How do you pronounce ';opossum';?

As in the animal? I asked this yesterday and i got really confused.





So is it pronounced:


OH-PAW-SUM





Or do you NOT pronounce the ';O'; in the beginning?


Like: PAW-SUM?





Help please? Oh yeah, and i'm Canadian by the way so idk the proper way to pronounce it.How do you pronounce ';opossum';?
It's not OH-pawsum for sure. It's uh-POS-um. In some dialects, and also because the word is frequently shortened to Possum, it's pronounced POS-um. Here's this note on the first ';uh';:





Although many American dialects feature aphesis, it is most famous in the dialects of the South, where it yields pronunciations such as count of for (on) account of, tater for potato, possum for opossum, and skeeter for mosquito.How do you pronounce ';opossum';?
I would think it is pronounced as - Or (O) Po (po) Serm (Ssum)





(Example: how you would pronounce Opponent).





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pawsum