Alex in Amarillo, Texas, says he often hears speakers dropping the sound of the first r in the word forward, sounding like foward or fuhward. It’s what linguists call dissimilation, where, when duplicate consonants are not far apart in a single word, one of them is sometimes dropped for ease of pronunciation. For more about dissimilation, check out this article by Nancy Hall, a professor of linguistics at California State University Long Beach. This is part of a complete episode.
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