How do you pronounce 'Tomato'?

Question

Is it :
To - mato or Toma - to?

GiiiIIggGGgggllLlLYyYyY GiGiGleEe ***Deep Breath***
Hee-Hee Haaaaaa-aaawwwaaaa. Sigh

OMG ... I'm on my back porch were everyone can hear me, and I've been sitting here immitating all of you're suggestions ... who knew there were so many ways to say tomato??? Anyways the neigbor's all think I'm fruity.

Answer 1

tah-may-tah

Answer 2

Tomato, as in "rhymes with potato"--Oh! I see.

T[h]uh-MEI-(d)ou.

The first "t" is aspirated--meaning you puff air out as you pronounce it. (I put an [h] mark there to denote aspiration; the real mark is supposed to be a small h elevated like an exponent right after the consonant that's supposed to be aspirated.) The first vowel, "o," is a schwa--the thing that looks like an upside-down "e"; but here I can't make the schwa mark, so I'll just write it as "uh." (If you've been linguistically trained, the schwa is an unstressed vowel immediately before or after a stressed vowel--in this case the stressed vowel is the "a," pronounced "ei"); next, the second "t" is actually not pronounced like a "t" in my dialect--it's a tap. A tap means the tip of the tongue touches the hard palate (roughly, the roof of your mouth) for just a split second, then releases. A common tap in American English is the "tt" in butter. Americans usually don't say "t" for "butter" as the British do--rather it's a tap that makes it sound like a "d": thus, "bu(d)er." That's the perfect example of a tap. So my "tomato" is pronounced with a tap on the second t. Finally, my "o" at the end is rounded: (ou). T[h]uh-MEI-(d)ou.

I'm capitalizing my stressed syllable here (MEI) for effect, but in liguistics, the stressed syllabe is usually denoted by a (') in front of it, like this t[h]uh-'mei-dou. And the tap is usually marked not like a d, but like a half-pi sign, which I can't make here. So let's just pretend the "(d)" is a tap mark.

t[h]u-'mei-(d)ou

p[h]u-'tei-(d)ou would be pronounced the same way, in my Californian English dialect.

If you're confused about aspiration, look at the word "pup."

How many types of p do you see there? Can you believe that the first p is different from the second p? It's true: The first p is aspirated (you blow air out while you pronounce it), while the second p is a stop, which means you cut off air at the end of it.
Just try it. Light a match and hold it to your mouth. Say the word "put" and see what happens to the flame. It goes out when you say the p, right? That's because you're aspirating the p--letting a gush of air out as you pronounce it. Now say the other type of p. Let's say the word "stop." Light another match and hold it to your mouth as you say "stop." Does the flame go out? No. That's because there is no air coming out of your lungs as you pronounce the p in "stop." This is called a stop, and in linguistics it's marked with a corner sign--something like this: ¬ (exept this one is on the wrong corner--but that's all I have on this keyboard; it should be framing the bottom-right corner, right after the letter.) So the word "pup" actually begins with an aspirated p: p[h], and ends with a p-stop: p¬. The word "pup" in linguistic notation looks something like this: p[h]Up¬. (I can't make the correct mark on this keyboard for the "u" sound, so I just capitalized it.)

So that's aspiration. And that's how I pronounce "tomato."

t[h]uh-'mei-(d)ou...and p[h]uh-'tei-(d)ou

I hope this helped in understanding my pronunciation!

=)

Answer 3

Tow-mah-tow

Like the Britons.

Answer 4

Tuh-may-tuh

Answer 5

Toe--may'-- toe

Sure looks funny typed out like that! like May stuck between 2 toes :-)

Answer 6

Louis Prima and Keeley Smith had a hit song about that -- 'You say tom-ato, and I say tom-ahto, you say pot-ato and I say pot-ahto; pot-ahto, pot-ato, tom-ahto, tom-ato, -- let's call the whole thing off..
Let's call the whole thing off is the name of the song, and it goes on through a whole variety of different pronounciations. If you can find it, give a listen. It's a really cute song.

Answer 7

/tə'mα:təu/ Br En
/tə'meıtəu/ Am En
plural form: tomatoes

Answer 8

In British English, we pronounce it
TOH-MAR-TOW

Answer 9

tomato cuz im british and the only way we say it lol

Answer 10

toe mate oo

Answer 11

toms - to im from the northern states