[‘ædrɛs] or [əd’rɛs]?

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Woods
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[‘ædrɛs] or [əd’rɛs]?

Postby Woods » 2015-12-11, 23:19

As far as I know, a double consonant (beside a few exceptions such as ‘travelling,’ also known as 'traveling' in the US) means that the syllable before is stressed. Therefore I’ve always pronounced the word address as [‘ædrɛs]. However, I’m currently speaking with a lot of British customers over the phone, and not only do they always say [əd’rɛs], but it seems like they’re kind of correcting me sometimes – the conversation goes:

“Can I have your e-mail [‘ædrɛs] please?” And instead of “yes, it is…” I usually hear:
“My e-mail [əd’rɛs] is the following.”

So I had to open a dictionary and check the word, just to make sure that the word [‘ædrɛs] fits my more American than British pronunciation.

According to Oxford Dictionaries, the only spelling is /əˈdrɛs/.
According to Merriam-Webster, however, it’s /əˈdrɛs/, but it can also be [‘ædrɛs] (I cannot check the exact transcription at the moment, because their website seems to be down.)

So my question is to you Americans, does [‘ædrɛs] sound fine, or is it a lot more common to hear the word pronounced as /əˈdrɛs/? Because if [‘ædrɛs] is so uncommon, I might have to start pronouncing it with the stress at the end, even though this double d will really annoy me if I have to do so.
Last edited by Woods on 2015-12-25, 10:08, edited 2 times in total.

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Re: For native Americans only: [‘ædrɛs] or [əd’rɛs]?

Postby linguoboy » 2015-12-12, 3:48

NB: "Native American" is synonymous with "American Indian". It took me a moment to figure out what you were really looking for was native speakers of American English.

Woods wrote:So my question is to you Americans, does [‘ædrɛs] sound fine, or is it a lot more common to hear the word pronounced as /əˈdrɛs/? Because if [‘ædrɛs] is so uncommon, I might have to start pronouncing it with the stress at the end, even though this double d will really annoy me if I have to do so.

Both are common. I use both variants and I'm not sure what rules guide the alternation, apart from one: There's a well-established pattern in English whereby certain roots take final stress when verbal and initial stress when nominal or adjectival. Examples:

an'nex vs 'annex
con'tract vs 'contract
en'velope vs 'envelope
per'mit vs 'permit
re'ject vs 'reject
up'set vs 'upset

So in the verbal sense, I would only ever use ad'dress. But both ad'dress and 'address are acceptable for the noun.

(I just checked with my husband, a native of the Bay Area. He uses only 'address for the noun [in both senses] and only ad'dress for the verb.)
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Re: For Americans only: [‘ædrɛs] or [əd’rɛs]?

Postby Woods » 2015-12-13, 8:38

linguoboy wrote:NB: "Native American" is synonymous with "American Indian".

I was thinking about this while writing, but didn’t know how to actually say "a person native from English-speaking America" :) So I thought this one would be understood correctly, but not – thanks for the remark.

Well, I agree about the alteration noun/verb, and it’s actually very cool to stress if a word is a noun or a verb this way. So to me as well, as a verb, the word will always be /əd’res/, and my question was about the noun only.

Okay, so I’m going to keep saying /‘ædrɛs/ all the way through, sorry British people :) Actually, someone British (or Irish) here, can you say if this spelling sounds very un-native and not English to you?

The problem that occurs is that I’m recently experimenting with some British elements of pronunciation, and I guess doing so while keeping the American stressing of a word makes my English sound all messed up (like saying /‘adrɛs/ instead of /‘ædrɛs/ while speaking “kind of British” would make no sense, since the British say /əd’res/, the Americans might say /‘ædrɛs/, and /‘adrɛs/ doesn’t exist. The British used to say I spoke like an American, and so did the Americans, long ago. Then the Americans were saying I sounded like a European, and the last time someone (from San Francisco) commented on my pronunciation, he said it was “kind of French or I don’t know what.” It’s got nothing to do with French, but I guess it’s not recognisable as anything standard anymore, since it’s neither purely American nor purely British. It’s really tempting to test all the different types of pronunciation and experiment with them. I don’t need to stick to any of them, since no kind of English is spoken when I was born and grew up. But then this kind of problem appears – if I switch from American to British (or partly switch, or sometimes switch), they not only change the vowels and consonants, but they also change the stress and the words. So I’m wondering if I can still say /‘ædrɛs/ (or in this case /‘adrɛs/) while not speaking purely American, or it sounds wrong.

One more question – does anyone know why the word is written with a double d, if /əd’res/ is the more common pronunciation? Or is it more common only in Europe? Actually, didn’t English spelling actually form in Europe before it was exported to America, or did they set the standards later on, after the US’s language became equally important?

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Re: For Americans only: [‘ædrɛs] or [əd’rɛs]?

Postby TeneReef » 2015-12-20, 0:46

And as for detail detail?
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Re: For Americans only: [‘ædrɛs] or [əd’rɛs]?

Postby Dormouse559 » 2015-12-20, 2:24

Woods wrote:One more question – does anyone know why the word is written with a double d, if /əd’res/ is the more common pronunciation?
I don't see the pattern you talked about earlier, especially with words beginning in A. For counterexamples, take "attend", "attract", "arrest", "assure", which are always pronounced with final stress. All of these doubled consonants are etymological. I think what you're seeing is when an affix that begins with a vowel is placed after a stressed syllable containing a "short" vowel (IMD /æ ɑ ʌ ɛ ɪ ʊ ɜ˞/). So we get ship > shipped, blog > blogger, refer > referring, etc.

TeneReef wrote:And as for detail detail?
The noun-verb stress change is not a productive or fully uniform pattern. For me either pronunciation of "detail" can be used as either a noun or a verb.
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Re: For Americans only: [‘ædrɛs] or [əd’rɛs]?

Postby Woods » 2015-12-25, 9:34

“Attend,” “attract,” “arrest” and “assure” are all French words, originally spelt with a double tt/rr/ss:

attendre
attirer
arrêter
assurer


“Address” is also a French word, but it’s spelt with one d only:

adresse

That’s why I don’t understand why the d would double – if it was not to mark that the stress goes to the first syllable.

In addition, the words you mentioned are all verbs – and verbs tend to have the stress on the last syllable more often. Therefore I’ve never asked myself the question. However, I don’t understand why address – a noun from French origin originally spelt adresse would have the consonant after the first vowel double, if it was not to mark the stress.

You guys say /di’teil/ in the US? I’ve never heard this one.

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Re: For native Americans only: [‘ædrɛs] or [əd’rɛs]?

Postby Woods » 2015-12-25, 10:05

linguoboy wrote:en'velope vs 'envelope


Linguoboy, I just noticed you've written envelop as a verb with an e at the end - and it didn't seem quite right. I checked in the dictionary and I was right - it's spelt envelop as a verb and envelope as a noun.

French helps enormously with English spelling :)

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Re: For Americans only: [‘ædrɛs] or [əd’rɛs]?

Postby Dormouse559 » 2015-12-25, 19:54

Woods wrote:“Address” is also a French word, but it’s spelt with one d only
But where is it written that English spelling always mirrors French spelling? "Debt" is borrowed from "dette", but it got a silent B added anyway, and that was based on the Latin etymon. Anglophones like Latin. If "address" had formed in Latin as "addirectio", it would have had the <dd> that English adopted.

EDIT: I thought I put this in my previous post, but for some reason I deleted it: Perhaps the extra D is a latinization similar to "debt".

Woods wrote:In addition, the words you mentioned are all verbs – and verbs tend to have the stress on the last syllable more often.
"Address" was borrowed as a verb first. The noun entered the language later. And "arrest" gets final stress whether a verb or a noun.

Woods wrote:You guys say /di’teil/ in the US? I’ve never heard this one.
For me, it's /ˈdiːteɪ̯l/ or /dɪˈteɪ̯l/.

Woods wrote:French helps enormously with English spelling :)
Is this about "envelop" and "envelope"? Because both French equivalents are spelled with two P's.
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Re: [‘ædrɛs] or [əd’rɛs]?

Postby Woods » 2015-12-27, 8:57

[a. (14th c.) Fr. adresse-r, earlier adresce-r, adrece-r, adrecie-r (Pr. adreysar, Sp. aderezar, It. addirizzare):—late pop. L. *addrictiā-re, addirectiā-re; f. ad to + drictiā-re, directiā-re to make straight or right, f. drictum, dirictum, directum, straight, right: see dress and direct. The subseq. refashioning of a- to ad- occasional in the 15th c. Fr., has been permanently adopted in Eng.; see ad-.] (Oxford English Dictionary)

You're right :)

So the double d was taken from some "occasional refashioning in 15th Century French."


I know enveloppe and envelopper are written with a double p - but it just didn't make sense to have a final e in envelop when it's pronounced the way it is. So I thought - if it's not written as it is in French, it should be written according to the way it sounds - then it makes no sense to have the e... Whereas in envelope it does - because the o becomes /oʊ/ / /əʊ/.


One more thought - don't you guys think the double d has influenced the American pronunciation of the word?

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Re: [‘ædrɛs] or [əd’rɛs]?

Postby OldBoring » 2015-12-28, 14:02

I don't see any pattern in double consonant = stress.
But I've noticed a pattern that most often a double consonant after a stressed vowel is an indication that said vowel is “short”. Or… more in general: a vowel in a closed syllable (i.e. a syllable ending with a consonant) is generally short.

That must be why verbs stressed on the last syllable ending with only one consonant must have it doubled when adding endings:
stop /stɑp/
stopped /stɑpt/ (*stoped would be pronounced /stoʊpt/).

Of course in English there are always exceptions, and this rule is not always valid.

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But… this is irrelevant with address. I don't think if it were spelt adress, the pronunciation would be different, because influenced by the spelling.
On the other hand, when learning British English at school, we learnt to pronounce it with the stress on the first syllable. While it's in American media, that I often hear it with the stress on the second syllable.


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