"fission" with -zh-?

[Jonathan Lighter]

"Fizhion" is what they've been saying on the news for years and years. I
suppose some still say "fission," but they must be a real minority.

JL

On Tue, Mar 15, 2011 at 3:58 PM, Wilson Gray <hwgray at gmail.com> wrote:

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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Wilson Gray <hwgray at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject:      Re: "fission" with -zh-?
>
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>
> On Tue, Mar 15, 2011 at 4:22 PM, Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu>
> wrote:
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> > Sender: Â  Â  Â  American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> > Poster: Â  Â  Â  Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU>
> > Subject: Â  Â  Â Re: "fission" with -zh-?
> >
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> >
> > At 12:11 PM -0700 3/15/11, geoffrey nunberg wrote:
> >>Listening to some nuclear energy experts talking about Japan on the
> >>radio this morning, I was led to wonder whether  "fission" is the
> >>only English word in which orthographic [Vssion] can be pronounced
> >>with a voiced fricative. When I checked with my graduate students, I
> >>was surprised to find that that's the pronunciation used by all but
> >>one of them (and the one is from S. Africa). If so, it must be by
> >>analogy with "fusion," right?
> >>
> >>Geoff
> >>
> >>
> > So I've always assumed, as with the shift from penult to ult stress
> > in "covert" on the model of "overt". Â Something there is that likes a
> > minimal pair. Â (Then there's the pronunciation of "transition" to
> > rhyme with "incision"...)
> >
> > LH
> >
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>
> Are speakers of BrE still under the impre[Z]ion that "equation" is
> pronounced "equa[S]ion"?
>
> --
> -Wilson
> -----
> All say, "How hard it is that we have to die!"---a strange complaint
> to come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
> -Mark Twain
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