Quote:
Originally Posted by zelda_pinwheel
thanks, very interesting stuff ! "a lengthened uh sound" is actually a pretty good way to explain it. it's the same vowel sound as in "her" or "fur", but without the r after, so i think in british english (where you don't pronounce the r much / at all) "hers" might be very close to the pronunciation of the second syllable.
technically that word-ending (-euse, or -eur in the masculine form) would be pronounced always the same, and you see the same one on "masseuse", "coiffeuse", etc. it means "someone / thing who performs the action described by the root of the word, like in english -er (footballer for instance  ). |
I find languages and pronunciations fascinating, though I understand why others wouldn't.
My relatively untrained ear cannot distinguish between related sounds very well, but her, fur, nurse, etc seem to all have the ɜː sound instead of the Ø, in both british and american english. (see here for example:
http://www.oxfordadvancedlearnersdic...dictionary/fur).
There
is a difference, but it is very slight, and anyway pronunciation mistakes are usually much less subtle than that!