D&D 5E How to pronounce Artificer

[Charlaquin]

Well, dang...

Now I'm tempted to change my pronunciation to art-uh-FISH-er for symmetry purposes due to artificial being the most common related word in regular day to day speech.

The “fish” sound comes from the “ial” suffix though. Like, official has that sound too, but officier doesn’t.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

No offisher, I definitely haven't been drinking.

Note: "official" does have the "fish" sound like artificial. It's the -er suffix that changes it to a a -sir sound as in officer.

 

[Flamestrike]

That's sounds a bit London: "ar'i-fiser".

Yeah, received Aussie English is very close to British 'upper class' English. People can often mistake the two.

Cate Blanchett is a pretty good example of received Aussie English it if you listen to her normal speaking voice.

 

[Bagpuss]

General rules in English for stresses are...

• One word has only one stress. (One word cannot have two stresses. If you hear two stresses, you hear two words. Two stresses cannot be one word. It is true that there can be a "secondary" stress in some words. ...
• We can only stress vowels, not consonants.

Which would make it ARR-ti-fi-sir. There are some other rules but that seems to fit them best.

 

[Charlaquin]

No offisher, I definitely haven't been drinking.

Note: "official" does have the "fish" sound like artificial. It's the -er suffix that changes it to a a -sir sound as in officer.

Right, and artificer also ends in -er, hence the analogy.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Right, and artificer also ends in -er, hence the analogy.

And pronouncing it to rhyme with officer is perfectly reasonable. It is not, however, correct.

There is no central authority that dictates how certain combinations of letters are pronounced (unlike French for example), and the same combination of letters can be pronounced in different ways. Take the homograph "bow" for example. Take a bow for tying a bow onto the bow of the ship. Sometimes spelling has little relation to pronunciation. How do you say Worcester source? Alnwick Castle?

The pronunciation of English words is established by common usage, not spelling, so a word that is not in common usage has no correct pronunciation.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Yeah, received Aussie English is very close to British 'upper class' English. People can often mistake the two.

Cate Blanchett is a pretty good example of received Aussie English it if you listen to her normal speaking voice.

I was thinking more Sarth Landan rather than RP, which doesn't usually drop ts for glottal stops. My version, with the stress on ICE, would be more of an RP version. Not that you hear RP anymore outside old British movies.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

I voted the closest one ("ARR-ti-fi-sir") but really it's none of the above. I use "art-i-FISS-er." Secondary stress on "art," primary stress on FISS. very short "i."

 

[EzekielRaiden]

General rules in English for stresses are...

• One word has only one stress. (One word cannot have two stresses. If you hear two stresses, you hear two words. Two stresses cannot be one word. It is true that there can be a "secondary" stress in some words. ...
• We can only stress vowels, not consonants.

Which would make it ARR-ti-fi-sir. There are some other rules but that seems to fit them best.

I'm...not sure who declared that words cannot have two stresses, since I've been using dictionaries for many years that use both a primary stress mark ( ˈ ) before the primary stress syllable, and a secondary stress mark ( ˌ ) before any secondary stressed syllables, for English pronunciations. For example, from Dictionary.com, the word "syllabify" is marked as having one primary stress and one secondary stress in IPA symbols: / sɪˈlæb əˌfaɪ /, in colloquial spelling "si-LOB-uh-FIE."

Now, I would absolutely grant that a word cannot have two primary stresses, but secondary stress is pretty damn well demonstrated in actual English usage. I would very much disagree with the claim that secondary stress is always dramatically smaller. It is, in general, consistently a meaningful step down, but for very long words--or words that are built up from several components with different stress rules--the end result often makes at least one secondary stressed syllable closer to the primary stressed syllable. And, as syllabify shows, secondary stress can occur in words as short as four syllables--I imagine it could even occur in words as short as three, though I suspect that would be pretty rare.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

the word "syllabify" is marked as having one primary stress and one secondary stress in IPA symbols: / sɪˈlæb əˌfaɪ /, in colloquial spelling "si-LOB-uh-FIE."

This word is obviously pronounced silly-biffy!