Pronunciation of "Immediately"????

[Williamyh]

Hi Everyone,

Standard pronunciation of "Immediately" I can find it in dictionaries, but sometimes I hear people would pronounce as 'Immedrly', 'diate' would be pronounced like a 'dr'....like a 'J' sound....The following Audio Clip I recorded from BBC, the guy pronounced as 'Immedrly'...'J' sound.....anyone can tell me if it only happens in British English, how about American English? Please advise.

small one but not the big one......(immediately) just.....situation..
http://www.supload.com/listen?s=dHpxzN

W

[Tdol]

He's saying /ɪmi:ʤətli:/ IMO.

[BobK]

He's saying /ɪmi:ʤətli:/ IMO.

My PC can't handle the link, but that makes sense. I had no idea what Williamyh's "r" might mean. If the announcer were on his/her best behaviour s/he'd probably say /ɪmi:di:ətli:/ (5 syllables); in fluent speech this becomes /ɪmi:djətli:/ and then /ɪmi:ʤətli:/ . The process is called 'palatalization', and happens a lot in the development of language.

Nerd alert: ignore the following unless you're a linguistics freak.

[Come to think of it, I've just thought of an analogy for the "r" that Williamyh reported - the Portuguese praia (palatalized from an initial Latin PL - preserved in the Spanish playa {the palatalization took a different route with the Latin PLENU[M] - Pg cheio, Sp lleno} ). See more here: Palatalization - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia .

I did warn you. ]

b

[BobK]

Afterthought. Something you may see (in print) is a reference to this tendency - in the case of the word "media", spelt, jokingly, "meejer". 'The [sometimes "Ve" - see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Th-fronting] meejer' are 'newspapers' like the Daily Star/Sun/News of the World or 'magazines' such as Heat, OK, or Hello, or it's used adjectivally to express contempt: 'Silvio Berlusconi is a meejer tycoon'.

b

[Williamyh]

Yes, I wanted to express the guy from BBC pronounced "ɪmi:ʤətli:", I was wondering if it would happen in American English?