Discussion Groups / British English / September 2009

The first thing to state is that the British are amazingly (and probably
excessively) tolerant of Americans and American pronunciation. If they ever
affect not to understand, they are making a point about cultural imperialism

It is not so much that the "a" is silent in "ordinary", "temporary", and
"momentary" as that it is so unstressed as to be practically a schwa. (The
preceding vowel is also unstressed.)   So, in  "ordinarily", "temporarily",
and "momentarily", it is the "i" that is silent in the correct British
pronunciation. The preceding vowel is often unstressed as well:
"ord'n'r'ly". But you also hear all vowels pronounced: "ordin-arilly".

I think the concept of 'proper British pronunciation' died a long
time ago, and it seems that nowadays anything goes.
That said, your three examples are not exactly parallel. I pronounce
the first adjective with three syllables, the second with four and
the third with something in between depending on the context; the
word doesn't sound the same in "a momentary lapse" and "the lapse
was momentary." The accent is on the first syllable in every case.
So I can't agree with your understanding. On the other hand, I
pronounce all the adverbs with stress on the 'a'. I find it very
uncomfortable trying to say 'temporarily' without pronouncing the
'a'.

Well this English speaker usually pronounces the 'a' in the adjectives,
but without emphasis on it.

But I think it should _always_ be pronounced in the adverbs, simply because
it is almost impossible to pronounce it otherwise.

I do not think either the Brits or those in the U.S. omit any vowel
sound in these words completely. In other words, there are no silent
syllables in these words.Theoretically, every syllable in a word is
uttered with a 'stress level' different from that of the other
syllables in the same word. But for practical considerations, we could
say, a word with four syllables or more probably has a syllable with a
primary stress and another with a secondary stress.The syllable that
is stressed the most, naturally, is the one that takes the primary
stress, and the one that is uttered with the second highest degree of
stress (force of utterance) is the one that takes the secondary
stress. When a particular syllable takes a primary stress, chances are
that the vowel in the syllable is pronounced with a longer time
duration than the vowels in the other syllables. This is what you
might perhaps have mistaken as the 'silencing' of a vowel. In 'or-di-
na-ri-ly', the third syllable 'na' takes the primary stress, the first
syllable 'or', the secondary. In 'tem-po-ra-ri-ly' the third syllable
'ra' takes the primary stress and first syllable 'tem', the secondary.
In 'mo-men-ta-ri-ly' too the third syllable takes the primary stress
and the first syllable, the third. This pattern does seem repetitive,
but watch out for the pitfalls of phonetics if you are not a native
speaker of English because you are likely to come across exceptions to
this pattern in words commonly used as adjectives.

In article
<c98cf391-8d3f-4241-a298-6427e024abe7@l33g2000pri.googlegroups.com>, ct
<claus.tondering@gmail.com> wrote:

Hi Claus

In Received Pronunciation, the dialect of educated speakers of standard
English, all three adverbs are stressed on the first syllable, with the
others trailing away in emphasis.

There are, of course, lots of 'educated speakers' who speak with a
whole variety of other dialects,  many of them approaching RP, and many
influenced by American and regional useage.

But in RP the pronunciation follows what Fowler called 'recessive
accent', with the stress on the first syllable.

That is the normal pronunciation among those who are comfortable,
habitual users of RP.

L