"Paul"  wrote in message 
news:5454ceda-b84e-416a-985a-d57677eed43f@v39g2000pro.googlegroups.com...
On 19 Dec, 07:34, "Charles Lindsey"  wrote:
> In  Paul 
>  writes:
>
>
>
> >I do not think either the Brits or those in the U.S. omit any vowel
> >sound in these words completely. In other words, there are no silent
> >syllables in these words.Theoretically, every syllable in a word is
> >uttered with a 'stress level' different from that of the other
> >syllables in the same word. But for practical considerations, we could
> >say, a word with four syllables or more probably has a syllable with a
> >primary stress and another with a secondary stress.The syllable that
> >is stressed the most, naturally, is the one that takes the primary
> >stress, and the one that is uttered with the second highest degree of
> >stress (force of utterance) is the one that takes the secondary
> >stress. When a particular syllable takes a primary stress, chances are
> >that the vowel in the syllable is pronounced with a longer time
> >duration than the vowels in the other syllables. This is what you
> >might perhaps have mistaken as the 'silencing' of a vowel. In 'or-di-
> >na-ri-ly', the third syllable 'na' takes the primary stress, the first
> >syllable 'or', the secondary. In 'tem-po-ra-ri-ly' the third syllable
> >'ra' takes the primary stress and first syllable 'tem', the secondary.
> >In 'mo-men-ta-ri-ly' too the third syllable takes the primary stress
> >and the first syllable, the third. This pattern does seem repetitive,
> >but watch out for the pitfalls of phonetics if you are not a native
> >speaker of English because you are likely to come across exceptions to
> >this pattern in words commonly used as adjectives.
>
> No! No! No!
>
> You have got your primary and secondary enphases exactly back-to-front in
> all three of those examples, which clearly marks you out as a Leftpondian.
>
> No speaker of British English would ever emphasize them that way round,
> and I think that is what the OP was really enquiring about.
>
> --
> Charles H. Lindsey ---------At Home, doing my own 
> thing------------------------
> Tel: +44 161 436 6131 Fax: +44 161 436 6133 
> Web:http://www.cs.man.ac.uk/~chl
> Email: c...@clerew.man.ac.uk Snail: 5 Clerewood Ave, CHEADLE, SK8 3JU, 
> U.K.
> PGP: 2C15F1A9 Fingerprint: 73 6D C2 51 93 A0 01 E7 65 E8 64 7E 14 A4 AB A5

Agreed. That was a mistake to respond without first having checked
Daniel Jones. What about the view that certain vowels are missing
altogether in these words?

"Necessarily" works the same way, doesn't it?  The British tend to make the 
first syllable stronger than the third, and most North Americans the other 
way around.  The song "It ain't necessarily so", by Americans Ira and George 
Gershwin, forces the singer to do the accentuation exactly as most North 
Americans do it!