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[Facts] Re: How are names ending in cia pronounced as sha in English?
This isn't specific to names. Consider the pronunciation of "special," "social," "musician," "physician." Of course there are exceptions, such as the word "pronunciation" itself. I don't know that there is a specific why. English spelling is quirky and only partially phonetic. And many people named Lucia, for instance, pronounce their name "loo-see-a" or the Itaian way, "loo-chee-a"
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Notice how these words and names are pronounced—the C when followed by a long /i/ becomes /s/, but if the ia is monophthongized to schwa it becomes sh. Of course s is affected the same way. In reality the i (sometimes e) has become the approximant /j/ and partially or fully merged with the preceding dental to form a new phoneme. This happens to s z t and d, and foreign words naturalised into English where C and g are dentalised before i and e. Sometimes you can still hear the approximant (marshya), sometimes you can't.

This message was edited 3/4/2024, 7:04 PM

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Thank you.
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