On Tue, 16 Aug 2005 14:18:47 GMT, Miss Elaine Eos
<Misc@*your-shoes*PlayNaked.com> wrote:
> In article <1124162829.322243.214690@o13g2000cwo.googlegroups.com>,
> "compunk" <compunk@chol.com> wrote:
>> English is not my mother tongue. So I'm confused sometimes with the
>> pronunciation.
>>
>> In the Enlgish grammar book or the dictionary, the plural 's' sounds
>> like 'z' , for exemple in <tearchers, computers, chairs, etc>.
>>
>> But actually when I listen to the pronunciation of the native speakers,
>> they pronounce it like 's', not 'z'.
>
> I have never heard anyone do this, native speaker or otherwise. As you
> say, the plural 's' is nearly always pronounced as a 'soft s', which
> sounds like 'z'. I say 'nearly always' because, although I can't think
> of one, it would not surprise me to learn of an exception or two.
The only people I have heard pronounce plural 's' as an unvoiced
('hard') 's' have been Scandinavians (Norwegians and Swedes,
specifically; I haven't heard enough Finns, but Danes generally follow
the German way of pronouncing any single 's' as 'z' and double 's' as a
sharp ('hard') 's'). It can be heard in some of Abba's songs, for
instance. I don't know of any native English dialect which pronounces
it that way.
> In fact, teenagers and some marketing people SPELL these words with "z",
> in an attempt to seem "kool." There is a shoe store in a nearby town
> called "Shuz", which I'm pretty sure they mean to be pronounced as
> "Shoes", but always looks to my eye as if it rhymes with "fuzz", so I
> pronounce it that way :)
It looks that way to me as well, but then I'm old <g>...
Chris C
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