Words starting with letter 'e'

Question

Are there any rules please, when a word starts with letter 'e' like echo, excuse, encode, economy, whether it is pronunced with sounds /e/ or /?/?

Fivejedjon · Accepted Answer

If the syllable is stressed, e is never pronounced /?/.

Anonymous · Answer

How do you work out if the syllable is stressed?

Fivejedjon · Answer

AnonymousHow do you work out if the syllable is stressed?

If you don't know, you have to refer to a dictionary.

MrGuedes · Answer

Whenever the word is stressed in the first syllable, it is pronounced either /?/ or (not so common) /i?/. From the examples you gave, only echo is such a word (pronounced /?/). As for rules regarding word stress, English is very lacking regarding that; generally, you will have to learn by experience. Let me try to give a few examples.

These words are always stressed on the first syllable, and pronounced /?/: echo, ecstasy, elegant, element, eloquent, emanate, entrance, Eritrea (though here the stress is secondary), escalate, essay, essence, ethanal, excellent, extra...
These words are always stressed on the first syllable, and pronounced /i?/: Esau, Ethiopia (though here the stress is secondary), evil...
Some words, like ego, epoch, ethane or evolution (which are stressed in the first syllable) can be pronounced either /?/ or /i?/.

I cannot find any particular rule here.

As for words not stressed in the first syllable, it seems that, in most cases, both /?/ and /?/ are acceptable, perhaps with /?/ being more common, due to the fact that it better suits the unstressed pronunciation of said syllable (indeed, in the dictionaries I check, the one with /?/ generally appears before the one with /?/).
Some examples of this are: embrace, empanel, encamp, encode, eschew, example, except, exclusive, excuse, exempt explosion, exterior, extravagant...

In other cases, it is always pronounced /?/: edacious, effect, egalitarian, eject, elect, elucidate, emancipate, erase, erect, essential, eternal, Ezekiel...

It seems easier to find a rule here. To me, it seems that, in general: if the e is followed by a ‘single’ consonant sound (like /d/, /f/, /g/, /d?/, /l/, /m/, /r/, /s/, /t/ or /z/), then it must be /?/; if it is followed by two consonant sounds (like /mb/, /mp/, /nk/, /st?/, /ks/ or /gz/), then it can be either /?/ or /?/.

I have not found any situation in which it would only be pronounced /?/. Therefore, I recommend that, for words beginning with e which are not stressed in the first syllable, you always use /?/.

To summarise:

In order to determine the sound of the initial e, you must determine whether it is stressed or not. There is no rule to do this.

If you determine that it is stressed, then you must determine whether it is /?/, /i?/ or both. There is no rule to do this, but it seems that, in most cases, /?/ is the correct pronunciation.

If you determine that it is unstressed, then (as far as I know) /?/ will always be an acceptable pronunciation. There seems to be a simple rule to determine whether /?/ is also acceptable or not — but you need not worry about that: instead, in such cases, I recommend that you always pronounce /?/.

I hope this has been helpful!

Anonymous · Answer

Thank you for a detailed explanation.

MrGuedes · Answer

AnonymousThank you for a detailed explanation.

You're welcome! It was my pleasure!

Words starting with letter 'e'

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