Pronounciation of "I" in words?

Question

I'm learning English.
I don't understand the Pronounciation of "I" in words."depress" and "desecrate" have a pronounciation of "I" in them,but "I" sounds quite different. "I" pronounced in "desecrate" likes the pronounciation of "er" in "center".
Could you tell me why there's a difference of pronouncing "I" in words?

Answer 1

It sounds like you do understand why the first e in "depress" sounds like a short i, but maybe it will help to look at that first.

Actually, the sound you're hearing is not precisely the same as a short i. That is, it is not exactly the same sound as the short i in "hit". That's "hit" is an ACCENTED syllable. When a short vowel (not just e) appears in an UN-accented syllable, it becomes a 'reduced vowel' that is often very close the the short i sound. In other cases the reduced vowel sound is closer to "uh", though again it is not identical.

This unaccented "uh" sound, and sometimes the unaccented i-sound, is often called "schwa" (or the i-version may be called "schwi" to distinguish it); sometimes the vowel almost seems to be swallowed or to hardly exist at all.

Note that ANY short vowel can end up pronounced this way when it loses the accent.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schwa
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unstressed_and_reduced_vowels_in_English
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phonological_history_of_English_high_front_vowels#Weak_vowel_merger

Whether the reduced vowel ends up sounding more like an "uh" or like a short i may vary some in different English dialects, but the other BIG factor is what consonant sounds surround this vowel. For instance, if you are pronouncing an "L" just after the vowel, the position of your mouth and especially your tongue for the the L makes it easier to pronounce a very short "uh" than a short i. (This only applies when you are NOT accenting the syllable.)

By the way, I completely disagree that this is because English speakers are all somehow lazy. It is a very common and natural occurrence in human language for adjacent sounds and where words are accented to affect surrounding sounds including the exact quality of a vowel.

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As for "desecrate" -- I'm not sure I understand what you're describing. The standard in both American English and British English would be very similar to the short i schwa of "depress", though it could very easily become more "uh"-like since the following k is pronounced further back than a p-sound is.

Compare the pronunciations of "depress" and "desecrate" -- both the unaccented e's are described by short i's-- in the following dictionary entries:
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/depress
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/desecrate

But you seem to be hearing an added R sound after that e. It is true, that there ARE dialects of English that tend to add r-sounds after vowels in places that seem unusual to the rest of us. For instance, Australians tack an "r" sound after an open vowel at the end of a word --pronouncing "idea" as "idear" and "law" as "lawr". Perhaps that's what you are hearing, though in the middle of a word before a k-sound is NOT a normal place for this to occur. It MAY just be a very local thing in some dialect, or even a mistake!

The origin of this added r, called an "intrusive r" (because it is not original) is described here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linking_consonant#Intrusive_R

Answer 2

In English, when a syllable is not stressed, we "run through" the vowel sound. No matter what the vowel is, it sounds like a short "u" or short "i" sound. Think of English speakers as lazy. We don't like to pronounce all the letters

Answer 3

I don't understand your saying there is an "I" in depress and desecrate. There isn't.

Depress has a long "e" - pronounced Dee-press.
Desecrate has 2 short "e's" - pronounced Deh-seh-crate.

I hope someone else can help you with your question about the "I".