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Nobody Pronounces the 'B' in 'Debt'

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Re: Nobody Pronounces the 'B' in 'Debt'

#91

Post by napsterbr »

islon wrote: post #71
laurent123456 wrote: post #18

English is spoken by more non-native speakers than native, and often they pronounce those letters since they don't know about it. With that in mind, I wonder if the language will eventually evolve to a point where the "b" of "debt" and other silent letters are no longer considered silent.

Non native speaker here. I always pronounced the b in debt and in doubt. Learned something new today =)

Non-native speaker as well. I recently noticed the "b" is supposed to be silent, but then every time I say "debt" without the "b", phonetically I'm saying the same as "that". They sound the same to me, at least.

This is probably related to the fact that "bad" and "bed" sound exactly the same to me.

Re: Nobody Pronounces the 'B' in 'Debt'

#93

Post by jibcage »

bloak wrote: post #54
dorianmariefr wrote: post #37

As a non-native english speaker (french), I was pronouncing those words wrong I guess: debt, doubt, plumber, subtle, indict, and island

Were you aware that the "t" in "often" is traditionally not pronounced? (On the one hand it's a very common word, so someone learning English as a foreign language might have been taught the "correct" pronunciation. On the other hand, it's something that many native speakers of English, particularly younger and less well educated speakers, get "wrong" so teaching the "correct" pronunciation may be assigned a lower pr…

I know many American speakers who pronounce the “t” in often, for the record. In fact, now that I think about it, I might do the same myself sometimes.

Re: Nobody Pronounces the 'B' in 'Debt'

#94

Post by thaumasiotes »

pessimizer wrote: post #66
eozoon wrote: post #6

English is not my first language so I wouldn't presume I know more than people at Merriam Webster - but that sounds iffy to me. Sure, I don't say deb-t, but isn't the b still there as a plosive / stop? If it were just spelt "det" I feel like it'd have a more prominent t sound. It also seems strange to say it would have been better to get rid of it when we definitely need the b in "debit" and "debenture", isn't it bet…

> If it were just spelt "det" I feel like it'd have a more prominent t sound. If it were just spelled 'det' the vowel would start jumping around. You'd have to go 'dett' or even 'dette' in order to avoid 'deet'.

> If it were just spelled 'det' the vowel would start jumping around. You'd have to go 'dett' or even 'dette' in order to avoid 'deet'.

Huh? None of this makes any sense.

Re: Nobody Pronounces the 'B' in 'Debt'

#96

Post by robofanatic »

Non-native speaker here. True story: this was long time ago when we used to work in offices and people actually used to sit in tall cubicles with names printed on it. I was the new guy and needed some help from IT so I walked up to the cubicle of the IT guy called Sean and said "Hey Seen, how is it going". There was like 30 seconds of silence and he said "it's Shawn, whats up" and then followed a very awkward conversation :-)

Re: Nobody Pronounces the 'B' in 'Debt'

#97

Post by Tade0 »

As a son of expats, who had to pick up English early on I noticed that I do indeed shape my lips in the form of those silent letters, but never pronounce them.

As example when saying "debt" I will close my mouth entirely at some point, even though it shouldn't be necessary.

Re: Nobody Pronounces the 'B' in 'Debt'

#98

Post by rahimnathwani »

Scarblac wrote: post #88
laurent123456 wrote: post #18

English is spoken by more non-native speakers than native, and often they pronounce those letters since they don't know about it. With that in mind, I wonder if the language will eventually evolve to a point where the "b" of "debt" and other silent letters are no longer considered silent.

The hard thing is that I read English the whole day, I don't often listen to it. And pronunciation is really unpredictable -- I once lost a bet because I couldn't believe that "finite" and "infinite" were pronounced so differently. I happen to know about "debt". But variants of it, like "indebted"? Who knows?

Wait until you hear someone say 'caveat'.

Re: Nobody Pronounces the 'B' in 'Debt'

#99

Post by pornel »

pessimizer wrote: post #64
timonoko wrote: post #3

Nobody in some nobodyland. Majority in the world would. It is safer to pronounce English as it written and just modify on well-known cases. Especially when two non-natives speak two each other. "Fancy" pronunciation can make things impossible, as only native speakers can understand where you are aiming at.

Pronouncing the 'b' in debt is just about impossible for anyone with an intelligible English accent. You have to shove a vowel in there which would likely result in 'debit', a different but related word that could create potential subtle and disastrous misunderstandings. Even if it were non-native speaker saying 'debit' when they meant 'debt' to another non-native speaker. Maybe it'd be better to spell it 'degt'. Tho…

As a Polish speaker, I have no problem pronouncing debt. Depth is debt-hhhh for me :)

Now you make me wonder if English speakers ever pronounce dept. literally.

Re: Nobody Pronounces the 'B' in 'Debt'

#100

Post by janto »

1_player wrote: post #45
kreeben wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To my ears it's the most beautiful when you replace "ae" with the "e" sound from "meh". Eh-stetic

It's not just a matter of beautiful, it is correct. Ah-stetic on the other hand is wrong, widespread and the reason of my crusade.

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