Quote:
Originally Posted by HarryT
Until I started listening to audiobooks I was unaware that British and American English pronounce, as well as spell, so many words differently. A lot of words are pronounced completely differently even if they're spelt the same. One example is the word "buoy" (as in a floating marker in a harbour or at sea). In the UK, the word is pronounced the same as the word "boy", but in one book by an American narrator, he pronounced it "boo-ee". I don't know if that's the standard American pronunciation, or if he just didn't know how to say the word? Another one which always strikes me as strange is that American narrators say the word "shone" the same as the word "shown", whereas in British English, "shone" has a short "o".
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Regional accents will change the words pronunciation a lot as well (on both sides of the pond) Grass, Stairs etc.
And there are always words like "Scone" that no one can decide how to pronounce - it either rhymes with Stone or Gone in English even if you speak to someone a couple of miles away the pronunciation can be different.
I mean, Americans can't even pronounce zed correctly, so it's bound to get worse when you have more than one letter
