I still remember when I met a guy from Germany about 20 years ago...he spoke decent-enough English and I don't remember the context but somehow he started going on about the word "debt" and refused to believe the b was silent lol.
In my opinion, "colonel" is even more confusing.
Nobody Pronounces the 'B' in 'Debt'
221–230 of 338 posts
Re: Nobody Pronounces the 'B' in 'Debt'
#222Earlier quoted context omitted.
"Correct" is an under-specified term when discussing english pronunciation. "Received Pronunciation" (roughly, BBC English) is full of all kinds of historical mispronunciations that have become standard, often as a result of the upper classes adopting some working-class tic as a fashion. Dropping the aitch from "historical" would be an example; it was a cockney habit, adopted by posh people. It's mostly faded among f…
> Dropping the aitch from "historical" would be an example; it was a cockney habit, adopted by posh people I'll need to check this. If the word came from Old French or any post-Latin Romance language, then the "h" would almost certainly be silent. The "h"s in Vulgar Latin were all silent except among educated speakers. Pronouncing the "h" in "historical" or "hotel" is almost certainly originally a spelling pronunciat…
Most latin-ish words in english came from Anglo-Norman; but some came earlier, from Old French. But it seems that phases of aitch-dropping have occurred repeatedly.
https://www.grammarphobia.com/blog/2016/02/h-dropping.html
That's an interesting article, and apparently the hhistory of dropped aitches is much more complicated than I suggested. But I don't entirely agree with it. It says it's correct to use the indefinite article before a noun starting with an aspirated aitch; I don't know anybody that talks like that, and it sounds awfully pompous.
Re: Nobody Pronounces the 'B' in 'Debt'
#223Oh 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…
How do you pronounce egg? Hahaha
I've heard it pronounced two ways.
Ayegg.
Ehgg.
So I still don't know how you pronounce asthetic.
Re: Nobody Pronounces the 'B' in 'Debt'
#224Earlier 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.
Mine was "hitherto." I was quite deep into my 30s before I found out it wasn't pronounced "hit-hurt-oh."
Re: Nobody Pronounces the 'B' in 'Debt'
#225Earlier 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…
> "falcon" (older pronunciation: "fawken") I'm unsure of the difference between the old and new here. Does anyone pronounce the "l" in "falcon" by touching their tongue to the roof of their mouth? I pronounce the "l" similarly in "fault", which is kind of "fau-t". (If you're just referring to the "a" sound, like the a in "fall" vs "fat" then that's a different question, but I think quite regional.)
Both of "falcon" and "fault" have very clear "l" sounds to me, both when I speak them or when I hear them spoken by someone else.
I'm near the Missouri/Arkansas border, for what it's worth.
Re: Nobody Pronounces the 'B' in 'Debt'
#226Earlier quoted context omitted.
> "falcon" (older pronunciation: "fawken") I'm unsure of the difference between the old and new here. Does anyone pronounce the "l" in "falcon" by touching their tongue to the roof of their mouth? I pronounce the "l" similarly in "fault", which is kind of "fau-t". (If you're just referring to the "a" sound, like the a in "fall" vs "fat" then that's a different question, but I think quite regional.)
I have a hard l in my pronunciation of falcon. FAL-CON. I'm from Appalachia though so we tend to have drawn out pronunciations of everything. lol Hell, I'm pretty sure captain falcon in smash brothers also has a hard L in "falcon punch!"
Ozarkian here - we have names where additional syllables are added when we're annoyed with the person.
It's "Karen" in normal conversation, but if she brought storebought cookies to the potluck it's "Kar-in-nuh", with the emphasis on the last syllanble.
In my head, these are called "spite syllables" :)
Re: Nobody Pronounces the 'B' in 'Debt'
#227Earlier 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…
Sometimes is easier to transmit how it should really sound using the phonetic alphabet (i.e. ˈtɔrtəs instead of tortoise), but it is a bit harder to write with normal keyboards, and you have to learn how each phoneme sound. Used a lot tophonetics.com when was trying to learn how some texts were supposed to be spoken.
Thanks for this link!
Growing up somewhere with a strong accent (the Ozarks), I often find myself in the position of knowing exactly the right word to use in a situation, but having never heard it spoken aloud. I've always intended to learn how to use a phonetic alphabet (e.g., IPA) but haven't had an easy path to it.
Re: Nobody Pronounces the 'B' in 'Debt'
#228Nobody 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…
Native English speakers can pronounce the unvoiced version in "kept", is it really hard to replace the voiceless 'p' with a voiced 'b'?
For what it's worth, "bt" is not a common combination in my native Romanian either, but it is not hard to pronounce.
Re: Nobody Pronounces the 'B' in 'Debt'
#229Earlier quoted context omitted.
but wouldn't that Old French go back to a Latin root?
Apparently from debitum : https://www.etymonline.com/search?q=debt English is sometimes closer to Latin than French, e.g. address ("ad" + "directiare") vs adresse in French
Looks like another case of the English version gaining a letter to be closer to Latin after borrowing it originally from French: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/address#English
Re: Nobody Pronounces the 'B' in 'Debt'
#230Earlier 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.
Note: native English speakers don't pronounce "depth" with a t and h sound, they use a different consonant, where you basically bite the tip of your tongue and blow air over it, without engaging your vocal chords (the "th" in "the" is pronounced the same, but this time using your vocal chords as well - like the difference between 'p' and 'b').