Pronunciation - Definition and Overview

Pronunciation refers to:

• the way a word or a language is usually spoken;
• the manner in which someone utters a word.

Introduction

A word can be spoken in different ways by different individuals, depending on many factors, such as the time in which they grew up, the area in which they grew up, the area in which they now live, their social class, and their education. Note that the word is spelled pronunciation, not pronounciation.

Linguistic terminology

The way in which an individual pronounces words depends firstly on the basic units of sound (phones) that they use in their language. The branch of linguistics which studies these units of sound is phonetics. Phones which play the same role are grouped together into classes called phonemes; the study of these is phonemics.

See also

• International Phonetic Alphabet - notational standard for the phonetic representation of all languages
• Pronunciation (simple guide to markup, American)
• Language
• List of words of disputed pronunciation
• Mispronunciation
• Initial-stress-derived noun