3 ms·

English speakers don't pronounce "oe" as a diphthong either.

• _delirium 11y ago
  Sometimes they do, sometimes they don't. It doesn't really have any consistent English pronunciation, since it appears in a bunch of different morphological contexts, and in loanwords from at least five or six different languages. Some examples: phoenix (1 syllable, 'ee'), Zoe (2 syllables, 'oh-ee'), Joe (1 syllable, 'oh'), Joel (either 1 or 2 syllables, depending on schwa insertion), canoe (1 syllable, 'oo'), Dostoevsky (2 syllables, 'oh-eh' or 'oh-yeh'), coed (2 syllables, 'oh-eh'), etc. If I saw something like Broetli and didn't immediately recognize the Germanic origin, I could see myself easily misanalyzing it as Bro-etli and pronouncing it that way.