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I was listening to the broadcasting of esport games(league of legends).

As a non-native speaker, I found out that most of the time both the play-by-play caster and colored caster tend to ignore the sound of "nite" in "definitely".

From \ˈde-fə-nit-lē, to \ˈde-fən.-lē.

The syllable length between the two pronunciation is slightly different, if I had heard it correctly.

Why is the "nit" part being omitted? It sounded very unnatural.

Jerry Ho
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    Omitting the syllable nite would give ‘defily’ /ˡdefəli/, which I don’t recall hearing. Reducing the very common variant [ˡdefnətli] to just [ˡdefn̩ᵗli] or even [ˡdefn̩li], however, sounds quite normal and commonplace to me. It’s really just letting the /ə/ be swallowed by the /n/ and then reducing /ntl/ to /nl/, which isn’t really that extreme. – Janus Bahs Jacquet Oct 21 '18 at 11:26
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    It seems to me that one is more likely to hear the first "i" omitted than any other part of the word. – Hot Licks Oct 21 '18 at 18:26
  • @JanusBahsJacquet

    It took me a while, but combining your comments and a native speaker friend, I finally understand the reasoning behind all the omitting syllables.

    Thank you!

     – Jerry Ho Dec 20 '18 at 08:58
  • @HotLicks Thank you, too! I can only mention one ppl in one comment, sorry for that! – Jerry Ho Dec 20 '18 at 08:59

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The phonetician Jack Windsor Lewis has a web page about pronunciations like this: "How English is Really Pronounced". I quoted it in my answers to two related questions, "Is it common to pronounce 'only' as 'own-knee'?" and Pronunciation of "Personally" and "Finally"

Here is the part that I think is relevant to this particular question:

  1. Longer adverbs ending with -ly are particularly prone to reduction in unselfconscious speech very widely receiving a syllable fewer than is so often indicated in dictionaries. Among examples of this are previously, seriously, immediately and invariably which generally lack any sound corresponding to the internal i of their spelling.
herisson
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  • I imagine Windsor Lewis must be referring to AmE in his §8 here; I’ve certainly never heard a BrE speaker pronounce immediately with “any sound corresponding to the internal i_”, since the internal _i quite consistently palatalises and affricates the preceding /d/ in all but very careful speech. The first i can easily be elided, as can the /ə/, the /t/, and the vowel quality of the internal /i/ – but not its effect on the /d/. You can chop it down to /ˈmiːʤli/, but not to /ˈmiːdli/ (or even the much less reduced /ɪˈmiːdətli/). – Janus Bahs Jacquet Oct 21 '18 at 19:30
  • It took me a while, but combining your comments, the link from Dr. Jack Windsor Lewis, and a native speaker friend, I finally understand the reasoning behind all the omitting syllables. Thank you! – Jerry Ho Dec 20 '18 at 09:00