Highly improbable, captain

[ewx]

[Poll #1049331]

Comments

[simont]

I think it quite often has one and a half Bs.

[karen2205]

I'm not sure I ever do really informal speech....

[pm215]

[X] I don't trust somebody's introspection as a guide to their own speech usage

[ewx.livejournal.com]

l-)

[kaberett.livejournal.com]

Truly inveterate poll-filler-outers will have gone and asked somebody how they usually say "probable"...

(I didn't.)

[j4.livejournal.com]

Ditto (and I certainly don't trust people who claim they always pronounce everything 'properly') but, with that caveat, I think mine comes out something like /prQblI/.

[vyvyan.livejournal.com]

I have transcribed my own recorded speech in the past, though...

[lnr]

I probably say probably but there's a possibility that it slurs a bit it probly some of the time. Having read the second poll before the first one and found myself wondering why the correct version wasn't an option (and why was rjk polling second years) I'm moderately confident that the one-B version is very rare in my speech usage. rjk might be able to comment, since he's fairly used to the way I speak.

[keirf.livejournal.com]

I don't know how you say "probably".

[ex-lark-asc.livejournal.com]

It has two B's, but they're both before the L :)

[geekette8.livejournal.com]

In emphasising the probable-ness it would have two Bs: "I'll PROBABLY do X." Otherwise, only one - "Not sure - I'll probally do X".

[sidheag.livejournal.com]

That's probably me, too; except that I think my less-emphasised version doesn't really have an "ally" in it, it's more like prob-bly (I'm justifying having said 2 bs :-) I notice some people's informal "probably" differs from "properly" only in which consonant is in the middle, and I'm pretty sure mine doesn't. It is very, very hard to assess your own informal speech though, as someone said above.

[ronebofh.livejournal.com]

[x] it has no A
[x] it has one voiced bilabial fricative and one B