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Nobody Pronounces the 'B' in 'Debt'

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

#131

Post by ghc »

housecarpenter wrote: post #121
mfontani wrote: post #114

> English has not managed to shed its own. The language suffers similarly (and for the same reason) with the silent letters in doubt, plumber, subtle, indict, and island. I'm confused. Which letter is silent in "plumber"?

English doesn't tolerate word-final -mb. It's always pronounced as -m, and the -b isn't pronounced when a suffix is added either. Other examples: dumb, tomb, comb, womb, numb, thumb, catacomb, Coulomb. All of these have a silent B.

Wait, what? None of those have a silent B, at least in my region. Are there places that pronounce the same as womb as "woom"?

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

#132

Post by kmstout »

codingdave wrote: post #105
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.

As a native speaker, that is an interesting take on it and one I had not considered before, so thanks for pointing it out. It meshes well with my overall attitude when I see incorrect English - to accept people wherever their language skills may fall. After all, even us natives make mistakes. As long as we can understand each other, perfect language is irrelevant.

> After all, even us natives make mistakes.

Aye, we natives sometimes do. ;)

My morning pedantry complete, I shall stand aside while the next greater pedant corrects this comment. Let the games begin!

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

#133

Post by specialist »

The more I've embraced audio books and podcasts, the more I'm aware that I've been mispronouncing words. Probably. It's been kinda crazy.

So much so I've decided I should start journaling about it. New Year's Resolution style decided, aka aspirational.

Not just the usual dialect stuff, like British vs American variations for aluminum. But easy to miss stuff like which syllable gets emphasis, hard vs soft 'ch', and so forth.

I mention it here in hopes someone with more gumption and education (about pronunciation) starts a compilation.

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

#134

Post by libertine »

jdavis703 wrote: post #125
libertine wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not a native english speaker, though I think I'm fluent speaking it... all of this to say that despite the sound being very similar, my lips movement differs between "det" and "debt": It my sound stupid, but when I say "det" my lips tend to remain bit open, when I say "debt" the word ends with my lips closed ahaha I doubt it makes any noticeable diference, and it's probably due to my native language influence.

I’m a native English speaker and I can feel there’s a slightly different muscle I’m using to pronounce debt vs det. It certainly feels physiologically different to pronounce it. But then, I actually can’t really here any aural difference.

So it would boil down to visual perception of those who are listening to us, if that subtle difference helps in comprehension.

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

#135

Post by julesnp »

hypertele-Xii wrote: post #129
housecarpenter wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

English doesn't tolerate word-final -mb. It's always pronounced as -m, and the -b isn't pronounced when a suffix is added either. Other examples: dumb, tomb, comb, womb, numb, thumb, catacomb, Coulomb. All of these have a silent B.

In most of these cases the final B is itself silent but elongates the previous wovel for me. "dumb" is pronounced longer than "dum", and it's the U that gets elongated. The difference is subtle, but my native tongue has "long wovels" so I'm trained to detect the difference.

That's true for the -omb words, but I've never heard anyone elongate the 'u' in any of the -umb words, at least not in Canadian English.

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

#136

Post by mhitza »

MathCodeLove wrote: post #84
islon wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Could you show phonetically how it sounds when you say those words? Im struggling to imagine what pronouncing the b would sound like

Non-native English speaker here. I don't know what the proper phonetical representation is for my pronunciation, but it sounds like 'kept', just with a b and a softer p.

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

#137

Post by nicoburns »

pornel wrote: post #99
pessimizer wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 de p t. literally.

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

Not often, but "dept" if sometimes used as a short form of "department" in written form, and I've heard people pronounce it literally before. It certainly can be pronounced distinctly from both "debt" and "depth" by native english speakers.

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

#138

Post by pnut »

dkdbejwi383 wrote: post #127
housecarpenter wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's happened again and again with other words. "often" (older pronunciation: "offen"), "Anthony" (older pronunciation: "Antony") and "tortoise" (older pronunciation: "tortuss") are examples where the spelling pronunciation still hasn't totally won out. Words where the spelling pronunciation has reached fixation include "falcon" (older pronunciation: "fawken"), "reptile" (older pronunciation: "reptil"), "sphere" (old…

> It's happened again and again with other words. "often" (older pronunciation: "offen"), "Anthony" (older pronunciation: "Antony") and "tortoise" (older pronunciation: "tortuss") are examples where the spelling pronunciation still hasn't totally won out. What are the "new" pronunciations for these? I'm a native speaker and I'd pronounce them the way you've indicated is "older".

off-ten An-thunny tor-toys

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

#139

Post by SilasX »

dkdbejwi383 wrote: post #127
housecarpenter wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's happened again and again with other words. "often" (older pronunciation: "offen"), "Anthony" (older pronunciation: "Antony") and "tortoise" (older pronunciation: "tortuss") are examples where the spelling pronunciation still hasn't totally won out. Words where the spelling pronunciation has reached fixation include "falcon" (older pronunciation: "fawken"), "reptile" (older pronunciation: "reptil"), "sphere" (old…

> It's happened again and again with other words. "often" (older pronunciation: "offen"), "Anthony" (older pronunciation: "Antony") and "tortoise" (older pronunciation: "tortuss") are examples where the spelling pronunciation still hasn't totally won out. What are the "new" pronunciations for these? I'm a native speaker and I'd pronounce them the way you've indicated is "older".

Yeah and my mom would even scold me, growing up, for pronouncing the t in often.

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

#140

Post by yeldarb »

kerneloftruth wrote: post #118
housecarpenter wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's happened again and again with other words. "often" (older pronunciation: "offen"), "Anthony" (older pronunciation: "Antony") and "tortoise" (older pronunciation: "tortuss") are examples where the spelling pronunciation still hasn't totally won out. Words where the spelling pronunciation has reached fixation include "falcon" (older pronunciation: "fawken"), "reptile" (older pronunciation: "reptil"), "sphere" (old…

I find that in the past few years I encounter more people (native English speakers) who intentionally pronounce the T in often. I notice that several are NPR correspondents, which makes me think some are saying it to "sound smart". It's funny, really.

If you don’t pronounce the “t” in “often”, how do you pronounce “oft”?
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