How to pronounce PhDs?

In north america, we would pronounce it, Pee - aych - dee, three separate letters.

Thank you.

The last one "s", sounds z or s in IPA?

If there were multiple PHDs, it would be pronounced pee-aych-deez.

In more English English countries, it is pronounced as Ceili says, except "aitch" is given its initial more of its initial "h" sound, and sounds more like Pee-haitch-dee

I don't know how you define "a more English English country", but here in England, Standard English speakers don't sound any initial 'h' sound when pronouncing the name of the letter 'h'. We say 'aitch'. Some dialects/regional accents may render it thus. Notably people of Afro-Caribbean extraction.

Once you learn phonetics you can often notice whether there is an initial slight "h" sound in front of the spoken aitch or not, and in other contexts.

For example, some people sat "witch" for which, and some people say more a "hwitch" sound.

Many English English speakers (especially those with more Oxbridge accents) and many Australians have a slight h sound in front of the aitch sound in PhD.

Pretty much everyone I know, for instance, in Oz says something more like pee haitch dee.

It's not usually heard when you just pronounce the aitch on its own, but it often has an effect (which lots of people can't really hear) in the pronunciation of a word in which h is used.

Well, I just got my son, daughter (who has a PhD and who studied phonetics) and wife to say "pee-aitch-dee" along with me and none of us could hear any of us doing that initial 'h', dlowan. Thanks for you patronising remarks.

It's not meant to be patronizing. I simply noticed
when I was doing phonetics (we had to transcribe from dictation) that some people could hear subtle differences like the hint of an "h" in front of words and some could not differentiate.

Others could not HEAR that the end sound of multitudes of words that end with er were not pronounced as is the er in Herman, but as an "uh" sound.

Believe me or not, for many there is a hint of "H" in front of many words, including the "aitch" in words like PhD, whisper, whimper, whom, which etc that is not there in Watson, wander and witch and wimp. It's odd I can hear them clearly because I am reasonably deaf...but I aced the transcription and was quite surprised that it was so common that people really could not hear what was said as opposed to what was written.


If you want to make this some sort of emotional drama I don't...but I know Oristar A is often interested in subtleties and I was letting him know about these.

Not everything is about you and your defensiveness, and that you have not noticed some subtleties doesn't mean they don't exist, or that I am implying anything untoward about you and your armies of rellies with PhDs, who may well speak a slightly different dialect of English than I do.

Said slow and carefully in normal speech, no 'h'. Said quickly there could be what Dlowan describes.