201–210 of 338 posts
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> From Middle English dette , dett , borrowed from Old French dete It seems to.
but wouldn't that Old French go back to a Latin root?
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.
This is true to the bone. It's hilarious how many native speakers ignore this - even knowingly. It also goes beyond pronunciation into local slang and choice of vocabulary. In my experience "Native Speakers" often don't understand each other correctly (of course random ones, from different parts of world) - plenty of tiny misunderstandings due to the tempo of conversation. 5 random non-native speakers may have all ba…
To your point on vocab choice: if I use vocab not present/with different meaning in American English I would get blank stares so I often switch to the American term e.g. mobile phone vs cell phone. To your other point about local slang: I recently learned South Africans call traffic lights "robots", which I thought was fantastic.
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.
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.
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…
Since it does not significantly alter the meaning of the word if you briefly close or not close your lips (bilabial "preparation") before articulating the dental plosive "t" it is omitted in the "broad transcription". Another related example as a foreign speaker before articulating "psychology" I will form the unvoiced bilabial plosive "p" with my lips before executing "saɪˈkɑlədʒɪ".
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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.
The vowels are tougher, though. I didn't appreciate how many different vowels there are in English until I married a woman whose native language doesn't have most of them (Hebrew doesn't have the "a" in "bad", the "i" in "grin", nor a bunch of weird regional American "o" sounds)
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I'm also from New England and pronounce it differently, note that the difference is outrageously slight... "debt" is ever-so slightly longer than "det"... best I can place it is that "debt" is pronounced further back in my mouth and "det" is more toothy.
The thing is, "debt" and "det" can be pronounced very slightly differently without claiming that you're "pronouncing the b". A "b" sound is very distinct in English, involving a closing of the lips. If "debt" were instead spelled "deht" (and pronounced exactly the same), readers would claim that they "pronounce the h".
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.
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'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.)
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> 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 mode…
Do you pronounce the T in "soften"... maybe you use fabric "sof-ten-er"? Do you have a brush with "bris-tels"? Those would be more inclusive and modern pronunciations? "I personally would applaud it as progress" One man's progress is another man's regress. Maybe it's the result of the "Hooked on Phonics" generation having grown up.
Yes, but I'm not a native speaker, so I have the privilege of seeing the matter from a more neutral perspective. And what I see, when it comes to pronounciations, is that traditionalism is largely illogical, and maintained simply as a way to signal exclusion. It looks harmless on some levels (i.e. figuring out whether somebody is "local" by the way they pronounce certain topological names), but more often than not it's just used to discriminate between education-rich and education-poor, which then translates into straightforward classism where educational systems are deeply and fundamentally classist (like in England or the US).
> Those would be more inclusive and modern pronunciations?
Yes.
> One man's progress is another man's regress.
For sure. After all, a few Catholics were ecstatic when pope Benedict XVI reinstated and promoted saying mass in Latin, effectively trying to revert a century of progress. But fighting actual and logical progress tends to be a losing proposition in the long run, and that particular movement kinda died off quickly.
(Fortunately, Shavian with "det" has solved for the meddling of linguistic hacks. Mostly.)
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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.
https://www.wordreference.com/definition/bad
https://www.wordreference.com/definition/bed
(then yes, I guess it's coherent)