PRONOUNCING STRESSED 
AND UNSTRESSED "UI"

© 2001-2002 by Orchid Land Publications

C.-J. N. Bailey

[20020625 (bis)]

     To begin with we exclude guilt because "gu" go together to keep "g" from being pronounced as in "gym."  In quit and quilt,  "qu" are like "kw."  We include "oui" in Louisiana but not in Louis or Louisville, because that accords with the history of the words and the way they came into English.  
     Unstressed "ui" in biscuit, conduit, and circuit are pronounced as though "u" were not there--the sound "i" (as in merit) is the unstressed grade of the "ui."
     There are several classes of stressed "ui":
--the nativized "ui" in bruise, bruit,  cruise, fruit, recruit, nuisance, Louisiana, suit (which is often distinguished from soot by rhyming the latter with foot)  with "ui" pronounced as though "oo."  Cf. suite, which in English sounds like sweet.  The "oui" In French Louisiana was pronounced like our English pronoun "we" or the Scottish "wee" (though in French"i" is much shorter, even when word-final); there was no falling diphthong such as is heard in the following examples.  (Note that Scottish English, which has the "oo" sound of too in words like good and crookëd spells good with "ui":   guid; cf. the name Cruickshank.  
--the "ui" diphthongized from dissyllabic "ui" in ruin (cf. earlier ru-inous), pronounced as spelled.  
--a subclass of the foregoing which has not been diphthongized--illustrated in perpetuity, gratuity, etc.  In Jesuit, there is a formative boundary between "u" and "i"--where "u" is pronounced as in issuance and "i"  is pronounced as in merit.  The two unstressed vowels are dissyllabic.  Intuit is similar, except that "u" is stressed and pronounced as in tune.   Similarly, the borrowed "ui" in bruin is a real diphthong--"u" plus "i."  Bruin rhymes with ruin.