From ‘sure’ to ‘pleasure’: Four words in which ‘s’ should be pronounced differently

It is the same letter, yet you must pronounce it differently in each word. That is one of the intricate tests embedded in English phonology – but which only a few people are aware of, let alone correctly observe. (Note that I used ‘let alone’, not ‘talkless of’, which is a non-standard expression.)

Here are the words: street, sure, pleasure, and is. Do you pronounce ‘s’ the same way in each of them? Then, you are one of the people the pronunciation police have been looking for!

Kindly pronounce the four words as a self-test. What did you discover? Whatever the result is, the facts are discussed below.

Firstly, it is only in ‘street’ that ‘s’ should be pronounced as S, as we have in the other elements here:

street – Street

small – Small

first – first

mats – matS

Sure?

Here, the ‘s’ that begins the