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Nobody Pronounces the 'B' in 'Debt'

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

#231

Post by amanaplanacanal »

SamBam wrote: post #207
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…

> "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.)

In my Dialect both of those L are pronounced.

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

#232

Post by tsimionescu »

scatters wrote: post #156
Scarblac wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> edit: maybe people pronounce it like 'depth' with the 'th' replaced with a 't'? Yes, like that. Definitely not with a vowel. There's really no way to know for a non native speaker that the b is supposed to be silent, except by learning about it as a special case.

That's impossible in English though; 'b' is pronounced as a plosive, blowing through the lips as they open, while 't' is produced by tapping the tongue on the palate with lips open. So there is an interval between the 'p' and 't' which must be occupied by a vowel, typically a schwa. 'pth' is different because the same stream of air can be used for both consonants, with the tongue contacting the teeth just as the lips…

So how do you pronounce "kept" then?

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

#233

Post by sulam »

housecarpenter wrote: post #102
laurent123456 wrote: post #18

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 was with you until tortoise. US English speaker here, but I have literally never heard anyone say “tor-toys”. I think I’d have a serious moment if I did. Is there some link you can throw our way to demonstrate the point? YouTube?

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

#234

Post by Ancapistani »

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.

Mine was "adjacent". My inner voice pronounced it "ad-ja-sent", with a soft "a". I said it that way until someone corrected me in my mid-20s; even then, I didn't believe them at first when they said that was the way it was consistently pronounced. I confirmed it through several acquaintances before I adapted my speech.

My inner monologue still pronounces it incorrectly in some instances in text, as if there were two pronunciations that could apply depending on usage.

Come to think of it, there are many instances of this for me. I use "data" with a soft "a" when referring to the abstract concept of structured information, but "data" with a hard "a" ("date-uh") when referring to an instance of that concept (i.e., the data used to generate a chart).

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

#235

Post by ghc »

kmm wrote: post #169
ghc wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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"?

Can I ask what region you live in? Pronouncing as /wuːm/ is the dominant pronunciation in every English speaking country, so much so that I can't recall ever hearing it differently, and I'm surprised you've never heard it. It's not a recent change either, the /b/ disappeared somewhere before the 14th century.

New England. I've never paid enough attention when traveling to notice (those words aren't exactly the most common to hear), but when I say "woom" my lips end closed, and when I say "womb" my lips end opened after closing. The b isn't "voiced", per se, but it does change the way the word sounds to me.

And to be fair, I am aware New England English is its own distinct thing so I might have grown up in a bubble:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_England_English

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

#236

Post by thaumasiotes »

pessimizer wrote: post #148
thaumasiotes wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 diph…

> 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.

For one thing, the evolution of the pronunciation isn't going to take the spelling into account unless the word gets a lot rarer.

But even if it did, there's only one way you could pronounce "det". It would rhyme with bet, get[1], jet, let, met, net, pet, set, vet, wet, and yet. The spelling is fully unambiguous. This is the paradigm context for distinguishing "long vowels" from "short vowels" - det must be short just as dete must be long. You could no more indicate a "long E" with "det" than you could indicate a "long A" with "mat" or a "long I" with "hit".

> although 'ea' is much squirrelier (turns into a couple of diphthongs.)

What? What diphthongs? As far as I can think of, the closest you get to a diphthong with -ea- is as in "near", which is still just /i/ plus whatever you get as you reposition your tongue.

[1] "get" is such a common word that its pronunciation has evolved in some nonstandard dialects. But of course it hasn't moved to the FLEECE vowel; it's moved to KIT.

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

#237

Post by Ancapistani »

napsterbr wrote: post #91
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 =)

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.

Native speaker here, from the Ozarks (US, on the Missouri/Arkansas border).

I can't hear the distinction between "pin" and "pen" unless I'm really paying attention. Even then I have to say it a dozen or so time before I can make myself say them distinctively. My birth accent is to pronounce them both mostly like "pin".

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

#238

Post by Ancapistani »

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…

Ooh, this is a good one.

I pronounce it "ass-thet-ic".

... but I pronounce "aesthetician" as "ess-tha-tish-in".

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

#239

Post by user-the-name »

b3orn wrote: post #229
rhizome31 wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Here's an interesting article about that: https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/why-is-debt-sp...

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

#240

Post by Ancapistani »

mekal wrote: post #221

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.

"Colonel" ain't got nothin' on "boatswain" and "coxswain".
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