I teach American English pronunciation to ESL students. I was teaching the pronunciation of plurals. For example, if the word before adding -s, that is, to make the word plural, has a voiced consonant or is a vowel sounds, the /s/ is pronounced like a /z/. Such as: carz, boyz, etc.
My question is: do Brits or other speakers of English pronounce these plurals in the same way? My student (from India) insisted that he was taught to pronounce these plurals with an /s/ sound, not /z/. So, my British/UK/Australian or other English speakers, please let me know about this.
Thanks!
Wikipedia says :
Sometimes, Indian speakers interchange /s/ and /z/, especially when plurals are being formed. Whereas in international varieties of English, [s] is used for pluralization of a word ending in a voiceless consonant, [z] for that ending in a voiced consonant or vowel, and [ɨz] for that ending in a sibilant.
Thank you everyone for your replies. I just wanted to be sure out of my own curiosity. With my Indian accent students, I am sometimes asked about "British English" which most Indians insist they speak well. And, I tried to 'hear' British English in my head and though I know a lot of the common vowel usages, I couldn't say with absolute certainty about this question. Many thanks!
There are some features of Inidan English that have preserved features we have changed in BrE, but I haven't come across this pronunciation in the UK.
The writer of the wikipedia article may have evidence for this.Sometimes, Indian speakers interchange /s/ and /z/, especially when plurals are being formed. Whereas in international varieties of English, [s] is used for pluralization of a word ending in a voiceless consonant, [z] for that ending in a voiced consonant or vowel, and [ɨz] for that ending in a sibilant.
I can say only that all of the many Indians I met when I was working in Oman, native and non-native speakers, used /s/ and /z/ as we do in BrE. Some of the speakers spoke with strong Indian English stress and intonation patterns and reflexive plosives, as well as using distinctively Indian English structures and vocabulary, but they didn't interchange /s/ and /z/.