Wordcraft Home Page    Wordcraft Community Home Page    Forums  Hop To Forum Categories  Questions & Answers about Words    'concrete' - pronunciation? regional?
Go
New
Find
Notify
Tools
Reply
  
'concrete' - pronunciation? regional? Login/Join
 
Member
posted

Question:
Which syllable of 'concrete' do you accent?

Whether noun or adjective, I've always said "It is made of concrete," or a concrete pavement, or concrete evidence. But yesterday someone said concrete to me, and I found to my surprise that the dictionary lists both versions. The speaker I heard hailed from Ontario. Could this be a regional difference?.

Which do you say?

Choices:
CON-crete
con-CRETE
it depends

 
 
Posts: 1184Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Member
Picture of BobHale
posted Hide Post
I put "it depends" but it isn't really true. The truth is that after five minutes of trying I can't decide which probably means that it's one of those unusual words where neither syllable carries a stress ( or both have equal stress).


"No man but a blockhead ever wrote except for money." Samuel Johnson.
 
Posts: 9421 | Location: EnglandReply With QuoteReport This Post
Member
Picture of aput
posted Hide Post
Initial stress only, though I have free variation between CON- and CONG-. I've never heard con-CRETE as a noun or adjective, even as an American pronunciation, though it is the (little-used) verb.

Variable stress usually happens in phrases to avoid clash of neighbouring stresses: so if you normally said con-CRETE you might say CON-crete EV-idence. Test it with a following noun that doesn't have a clashing initial syllable: do you say con-CRETE pro-PO-sal?
 
Posts: 502 | Location: LondonReply With QuoteReport This Post
Member
Picture of Richard English
posted Hide Post
Difficult, yes. But try stressing the final syllable - as in "discrete" and you will probably agree that the stress falls on the first. Or it does in the south of England, anyway!


Richard English
 
Posts: 8038 | Location: Partridge Green, West Sussex, UKReply With QuoteReport This Post
Member
Picture of Graham Nice
posted Hide Post
I just can imagigne what the other example would sound like so I plumped for the first option.
 
Posts: 382 | Location: CambridgeReply With QuoteReport This Post
Member
Picture of Kalleh
posted Hide Post
I pronounce it just as you do, wordnerd.
 
Posts: 24735 | Location: Chicago, USAReply With QuoteReport This Post
  Powered by Social Strata  
 

Wordcraft Home Page    Wordcraft Community Home Page    Forums  Hop To Forum Categories  Questions & Answers about Words    'concrete' - pronunciation? regional?

Copyright © 2002-12