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There are several pronunciation points that are a little ambiguous due to the limitations of text. Let's address them one-by-one:
Accent on the first syllable - I don't believe I've ever heard anyone pronounce "fascist" without doing that.
The vowel sound following the initial "f" - I use the same vowel here that I use in the word "fat". If your professor is using the vowel in the first syllable of "father" instead, it may be due to influence from the Latin root word "fasces"; so-called classical pronunciation of Latin insists on that broader "ah" sound. You haven't said, but if he's not originally from the US, he may also be influenced by the way the corresponding word is pronounced in another language (the Romance languages tend to use a vowel closer to the Latin original than does English).
The consonant or cluster of consonants in the middle of the world - My own inclination here is the "sh" sound, which is what the "classical" Latin rules suggest, but some scholars of Latin prefer a hard "c", even when it's followed by an "e" or "i", thus "faskist". Others would combine the "sc" cluster before those vowels as a single "s" sound, resulting in "fassist", though I don't think I've heard that done to this particular word (the word that gets the treatment more often than I expect it is "schism", pronounced "sizzum" by some).
May just be a dialectal difference too. Being from MN/WI I hear /ae/ as in "fat" and /a/ as in "father" used interchangeably. Yesterday I heard "Asperger's" pronounced with /a/ for the first time (I use /ae/). I pronounce "aunt" with /a/, but hear many people use /ae/. I'm always made aware of this when I go to "Auntie Anne's" for a pretzel.
It's still a little unclear to me how you pronounce the word, and what part of the word seems off to you. I pronounce it just as Ron does /fash/ as in fashion, and /ist/. The word came to English from modern Italian in the early 1900s, so the /sh/ sound spelled as -sc- approximates the Italian. Most American dictionaries agree on the first vowel sound as in ash. If the pronunciation you are hearing is like father, then I would guess he is pulling that from the modern Italian pronunciation. But then I might expect a pronunciation more like /fah-sheest/.
I further agree with Ron that, while some dictionaries list the /s/ sound in the middle, I have never heard that pronunciation.
Martha Barnette
Grant Barrett
Grant Barrett
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