Word poll!

[conuly]

Poll #24736 Stress question

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 140

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Native speakers of American English - where do you put the stress in the word "electoral"?

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E
3 (3.0%)

Lec
45 (45.0%)

Tor
51 (51.0%)

Al
1 (1.0%)

Native speakers of other Englishes, same question:

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E
3 (9.7%)

Lec
25 (80.6%)

Tor
3 (9.7%)

Al
0 (0.0%)

Nonnative speakers, all varieties, same question:

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E
0 (0.0%)

Lec
9 (100.0%)

Tor
0 (0.0%)

Al
0 (0.0%)

Comments

[troisoiseaux]

...I may have misunderstood what it means to stress a syllable.

[conuly]

...what did you think it meant?

[troisoiseaux]

I don't KNOW, I just said "electoral" out loud and was like AH YES, ANSWER ONE SOUNDS CORRECT and then I picked it and everyone else (American English speakers) had picked /tor/.

[delight]

I didn't! I definitely stress the lec.

[wenchpixie]

hi, sorry - I should have introduced myself before - I kept seeing you on Agony Aunt and enjoyed your view of things, so I journal stalked you.

Anyway, I've said E in the poll, but actually I say the first syllable (and stress it) as El. I'm a Scots English speaker, tempered by a couple of formative years spent in England.

[conuly]

Ah, that's where you know me from!

No worries, I've added people based on seeing them on recent posts or friend-of-friend, so whatever :)

[conuly]

Also...

Anyway, I've said E in the poll, but actually I say the first syllable (and stress it) as El. I'm a Scots English speaker, tempered by a couple of formative years spent in England.

Are you 100% certain? Typically people say that in English we break syllables after the vowel unless that would mean starting the next syllable with a consonant cluster that violates English phonological constraints... but I'm not all that familiar with how people break syllables in Scotland. Or the UK in general.

[wenchpixie]

Yes, I'm voice trained - mostly to change where I'd naturally break syllables so I'm more comprehensible to English people, but it means I've generally got a reasonable idea of what I do.

I suspect this particular break's down to a touch of the West Central Scottish dark L (which isn't the same as the English variation, but similar enough.. we just vary more to dark/darker than light/dark) which means I'm effectively diphthonging el as one letter with a shortened a at the start and what a lot of ears would perceive as no e sound at all (it's there, but it's very Scots and a lot of people can't make out the difference).

[conuly]

it means I've generally got a reasonable idea of what I do.

That, btw, puts you a world ahead of a lot of people who picked up from reading instruction this very weird idea of how we do syllables.

"Some syllables are closed" is a fine mental mnemonic for remembering that "rabbit" has a double b, but I don't think anybody can honestly say that they say "rab bit" unless they're specifically "saying to spell".

(Edit: Sorry, I've had dyslexia and reading instruction on the brain today and you managed to accidentally walk into a gripe. Not hard for you to do, because I was bound and determined to insert that into my conversations with people, it seems.)

I suspect this particular break's down to a touch of the West Central Scottish dark L (which isn't the same as the English variation, but similar enough.. we just vary more to dark/darker than light/dark) which means I'm effectively diphthonging el as one letter with a shortened a at the start and what a lot of ears would perceive as no e sound at all (it's there, but it's very Scots and a lot of people can't make out the difference).

This makes sense. Now I wanna dig up some youtube videos to hear people speaking.

[wenchpixie]

No worries - I started getting the instruction in the first place because I had to sit a fairly life-determining exam, aged 11 and a whole section of it was based on word pronunciation, except I cam from 450 miles away and all my pronuciation was quite different to the exam's assumption. Luckily I found it fascinating rather than infuriating and continued atudying with an excellent linguistics fellow that my Mum knew when we moved back to home, so it hit nerdery for me :)

Rabbit's a great exanmple for that - I can think of some accents that stretch the b out, but it's still a single undifferentiated sound.

[jtthomas]

Massachusetts, rhymes with spectral. Tor isn’t its own syllable. It goes lect-ruhl.

[shewhostaples]

British (English, southern) here and yes, that's how I'd say it too. (I voted 'lec' in the poll, as it seemed the closest.)

[fuzzyred]

I see I'm in the minority (and I almost put American English, then I figured "Canadian English" might be different). Although, honestly, it's not a word I say very often.

[conuly]

How about "pectoral"?

[fuzzyred]

First syllable again, PEC-torl (yes, I meant to leave out the "a", I tend to slur the last two syllables together, similar to the ending of the word "swirl")

[brokenallbroken]

Mostly on the tor, always on tor when said in isolation, but it changes depending on the rhythm of the rest of the sentence.

[lydy]

I think it changes depending on whether or not I use it as a modifier, maybe? Electoral college and electoral seem to be different, the first with a stress on the second syllable and the second with a stress on the third? Maybe It can be hard to hear oneself.

American English speaker, here.

[dragonlady7]

ah, it depends on use. "eLECtoral college, elecTORal votes", dunno why

[crystalpyramid]

I think I say Tor, but there's a secondary, almost as strong stress on Lec?

[readerjane]

Chicagolander here.

I say TOR, but if I'm using the whole phrase, "electoral college," then I say LEC.

[wendelah1]

Me, too!

[steorra]

I may have been contaminated by living in the US for most of a decade.

[nrgburst]

Canadian, so that probably explains why I think it’s tor.

[pauamma]

Answered "non-native", but my English is heavily if not wholly US-influenced.

[agoodwinsmith]

Hmm. Canadian, with American mother and grandmothers. The word is not used much here. In certain circumstances I would do a two stress: E lect TOR al. It's probably going to be when I feel a sentence's rhythm needs a double beat. More commonly I would say e LEC toral, and it would really be e LEC tral.

And now that I've thought about it this much, it doesn't seem like a real word at all, anymore.

[elainegrey]

HA

[maju]

Australian here. As far as I know it's only ever pronounced with emphasis on LEC in Australia, no matter what the context.

[fred_mouse]

Another aussie, agree entirely. I've spent a lot of time around politics wonks; e-lec-TOR-al was new to me with listening to clips on social media containing discussion of the USA electoral college, which comes so far into the 'you do politics how?' category.