, but put it in after /n/.
In my comment above, I said there were no minimal pairs for /əl/ and syllabic /l/, because they are allophonic, but I think I was wrong. The way I speak, there are several multi-word minimal pairs; for example, metal ion versus met a lion, or mental aberration versus meant elaboration.