Jeff Adkins contributed:
>I'll bet you get a variety of answers on this one, given our international
>audience!
Not just international but regional variations too. Where I come from,
in the North of England, grass has the same hard 'a' as in 'cat'.
Southerners lengthen their 'a' sound as in 'car'. This can lead to
problems of inconsistency when e.g. 'I'm leading an ass up a grass path!'
:-)
>
>But just to stimulate responses, I'll throw my two cents worth in here. This
>is how I pronounce them, not how the dictionary says to pronounce them
>necessarily. All caps is the emphasized syllable:
I've added North of England versions below the pasted examples from which
they vary.
>
>altitude "AL-ti- too-deh" (very small "eh")
"Al-ti-tyood"
>fiducial "fid- OO-shull"
"fid-yoo-see-al"
>pendulum "PEND - yool - um" or sometimes "PEN -jew- lum"
The first example.
>polaris "po -LARE - iss"
"po-lar-is 'lar' as in 'car'
>zenith "ZEE - nith"
"Zeh-nith" 'zeh' as in 'pet'
Tony Moss
