'W' Sound Of Sanctuary

Question

About the pronunciation of sanctuary, learner's English dictionaries say Brit 'sæ?kt?u?ri' and Ame 'sæ?kt?ueri'.But the voice of America, Merriam Webster says it's  'sa?(k)-ch?-?wer-e' (IPA : 'sæ?kt???weri).May I take it that a w sound like that is the exclusive property of General American?

CalifJim · Accepted Answer

anonymousMay I take it that a w sound like that is the exclusive property of General American?

No. Between /u/ and /e/ you're always going to have a sycophant W sound. It's hard to suppress without deliberate effort. Dictionaries don't always symbolize the phonetics in that much detail ("narrow transcription").

"you ate" = //ju^w'eit/

The Cambridge Dictionary has the same IPA for both varieties of English.

UK /?s?t?.u'e?.??n/
US /?s?t?.u'e?.??n/

If you click on the audio icons, however, you may find that for the US speaker the W is a bit more prominent. Whether this is a systematic difference between the UK and the US or a random difference between individual speakers, I do not know.

(By the way, "situation" is one of the most frequently mispronounced words by learners of English.)

The same observations apply for other words with that "ua" combination.

However, I did notice that Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary shows "sanctuary" as a three-syllable word for British English and as a four-syllable word for American English. /'sæ?k.t???.ri/ vs /'sæ?k.t?u.er.i/ In this case the /?/ makes a very muted W sound in the British version. The same dictionary uses the same IPA for for the British and the American pronunciation of "January", and yet the audio shows the same pattern of pronunciations for "January" as for "sanctuary". Dictionaries are not always completely consistent about these matters.

CJ

'W' Sound Of Sanctuary

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