YAEPT: "restaurant" et sim

IMD, "restaurant" is /'rEst@rant/, sometimes /'rEst'rant/.  I have
always regarded the pronunciation /'rEstr@nt/ as Rightpondian, part of
the general tendency over there to get carried away with schwas and
syllable reduction while we Murkans stubbornly hold on to our
extraneous syllables and vowel qualities (c.f. /'l&v@,tOri/ vs
/'l&v@tri/ and countless other examples).    But today I heard a local
newscaster here in Atlanta use the bisyllabic enschwa'ed
pronunciation.  It could have been a case of trying to sound posh or
proper, given the context, but I wonder if that pronunciation isn't
more widespread than I thought.  Perhaps it's less like "lavatory" and
more like "ambulance", which most of the world pronounces with
-/l@n(t)s/ while many US Southerners pronounce it with -/,l&n(t)s/.

So what's your experience with this word?  Given the current YAEPT on
"plaza", I wouldn't be surprised to find that the genuine Rightpondian
pronunciation follows the French model - /REsto'rA~/ or some such.

--
Mark J. Reed <markjreed@...>

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