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Nobody Pronounces the 'B' in 'Debt'

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

#181

Post by toyg »

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.

> some are saying it to "sound smart". It's funny, really.

You're implying that traditional, complex, and arbitrary pronounciations should be considered "smarter" than logical, simpler, and hence modern ones because...?

Pronounciation is a inherently classist concept; the harder you make it, the more you entrench classism and intolerance into society. Regardless of the motivation for such correspondents to use a modern form, I personally would applaud it as progress, rather than sneering at it.

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

#182

Post by [deleted] »

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.

[deleted]

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

#183

Post by pharke »

nh23423fefe wrote: post #153
quitit wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe some accents don't pronounce the b at all, but its presence definitely affects how I pronounce the word, I'm sure I'm not alone in this either. The difference is that my lips touch and close when pronouncing "debt", while they stay entirely open if pronouncing "det" (e.g. in "determined"). The change of airflow imparts a soft "peh" before the "t", making the word sound like a softer form of "dept" rather than i…

I'm from New England. I pronounce both det and debt exactly the same. As for debt versus determined. Those are both the same except the vowel is slightly different. debt like head vs determined like head or hit But I couldn't even hear how to put a "puh" sound in the word

> But I couldn't even hear how to put a "puh" sound in the word

The comment you're replying to describes it somewhat but since accents can drastically affect how we move our mouths during pronunciation I'll describe how I go about it. "det" by opening your lips slightly and pulling the corners of your mouth back, the tip of the tongue begins pressed against the gum line of your upper incisors, it is then pulled down quickly as you exhale, the jaw moves down slightly and your lips remain open but do not change shape.

"debt" by having the lips parted slightly but relaxed forming more of an "O" shape, the tongue is lightly pressed against the back of the top incisors but more flatly with more of the top of the tongue touching, as you exhale the tongue and lower jaw are pulled down but before you finish exhaling the lips are closed which truncates the sound softly. It's important to not close the lips too soon or too quickly otherwise you will wind up pronouncing "dept" with a sharp "puh". You're aiming for the very end of the exhalation and a soft closure to avoid any smacking sound.

The major difference seems to be that "det" is spoken from the back of the mouth whereas "debt" comes from the front. The former sounds more inline with a New England accent and the latter with an English accent.

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

#184

Post by travisgriggs »

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.

So you feel that you somehow owe something to the b, but don’t have the wherewithal to pay up on the pronunciation of it. But it can’t just be removed from the ledger of letters used to compose the word.

How very fitting. I love life’s little ironies.

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

#185

Post by julesnp »

toyg wrote: post #173
dkdbejwi383 wrote: post #127

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. What are the "new" pronunciations for these? I'm a native speaker and I'd pronounce them the way you've indicated is "older".

You must be a posh RP speaker ;-) The way I hear them here in the North (of England), from most common folks, is Of-Ten, An-th-ony (with TH from "the"), and Tor-Toy-s. The T in "often" can be very short but it's definitely there.

In Canadian English we use the "Antony" and "tortuss" pronunciations as well. For "often", I usually only pronounce the 't' if the word is stressed in the sentence.

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

#186

Post by jdminhbg »

brabel wrote: post #172
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"?

I had the same question :D from other comments, it seems a bit controversial, no? Another one I, as a non native speaker, find odd, is "iron". People just say it as "ion", dropping the 'r', right?? At least that's what I hear.

The 'r' and 'o' are transposed: it's pronounced 'iorn.'

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

#187

Post by werdnapk »

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.

I'm on team "I pronounce them both the same way". No difference in how I say them at all with my Canadian "accent".

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

#188

Post by tpaulin »

nicoburns wrote: post #130
Scarblac wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

I was quite a prolific reader as a child, and this caught me out with a quite a few words even as a native english speaker. My favourite instance being "awry"(pronounced a-wry). I was aware of and understood the word a-wry (having heard it on the radio), but I thought there was also a word "awry" pronounced aw-ry. I was in my twenties before I connected that these were the same word.

I had a similar experiences to you on both accords: 1. It wasn't until a class aged 14 where I heard the word 'chasm' spoken aloud and realised I had it wrong all those years. 2. It took me a some time to realise a word which sounded like 'rederick' was actually rhetoric.

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

#189

Post by Dracophoenix »

1_player wrote: post #15

Oh this is the place where I can finally rant about _aesthetic_, the favourite word for most music/art/movie content creators I've watched in the 2020s, one everybody mispronounces and reads it as "asthetic" which annoys me to no end, because it is totally WRONG. And I keep hearing it daily, which is maddening. "Ae" is supposed to be one sound, like the vowel sound in "egg". The "a" is silent. I'm terribly afraid eve…

You're free to blame vapo(u)rwave for that.

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

#190

Post by brabel »

specialist wrote: post #133

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…

> But easy to miss stuff like which syllable gets emphasis...

here's a fun one: juice VS jews. As a non-native speaker, I am not sure these are prounounced differently enough you can confidently say which one is being said when there's no context to guess it... I guess "jews" just gets a longer vowel?

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