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All my life, I've been pronouncing certain words wrong. I always pronounced "e" as "eh" in some words instead of "ih." An example would be "precipitation." For the first e, I would pronounce it as eh instead of ih. I recently found out that I've been wrong when I looked in the dictionary. When does e sound like ih? Is it okay if I pronounce it as eh?

Shuu
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    Where are you from? Pronunciation varies widely (even wildly) from place to place; dictionaries are only approximating some of the most common dialects. Basically, if the folks around you understand you, you're probably doing it right. – 1006a Feb 16 '18 at 17:16
  • What sound exactly do you mean by ‘ih’? Do you mean [ɪ], the vowel found in the most common pronunciation of words like hit or sing? That is the most commonly heard first vowel in the word precipitation, though it’s reduced, so you may also hear something closer to [ə]. Some would transcribe the vowel phonemically as /ɪ̵/ or /ɨ/. – Janus Bahs Jacquet Feb 16 '18 at 17:23
  • @Janus I meant [ɪ], sorry about that! So is pronouncing it as [ə] okay? Is pronouncing it as a short e (eh) okay? When do I know to pronounce an e like [ɪ]? Thanks. – Shuu Feb 16 '18 at 17:29
  • @1006a I'm from California. Most people understand me, but I want to make my pronunciation as clear as possible since I've been tutoring lately. – Shuu Feb 16 '18 at 17:30
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    Pronouncing precipitation with an [ε] (as in let or bell) sounds unusual to my ear; I don’t think I’ve ever heard it. Perfectly understandable, of course, and possibly not even something I’d notice unless it was systematic, but unusual. A schwa [ə] sounds perfectly normal and natural to me—I’m certain I’ve heard many people say that. Unfortunately, in English, spelling and pronunciation are rarely more than distant cousins, sometimes not even kissing cousins, so deducing from spelling when an ⟨e⟩ represents which of [ε ə ɪ iː] is an almost impossible task. – Janus Bahs Jacquet Feb 16 '18 at 17:35
  • Thanks for your response! I just don't understand how an e could be pronounced as a short i (ih). I've searched through many countless websites, none which explain this. It definitely does not feel right to pronounce the first vowel in precipitation as "eh," but I'm not sure where the "ih" sound comes from. I was never taught that the e could make that sound. If the first vowel actually makes the schwa sound, why isn't it shown like that in any dictionaries? If it actually is supposed to be a schwa sound, is it pronounced the same for all words like precipitation? Thanks! – Shuu Feb 16 '18 at 17:54
  • I'm not sure which dictionary you're looking at, but I believe in most "standard" American accents the vowel sound in the first syllable of "precipitation" isn't the vowel in "pin" (what I think you mean by "ih") but rather the vowel sound in "free" or else a schwa, as @JanusBahsJacquet mentions. FWIW, I lived in LA for about a decade and I can imagine a SoCal accent using something like the "friend" vowel in precipitation. – 1006a Feb 16 '18 at 18:01
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    @1006a I have to disagree with that. In my experience, long [iː] (or a shortened form [i]) is less common than short [ɪ] in precipitation. Even specifically American dictionaries like MW and AH show only /ɪ/ as the phoneme, the same vowel as in pin, apparently considering the [i(ː)] variant too uncommon to even list. The /ɪ/ vowel is often in more or less free variation with schwa in pretonic syllables especially, while /iː/ is not usually. (But see sumelic’s answer below: the OED apparently has /i/ first and /ə/ second, rather than vice versa.) – Janus Bahs Jacquet Feb 16 '18 at 18:17
  • @JanusBahsJacquet Hmm, perhaps. Listening to US speakers on Forvo, I think probably I'm hearing a schwa where M-W has an (un-stressed?) [I]. – 1006a Feb 16 '18 at 18:33
  • @JanusBahsJacquet I'm stunned by this idea of there ever being a FLEECE vowel there in the first syllable of precipitation, unstressed as it is and all. I don't know I've ever heard such a thing, but maybe whether precipitate is a noun or a verb or an adjective might change that. I might say it with a schwi when I’m over-elocuting, but schwa seems the norm in casual connected speech. Saying it like the start of precept is a novel concept for me, one I'm not sure my idiolect's phonology supports. – tchrist Feb 16 '18 at 19:48

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Reduced vowels always occur in unstressed syllables

In English, a process called "vowel reduction" may affect the pronunciation of a vowel in a syllable without any stress. The letter "e" may correspond to a "reduced" vowel sound transcribed as [ɪ] or [ə]. Not all unstressed syllables are pronounced with reduced vowels. To learn whether the letter "e" in an unstressed syllable can correspond to a reduced vowel, you should look in a dictionary, as you have done for this word.

Reduced vowels and "precipitation"

The word "precipitation" has secondary stress on the second syllable, and primary stress on the second-to-last syllable, but no stress on the first syllable. For this reason, the first syllable is often pronounced with a reduced vowel.

However, it's not necessarily easy for a native English speaker to notice this, because the distribution of reduced vowels is variable, the pronuciation of reduced vowels is variable, and vowel reduction is rarely explicitly taught to native English speakers when they are learning how to read because they tend to do it naturally.

The comments below your question show the variability and confusion that exist.

One major area of variation that is fairly well-known is the presence or absence of what is called the "weak vowel merger". Basically, some speakers feel like they can't tell the difference between an "ih" sound and an "ə" sound in a syllable with a reduced vowel, or they feel that all syllables with a reduced vowel have "ə": these speakers are considered to have this merger. It is common in American English. (But even accents that don't have a general merger may differ in which reduced vowel they use in particular words, or may allow either reduced vowel to be used in certain contexts.)

The convention in most modern dictionaries is as follows:

  • for accents that have two main reduced vowel sounds, one of them (the one that often corresponds to a written "e" or "i") is represented with the same symbol as the unreduced vowel found in words like "bit" (in IPA, /ɪ/), and the other is represented with the symbol "ə".

  • for accents that have only one main reduced vowel sound, it is represented with "ə".

The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) gives the following transcriptions for "precipitation":

/prᵻˌsɪpᵻˈteɪʃn/, U.S. /priˌsɪpəˈteɪʃ(ə)n/, /prəˌsɪpəˈteɪʃ(ə)n/

The special, non-IPA symbol "ᵻ" is used in the OED to represent a reduced vowel that can be realized either as /ɪ/ or as /ə/ in British English.

You can see that the OED does record a pronunciation without a reduced vowel in the first syllable for American English, but it has the vowel /i/ (this is the pronunciation with the "free" vowel that 1006a mentioned in a comment). Pronunciations with a vowel more like [ɛ] may exist, but as you have found, most dictionary-makers either don't consider these pronunciations common enough or don't consider them standard enough to include in their transcriptions.

Situations where /ε/ occurs in unstressed syllables

In closed word-initial syllables

The letter "e" can sometimes represent unreduced /ε/ in an unstressed syllable. This occurs in particular in many words where the first syllable is unstressed, but not a prefix, and is "closed"—that is, the syllable ends in a consonant sound: for example, tectonic, technique, sectarian, centripetal, mentality, tempestuous.

But prefixes can have reduced vowels even when they are closed syllables

In words starting with the prefix ex-, the first syllable is closed, but the vowel may be reduced anyway when it is unstressed: see the answers to Is there a rule for the correct pronunciation of words starting with "ex"?

I believe there is is similar variation in the pronunciation of the vowel in the prefix en-/em- in some words where it is unstressed. E.g. the word embed is transcribed by Merriam-Webster with /ɪ/, but by the American Heritage Dictionary with /ε/.

In word-final closed syllables, sometimes

In words like project, the unstressed vowel in the final syllable is not always reduced. Merriam-Webster indicates project can have /ε/ or /ɪ/ in the second syllable, and progress can have /ə/ or /ε/ (I don't know why they transcribe the reduced vowels differently; maybe the identity of the preceding consonant is relevant).

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herisson
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  • I've never heard the first syllable with the FLEECE vowel!! Could that be regional, like the Deep South or some such? – tchrist Feb 16 '18 at 18:30
  • @tchrist have you heard "precipitate" with the FLEECE vowel? It seems to me that I would tend to use it there, certainly for the adjective and noun and possibly for the verb; therefore I might use it for "precipitation" if I have one of those other uses in mind. – 1006a Feb 16 '18 at 18:36
  • @sumelic Why did you mention prefixes? Precipitate came to us that way. – tchrist Feb 16 '18 at 19:19
  • @tchrist: The second-to-last section is saying that consonant-final prefixes are an exception to the general rule that unreduced /ε/ occurs in closed word-initial syllables. Pre-, being a vowel-final prefix, (almost?) always occurs in an open syllable, so its pronunciation follows different patterns. – herisson Feb 16 '18 at 19:29
  • @1006a No, that’s what I said: I’ve never heard precipitate said with the FLEECE vowel in its first syllable. Not even preception has anything but a schwa/schwi there (unlike precept /ˈpriˌsɛpt/) at the start. – tchrist Feb 16 '18 at 19:37
  • For pre‑ to be prefix in precipitate, wouldn’t have to be a recoverable ✱cipitate in English to attach that prefix to? Already in Latin it was praecipitō/praecipitāre from praeceps for head-first. I don’t know that you could consider that to have left even a cranberry morpheme in English. – tchrist Feb 16 '18 at 19:46
  • @tchrist It's probably an etymological fallacy, but I do think of "pre" as a prefix there. I think it's because the "before" meaning is preserved in some senses of the word—I tend to think of "precipitate" and "precipitous" as describing actions taken before enough thought/the time is right (and, probably not coincidentally, use the FLEECE vowel for both). – 1006a Feb 16 '18 at 20:08