words starting with "ex"

[Laurence Urdang]

Your comment about the pronunciation of ex- words is more a matter of phonetic transcription by M-W editors than a strict matter of pronunciation.  I call your attention to something that always confused me in my youth (spent with M-W Second Unabridged,  in which the final -y in words like city were transcribed as "short i," in other words, a sound identical to that in the cit- part.  I could not understand which Americans were saying (British-sounding) "siti" instead of "sitee," which is what I was hearing.  The same practices apply to the initial ex-often transcribed as "igz-" rather than "eks."
  It was not till I did the pronunciations for the Funk & Wagnalls International Edition (1956) and the Random House Unabridged (1966) that these sounds came to be transcribed as better described by the (IPA) [i] sound, as in peek.  The problem arose because of the convention of choosing between the transcription of the unstressed "short -i"  sound and the allophonic "ee" sound, which most dictionaries use today.
  L. Urdang
  ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
Sender: American Dialect Society
Poster: Scot LaFaive
Subject: Re: words starting with "ex"
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>Do you think this is correct for American dialect?

Which American dialect?

Scot


>From: Tom Zurinskas
>Reply-To: American Dialect Society
>To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
>Subject: words starting with "ex"
>Date: Sun, 22 Jul 2007 03:36:18 +0000
>
>---------------------- Information from the mail header
>-----------------------
>Sender: American Dialect Society
>Poster: Tom Zurinskas
>Subject: words starting with "ex"
>-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>Words starting with "ex"
>
>There are 64 words in the top 5,000 words of English that start with "ex"
>according to the word-count analysis of English media text by Collins
>Cobuild.
>They are listed below. Of interest is how the first sound of "ex" is
>pronounced
>by the speakers in m-w.com. They may say it with "short e" or "short i."
>They are faithful to the phonetic spelling that m-w.com provides.
>Without peeking at m-w.com, take the test. Which words take which
>pronunciations for "ex." Do you think this is correct for American
>dialect?
>
>The words are listed in order of popularity
>1 example
>2 experience
>3 except
>4 exactly
>5 expected
>6 expect
>7 exercise
>8 extent
>9 explain
>10 explained
>11 extra
>12 expression
>13 extremely
>14 existence
>15 expensive
>16 exist
>17 extreme
>18 expressed
>19 excellent
>20 exchange
>21 existing
>22 examination
>23 express
>24 extraordinary
>25 experienced
>26 explanation
>27 examples
>28 excitement
>29 executive
>30 extended
>31 excuse
>32 exciting
>33 expert
>34 existed
>35 exposed
>36 examined
>37 excited
>38 exact
>39 expansion
>40 experiences
>41 exists
>42 exercises
>43 experts
>44 experiment
>45 examine
>46 external
>47 experiments
>48 expenditure
>49 exhausted
>50 exception
>51 expense
>52 expecting
>53 extension
>54 extend
>55 explaining
>56 explosion
>57 exploitation
>58 examinations
>59 extensive
>60 expectations
>61 exhibition
>62 excess
>63 exposure
>64 explains
>
>
>
>
>According to m-w.com over eighty percent of the words start with "short i".
>In the count of word instances in text, it's eighty six percent. I
>personally believe that this is more UK than USA accent.
>
>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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