Thread: Beyond

Ok this puzzled me for a few years now... Should one pronounce it "beyond" or "beyon'" ? The most consistent pattern I heard was that it's "beyond", except before d,t and th. So it's, say, "beyon'the call of duty", but "beyond any doubt". Am I right? And where on Earth did this pattern came from?

In British English you should be careful to pronounce the last consonant of a word properly (particularly T and D). Else you sound like an uneducated person. But you only need to pronounce the D in "beyond" carefully if you are speaking slowly. If you speak fast and the next letter is a consonant, then it merges with that letter.

Americans have their own way of handling consonants and I think they "drop" a fair number of them. Including the D in "beyond" in some accents. In American English T often sounds like D.

Because of these types of differences it's best to decide on speaking either British or American English; then you focus on pronouncing in that way and ignore the other accent.

Your written English is great, I'm sure this is not a serious problem. You'd only need to spend a month or so in an English speaking country and all this would feel very natural.

American English speaker here - I've never heard the word beyond without the "d".

Scott

American speaker here, I have to say that the "d" is meant to be pronounced but when people speak fast sometimes it is more silent and the "n" and "d" intertwine or sometimes the d even sounds like a t.

If you fully pronounce the word it will sound fine.

Originally Posted by ac220

Ok this puzzled me for a few years now... Should one pronounce it "beyond" or "beyon'" ? The most consistent pattern I heard was that it's "beyond", except before d,t and th. So it's, say, "beyon'the call of duty", but "beyond any doubt". Am I right? And where on Earth did this pattern came from?

I think these contractions facilitate speech. In "beyon'the call of duty" if you fully pronounce the d and then the "th" it doesn't flow easily, so the n,d and th are sort of combined. I don't think you can spell this out and I don't think "beyon'the" accurately captures the sound. With "beyond any doubt" the d flows right into the a so it's pronounced.

Originally Posted by sperk

Originally Posted by ac220

Ok this puzzled me for a few years now... Should one pronounce it "beyond" or "beyon'" ? The most consistent pattern I heard was that it's "beyond", except before d,t and th. So it's, say, "beyon'the call of duty", but "beyond any doubt". Am I right? And where on Earth did this pattern came from?

I think these contractions facilitate speech. In "beyon'the call of duty" if you fully pronounce the d and then the "th" it doesn't flow easily, so the n,d and th are sort of combined. I don't think you can spell this out and I don't think "beyon'the" accurately captures the sound. With "beyond any doubt" the d flows right into the a so it's pronounced.

This is a good point.

Thanks everybody.

@Johanna. I wish it was that easy. Then again, as Hercule Poirot (or rather Agatha Christie) remarked once, sounding as zee stupit forener may have its advantages. Sometimes. Not so most of the time.

I would agree. If the beginning letter of the next word is a vowel, pronounce the d. If not (such as in the "beyond the call of duty"), pronouncing the d would give us too much of a mouthful of consonants (ha, like Russian...), so we drop it a little. What I find when I say it is that I do form the the d with my mouth, but it falls into the space between the words, if that makes any sense at all. I think this is the hard-to-describe sound somebody mentioned above. For example, if I write all of the sounds/letters that my mouth forms, but I write what my vocal cords actually say in capital letters, it would look like this: BEYONdTHECALL. There is a very tiny pause after BEYON where the d sound forms but doesn't quite get vocalized, but as a result of speaking quickly a bit of the beginning of the sound gets "caught" after the N, and a bit of the end of the sound gets "caughts" before the TH.

Thanks. I think I've understod what happens here and why.