[1] I watched Star Trek: The Original Series recently and the cast's pronunciation of "sensors" with the FORCE vowel in the second syllable is really jarring. Do we know if that was an affectation or a natural pronunciation?
"launch a boo-eey"
(Brit's distinguish between "boy" and "buoy" - the latter has the same sound as in "buoyancy")
That didn't clarify much. I would pronounce "buoyancy" as if it began with "boy".
Edited: - Maybe this will help:
Anyway, if someone can't hear the difference in that sample, load it in to an audio editor, and see that (in a time / amplitude graph) the two words have different shapes.
I've not got a tool for graphing the frequency content to hand, so can't easily see how those would be distinguished.
I don't understand either. As far as I'm concerned, boy and buoy are homophones, and the first syllable of buoyancy is too.
Wiktionary agrees: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/buoy#Pronunciation
Southie Spock would have been amazing though.