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I'm an English learner, and I have had this question troubling me for a really long time.

In the word "magically", we do not pronounce the "a", so it is pronounced just "magicly," like most adverbs having the "-ally."

But in the word internationally, we pronounce it as its full form. So is there a rule for this and are there any words which are similar to "internationally"?

tchrist
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    I don't think you'll find any hard and fast rules about the development of pronunciation. – marcellothearcane Jul 29 '19 at 16:35
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    From the full OED: magically - Brit. /ˈmadʒᵻkli/, U.S. /ˈmædʒək(ə)li/, internationally - Brit. /ˌɪntəˈnaʃn̩əli/, /ˌɪntəˈnaʃn̩l̩i/, /ˌɪntəˈnaʃənl̩i/, /ˌɪntəˈnaʃ(ə)nəli/, U.S. I think what that means is both sides of the pond some people articulate the first vowel in both these *-ally* suffixes (for those two specific words), and some don't. – FumbleFingers Jul 29 '19 at 16:43
  • I say that 'a' in magically, practically, tactically, etc, so your notion that "we" do not pronounce it is false. Also I have heard people omit it in 'internationally'. – Michael Harvey Jul 29 '19 at 21:51
  • It's not just the "A"; it's any unstressed vowel, however it's spelled. Unstressed vowels can be spelled with any vowel letter, since letters don't determine sounds, or stress. And it's not just adverbs; it can happen to any word. There are a lot of rules, but one stands out -- in a long word the unstressed vowels will be reduced, centralized, and/or deleted. Listen to the way native speakers pronounce them in natural speech. – John Lawler Jul 30 '19 at 02:14
  • I think I'd be more likely to pronounce the penultimate "a" in "internationally" than in "magically". I think it's to do with stressing and rhythm: "internationally" calls for three stressed/unstressed patterns (trochees) over 6 syllables, although the third pair "ally" is weakened. "magically" fits a stress-unstress-unstress (dactyl). When pronouncing a really long word that we don't say very often, the stress pattern will often be a bit exaggerated or off because stress helps us remember words. – Stuart F Feb 13 '23 at 09:45

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In a comment, John Lawler wrote:

It's not just the "A"; it's any unstressed vowel, however it's spelled. Unstressed vowels can be spelled with any vowel letter, since letters don't determine sounds, or stress. And it's not just adverbs; it can happen to any word. There are a lot of rules, but one stands out -- in a long word the unstressed vowels will be reduced, centralized, and/or deleted. Listen to the way native speakers pronounce them in natural speech.

tchrist
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  • This is a good description of vowel weakening, but it won't explain the OP's issue. The OP's case is one of compression. The process is: schwa + sonorant (in coda) + vowel--> syllabic sonorant + vowel --> sonorant (in onset) + vowel. – Araucaria - Him Jul 30 '19 at 04:58
  • @Araucaria: Your description of the process doesn't account for the distinction between magically and internationally that the OP asked about. – herisson Jul 30 '19 at 05:53
  • @sumelic That's cuz it wasn't an answer! However, OP is wrong in that an /nli/ ending is absolutely perfectly possible there. It may be less pervasive than with 'magically', but there's already a syllabic consonant/potential compression there preceding the /l/ or schwa. – Araucaria - Him Jul 30 '19 at 06:00
  • Related. – tchrist Feb 13 '23 at 03:37
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It's rarely mandatory to pronounce -ally as one syllable

In the word "magically", we do not pronounce the "a"

Not necessarily. As Michael Harvey said in a comment, some speakers do have a four-syllable pronunciation of magically. The Merriam-Webster entry for magical indicates that the pronunciation of magically can be either /ˈmædʒɪkəli/ or /ˈmædʒɪkli/.

so it is pronounced just "magicly" like most adverbs having the "ally"

This generalization is a bit too broad. Magically falls into the more specific class of -ically adverbs, which commonly have pronunciations in /ɪkli/. But as you've found, there are other -ally adverbs (such as internationally) that are commonly pronounced with /əli/. In fact, I wouldn't say internationally is an outlier at all.

I think a reasonable rule to follow would be to use /ɪkli/ in -ically adverbs, /fli/ in certain -fully adverbs (such as beautifully or awfully), and /əli/ in any other adverb spelled with a vowel letter followed by -lly.

Many -ly adverbs have optional shortened pronunciations

As John Lawler said in his comment, many long words have shortened pronunciations that drop an unstressed vowel. I wrote an answer to a previous question about the pronunciation of the adverbs "personally" and "finally" that has some information about this.

As the comments beneath your question indicate, internationally may be shortened by dropping the vowel after /ʃ/. It may even be possible for some speakers to drop the vowel between the /n/ and /l/, even if that pronunciation is not listed in dictionaries.

But these kinds of optional shortenings are often variable and difficult to perceive or precisely describe, and so for a non-native speaker, it may not be very effective to try to reproduce these pronunciations. So I won't try to give a rule about where or when those kinds of reduced pronunciations are likely to occur.

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herisson
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  • principally, humbly, etc – Araucaria - Him Jul 30 '19 at 06:09
  • @Araucaria: "humbly" is not spelled with a vowel letter + -lly. "Principally" is missed by the rule that I suggested, but I didn't expect it to have perfect coverage. I wouldn't recommend aiming for /pl/ in "municipally", so I don't think I could easily modify the rule to include principally – herisson Jul 30 '19 at 06:25
  • It's the same loss of a schwa before an /l/ at the end of an -ly adverb. Spelling's not the issue here. – Araucaria - Him Jul 30 '19 at 06:31
  • @Araucaria: I disagree. For one thing, the original poster is a learner who phrased the question in terms of "not pronounc[ing] the 'a'" in magically. I don't think words that are spelled with a -bly are likely to give as much trouble for somebody in this situation. And setting that aside, I think that many -bly adverbs simply don't have any commonly used alternative form pronounced with /bəli/, so I don't think they should be explained as just resulting from the same process as optionally compressed variants of words containing the suffix -al followed by -ly. – herisson Jul 30 '19 at 07:09
  • @Araucaria: For comparison, adjectives ending in -ble and -al often correspond to -ity nouns with non-rhyming pronunciations (for example, invisible goes to invisibility but legal goes to legality) so I don't see why it would be implausible that they might likewise correspond to -ly adverbs with (potentially) different pronunciations. – herisson Jul 30 '19 at 07:14
  • But they do indeed have a commonly used alternative form pronounced with /bəli/. Check in LPD or similar. And it's exactly the same process. Whether you want to cover it or not here is another matter. – Araucaria - Him Jul 30 '19 at 09:23
  • @Araucaria: Unfortunately, I don't own the LPD. Does it show /bəli/ pronunciations for all words ending in -bly, including ones with unstressed -able or -ible like invisibly or agreeably, or only for ones like humble and stable, where there is only one syllable before the /b/? While there is variation in the pronunciation of some adverbs derived from adjectives spelled with -le (perhaps more than I thought), I do think that there is a real difference in frequency between the use of /bəli/ for -bly and /əli/ for -ally. – herisson Jul 30 '19 at 10:00
  • @Araucaria: Anyway, if you know a better rule unrelated to the spelling for when we tend to see /əli/ vs. /li/, I'd be happy to know of it. I started to write a section about consonant clusters, but I stopped because there's so many possible cases to cover, and even phonotactically "impossible" clusters are probably possible as the output of fast speech compression. – herisson Jul 30 '19 at 10:18
  • I really think that I'm less likely to use /bli/ in globally than in nobly, and that I'm less likely to use /tli/ in mentally than in gently. I could be imagining that, or it might all be explained by some other factor like relative frequencies of the words, but I don't see why there couldn't be lexicalized differences in this area. – herisson Jul 30 '19 at 10:21