NU-meral, NU-merical

Question

Hi,all of my dictionaries don't make a distinction between the NU in numeral and the NU in numerical, but Merriam Webster DOES.The distinction they make is, main stress on NU =&gt; New (Numeral)main stress not on NU =&gt; Noo, oo as in book (Numerical)Any (American) advice? Thanks

BarbaraPA · Accepted Answer

I'm pretty sure - although after I say it ten times each way they both sound weird - new MARE ih cull not nuh...

Kooyeen · Answer

LOL, they both sound weird after some time? Interesting...

Anyway, I see, thanks. There must be so many different ways to pronounce certain words...

It's just that I always check in more than one dictionary to be sure how to pronounce something. Merriam-Webster seems the best for pronunciations...
For example, it's the only one that breaks California into Ca-li-for-nia. The others (like thefreedictionary.com, American Heritage, etc.) say Cal-i-for-nia. The difference is that including the L in CAL makes it a final L in a syllable, and therefore it's darker. Ok, I know I'm way too picky...

CalifJim · Answer

Any unstressed oo (moon) is going to reduce somewhat, perhaps even to oo in book, so I'm not surprised by M-W's notation. Nevertheless, oo

is fairly resistant to reduction, so within a given population you're going to hear various shades of oo in the unstressed syllables.

Personally, for numerical I use oo (moon) in slower speech and oo (book) in faster speech.

CJ

Kooyeen · Answer

Very, very interesting... Thanks. <img class='emoticon' style='Width:19px;Height:19px;' data-delaysrc='https://uat-englishforward-forums-backend.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/Emoticons/1.gif' src='https://uat-englishforward-forums-backend.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/Emoticons/1.gif' alt='Emotion: smile'/>

NU-meral, NU-merical

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