pronounciation?

Question

why do we pronouce the word premise as premiss, but we pronounce compromise as compromice?

Answer 1

This is, I think, at least a partial explanation of how the distinction came about:

1) Note first that the pronunciation of the ending "ise" in "compromise" is the same as it is in almost every other English word with this ending. The "iss" sound is, so far as I can find, limited to just FOUR words: anise, premise, promise and precise.

2) Now note that in the first three of these the "ise" syllable is unaccented and, as a result, the "i" is pronounced is short. ALL the words with with "ise" at the end (including the many that in American English, and some British circles, is written "ize") have a "long i" and in nearly all of them this syllable has the primary or secondary accent in the word. ("Precise" seems to be the ONLY exception to the basic pattern.)

3) Originally "short i" and "long i" were really related in English, as they still are in other European languages. (Observe that if you lengthen the sound of the "i" of "bit" the word sounds like "beet", which is how long i was once pronounced in general. ) The "ay" sound that we now call "long i" is a result of the "Great Vowel Shift" that took place at the very end of Middle English (and was part of the shift to Modern English), ca. the 15th century.

This mysterious vowel shift (for which there are many interesting theories, several based on population shifts or sociological changes as a result of the Black Death) is at least partly responsible for MANY odd spelling/pronunciation problems of modern English (including the various pronunciations of "ough", which had a consistent pronunciation [with gh sounding much like the ch of "loch" and German "ach"]).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Vowel_Shift

Note too that when English words end with a long vowel followed by an -s (or -se), it is much more common for that s to be voiced (that is, to make the /z/ sound). This is not too surprising, since the vowel itself uses the voice. But when the syllable is UN-accented and the vowel is SHORT the s (often written with ss) is much more likely to be the unvoiced /s/ sound. So, "promise" and "compromise" are following these common tendencies of the language.

Answer 2

The spelling of many languages does not give us the correct pronunciation of words. There are different pronunciations for one or some letters together. For example the letter "s" can be pronounced both "s" and "z" in different words. Also, you can find i, ei, ie, eo, oe, ee having the same pronunciation. Of course it happens because all languages of the world are always changing. Spelling changes much more slowly than pronunciation. It means that in the past when people wrote one word with the letter "s" and another with "c" or other letters which today have similar pronunciations, these letters in those words were pronounced differently.

Answer 3

pro‧nun‧ci‧a‧tion [pruh-nuhn-see-ey-shuhn]

–noun 1. the act or result of producing the sounds of speech, including articulation, stress, and intonation, often with reference to some standard of correctness or acceptability.
2. an accepted standard of the sound and stress patterns of a syllable, word, etc.: He said the pronunciation of “curl” is /kɜrl/ 3. the conventional patterns of treatment of the sounds of a language: the pronunciation of French.
4. a phonetic transcription of a given word, sound, etc.: The pronunciation of “pheasant” is /ˈfɛzənt/

Answer 4

That's just the was the English language works.

and it's pronUnciation, not pronOUnciation, even though it's from the word pronOUnce

Answer 5

English is such a strange language.
Try this:
"ghoti"

gh as in rough
O as in women
ti as in nation

Incidentally I wonder if any country can be described as a rough women nation

Answer 6

Totally. Language is weird.