How to figure out the pronunciation of a word you've never seen before

Question

After looking through the forum, it seems like there's no correct way to break syllables apart. So how do English speakers figure out how to pronounce a word they have never seen before? (Please give some examples if possible) Any help would be appreciated, thank you.

CalifJim · Accepted Answer

Welcome to English Forums!
I assume you are referring to the case where a speaker has never seen or heard the word before. In that case, you can always guess on the basis of other words with similar spellings, but the only way to be sure is to look it up in the dictionary or ask someone else who can be trusted to know the correct pronunciation.
CJ

MissMandy · Answer

CJ is right, the only way to know for sure is to ask someone you trust. I introduce all of my students to the Merriam Webster online dictionary for pronunciation because I have found them to have the best searchable audio clips, and they speak as Americans generally do (they incorporate glottal stops and such). There is probably an equivalent dictionary for British speakers, but I don't knw what it is.

Yet, native speakers can often correctly "guess" the syllable stress of a word intuitively. We usually do this without realizing it, based on suffixes, which dictate many words' stressed syllable. For instance, words that end in -ic or -tion will be stressed on the second to last syllable. It doesn't matter how many syllables long a word is, we will count backward.
Here are some examples with -ic and -tion.
-ic: clas~~sic, fan~~tas-tic, e-co-nom-ic, en-thu-si-as-tic
-tion: na~~tion, con~~di-tion, in-tu-i-tion, spec-i-fi-ca-tion
You can see how it would be hard to find the pattern because the syllable stress seems to change from the first, to the second, to the third, etc, syllable. But there is a pattern to it. Unfortunately, there is a pattern for each specific suffix, so they all need to be learned independently if you're no a native speaker.

Hope that helps!
~Miss Mandy

Anonymous · Answer

Essentially it's a guessing game that you win more if you know more about the origins of English words. Take for example the (ridiculously long) Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis. If you break it up you get pneumono-ultra-microscopic-silico-volcano-con-iosis. At this point you look for similar letter combinations (ie pneumonia (pronounced nimonia) or pneumatic (pronounced noomatic)) and generally go off the pronunciation of these words. "Ultra" and "micro" are words in their own right and their pronunciation is basically static (Ulltruh and "my crow"). "Scopic" is actually a part of the word "microscopic" and thus would be pronounced "scawpick" instead of "scope-ic". "Silico" is pretty clearly related to "silicon" so you'll likely pronounce it "silicon" without the N. "Volcano" is its own word in English, pronounce it as normal. "Con" is pronounced with the "unstressed vowel" the schwa, because . "-iosis" is in a bunch of disease names and is usually pronounced the same way in all of these (as eye-oh-sis). Put all this together and you get "Noomono-ultra-my-crow-scawpic-silicoh-volcano-cunn-eye-oh-sis". This is pretty close to its actual pronunciation.

Anonymous · Answer

Anonymous(ie pneumonia (pronounced nimonia)

Certainly not pronounced that way by a lot of English speakers. Many pronounce it as new-monia.

Anonymouspneumatic (pronounced noomatic))

In North American pronunciation. In English pronunciation that is not North American, it is new-matic.

Anonymous"Scopic" is actually a part of the word "microscopic" and thus would be pronounced "scawpick" instead of "scope-ic"

In North American pronunciation. In English pronunciation that is not North American, it is sko-pik. The first syllable being pronounced as the first syllable in Scotch and Scotland.

Anonymous"-iosis" is in a bunch of disease names and is usually pronounced the same way in all of these (as eye-oh-sis).

In North American pronunciation. In English pronunciation that is not North American, it is ee-oh-sis.

Put all this together and you get "New-mono-ultra-my-crow-sko-pic-silicoh-volcano-con-ee-oh-sis". This is pretty close to its pronunciation outside North America.

How to figure out the pronunciation of a word you've never seen before

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