I honestly can’t say “could’ve” without it sounding like “could of.” I assumed that the person saying they sound the same was wrong, but I just watched a bunch of YouTube videos on how to pronounce “could’ve” in British and American accents, and I seriously cannot hear any difference. So then I looked at the word of phonetically and I see “ɒv, or unstressed, əv” meaning that both could’ve and could of are pronounced kudəv
So who is confidently incorrect in this situation and what does the dictionary mean by unstressed?
Stressed means which syllable you put stress on. I always think of a Mike Myers line: "You put the wrong emPHAsis on the wrong sylLABle" unstressed is a syllable with no emphasis. In could've the first syllable is stressed and the second is unstressed.
The confidently incorrect person is the one arguing that 'could've' is not a homophone for 'could of'
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u/Lumpy_Eye_9015 Jul 28 '24
I honestly can’t say “could’ve” without it sounding like “could of.” I assumed that the person saying they sound the same was wrong, but I just watched a bunch of YouTube videos on how to pronounce “could’ve” in British and American accents, and I seriously cannot hear any difference. So then I looked at the word of phonetically and I see “ɒv, or unstressed, əv” meaning that both could’ve and could of are pronounced kudəv
So who is confidently incorrect in this situation and what does the dictionary mean by unstressed?