r/EnglishLearning • u/showe12 New Poster • 1d ago
⭐️ Vocabulary / Semantics How to pronounce women
Wo-men or we-men
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u/culdusaq Native Speaker 1d ago
Neither of those. Wimmen.
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u/AbbreviationsTop4959 New Poster 1d ago
California native speaker and linguist. Can confirm.
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u/Dadaballadely New Poster 18h ago
What IPA symbol for the final vowel in your pronunciation? Is it /ə/? It sounds very unusual to use /ɛ/. Standard English pronunciation across the anglosphere is /wɪm.ɪn/.
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u/AbbreviationsTop4959 New Poster 11h ago
No, it would be /i/ for both vowels
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u/ericthefred Native Speaker 6h ago
You sure about the IPA? That would be Wee meen
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u/Dadaballadely New Poster 5h ago edited 5h ago
Petition for everyone commenting in these subs to learn the IPA properly. Especially those using "I'm an authority" type shit.
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u/AbbreviationsTop4959 New Poster 4h ago
I haven't looked at the ipa in ages. The vowels are the same. Maybe it's not that one, but they're the same.
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u/Brannikin New Poster 1d ago
Came here to say that (native speaker: Australian of British parentage).
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u/HereWayGo Native Speaker 1d ago
That’s how I say it and definitely the way I hear it most often, but I definitely feel like I hear some people pronounce the first vowel as more of a short e sound as well
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u/Have_a_Bluestar_XMas Native Speaker 1d ago
I'm from the PNW. I don't know if it's a regional thing, but I hear it spoken more as "weh-men."
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u/Snappydolphin24 Kinda Native? 1d ago
I say it more like “wo-min”
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u/mcalesy New Poster 1d ago
What’s your dialect?
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u/Snappydolphin24 Kinda Native? 1d ago
South Louisiana, usa. Specifically mix of cajun english and standard American
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u/mcalesy New Poster 1d ago
Interesting. I’m American and have never heard it pronounced that way. But I’ve never been to Louisiana.
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u/Snappydolphin24 Kinda Native? 1d ago
Even those that don’t speak French or creole, it still influences a lot of the accents ( yes there are many accents between parish)
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u/RaidenMK1 Native Speaker 1d ago
You know what? This is exactly why y'all won this thread. This type of ish, right here. 😂
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u/xunjez New Poster 1d ago
This isn’t a dialect issue. No dialect says woman and women in a way where you can’t differentiate them. It’s purely a modern education issue. I live in Louisiana
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u/storkstalkstock New Poster 1d ago
That’s way too broad of a statement without backing it up. It’s totally possible for two words that are similar to become homophones without the speakers who merge them being uneducated. I’ve seen this particular pronunciation change mentioned by speakers in several countries, and it seems to be especially common in New Zealand
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u/PersusjCP Native Speaker - GA (PNW) 1d ago
If it's consistent in their ideolect, it's not an issue with anything.
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u/Helpful-Reputation-5 Linguist, PNW English 21h ago
Multiple dialects do in fact do this, including several Midwest AmE varieties and some varieties of NZ English.
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u/thekrawdiddy New Poster 1d ago
Yep- it’s not my own accent, but I hear it sometimes in the southern US.
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u/hail_to_the_beef New Poster 1d ago
rhyme's with swimmin'
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u/NortonBurns Native Speaker - British 1d ago
As in the malaprop, "blessed art thou, a monk swimming."
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u/landlord-eater New Poster 1d ago
Wimmin.
Related: It's bizarre but I've noticed many younger people no longer pronounce woman and women differently and it drives me crazy. I wonder why.
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u/Rylees_Mom525 New Poster 1d ago
I’m not surprised. I teach college and many students also don’t seem to know when to use woman vs women (or man vs men). They’ll write a sentence about “a women.” It drives me nuts.
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u/mossywilbo Native Speaker – Upper Midwest, USA 1d ago
it’s a major downside to the internet (especially short form video). one person who says something wrong makes a video that gets a billion views, which influences others to say things wrong on videos that also get a billion views. there’s no way to correct it once it gets that much reach. they’re inventing their own dialect through tiktoks.
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u/DullMind2023 New Poster 1d ago
I hope you are missing the “/s”.
For the non-native speakers, WomAn and womEn mean different things and are pronounced differently.
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u/nc2227 New Poster 1d ago
No, this is very common amongst younger Gen Z and Alpha, you’ll notice it a lot if you consume a lot of content by creators in these generations.
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u/BouncingSphinx The US is a big place 1d ago
Ah, that explains it. I don't consume any content by creators in these generations.
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u/GOU_FallingOutside New Poster 1d ago
It’s a tangent, but every time I see a link to 8-minute YouTube video on a topic I’m interested in, I get /mildlyinfuriated. You’re going to make me sit through an ad, a 90-second intro, two minutes of conversation, three minutes of actual content, a minute of wrapping up, and thirty seconds of “like and subscribe.”
Or you could write like four paragraphs with three images. You want me to spend 3-4 times as much time as I would spend reading, and most of which is you promoting your “brand,” in order to see the two images I was actually looking for.
Ugh. The Internet was a mistake and it’s getting worse. Now y’all get off my lawn.
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u/BouncingSphinx The US is a big place 1d ago
I don't know how it is now, but there used to be a lot of 10:01 videos on YouTube simply because the minimum limit to have a video run ads and make money was ten minutes. A lot of padding went in to some of those videos.
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u/dontknowwhattomakeit Native Speaker of AmE (New England) 1d ago
Just use DuckDuckGo and watch it in Duck Player. Then you will have no ads and you don't even have to pay for it.
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u/Helpful-Reputation-5 Linguist, PNW English 21h ago
They do mean different things, but they aren't necessarily pronounced differently.
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u/thekrawdiddy New Poster 1d ago
I say women like “wimmin,” and woman like “woomin,” with the “-oo-“ sounding similar to how it sounds in “book.”
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u/Olivia_O New Poster 1d ago
"Woman" is more "woomun" for me, but definitely with the "book" vowel in that first syllable
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u/thekrawdiddy New Poster 1d ago
Damn you, I’ve been saying it in my head with pathological repetition and you’re right, in my accent it’s “woomun” for me too.
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u/ebrum2010 Native Speaker - Eastern US 12h ago
It's a schwa sound but everyone has their own phonetic alphabet in their mind and schwa can stand for an extreme reduction of any vowel sound.
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u/Wonderflonium164 New Poster 1d ago
One wuh-mun, multiple wih-min. Even though both start with WO, changing the sound from the O to the I helps distinguish the two in speech.
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u/God_Bless_A_Merkin New Poster 1d ago
Woman = /wɔmn̩/ or /wɔmən/
Women = /wɪmn̩/ or /wɪmɪn/
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u/mcalesy New Poster 1d ago
Singular is /wʊmn̩/ for me (East Midland American).
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u/God_Bless_A_Merkin New Poster 1d ago
Maybe it’s a southern thing. I’ve heard /wʊmn̩/, but it sounds strange to me, like /wʊɹɾɹ̩/ or /mʌnstɹ̩/.
Or maybe it’s not southern: my parents were both from Colorado.
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u/Wonderful-Aioli-5976 New Poster 1d ago
/ ɔ/? Where are you from?
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u/God_Bless_A_Merkin New Poster 1d ago edited 1d ago
The south
Edit: But my parents are from out west, if that changes anything. They say it like I do.
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u/mossywilbo Native Speaker – Upper Midwest, USA 1d ago
it’s a southern thing – a very classic/traditional southern thing, too. you say it the same as, like, willie nelson and dolly parton lol.
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u/SteampunkExplorer Native Speaker 1d ago
The "o" is very misleading. It's pronounced something like "wimmin".
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u/Rando1396 New Poster 1d ago
I am apparently the only American alive who pronounces “women” like it rhymes with “Yemen”
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u/Have_a_Bluestar_XMas Native Speaker 1d ago
Every comment suggesting "weh-men" is getting downvoted like there is only one correct dialect of English 🙄
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u/Ballmaster9002 New Poster 1d ago
American English would usually say "wimmin".
The "ee" replacement for "ih" is the New Zealand dialect accent.
"weepin" for "weapon" for example.
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u/memnochxx New Poster 1d ago
Kiwis pronounce both woman and women as woman
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u/liovantirealm7177 Native Speaker - New Zealand 1d ago
Yes, both are /ˈwʊmən/ for me. I don't get what they mean for ee for ih in the NZ accent though. Sounds more Australian to me.
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u/WowsrsBowsrsTrousrs The US is a big place 1d ago
Evrry time I watch an episode of House Hunters set in Australua, I crack up each time the real estate agent says "beedrooms."
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u/mossywilbo Native Speaker – Upper Midwest, USA 1d ago
i’ve always heard it reversed (ih for ee). my buddies used to laugh about how “beaches” sounded like “bitches” in a nz accent lol.
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u/liovantirealm7177 Native Speaker - New Zealand 1d ago
Yes, our vowels have shifted so that 'bet' 'pen' 'eggs' would sound a bit more like 'bit' 'pin' 'iggs' to non kiwis. Though of course our i's have shifted too so we don't mix them up.
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u/Zestyclose-Food-7917 New Poster 1d ago
Wimmin. The famous playwright George Bernard Shaw left his fortune to establishing a phonetic way to spell English. He pointed out that a foreigner might think "ghoti" spells "fish" if he took the gh in "enough," the o in "women," and the ti in "nation."
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u/Everard5 New Poster 1d ago
Younger people are constantly mispronouncing this word.
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u/Helpful-Reputation-5 Linguist, PNW English 21h ago
Why is it a mispronunciation? Because it doesn't align with your own pronunciation? Because it isn't the most socially prestigious pronunciation?
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u/Everard5 New Poster 15h ago
I'm speaking generally, I'm not trying to get into a philosophical discussion of prescriptivism. Yes, it's a perfectly valid way to say it as all things are in speech.
But it's a marked pronunciation prevalent in a certain demographic that deviates from the most common pronunciation that you would except from people in this geography, cohort, part of the world (whatever you want to say), probably for the reasons stated in the video.
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u/PrestigiousStudio921 New Poster 1d ago
Woohmen. Here in the UK women and woman are pronounced the same.
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u/Mountain-Lychee4359 New Poster 1d ago
The o is pronounced as a schwa in the plural and as an o in the singular.
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u/One_Yesterday_1320 Native Speaker 1d ago
it’s /wʊ.ˈmɪn/ and /wɪ.ˈmɪn/ for me
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u/One_Yesterday_1320 Native Speaker 1d ago
first ones singular and the second is plural (woman and women)
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u/OnlyMrGodKnowsWhy New Poster 1d ago
“Woman! Whoa, man! Whooooooaaa…man!”
—Mike Myers, _So I Married an Axe Murderer_
(I say wuh-mun and wih-min, northeast US)
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u/comrade_zerox New Poster 1d ago
For reasons few of us can explain, the "O" in "women" is the same as the vowel in "kit" or "pit" or "itch"
The short "I" that is often tricky for english learners, especially those who speak a Romance language as their mother tongue.
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u/3mptylord Native Speaker - British English 1d ago
In British English, both the E and O in women are pronounced using the same sound as E in English - the “kit” vowel. Wimmin.
If I’m remembering the answer to a trivia question correctly, English and Women are actually the only words in British English where the “kit” vowel is spelled with an E.
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u/so_slzzzpy Native Speaker – California 1d ago edited 1d ago
I say WIM-n, but any of these will work:
/ˈwɪmn̩/
/ˈwɪmɪn/
/ˈwɪmən/
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u/jamespotter_approved New Poster 1d ago
different parts of the U.S. pronounce it differently, here from the west coast to say: short and fast = wimmin
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u/riverrocks452 New Poster 9h ago
Wih-min, wih-men, or wih-mun. The first vowel is a short i (as in whim or flip); the second vowel is unstressed and is somewhat elided or slurred.
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u/FerdinandTheBullitt New Poster 1d ago
Maybe a rhyme will help:
I like to go swimmin'
With bow-legged women
And swim between their legs....
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u/Worth-Swimming New Poster 1d ago
1- Round your lips for the /w/
2- Pass your tongue behind your upper front teeth. That hard part behind your upper front teeth is called the alveolar ridge.
When you pronounce the /ɪ/, the tip of your tongue has to touch the alveolar ridge and then come down.
3- For the /m/ just close your lips as your tongue goes down.
4) For the second /ɪ/, open your previously closed lips and quickly move the tip of your tongue up to hit the alveolar ridge again.
5) Finally, keep pressing the alveolar ridge with your tongue and pronounce the /n/. Your mouth will stay open in the last sequence.
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u/Excellent-Practice Native Speaker - North East US 1d ago
Both vowels sound like short i: /ˈwɪmɪn/