there aren't many -crats

credit: Thomas Hawk

This semester's reading text in my phonetics course finals contained the word 'aristocrat'. Many of my young professionals trying to speak English placed the stress on either the first or second syllable and correctly used the ash vowel in the ultimate syllable. There were, however, quite a few who pronounced a schwa in the final syllable.
All the words ending in -crat have the ash vowel whether it is

• aristocrat
• autocrat
• bureaucrat
• democrat
• Eurocrat
• plutocrat or
• technocrat

They are not the only ones ending in <-crat>:

• cosmocrat
• gerontocrat
• ochlocrat
• theocrat
• phallocrat
• ...