Today I learned

Lounge
43

Talk, it’s only talk
Arguments, agreements, advice, answers
Articulate announcements
It’s only talk

Talk, it’s only talk
Babble, burble, banter, bicker bicker bicker
Brouhaha, balderdash, ballyhoo
It’s only talk
Back talk

Talk talk talk, it’s only talk
Comments, cliches, commentary, controversy
Chatter, chit-chat, chit-chat, chit-chat
Conversation, contradiction, criticism
It’s only talk
Cheap talk

Talk, talk, it’s only talk
Debates, discussions
These are words with a D this time
Dialogue, dualogue, diatribe
Dissention, declamation
Double talk, double talk

Talk, talk, it’s all talk
Too much talk
Small talk
Talk that trash
Expressions, editorials, expugnations, exclamations, exaggerations
It’s all talk
Elephant talk

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Today I learnt a very odd thing about the English language. If you remove the ‘s’ sound from the word ‘speech’, what you end up with sounds more like ‘beach’ than ‘peach’.

I am mildly disturbed by this realisation.

Background

My native language makes a significant difference between voiced and voiceless consonants, but aspiration has no phonemic role in it. English is somewhat the opposite in that regard, in the sense that there exists a phonemic difference between aspirated and unaspirated consonants, to the point it blends with the voicelessness: a native English speaker makes almost no distinction between unaspirated ‘p’ and voiced ‘b’.

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46

This video demonstrates the (very) subtle difference between voiced /b/ and unvoiced /p/.

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47

In Croatian we don’t have the aspirated ‘p’, only unaspirated ‘p’. We also have the fully voiced ‘b’, and the difference between the two is quite strong. In English, the difference between aspirated ‘p’ and unaspirated ‘p’ is very obvious, but the difference between unaspirated ‘p’ and ‘b’ is very, very subtle, almost non-existant. So when a native speaker says ‘sbeech’ instead of ‘speech’, there is almost no difference, but if I say it, it’s sounds silly.

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48

Here is another very messed up fact that was just brought to my attention:

The string "()()" is not a palindrome, but the string "())(" is.

Absolutely disgusting.

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49

Boo …Poo! I’m not sure how you are getting beach instead of peach by dropping the s? More emphasis on the p :smile:

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I am also in doubt about some English spelling methods. I feel, why do we write those letters of the words which play no cause in their pronunciation, i.e. they are silent…

As of something new, then

Reverse of Kresimir is Rimiserk, or in sentence form rim-is-erk.

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Try it, you’re a native speaker of English, right? Record yourself saying the word ‘speech’ and then carefully edit the audio file to cut out the ‘s’ sound. You’ll clearly hear ‘beach’ but not ‘peach’. I was as shocked as you :slight_smile:

Also try removing ‘s’ from ‘store’: you’ll clearly hear the word ‘door’.

Of course, if you’re not a native speaker of English, none of this will work.

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52

No… you are wrong. Removing s from store and the word is tore. The pronunciation of d & t are totally different? Door and Tore are two totally different sounds.

In a lot of other languages they don’t pronounce some of these letters in their words so they sound different. In English there is no comparison to words that start with s or t and or s and b.

The pronunciation of the words are learned from the alphabet. A through Z
A non English speaker would have to learn this first in order to pronounce the words correctly.

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But in speech, when actually pronounced, the sound of t in store is somewhat similar to that of d (as in door). In other words, the t in store is unaspirated and therfore sounds like d.

I think this is called progressive assimilation. In this case, the occurrence of a certain consonant affects the pronunciation of the succeeding one.

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54

Not always. British english is a lot different from american english. Try editing audio from both saying “Internet” and cutting the “In” part, I guess first one would sound “ternet”, but the second one would be just “ernet” or something else.

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Non native english speaking persons might think so but it’s not. A d and a T are totally different sounds. Like i said you have to learn English alphabet pronunciation first and then English words as the pronunciation does change in some words depending on how they are spelled.

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We don’t talk like the British. :laughing:

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I don’t need a lesson on how English words sound and are pronounced. I already know it! :wink:

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This is a linguistics fact and it is not specific to the English language.
It has nothing to do with being native or non-native English speaker.

You would need to consider the pronunciation of the phones (aka sounds) in it its phonological context not separately as you do.

In this case the occurrence of s before t (phonological context) affects the pronunciation :wink: of t which becomes unaspirated and therefore sounds like d.

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59

I used to think I knew how every single letter sounds… but I don’t, at all! :rofl:

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As i said i don’t need any lessons. My english is good. French not so much!

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In what word are you talking about?

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Nobody is questioning your proficiency in English. Don’t take it personal.

Being a native speaker of a language and having the knowledge of all its linguistics subtleties does not always conflate :wink:

Store, speak, skate to give you some examples of progressive assimilation.

Look it up for yourself:

Aspirated vs. unaspirated consonants

Assimilation: regressive, progressive etc.

Phonological and phonetic context

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