Mansion

Question

I have an Elvis Presley gospel CD and one of the songs is Mansion Over The Hilltop. Elvis pronounces "mansion" [mænt??n]. I find that quite peculiar. Is it a common pronunciation in the USA? Webster's Dictionary certainly doesn't know it.
Thank you for your comments,
CB

Kooyeen · Accepted Answer

Ha! I'm so glad you are confused about that! Because that's a thing I've asked everyone, everywhere!

Ok, talking about American English... as far as I know (what I learned), sometimes when you have a N followed by an S, you get an "intrusive" T between them (call it what you want). And that happens with N + SH too.
Before I learned that feature, I mispronounced all my N's, so I used to pronounce PRINCE and PRINTS quite differently. Now they would come out pretty much the same. Merriam-Websters points out that phenomenon in its transcriptions: PRINCE is /prin(t)s/ - they put a T in parentheses.

The problem with N + SH is that if you put a T before SH, T+SH is very similar to CH (as in CHERRY). So similar that IPA transcriptions actually use /t/ + the symbol for SH when they want to give a transcription for CH... --> t + ? = t?
However, it seems T + SH is not exactly the same as CH, at least when speaking at normal speed. In other words, MANSION is actually MANT-SHUN, which sounds very similar to something like MAN-CHUN, but it's not exactly the same.

I can't be 100% sure though, because it's something I've never really understood, but in my opinion T + SH is not exactly the same as CH at normal speed, so MANSION is not really MAN-CHUN, but it's MANT-SHUN, which sounds very close. In fast or careless speech (or in songs), I'm afraid you're gonna get a real CH sound though.
Just my opinion.

By the way, this issue comes up when you look at certain transcriptions in some dictioneries. My Longman and Oxford both say CENTURY is SEN-CHURY, but Merriam-Webster gives SEN(T)-SHURY instead. This is confusing, darn.

Cool Breeze · Answer

Hi Kooyeen
Thank you for your comments. I've never heard anybody pronounce century without a t-sound. The wovel after the sibilant in mansionmay of course vary from region to region. What amazes me is the t in the pronunciation. I wonder if it's typical of uneducated speech only? After all, Elvis was an average student at school, did extremely little writing in his lifetime and his father was barely literate.

Cheers, CB

Kooyeen · Answer

Well, I think I never heard words like "attention" pronounced without that kind of CH sound! Pay attenchon! Playboy Manchon. One choov done it... (once you've done it...).

N + SH ---> N + T + SH ---> almost like: N + CH.

As I said, I still believe it's different from N + CH, even though it sounds very very similar. You'd need a native speaker to find out more...

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