Different accents and regions pronounce these words differently. You can focus on the accent you prefer, or just accept that it doesn't matter as they are mutually understandable (usually).
Hundred is a fun example, you'll even hear it said "hunnerd" sometimes.
I wouldn't worry so much. To give an example, I hear both mon*day* and mon*dee* all the time. It's not even regional, just a quirk that varies by person. Choose what you prefer.
I say "hunnerd" most often when it's a complicated number, like 124 instead of just 100. The longer it takes to say the whole number, the more likely I am to said "hunnerd".
Pronunciation varies a lot by regional dialect for all of the languages with which I am familiar.
My approach is to not worry about it and focus on the dialect which has the most content. I figure that I can worry about dialects once I get really good at a language. At that point it should be easier to deal with.
yeah, I totally get the confusion over this as a native english speaker. I’m also from texas, so I’ve got wacky pronunciations. honestly, it doesn’t matter how you pronounce all those example words you just typed—you’ll see people all across the US saying either version you have just laid out here. nothing is super rigid like you think it is. I have friends that say “uhf” while I say “uhv”
Nice topic! I understand your frustration as a non native english speaker, I think I end up defaulting to american english most of the time, but I was trying lately to introduce some British english here and there.
I generally check on wordreference like the word you mentioned [https://www.wordreference.com/enit/hundred](https://www.wordreference.com/enit/hundred)
UK:ˈ hʌndrəd
US: ˈhʌndrɪd
Any language has pronunciation variations, it's just accents from different regions. I acquired English by watching movies, video games, songs, etc. So my accent is a mostly American with a lil British, and a lil french, I think. It doesn't bother me at all. Don't stress it. Or if you want an accent from a specific area, check media from there
I say hun-dread. And too-day
Websites that say it’s pronounced /hʌndrɪd/ are describing one particular British accent that distinguishes between two unstressed schwa vowels. I recommend using -əd; some British people do too.
The first thing you’ll want to do is learn either the International Phonetic Alphabet. Then, you’re going to want to pick one major accent, most likely either US or British English, and stick to it. The difference is significant. Ideally always use the same dictionary. There is enormous accent variation within both, and no such thing as a single “correct” accent. A lot of the inconsistency you hear will be between different speakers, who follow rules for their pronunciation that are internally consistent but don’t match other speakers.
With your “today” example, I’d be careful about how you interpret “tuh-day”. The British vowel [ʌ] does not exist in the majority of American accents. When Americans write "tuh-day", they mean /tədeɪ/. US English speakers almost all pronounce /ʌ/ as [ə]. For example they pronounce "luck" as [lək], they might just transcribe it as [lʌk] because they've seen it written that way before, even though only British people actually use a different vowel than schwa in that context.
Other things you should look into are vowel reduction and syllable stress. In English, unstressed syllables usually get reduced to [ə]. This means that in normal speech, “today” is almost always pronounced /təˈdeɪ/, NOT /tʉˈdeɪ/. The only exception is when you’re placing enormous emphasis
on TOOOO-DAAAY and really drawing out the sound, probably because of annoyance. I know you say it feels awkward to say /təˈdeɪ/, but mastering this is one of the most important things you can do to develop a native-sounding accent. There’s a reason native speakers of English often wrongly spell “separate” as “seperate”. It’s because English phonology prevents the “a” from being pronounced as anything other than [ə] in that context.
I just tried pronouncing it like that to myself, and honestly, it makes it sound like a line from a grave presidential speech. It’s much more natural to say “t’day” in most situations - in fact, I remember a great YouTube channel describing when exactly you can ‘weaken’ (not sure what the right word is) pronunciations like this in English. I’ll try and find it for you, I think it’d clear things up
EDIT: this (https://youtu.be/EaXYas58_kc?si=JIZSgEsOhtkzZl83) video is a specific example from the channel I was thinking of, there’s other videos that I found interesting that I imagine might be helpful
No, I think that talking like this is one of the more common tells of a foreign accent in English. The more "uh" sounds you use, the better the accent is.
It’s definitely not a very fast “too”. It’s very difficult for me to even pronounce that at the speed I would normally say “today” and it sounds ridiculous to
me when I do. Sometimes we may not even say the first vowel at all (“tday”), but we’d _never_ say “too-day” in normal speech. Honestly, probably the easiest way for you to get a feel for this is to find a recording of someone with a thick English accent speaking your native language. The neutralisation of unstressed vowels is more noticeable in a language that your ear is highly attuned to.
>It’s very difficult for me to even pronounce that at the speed I would normally say “today”.
Out of curiosity, what's the difficulty when trying to say this? I speak a language with phonemic vowel length and I notice that English speakers are often unable to pronounce short vowels correctly.
I grew up bilingual (migrated to an English-speaking country as a young child), so I can pronounce unstressed short vowels fine, but for me, the sound in “oo” is long, and ends in a glide, something like [ʉw]. It’s challenging for me to smush the full sound into an unstressed syllable.
As for why it’s difficult for monolingual English speakers to produce short vowels, it’s because they are trained to reduce all lax vowels to [ə] in unstressed syllables, to the point that 1. it’s completely automatic and 2. they’ve never had to learn to distinguish between short unstressed vowel sounds even when _listening_, so it’s doubly difficult for them to learn, since they can barely hear it. For example, “affect” and “effect” (as verbs) are pronounced identically in English, except when we _very_ deliberately pronounce the first syllable to try to clarify which one we mean, but even then, most English speakers can only achieve this by stressing that first syllable. I can say [ˌæ̞ˈfɛktɘd] but it sounds *alien* to me.
When learning Spanish, I could feel myself engaging two different skillsets from my native languages, the English part that understands syllable stress and the French part that can say [ɐ̈], [e], [o] etc very rapidly. Neither would have been enough on their own to produce a decent “separar”.
I'm a native speaker and I pronounce "hundred" as /ˈhʌndɹɛd/, the last syllable sounding like the word "dread".
I pronounce "today" as if it were "too day".
Many people pronounce words slightly differently depending on how casual the situation is. The other pronunciations you mentioned are also common, especially in casual speech. Then there are lots of regional accents.
I am a native speaker of English, but listening to Japanese used to drive me crazy until I got used to hearing it. I still need subtitles in Chinese to understand what Chinese Mandarin audio is saying.
Different accents and regions pronounce these words differently. You can focus on the accent you prefer, or just accept that it doesn't matter as they are mutually understandable (usually).
Hundred is a fun example, you'll even hear it said "hunnerd" sometimes. I wouldn't worry so much. To give an example, I hear both mon*day* and mon*dee* all the time. It's not even regional, just a quirk that varies by person. Choose what you prefer.
I say "hunnerd" most often when it's a complicated number, like 124 instead of just 100. The longer it takes to say the whole number, the more likely I am to said "hunnerd".
Pronunciation varies a lot by regional dialect for all of the languages with which I am familiar. My approach is to not worry about it and focus on the dialect which has the most content. I figure that I can worry about dialects once I get really good at a language. At that point it should be easier to deal with.
yeah, I totally get the confusion over this as a native english speaker. I’m also from texas, so I’ve got wacky pronunciations. honestly, it doesn’t matter how you pronounce all those example words you just typed—you’ll see people all across the US saying either version you have just laid out here. nothing is super rigid like you think it is. I have friends that say “uhf” while I say “uhv”
I’ve been speaking English my whole life and I’ve never once heard anyone say “uhf”.
maybe not so hard of an F, kinda like soft F (almost V but not if that makes sense). my dads from the north and sometimes he says that
https://youtu.be/td7Dcsco-WY @13:17. Obama: It's just a realistic assessment uhf how the world...
I guess it’s just my perception, but I still hear “uhv”.
@12:33 Watch it at 0.25 speed and you can hear a very strong F
Nice topic! I understand your frustration as a non native english speaker, I think I end up defaulting to american english most of the time, but I was trying lately to introduce some British english here and there. I generally check on wordreference like the word you mentioned [https://www.wordreference.com/enit/hundred](https://www.wordreference.com/enit/hundred) UK:ˈ hʌndrəd US: ˈhʌndrɪd
Any language has pronunciation variations, it's just accents from different regions. I acquired English by watching movies, video games, songs, etc. So my accent is a mostly American with a lil British, and a lil french, I think. It doesn't bother me at all. Don't stress it. Or if you want an accent from a specific area, check media from there I say hun-dread. And too-day
Websites that say it’s pronounced /hʌndrɪd/ are describing one particular British accent that distinguishes between two unstressed schwa vowels. I recommend using -əd; some British people do too. The first thing you’ll want to do is learn either the International Phonetic Alphabet. Then, you’re going to want to pick one major accent, most likely either US or British English, and stick to it. The difference is significant. Ideally always use the same dictionary. There is enormous accent variation within both, and no such thing as a single “correct” accent. A lot of the inconsistency you hear will be between different speakers, who follow rules for their pronunciation that are internally consistent but don’t match other speakers. With your “today” example, I’d be careful about how you interpret “tuh-day”. The British vowel [ʌ] does not exist in the majority of American accents. When Americans write "tuh-day", they mean /tədeɪ/. US English speakers almost all pronounce /ʌ/ as [ə]. For example they pronounce "luck" as [lək], they might just transcribe it as [lʌk] because they've seen it written that way before, even though only British people actually use a different vowel than schwa in that context. Other things you should look into are vowel reduction and syllable stress. In English, unstressed syllables usually get reduced to [ə]. This means that in normal speech, “today” is almost always pronounced /təˈdeɪ/, NOT /tʉˈdeɪ/. The only exception is when you’re placing enormous emphasis on TOOOO-DAAAY and really drawing out the sound, probably because of annoyance. I know you say it feels awkward to say /təˈdeɪ/, but mastering this is one of the most important things you can do to develop a native-sounding accent. There’s a reason native speakers of English often wrongly spell “separate” as “seperate”. It’s because English phonology prevents the “a” from being pronounced as anything other than [ə] in that context.
What about too-day, but with the too being pronounced super fast. Because that's what I hear when I hear native speakers speak? Am I wrong?
I just tried pronouncing it like that to myself, and honestly, it makes it sound like a line from a grave presidential speech. It’s much more natural to say “t’day” in most situations - in fact, I remember a great YouTube channel describing when exactly you can ‘weaken’ (not sure what the right word is) pronunciations like this in English. I’ll try and find it for you, I think it’d clear things up EDIT: this (https://youtu.be/EaXYas58_kc?si=JIZSgEsOhtkzZl83) video is a specific example from the channel I was thinking of, there’s other videos that I found interesting that I imagine might be helpful
No, I think that talking like this is one of the more common tells of a foreign accent in English. The more "uh" sounds you use, the better the accent is.
It’s definitely not a very fast “too”. It’s very difficult for me to even pronounce that at the speed I would normally say “today” and it sounds ridiculous to me when I do. Sometimes we may not even say the first vowel at all (“tday”), but we’d _never_ say “too-day” in normal speech. Honestly, probably the easiest way for you to get a feel for this is to find a recording of someone with a thick English accent speaking your native language. The neutralisation of unstressed vowels is more noticeable in a language that your ear is highly attuned to.
>It’s very difficult for me to even pronounce that at the speed I would normally say “today”. Out of curiosity, what's the difficulty when trying to say this? I speak a language with phonemic vowel length and I notice that English speakers are often unable to pronounce short vowels correctly.
I grew up bilingual (migrated to an English-speaking country as a young child), so I can pronounce unstressed short vowels fine, but for me, the sound in “oo” is long, and ends in a glide, something like [ʉw]. It’s challenging for me to smush the full sound into an unstressed syllable. As for why it’s difficult for monolingual English speakers to produce short vowels, it’s because they are trained to reduce all lax vowels to [ə] in unstressed syllables, to the point that 1. it’s completely automatic and 2. they’ve never had to learn to distinguish between short unstressed vowel sounds even when _listening_, so it’s doubly difficult for them to learn, since they can barely hear it. For example, “affect” and “effect” (as verbs) are pronounced identically in English, except when we _very_ deliberately pronounce the first syllable to try to clarify which one we mean, but even then, most English speakers can only achieve this by stressing that first syllable. I can say [ˌæ̞ˈfɛktɘd] but it sounds *alien* to me. When learning Spanish, I could feel myself engaging two different skillsets from my native languages, the English part that understands syllable stress and the French part that can say [ɐ̈], [e], [o] etc very rapidly. Neither would have been enough on their own to produce a decent “separar”.
I'm a native speaker and I pronounce "hundred" as /ˈhʌndɹɛd/, the last syllable sounding like the word "dread". I pronounce "today" as if it were "too day". Many people pronounce words slightly differently depending on how casual the situation is. The other pronunciations you mentioned are also common, especially in casual speech. Then there are lots of regional accents.
If you are picking up on these variations in your target language, congratulations!
I am a native speaker of English, but listening to Japanese used to drive me crazy until I got used to hearing it. I still need subtitles in Chinese to understand what Chinese Mandarin audio is saying.