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I'm wondering what mechanism puts a y sound (IPA /j/) into words like coupon, which presumably had none when it came into the language. French pronunciation would seem to indicate it would be pronounced [ˈkuːpɔ:n], not [ˈkjuːpɔ:n], but many people pronounce it the latter way.

Similarly, why do we have such a difference in a word like duke, which can be pronounced [djuːk] or [duːk], when dude only ever seems to be pronounced [duːd]?

addendum

An even more puzzling example, brought up in the comments below, is that of Houston, which is pronounced with the /j/ when it refers to the city in Texas, and without it when referring to the street in Manhattan.

Robusto
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    I think interpolating a "y" sound into *coupon* would be a "hypercorrection". It's not the same as, say, *duke* - which Brits (but not all Americans) pronounce as /djuːk/. – FumbleFingers Feb 19 '15 at 21:37
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    "Coupon" is "coup" followed by "pon". (Never mind that the first syllable is really open and there is only one "P" sound.) "Coup" is like a chicken coup, then tack on the "pon" sound. "Coupon". – Hot Licks Feb 19 '15 at 21:45
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    (There are some in the US, though, who pronounce it "cue-pon". But ever since the folks on TV started using "coup-pon" back about 1960 that pronunciation has gotten rarer and rarer.) – Hot Licks Feb 19 '15 at 21:46
  • Is it a regional thing, like pronouncing word as "woid" in Brooklyn and New Joisey? – Barmar Feb 19 '15 at 21:48
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    Really, duke and dude *should* have the same vowel. But you hear duke in movies where everyone speaks with an upper class British accent, and dude in movies where bowlers speak with laid-back California accents. And so these are the pronunciations you use. – Peter Shor Feb 19 '15 at 23:32
  • @FumbleFingers: I'm just wondering why it would be a hypercorrection, I mean of what? Nothing obvious jumps out at me. – Robusto Feb 20 '15 at 02:42
  • @HotLicks: I hear it both ways, from people with no agenda about the pronunciation. It seems to be simply unconscious. – Robusto Feb 20 '15 at 02:42
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    Thanks for using IPA: the non-IPA comments are not useful and should be revised or deleted so people can understand them. The reason you’re hearing them as different because /u/ and /ju/ are phonemically distinct in English: consider the minimal pair cute and coot. So it is not just allophonic variation. For the record, the French pronunciation would be /kupɔ̃/. – tchrist Feb 20 '15 at 03:23
  • It's true that /uː/ and /juː/ are separate phonemes in English, but there's historical overlap and therefore confusion. It depends on the preceding consonant, as mentioned above, but it's complicated. British speakers say 'duke' as [djuːk/ while lots of Americans say /duːk/. On the other hand, no-one says 'super' as /sjuːpə/ or /sjuːpɹ̩/ anymore, while everyone says 'human' as /hjuːmən/ [unless they drop the H]. This last example may be why Americans say 'Houston' as /hjuːstən/ which sounds odd to us Brits because here, words with 'ou' in the spelling never get the /j/. – David Garner Feb 20 '15 at 11:31
  • @Robusto: I'm quite familiar with the (primarily American) pronunciation where due, do and tune, 'toon are homonyms, but I'm not sure I've ever heard anyone use the /j/ version in a word like coupon (except maybe facetiously). Because Americans don't actually have "dukes", they probably hear the BrE pronunciation relatively more often than we might otherwise expect. Leading perhaps to the idea that our version is more "traditional, correct", which could then further lead to erroneously applying "the same" adjustment to other words where there's no historical basis for doing this. – FumbleFingers Feb 20 '15 at 13:54
  • @FumbleFingers: but you'd agree with what I said about Houston [as in Texas, not Houston St., NY?] – David Garner Feb 20 '15 at 14:04
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    @David Garner: I'm not that attuned to AmE! I've only just realised that HOOSTON is primarily an "erroneous" BrE version of the place whose inhabitants all call it HEWSTON. I'm probably like most Brits - I assume that one fits the general pattern, so out of respect for the natives I sometimes pronounce it the way I mistakenly thought they did. As does the BBC, apparently. – FumbleFingers Feb 20 '15 at 14:19
  • Regarding Houston: the street in NYC by that name is pronounced to rhyme with "house ton" . . . which makes one wonder where Texas got that pronunciation in the first place. – Robusto Feb 20 '15 at 14:30
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    @FumbleFingers They do have "The Dooks of Hazzard" including Daisy Dook. – Frank Feb 20 '15 at 14:46
  • @FumbleFingers: Thanks for that link - fascinating. Two points. (1) To repeat and expand, in BrE, 'ou' may represent /aʊ/, /əʊ/, /uː/ and a few others, but as far as I can think, never /juː/. When a Brit sees 'ou', the default is /uː/, in the same way that when English-speakers see 'th' in an unfamiliar word, they'll go for /θ/ not /ð/. (2) In the specific case of Houston, I think /huːstən/ took hold in the UK during early space-shots and won't let go now. It's amazing how often newspapers use it: "Hello, Euston, we have a problem." – David Garner Feb 20 '15 at 15:25
  • @David Garner: Yeah - but although I can just about believe s-YOU-per, s-YOU-et, c-YOU-pon as "facetiously affected upper-class" versions of super, suet, coupon, I can't really imagine anyone doing that with, say, m-YOU-stache. Anyway, noting *Tucson, so far as I'm concerned the name of any particular place in America is essentially what the natives call it (except for oddities like Houston*, where I guess I must now admit we Brits habitually get it "wrong"). – FumbleFingers Feb 20 '15 at 16:27
  • OK, so what is the correct way to say "Louisville", the major city in the US state of Kentucky? – Hot Licks Feb 20 '15 at 17:46
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    @Hot: What does that have to do with anything? – Robusto Feb 20 '15 at 17:48
  • @FumbleFingers Don't count me in with the 'habitually wrong Brits' - Houston has always been 'Hyoo-ston' since 'Houston, we've got a problem'. – Frank Feb 20 '15 at 18:29
  • @Frank: I honestly don't know if I'm in the majority (of Brits), but *Houston: Staying on the theme of American place names, the famous Texan city of Houston represents another phonetic role reversal. In words like “tuna”, it is normally the British who incorporate a y-sound even when the letter “y” is absent from the word itself {e.g. TYOO-na}. However, on this occasion, Americans—almost universally—pronounce Houston as “HYOO-stun,” whereas the British very often say “HOO-stun.”* – FumbleFingers Feb 20 '15 at 19:00
  • I'm pretty sure Houston is English (or at the very least British). I'd need to check but I'm quite confident that the Irish/Scottish Houstons are why Houston is so-called. (and hence the pronunciation). – Frank Feb 20 '15 at 19:12
  • The part of this question relating to the /j/ in "coupon" and "Houston" is not duplicated, but the part relating to "duke" is, by the following question: http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/232729/u-pronounced-ew – herisson Jul 13 '15 at 00:04
  • "Dude" is also a newer word, so any regularization that it might undergo could still be in its future. – user173897 May 12 '20 at 21:44

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Just guessing, but perhaps the /ju/, which came by breaking a high front rounded [y] in words borrowed from French, came to be regarded as a high prestige form. Then, hearing /u/, some English speakers interpreted that as a mistaken or low-class way of saying /ju/ and decided to correct it in their own pronunciations. If that's right, the /ju/ from earlier /u/ should turn up in words most easily interpreted as having been borrowed from French. Folk loan phonology.

Greg Lee
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    The /ju/ came from several places: the action of the Great Vowel Shift on the vowel /y/, which was actually used in Middle English for words of French origin like duke, and the action of the Great Vowel Shift on Middle English diphthongs like dew, which came from Old English diphthongs. See Wikipedia, which says that three different diphthongs and the vowel /y/ all got merged into /juː/. – Peter Shor Feb 20 '15 at 22:36