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Nobody Pronounces the 'B' in 'Debt'

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

#141

Post by julesnp »

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.

We do in a different word: adept :)

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

#142

Post by dougmwne »

jtsiskin wrote: post #81

I may be crazy but I feel the ghostly presence of the “b”. For instance say “let let let let det” Now say “let let let let debt” Train a neural net on a few million samples of native English speakers reading these, and I think it could predict which prompt was read with >50% accuracy, even if each person was only shown one of the prompts.

In my accent it is pronounced with an extra breathy “H”, deht vs. det.

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

#143

Post by robofanatic »

Supernaut wrote: post #128
robofanatic wrote: post #96

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 convers…

"Sean" (properly, Seán) is actually an Irish Gaelic name. Irish, like English, features very many non-phonetic spellings. If the guy deliberately made you feel embarrassed for mispronouncing his name, he was just being a dick.

No he was actually a good guy, we became friends later. I apologized for butchering his name.

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

#144

Post by tclancy »

stn8188 wrote: post #122

This topic was just recently discussed in what is probably my favorite non-engineering podcast, the History of English Podcast: https://historyofenglishpodcast.com/2021/10/30/episode-153-z...

Came here to say the same! I learned my name starts with a Th because it’s a thorn, not a th.

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

#145

Post by pessimizer »

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.

I hate to contradict my sibling, but I've never heard anyone pronounce "dept." as anything other than "department."

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

#146

Post by kxjkckicllfhhh »

senkora wrote: post #119
teilo wrote: post #87

What M-W attributes to "lexical meddlers" is almost certainly the result of the very common practice of borrowing latin words, and, when the word is in common use, abbreviating it. Originally the latin word would have always been pronounced "debitum" when read, even if abbreviated "debt." So the b certainly was pronounced. It just wasn't English to begin with. I work in old manuscripts, and this practice is very comm…

Debt was borrowed into English from Old French, where it had already lost the b, rather than from Latin. https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/debt

Consider reading the article discussed for correct info. Wiktionary does not even claim what you just did.

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

#147

Post by ravi-delia »

teilo wrote: post #87

What M-W attributes to "lexical meddlers" is almost certainly the result of the very common practice of borrowing latin words, and, when the word is in common use, abbreviating it. Originally the latin word would have always been pronounced "debitum" when read, even if abbreviated "debt." So the b certainly was pronounced. It just wasn't English to begin with. I work in old manuscripts, and this practice is very comm…

We definitely know that there are lots of words that came to English via French that had already lost their b, and had the b added back in a foolish attempt to standardize English spelling.

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

#148

Post by pessimizer »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #94
pessimizer wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

There are no markers in 'det' that one can use to figure out whether the vowel is long or short. 'ee' is always long, and 'ett(e)' is always short.

English has far more vowels than letters. 'ee' is an old digraph that always afaik means long-e, and ett(e) is a french borrowing that will always indicate short-e. 'deat' would work for long-e, too, probably, although 'ea' is much squirrelier (turns into a couple of diphthongs.)

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

#149

Post by ravi-delia »

kxjkckicllfhhh wrote: post #146
senkora wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Debt was borrowed into English from Old French, where it had already lost the b, rather than from Latin. https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/debt

Consider reading the article discussed for correct info. Wiktionary does not even claim what you just did.

Maybe I'm just an idiot, but it seems that both the link in the comment you replied to and the article in the post itself specifically say that debt is derived from French, where it lacked a b.

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

#150

Post by williamdclt »

kgeist wrote: post #62

Early French grammarians had the idea to make spelling more etymological to show continuity with Latin, another example which comes to mind is Old French "deit/doit" which became "doigt" in Middle French because Latin had -g- in "digitus".

As you'd expect, the g and the t are both silent
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