4 ms·

Sincere question from an American: can you explain why er and re make different sounds at the end of a word than everywhere else? like "read" or "redo" or "terr

• Tagbert 3y ago
  It is common in languages that phonemes (groups of letters making a single sound) are pronounced differently depending in where in a word they occur. At the start of a word, they may get more emphasis and that can chance the pronunciation. At the end of the word, there is a tendency to drop emphasis as you prepare to speak the next word. That causes a phoneme like “er” to sound like “ur” at the ends of words.