When to pronounce long u as "yoo" or "ooo"

Question

Can you look at a word and see if a "u" should be pronounced as "ooo" or "yoo" by using some set of rules, or do you just have to know the correct pronunciation ahead of time?

For example:

cop[u]late "yoo"
l[u]minate "ooo"
r[u]minate "ooo"
imm[u]ne "yoo"
cons[u]me  "ooo"
comm[u]ne "yoo"

New York drops its yod half way across the Atlantic (travelling westwards). — Edwin Ashworth, Sep 04 '15 at 18:27
You might want to include t[u]ne “yoo” in British English (at least some forms), which sounds strange to this American ear. — Arm the good guys in America, Oct 29 '17 at 16:58

Peter Shor · Answer 1 · 2015-09-05T11:46:12.443

3

I believe the following are reasonable guidelines (although there are numerous exceptions, like cuckoo).

For words that came from Middle English, in standard British English you pronounce long u as "oo" if it follows an "l", "r", "sh", "ch", or "j" sound; and "yoo" otherwise.

In standard American, you can pronounce long u as "oo" if it follows an "l", "r", "sh" "ch", "j", "n", "t", "d", "s", "z" or "th" sound; and "yoo" otherwise.

This phenomenon is called "yod dropping" and exactly what consonants trigger it varies widely with the specific dialect of English (and maybe even the speaker). See Wikipedia.

For foreign words, like kudos, sushi, and puma, all bets are off. All of these were pronounced "oo" in their original languages, but English speakers may (fairly randomly) decide to pronounce some of them with the spelling pronunciation.

edited Sep 05 '15 at 11:46

answered Sep 04 '15 at 19:07

Peter Shor

88,407

Great info! And knowing its called yod dropping is also helpful. – chiliNUT Sep 04 '15 at 19:18
1

Yep. Syllable structure/word stress also affects yod-dropping: compare menu and renew or value and allure. – herisson Sep 05 '15 at 02:57
2

I can imagine someone saying pyuma. I can just about accept kyudos. But syushi?!? Surely not! @sumelic Allure is an interesting case since it’s pronounced both with and without yod on both sides of the Atlantic. – Janus Bahs Jacquet Sep 05 '15 at 12:40
Also, how is cuckoo an exception? The u is /ɵ/, and the only /uː/ in the word is oo (= from a pre-Great Vowel Shift /oː/) and never had a yod to drop. – Janus Bahs Jacquet Sep 05 '15 at 12:43
@Janus: Nobody says syushi. I was including it to show that sometimes people add an extraneous yod and sometimes they don't. (The only pronunciations in some British dictionaries are kyudos and pyuma — although kyudos sounds horrible to me, since it's usually yodless in the U.S.) And cuckoo is an exception only if you use the most common American pronunciation, which has two /uː/s. – Peter Shor Sep 05 '15 at 12:58
@PeterShor Oh thank god. Syushi would just about have destroyed my faith in the English-speaking part of humanity. (And both pyuma and kyudos sound terrible to me as well, dictionaries be damned. But then, the typical American kudose [ˈkuːˌdoʊs/z] sounds dreadful to me as well…) – Janus Bahs Jacquet Sep 05 '15 at 13:00
@JanusBahsJacquet: Actually, "cuckoo" seems to be a relatively recent borrowing from French, and it was not affected by the Great Vowel shift -- it never had /oː/, the "oo" spelling is just to represent the sound /uː/. – herisson Sep 05 '15 at 16:08
3

@sumelic: Cuckoo goes back to 1240, so it should have been affected by the Great Vowel shift. And it had various spellings, probably representing various vowels, including /oː/, in Middle English (among the ones the OED gives are cuccu, koko, kookoo). The fact that it was imitative probably helped it to resist the Great Vowel shift to some extent – for example, I can't imagine it being pronounced cowcow, which would be the shift from the original French pronunciation /kuːkuː/. – Peter Shor Sep 05 '15 at 16:47

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Feb 07 '24 at 13:09

Whether u says /oo/ or /yoo/ is determined by whether or not the preceeding consonant is voiced (vibrates the voice box) or unvoiced.

Some guidelines for when ‘u’ says /oo/ or /yoo/ are: It usually says /oo/ when it follows a voiced consonant (g, j, l, y, s, r, z). It usually says /yoo/ when it follows an unvoiced consonant (b, d, p, c, f, h, t).

As languages evolve both in pronunciation and dialect, this 'rule' is weakened somewhat, however it does still hold true in the majority of cases.

Learn a rule and figure out exceptions through exposure is what I always say.

In your second list, b and d are voiced, not unvoiced. Maybe you should give a good list of examples and pronunciations to confirm your rules. — Mitch, Feb 07 '24 at 15:56

When to pronounce long u as "yoo" or "ooo"

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