English majors and phoeneticists:
Is there any rational reason or rule as to why the "s" in "sure" is pronounced as "sh"?
I have a non-native English speaker at work who pronounces it as "soo-rey", and I'd always thought he was just using a native-to-him word or expression... and I can explain the silent -e, but I have no explanation as to why we pronounce "surly" and "surely" so differently, and that "sale" and "shale" are separate things.
@JulieSqveakaroo by analogy with sugar?
-F
i'm also thinking possibly /su/ -> /sju/ -> /ʃu/, because english has a tendency to palatalize consonants before /u/ (see common pronunciation of new as /njuː/ or few as /fjuː/, for instance), and then /sj/ is often further palatalized to /ʃ/.
-R
@Cerulean @JulieSqveakaroo /j/ is *weird* in how it interacts with other sounds, isn't it?
-F
@Felthry @JulieSqveakaroo
I found the name of it: "yod-coalescence."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phonological_history_of_English_consonant_clusters#Yod-coalescence
In American we have a lot of "yod-dropping"(scroll up for that, basically it means we can say new as /nu:/) so instances of long past yod-coalescence fossilized in our language can seem more of a mystery.