How do you pronounce "asked"?

[Abeja de Almirante]

How do you pronounce "asked"?

I was speaking with a friend yesterday, who pronounced "asked" as "as't". He also says To'ron'ah for Toronto, so he's likely not a good benchmark.

How do you guys pronounce "asked"? What about masked, would you say "mas't? It would seem to me that asked would be pronounced ask'd (i.e. with a slight "D" sound after ask, but not "ask'e'did".

 

[interchange42]

Are we allowed to give just joke responses? Because that's all that are coming to mind right now, and quite a few of them actually. I'm not saying they're all good jokes mind you...

42

 

[Abeja de Almirante]

Hmm....are we leaning toward ass'ed?

That doesn't sound right either. Where is the "k"?

 

[Greg29Toronto]

Oops, guilty. I say "ass't", "Torono" too. A friend recently noted that I say "Scarbra" instead of Scar-bor-ough, never realized it before that. I grew up there, so I guess I'm allowed.

 

[andreapalladio]

I've always thought "bra" (with a short a) is an accepted pronunciation for "borough". Ex. Edin-bra, Marl-bra, etc.

 

[scarberiankhatru]

I've never heard anyone say Scarbra before...99% of the time people say Scarbro...once in a while you'll hear the "-oro" pronunciation, although it ends up sounding like Scarbero.

 

[spmarshall]

Asst'd (with an almost silent d).

I'm not sure if "bra" is "accepted", but it is very common. THough I pronounce Scarborough Scar-bro, not Scar-bra. And of course, Tor-raw-no.

 

[Abeja de Almirante]

My Chinese friend pronounces Scarborough as Ska-boh. Of course, my pronounciation looks like ˆê“_‰ä“I‹…

 

[cassiusa]

My 'k' in asked sounds somewhat like a combination of 'k' and 'g'. Somewhat like "ass'kg'd".

And they are pronouced "Scarbro" and "Terawnoe" dammit!

 

[tayser2]

arskt.

but I'm different to you lot

 

[hamilton905]

I pronounce it - ax'ed

You know, I axed her yesterday about my money.
Kidding aside, who cares.

 

[adma]

 

[BuildTO]

Re: aks a linguist

The pronunciation of "asked" is actually very difficult because it contains three consecutive consonants articulated in different parts of the oral tract. You bounce from at the front of the mouth to [k] at the back and back to [t] at the front again.

(The final sound is actually [t] and not [d]. These sounds are identical except that [d] is "voiced" (the vocal cords vibrate) while [t] is "voiceless" or "unvoiced" (the vocal cords do not vibrate). Since the and [k] are also voiceless, there is a strong tendency not to voice the following [d], a process called progressive assimilation.)

There is a natural tendency for some speakers to simplify such clusters by dropping sounds; in this case you sometimes hear people drop the middle consonant, [k], which makes pronunciation markedly easier because the and [t] have exactly the same place of articulation: [æst]

In some dialects (notably the unfairly stigmatized inner-city Black American English), you see a phenomenon called metathesis, in which problematic consonant clusters such as these are handled by reversing consonants - reordering so that the similar consonants are consecutive. In this case, the [k] is articulated before the , which puts the next to the [t] so that you articulate the first at the back of the oral tract and then move front for the other two: [ækst]
This is seen in other words such as "desk". For a long time now, I've had a folder on my computer desktop for storing miscellaneous files; I named the folder "dekstop".

 

[BuildTO]

Re: How do you pronounce "Trono"?

The question of the final "o" in "Toronto" and "Scarborough" is a bit trickier. It's hard to tell exactly what some of you mean when you spell the pronunciation with an "a".

Native Torontonians like myself always pronounce words like these with a definite [o] ("oh"). You can spot an American immediately when you hear a pronunciation like "Trawna" or "Trahna", with an "ah" at the end.

If you are a local and are pronouncing "Toronto" with anything other than an [o], it may be the result of an ESL influence (i.e., you are from a community in which the first language was other than English and that language still has a strong effect on English pronunciations). The vowel is likely "colourless-indeterminate", meaning it is as close as you can get to not articulating any vowel at all (that is what "schwa" is in the dictionary, in case you've ever wondered). But for a Torontonian, the vowel is not likely to be "ah" or "aw".

 

[scarberiankhatru]

"I'm not sure if "bra" is "accepted", but it is very common."

No it isn't! I've never in my life heard it pronounced with anything other than an O (oh) at the end.

Cassiusa's versions of Scarborough and Toronto are the correct ones.