How to pronounce the word "actually"?

[hebiancao]

Hello everyone! I'm a beginner in English from China mainland. Last night I found out there was an argue at a forum about the pronunciation of the word "actually". It could be ['æktʃuəli], ['ækʃuəli] or ['ækʒuəli], which confused me so much. So that's the reason I come and ask for some help. Whatever, which one is right? How do you pronounce it? Thanks in advance.

 

[MPhillips]

It depends on who you ask! Which country's pronunciation do you wish to emulate? In any event, welcome to the forum, and by the way you're too modest--your English is already quite good. PS I didn't mean to be dismissive--I can't make much sense of the system of phonetic transcription you're using as my "smartphone" doesn't support some of its symbol set.

[tooironic]

Forget about that word. Make sure you can pronounce "usually" correctly first.

[Basil]

Then try "vision".

[Melanie1989]

Welcome to the forums!

 

As said above, it really depends on what accent you're trying to emulate, but generally it seems to be pronounced "act-chully". There are some exceptions (in accents) where you'll want to enunciate, but you can basically say it however you want. 

[Demonic_Duck]

I'd say /'æktʃuəli/ would be most standard-sounding, but most people slur it to something like /'ætʃəli/.

[陳德聰]

I pronounce it as ['æk^ʔ.ʃə.li], which as far as I know is standard West Coast North American.

[Hofmann]

I use three syllables /'æk.tʃuə.li/

[Michaelyus]

From a speaker of British English (specifically, London-influenced RP-leaning Estuary English):

 

['æktʃuəli] is the most common, although in modern British English /æ/ leans towards [a], which is closer to Pinyin "a". 

['ækʃuəli] is uncommon, and sounds foreign.

['ækʒuəli] seems unacceptable to me. Understandable, but erroneous. 这样发音不是有点怪吗？

 

In practice, I render it [ˈak̚t͡ʃʰəli] (SAMPA: ["ak_}tS_h@li]) in fast speech and as [ˈakʰt͡ʃʰʷəliː] (SAMPA: ["ak_htS_h_w@li:]) in careful speech. 

 

See http://www.forvo.com/word/actually for examples.

[Johnny20270]

This website seems good. It shows the difference between American and British pronunciation. Its very accurate in my view

http://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/british/actually_1?q=actually

Also the grammar section shows common usage of the word. The section on "Actual and actually: typical errors" gives examples of the words being used incorrectly. These are common mistakes used by native English speakers.