caterpillar

[darkoshi]

https://www.dictionary.com/browse/caterpillar

That word was in the episode title of tonight's episode of Killing Eve (The Hungry Caterpillar). Just now, I was trying to think of how to spell the word, and couldn't figure it out, even though I'm quite familiar with the word. That's unusual for me. All of the spellings I tried looked wrong to me, and they were wrong.

cater cater
pillar pillar
catepillar

Dang. I was trying to spell it right, and spelled it wrong again, in spite of myself!

caterpillar!

(How many words have silent R's in the middle like that?)

Comments

[marahmarie]

It's not silent: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MMm5NJz0aKk

(To my ear there's an "errrr" sound to it)

[darkoshi]

There's 2 pronunciations for it, with and without the R. They both sound natural to me, but the one without the R must be more familiar, as I couldn't figure out how to spell it and had no memory of there being an R in the spelling or pronunciation, until I looked it up.

The audio link on this page gives the pronunciation without the R:
https://www.dictionary.com/browse/caterpillar

[marahmarie]

Huh - the speaker on that page kind of pronounces it with a breathy "h" - cat eh pillar. I guess either way's close enough.

[marahmarie]

OK, I get it...just autoplayed into Emma's next Youtube vid and she's very obviously...British! Explains everything, as now that I think of it/pronounce it out loud, the breathy eh sound is more familiar to my ear than the errrr. Aaah.

[darkoshi]

I listened to a few of her other vids, and can't tell what kind of accent she has... some of them even sound computer-generated to me. But some don't.

Anyway, I was amused you brought up that being the British pronunciation, as I'd just been reading & listening to the audio on this page:
https://pronunciationstudio.com/silent-r-british-pronunciation/

According to that page, British would not pronounce the R in caterpillar.
I'm also amused that my brain "hears" an R in the words spoken on that page (fork, cart, etc.), even when it's not pronounced. Or rather, my brain interprets the schwa (or whatever) sound in those words as another way to pronounce an R. Ie, "what do you mean the R is silent; I just heard you say the R!")

[marahmarie]

Well, it depends!

Don't know if you're familiar with a Long Island (basically: Boston-lite) accent but if so, you know that we don't (traditionally) say the "r" in anything (Bostoners are even worse about this, more pronounced, than LIers). So a LIer might say cahrt, a Bostoner might say caaht, and the rest of the country would say car-t (like car, but with a t on the end - *except* upstate New Yorkers, who put hard rs where there weren't any to begin with, so you get cart like how you'd say Bart!).

Just forex.

Kind of why I love language (especially English) and dialects (especially USian); there can be so much variation.