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⟨eau⟩
From Teflpedia
⟨eau⟩ is an English vowel trigraph consisting of E+A+U. This tends to be found in French‐to‐English loans.
The default pronunciation puts words into the ɢᴏᴀᴛ lexical set, for example in bureau, so takes the ɢᴏᴀᴛ vowel. This is close to the French pronunciation. This can be subject to vowel reduction to /ɒ/ or schwa sound:
- bureaucrat /ə/
- bur'eaucracy /ɒ/
Although beau is /bəʊ/, in beauty, beautiful, beautifully, ⟨eau⟩ represents the ɢᴏᴏꜱᴇ vowel phoneme.
The English place name Beaulieu has had its pronunciation heavily Anglicised to /bjuːliː/; there being several other places called Bewley or Beauly.
