How is the ending "ous" really spoken?
Tom Zurinskas
truespel at HOTMAIL.COM
Thu Jul 5 21:20:05 UTC 2007
The sounds for the ending "-ous" in USA English as spoken in m-w.com.
There are 25 words in the top 5,000 words of English that end in "ous"
as per the multi-million word count analysis of media text by Collins
Cobuild.
Of these, 80% as spoken in m-w.com take the sound ~is, as in "kiss" (~kis).
Based on this large sample set, this trend is conclusive. Thus, all words
ending
in "ous" are spelled phonetically ~is for consistency in the truespel
dictionary.
Interestingly, this study was started in June 07. Backslashes were used
in the phonetic spelling by m-w.com then. But as of today July 5, all
backslashes have been removed from m-w.com phonetic spelling.
Tom Zurinskas, USA - CT20, TN3, NJ33, FL5+
See truespel.com - and the 4 truespel books plus "Occasional Poems" at
authorhouse.com.
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