> I had a colleague that pronounced RTS as "ritz". What I find interesting with "ritz" is why the "i". Why not "rats" or "ruts" or "rets" or "rots". This has a

> I had a colleague that pronounced RTS as "ritz". What I find interesting with "ritz" is why the "i". Why not "rats" or "ruts" or "rets" or "rots". This has an explanation! If a short vowel is inserted as a transition between two consonants, there is a strong tendency for the inserted sound to be a more ‘neutral’ vowel, such as the schwa /ə/. But in many English dialects, there has been a merger [0] between the schwa /ə/ and the short ‘i’ sound /ɪ/ — the two sounds are no longer distinguishable by native speakers of those dialects. Thus, what might be pronounced as [ɹəts] sounds very much like ‘ritz’, and ‘GLSL’ becomes [ɡləzl̩], sounding like ‘Glisle’. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phonological_history_of_English_close_front_vowels#Weak_vowel_merger https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phonological_history_of_Englis...