pronunciation: /u:/ /ju:/ [ /y/ sound before /u:/? ] (2025)

I'm a little bit confused by the /u:/ and /ju:/ sounds. Sometimes it is pronounced as /u:/ like afternoon /ˌɑːf.təˈnuːn/ /ˌæf.tɚˈnuːn/ and noodle /ˈnuː.dəl/ /ˈnuː.dəl/ but It sounds like there is a /y/sound before /u:/.

Am I wrong?

The simple rule is that the spelling <oo> represents plain /u:/, as in food, but spellings <u>, <eu>, and <ew> represent /ju:/ with the leading consonant (in accents that allow it in this position): fuse, feud, few, and also beauty.

Of course <oo> can also be short /ʊ/, and there's no easy rule for telling which of /ʊ/ or /u:/ it represents.

entangledbank said:

The simple rule is that the spelling <oo> represents plain /u:/, as in food, but spellings <u>, <eu>, and <ew> represent /ju:/ with the leading consonant (in accents that allow it in this position): fuse, feud, few, and also beauty.

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AE also uses the "yu" sound in fuse, feud, few, beauty.

dojibear said:

AE also uses the "yu" sound in fuse, feud, few, beauty.

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But generally not in neutral and dew.

English (especially American English) is famous for awkward spelling "rules". Examples of this are used as jokes a lot.
I still remember a post (in this forum) from a native Chinese person who had gotten good at English. He said:

"English has spelling rules. It just has too many of them. That's the problem for students: you have to memorize which rule applies to each word."

dojibear said:

AE also uses the "yu" sound in fuse, feud, few, beauty.

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Yes, I chose examples that preserve it. By 'in this position' I actually meant including the previous consonant.

After a labial, most accents have /j/: so fuse, view, beauty, puny have /ju:/. (There's a bit of the East of England where they don't have it.)

Likewise after a velar: cute, gubernatorial. (There aren't many words with /gju:/ in a stressed syllable.)

After /r/, /s/, /l/, almost all accents have lost the /j/ that was once there: so rule, sue, lewd have /u:/, though you might still hear /j/ in the /s/ and /l/ words.

The BrE/AmE difference is after alveolars: tune, duty, new have /u:/ in AmE, /ju:/ in most BrE accents.

For me, “gubernatorial” doesn’t have a glide, and I’ve never heard it with one.

I believe that in all varieties of English, both versions occur word-initially, with the difference reflected in the spelling:

Glide:
<u> use, uniform, utopia, ubiquitous, ukulele, urology
<eu> eulogy, eunuch, euphony, eureka

No glide:
<oo> oodles, oolong, oomph

Gewgaw, then?

It really is very hard to find examples of this, which is surprising, because it seems a natural English pattern. It's normal enough in non-stressed position, as in argue, but there's this big gap in obvious stressed examples.

(I recall when I was a tiny little linguist, my lecturer used the heraldic colour gules as an example. But I knew a bit of heraldry, and I called it /gu:lz/, probably reflecting the fact that /'gju:/ was intuitively unlikely.)

I’ve never heard “gewgaw” or “gules,” so I don’t know how people pronounce them.

What about “guru” and “gulag”? Neither has a glide in American English. Neither does “goulash,” but that’s spelled with an <o>, so maybe it doesn’t count.