My friends have a variety of ways of pronouncing "Tuesday":
- Tooos-day
- Tyu-sday
- Choose-day
Which one is considered correct?
Answer
There are really only two phonemic variants here:
- First syllable is /tu:/
- First syllable is /tju:/
The variation between these two forms is an instance of the widespread idiosyncratic insertion of /j/ before /u:/ in many English dialects. Another common word with this variation is tune, which is pronounced both as /tu:n/ and /tju:n/. Generally both variants are accepted as correct, though your dialect will vary in which one it prefers.
The variant pronunciation with "choose-day" is a matter of dialects in which the cluster /tj/ is regularly pronounced as [tʃ] ("ch"). This is another common dialectical feature which is generally accepted as correct in the regions where it occurs. When you have someone who begins "Tuesday" with /tju:/ and produces /tj/ as [tʃ], you'll hear them pronounce the word with [tʃu:] as the first syllable.
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