I looked up foliage on Merriam Webster, because I surmised that it does not includes trees with needles, not leaves. 🌲 (It does include trees with flowers, I see.)

They also have a short discussion of how it’s pronounced. I say it with 3 syllables, though 2 syllables is prefered, like marriage. TIL.

@jean yeah, it's confusing because you do pronounce "foliar" as three syllables

@jean it's a fine word

@jean Oooh, 2 syllables you say? I'm a three syllable fole-i-age girl myself.

@jean I had to open that link to check if it was published on April 1. I've lived all over this continent and never heard anyone use "2 syllables, like marriage". saying it out loud makes me sound completely deranged. I wonder how old that definition is? or if I've somehow managed to avoid exposure to a common American dialect?

@numist @jean Mind. Blown. o.O I've NEVER heard the i not be pronounced in foliage!! o.O

@nothe @numist Agreed, I don’t hear two syllable version often. I’m more likely to hear the incorrect“foil-age”. It did make me think more about why we don’t pronounce the “i” in marriage and carriage.

@jean When spoken, to me it sounds more like marr-itch and carr-itch, so not quite “-age”, but that’s probably me being foreign.

@jean @numist it did, and i was fascinated, thank you! :) I learned french! ;)

@jean Must be a US thing as Chambers has it as three syllables and I've never heard it with two.

@jean the Markdown link's proper rendering in my client made me a bit jealous tbh. @nothe were slinging bbcode at each other a quarter century ago and now here I am in 2024 wysiwyging plain text on Mastodon like an animal

@nothe @jean oops. now that I've slept on it I looked at the link again, and it definitely says the 2-syllable is *non*-standard:

ˈfō-lē-ij also -lyij; nonstandard ˈfō-lij, nonstandard ˈfȯi-lij

@numist @nothe Thank you!! I obviously didn’t read that note carefully. ☺️ I’m glad you did so I don’t have to change my pronunciation.