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A friend said that epitome is pronounced as epi-tuh-mi and not epi-tome (with the tome like home). Who is right? Also, is the pronunciation purely dependent on the region where you learnt English?

Uticensis
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Lelouch Lamperouge
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2 Answers2

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Epitome comes from Greek but it was introduced in English via the Medieval French épitomé. It's now very rarely used in French, really found only in scholarly works.

Note the acute accent at the end. This is why you pronounce it with an 'i'. For instance: Beauté => Beauty.

Uticensis
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Alain Pannetier Φ
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As reported by the NOAD and the OED, Epitome is pronounced /əˈpɪdəmi/ in American English and /ɪˈpɪtəmi/ (or /ɛˈpɪtəmi/) in British English.

apaderno
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  • Both the American Heritage and Merriam-Webster dictionaries say that it's pronounced /ɪˈpɪtəmi/ in American English as well. Of course, it's difficult to tell /ə/ from /ɪ/ in an unstressed syllable. – Peter Shor Apr 21 '11 at 12:13
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    @Peter Shor Usually, in American English a non accented t that is not at the beginning (nor at the end) of a word is pronounced /d/, as in Italy; Ito, Prince Hirobumi; cartage; Carter, Angela; aorta; etc. – apaderno Apr 21 '11 at 12:24
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    @kiamlaluna: But if this is a feature of your accent (definitely not universal in American English), you distinguish between a "t" and the "d" by the length of the preceding vowel, so catty and caddy are still pronounced differently, even if the "t" and "d" are pronounced the same. With due respects to the NOAD, I think prescribing the /d/ in pronunciation guides is just likely to confuse everybody. – Peter Shor Apr 21 '11 at 12:40
  • @Peter Shor No, it is not a feature of my accent. The NOAD is not the only American dictionary that reports that pronunciation of Italy. See also Why is "t" sometimes pronounced like "d" in American English?. As for the pronunciation of catty and caddy, the NOAD reports that both the words are pronounced /ˈkædi/. – apaderno Apr 21 '11 at 12:48
  • @Peter Shor To notice that one of the answers of that question contains a link to a Merriam-Webster's post: Do Americans pronounce T like D? – apaderno Apr 21 '11 at 13:04
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    @kiamlaluna: I believe the NOAD is wrong; they're pronounced differently. See the vowel length wikipedia page. Catty is pronounced /ˈkædi/ while caddy is pronounced[ˈkæˑdi]. What happened phonetically is presumably that once the length of the vowel became a distinguishing mark between voiced and unvoiced consonants, Americans became lazy about distinguishing their t's from d's in certain situations. – Peter Shor Apr 21 '11 at 13:14
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    @kiamlaluna: thanks for the links. So, to summarize, Americans do distinguish between the phonemes /t/ and /d/ at the beginning of unstressed syllables, but many do this just by lengthening the previous syllable. Most of them probably don't even realize they're pronouncing the "t" and "d" the same in catty and caddy. This does mean the phonemes "t" and "d" merge between two unstressed syllables, so the last two syllables of quantity and chickadee would be pronounced identically. Brits then hear Americans as pronouncing "t"s and "d"s identically. – Peter Shor Apr 21 '11 at 13:55
  • @Peter Shor It's kiamlaluno, not kiamlaluna. The American Accent Training (ISBN 0-7641-1429-8), which is edited and published in the United States of America, reports that the pronunciation of Italy is (they don't use the IPA) id'ly, and the pronunciation of "Betty bought a bit of better butter" is "Beddy bä də bihda bedder budder." I am not talking of the difference between t and d, which is well clear to any American, but how the t is pronounced in American English. – apaderno Apr 21 '11 at 13:59
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    @kiamlaluno even the website that you linked from www.learnersdictionary.com says "t" is not pronounced "d", but it's a different sound, a "flap/tap". – Bogdan Lataianu Apr 23 '11 at 07:44
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    If anybody's still reading this, I just realized why Americans use a /dʒ/ in the pronunication of congratulations. It was probably originally pronunced /kənˌgrætjuˈleɪʃənz/, much closer to the British pronunciation. I suspect that first, the /t/ turned into a /d/, and then the /dj/ turned into a /dʒ/, giving /kənˌgrædʒuˈleɪʃənz/. (Merriam-Webster says both /tʃ/ and /dʒ/ are valid pronunciations, but does not mention /tj/; I use /dʒ/.) – Peter Shor May 09 '11 at 16:00
  • The NOAD reports /kənɡrætʃəˈleɪʃən/ as pronunciation of congratulation. – apaderno May 09 '11 at 19:31