How do you pronounce it?

[Gliondrach]

Some English words have more than one pronunciation. I often wonder why some people use one and others use another.

'Either' can be pronounced either as eye-ther or ee-ther. I say eye-ther. Same with neither.

Economics. Eeco-nomics and echo-nomics. Eeco for me.

Evolution. Eevo-lution and ever-lution. Eevo for me.

Financial. Fy-nancial and fin-ancial. Fy, says I.

Now, with 'privacy' and 'controversy', I have used both of their pronunciations. I'm not sure why but I've never been sure why I don't know which I prefer. So I have decided to use the pronunciation that matches the main form of the word that they are formed from. They are formed from 'private' and 'controversial'.

Privacy. Pry-vacy and priv-acy. The first one for me because 'private' has a 'pry' sound.

Controversy. Controe-versy and con-troversy. The first one for me because 'controversial' has a 'controe' sound.

Any others? And how do you pronounce them? I don't mean the way Amercian-types pronounce some words such as 'tomato' or 'missile'.

[Bowwowmeow]

Well it's more of an emphasis than a pronunciation I guess, but you can always tell if someone is from the southern US by the way they say "insurance". People from the south say "INsurance, while most others say "inSURance". Same with "vehicle". Most people run it all together as in "veicle". People from the south say "veeHICKle".

[gabbles]

I say them the same way as Gliondrach except for controversy.

I say inSURance.

[Gliondrach]

Good man.

[nagev]

I'll say either, either way, depending on how it's used. (I can't think of how at the moment though, but I have used both, depending on what I'm saying). The rest seem similar to how you state, although I'm a bit confused with the controversy one. :)

I can't really think of others, but I seem to get grief occasionally because of how I pronounce things. I've even been asked by a wide range of people if I am from Canada (I'm not) or what country I grew up in (as in other than the USA). People often think I have an accent, but maybe I'm just lazy in speaking or something. :)

[Gliondrach]

One can usually tell Canadians by the way they pronounce the 'out' sound. Something like oeat. Half-way between out and oat.

There are many regional pronunciations in England. In the North East, I've heard 'cold' pronounced as cad, cowld and coorld. And once or twice as cald.

[nagev]

I don't pronounce out in the stereotyped Canadian accent. :)

[Gliondrach]

We'll take your word for it.

[nagev]

So you'll take my word? Can I have it back when your done?

[Gliondrach]

It might be pronounced differently after I've used it.

In Geordieland, 'word' is pronounced as 'ward'.

[manzana]

I was watching some foreign porn clip where the protagonist enthusiastically said "fake me" (instead of you know...) and I thought that was an ironically keen pronunciation. :wigglebutt: