Why do we say it -
 

Why is bicycle pronounced "bi-sickle" but motorcycle is pronounced "motor-sikel"?

Why ask why?

Lotsa tings to yeewonder bout. Just like some say Soda, pop, or coke.

Arlo Guthrie says motor-sickle here:
Frank Zappa says by-sikel here: (This is really pretty funny, IMO)

[MENTION=305660]MikeWMass[/MENTION], ya beat me to the Arlo reference!

Why do we drive on parkways but park on driveways?

I remember the Steve Allen show with Frank Zappa. He was also on " What's My Line ". I saw Zappa twice, 3 weeks apart, 1973 or '74. First at the Chicago Auditorium and then at NIU Fieldhouse. Great musician and showman. A Lot of props and stage antics.

r e d d i t.com in that url.
Interesting but I can't buy it, partly because that "unstressed syllable" idea is a crock, and partly because I never hear the referenced schwa sound - it's always a short "i" in bicycle.

Also "sickle: is just as easy to say as "cycle" no matter how many syllables so why isn't it "motorsickle"? I know that some dialects do have motorsickle but why isn't it the normal way? Bicycles obviously predated motorcycles - where did it change?

Syllables, and what syllable the stress falls on.

bi-sick-uhl
tri-sick-uhl

mo-tor-sigh-kuhl

I pronounce it “motorbike.” Problem solved.

And then I remembered Wesley from 30 Rock, and his use of the non-word "footcycle," which I would say as foot-sigh-kuhl-- with the stress on the middle syllable.

https://cimg8.ibsrv.net/gimg/bikefor...9fbeb57529.gif

Insight and encite don't follow that rule.

Well, "encite" isn't a word. Insight and incite are both words. The former is from the Low German, and the latter from French.

The emphasis is on the first syllable in one and the second in the other, because they have utterly different meanings, and come from different roots.

Motorcycle and bicycle share a suffix, from the same origin.

Yep.

It's pretty much because it rolls off the tongue better this way.

a motor biker might be psycho for driving such a small vehicle along with larger motorized vehicles capable of the same speeds.
a cyclists could have poor health, & rather becoming down with a sickness, they choose to ride for better health.

That's not really a good explanation because one can stress or not stress a long "i" sound. There's definitely a vowel shift in "bicycle" and "tricycle". My guess is that the repeated long "i" sound just sounds awkward to most people.

On the other hand, the word "cyclical" is pronounced with a long i sound by the British, and a short i sound by Americans, but it doesn't come up in conversation very often.

I sikel on my bi-sickels.

The explanation presented was based on phonetics, not etymology or spelling (:foo:)

I dunno, people seem ok with saying "eyesight", with the repeated long i.

I don't think it has anything to do with the phonetic rules (which don't work anyway), nor with etymology especially since both words share origins. Somewhere it changed from sickle to sigh-kal, and it's a puzzle. Keeping me up at night.

Don’t think I’ve ever thought about it or used either word verbally. I just say bike. If a distinction needs to be made I will say motorbike sport bike mountain bike etc

Lotta folks around here say "motorsickel"

So, should people who ride bicycles be called "sicklists?"

Now you've done it, another question to haunt me. If you ride sickles you're a sicklist, just stands to reason.

Call Martha & Grant

https://www.waywordradio.org/

https://cimg8.ibsrv.net/gimg/bikefor...7b0d0f8c44.jpg
"Don't touch my motor- sickle Ange"

A lot of these things are accidents of history, occurring for reasons that are long since forgotten, and then we try to retrofit an explanation.

It would be interesting to know how bicycle was being pronounced at the time motorcycle was coined. Not sure if anyone knows that. There may have even been a conscious effort by the people marketing the new product to pronounce it differently to differentiate between the products.

Variations in pronounciation is a mystery deeper than quantum physics. Having lived in the deep South for 10 years or so, which I very much liked, I never understood how ordinary one syllable words, such as "eye or I" turn into two syllables. Just as mysterious is a heavy duty Scots accent and Caribbean accents which I'm informed are actually English. For example, the phrase "Am Fay Embra" is "I'm from Edinburg", believe it or not.

I think a high school friend of mine had a band which was part of opening for Zappa at NIU.

I was told by a Southern lady that when you live in the Deep South, you must speak slowly so that your mouth does not overheat. (Put that in your best Selma, AL accent!)

That doesn't explain the phenomenon of two words becoming one (e.g. Old Bay becomes Olbay, Spring Hill becomes Springill).

I'm kind of obsessed with variations in pronunciation across the US (having lived in no fewer than seven different regions of the US - with seven different accents - and adding in my mom's East Coast accent to make eight.) The Southern lady might actually be on to something, though. If you want a good Fargo/Minnesota accent, go stand in a freezer until your mouth goes numb. Amazing!