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Nobody Pronounces the 'B' in 'Debt'

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

#311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Midwest, same pronunciation of debt/det. Determined has a long 'e' for me. Dee-ter-mind (the 'i' is like 'in', not mind)

> a long 'e'

Note that the term 'long' here refers to the quality of the vowel and not the quantity.

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

#312
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 just spoke both words several times paying attention to my lips and seemed to have the same response as you. The b in debt does distinctly change the sound of the word for me. Maybe a better example is I don't open my mouth as much for debt as I do for met.

> I don't open my mouth as much

This could probably be explained by having to actually move the muscles when opening the mouth in order to pronounce 'm'.

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

#313
post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's very interesting people think so, and I've heard similar statements about the in "scent". Yet linguistically, it really doesn't hold up. Words are built up from phonemes, which undergo some alterations depending on their order and the context to become the phones (as in sounds, not telephones) which are actually pronounced. But this allophonic variation is never dependent on the spelling of the word†, and the wo…

Regarding scent, I definitely notice a difference in my Appalachian brain. I feel like the s sound is more drawn out with the present.

I wonder if this might be a mental artifact of being aware of the spelling. Kids probably would hear no difference between 'scent', 'cent', or 'sent'.

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

#314
post #207

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.)

The L in "falcon" in the spelling pronunciation is a "dark" L, which is a pretty different sound from the "light" L, but it's still there. In most accents of English L regularly manifests with the "dark" sound before a consonant or at the end of a word, and with the "light" sound elsewhere.

Both L sounds involve raising the tongue, but with the light L the tip of tongue approaches the alveolar ridge (the part of your gum just behind your top row of teeth), while with the dark L the tip of the tongue does the same thing, but the back of the tongue simultaneously rises towards the soft palate (this is called "velarization", and it's the same gesture that accompanies lip-rounding to form a W sound). There may be further differences depending on accent, e.g. in Cockney accents the tongue-tip gesture of dark L is lost completely so that dark L becomes a fully-fledged vowel, and it might even acquire lip-rounding and merge with W. Other accents have lost the distinction as well and generalized either light L or dark L to all positions (e.g. Scottish English tends to use dark L everywhere).

In the older pronunciation of "falcon", there's no L there at all, light or dark. It was borrowed from Old French "faucon", and the L was restored in spelling via Latin influence in more or less exactly the same way as the B in "debt".

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

#315

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…

"He got his just deserts when forced to desert his dessert in the desert."

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

#316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The new pronunciations seem conventional enough now, although "offen/often" can go either way, and I can't say I've ever heard anyone pronounce "tortoise" in a newer way. Is it supposed to sound like the end of "turquoise?"

> Is it supposed to sound like the end of "turquoise?" Yes, though some speakers use an S rather than a Z sound (think "choice"). I have only heard these pronunciations from British speakers.

Even weirder than I thought.

I look forward to hearing that from Zoomer college students any time soon then.

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

#317
post #157

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.

It's very interesting people think so, and I've heard similar statements about the in "scent". Yet linguistically, it really doesn't hold up. Words are built up from phonemes, which undergo some alterations depending on their order and the context to become the phones (as in sounds, not telephones) which are actually pronounced. But this allophonic variation is never dependent on the spelling of the word†, and the wo…

The consonants in English are clearly demarcated, but not the vowels, and especially not between dialects.

I don't think most of the other posters here are claiming a "ghostly b phoneme", but a subtle vowel shift of /ɛ/ (which yes, does alter the phonemic content). In some dialects it sounds like some are describing an internalized "schwa-ification" rule of one sort of the other with the "b" in debt seen as most likely preventing a schwa /ə/ (or nearly such) in their dialect. In general in English /ə/ is the most common actual vowel sound in the majority of dialects, so many dialectal differences are the various rules in which vowels "drop" to /ə/ or not. It wouldn't surprise me if some of these ghost letters are indeed just relics of schwa-ification rules (which would indicate that with a possible spelling reform you'd still want to accent the vowel somehow that it is likely prevented from schwa such as rewriting "debt" to "dét").

(Aside: From this distance, the presumed Middle Age scholars' appeal to Latin to explain some of these deeply internalized schwa rules seems silly, but probably isn't far off the mark from a language evolutionary standpoint, at least for Old French borrowings in the language.)

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

#318

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…

I know a friend with that name, Sean. He works in consumer service dept and he is the only Sean/Shawn/Shaun in there, everyone knows they are asking for him. Usually his coworker will transfer the call to him and say "Give me a moment, I will transfer you to Sean, as in Sean Connery, who will handle this". It also help a lot when doing intake over the phone. If there are name are that so much similarities, it is best…

[deleted]

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

#319

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…

I don't know if this is an English-only thing or not, but the emphasis on a particular word in a sentence can convey some extra info.

Ex: He's not lying.

1. He's not lying. (Someone else is lying)

2. He's not lying. (Same as original but more forceful)

3. He's not lying. (Depending on context, could mean "He's not technically lying, but perhaps I'll agree he's stretching the truth a little.", or it could mean "OMG c'mon this is Jim we're talking about, he's not LYING...are you crazy? He always tells the truth."

I wonder how many court transcript readings have totally screwed someone over because of something like this. Add sarcasm to the mix to take it up a notch.

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

#320

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.

When we first started working with Irish teammates, we were confused about who people were referring to when they talked about Owen as there was no Owen in Slack at all.

There was an Eoghan, though.

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