Words with two different transcription

[Anne59]

Can anyone please explain to me why some words have two different transcriptions. The word I've found is "room".

Thanks

[BobK]

Can anyone please explain to me why some words have two different transcriptions. The word I've found is "room".

Thanks

The only explanation I can suggest is that people use two different pronunciations, depending on stress. If you asked me the word for a cubicle in a house with one or more doors, and usually - but not always - one or more windows, I'd say /ru:m/. But in a compound where it's not stressed, like /'ba:θrʊm/ you use the shorter version.

There's a certain amount of latitude; different speakers make the choice between the two variants differently. But both variants occur, and sometimes the choice may seem random. For example, there are two novels - A Room at the Top and A Room with a View, and the vowel lengths vary (it seems to me) to match the length of the vowel in the other word (a sort of long-range form of phonetic assimilation): /ʊ/ /ɒ/ in the first, and /u:/ /u:/ in the second [that's my idiolect; some speakers would probably balance the vowel lengths: /u:/ /ɒ/ and /ʊ/ /u:/ - so that each title has one short vowel and one long!]

But there are no hard and fast rules that I know of - sorry , not very satisfactory, but there it is...

b

PS Seeing your provenance, I think I could have shortened my answer. In RSP I believe the vowel is usually something like /ʊ/ (but with rather more lip-rounding than we do South of the border) in both cases. This vowel is often transcribed in literary works as 'ui' - as in 'Guid grief mon'!

[5jj]

I'd just add that when I attended a would-be public school in the 1950s, my /ru:m/ was not considered refined enough. I was corrected so much that I still tend to say /rʊm/ today.

Note for Americans: a public school in BrE is one of the more prestigious private schools

[BobK]

I'd just add that when I attended a would-be public school in the 1950s, my /ru:m/ was not considered refined enough. I was corrected so much that I still tend to say /rʊm/ today.

Note for Americans: a public school in BrE is one of the more prestigious private schools

That rings a bell. I made the transition the other way, from a posh school to one where a posh accent didn't fit in; maybe that's why my pronunciation varies (as does many other people's - not being sure what to do about class-based accent choices).

b

[RachelsEnglish]

Can anyone please explain to me why some words have two different transcriptions. The word I've found is "room".

Thanks

Dictionary.com lists two different transcriptions:
/rum, rʊm/

For any word, the first transcription is always the most common pronunciation, and any transcription after it is/are accepted alternative pronunciations.

Rachel
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