joke vs choke, thank and tank

[belly_ttt]

1)The Americans told me I pronounce joke like choke. I can't differentiate between the two. Please help me.

2)My American teacher told me to pronounce thanks as /tank/, usually I pronounce it as /thank/. He is a Black American. Is that right?

Thanks in advance

[BobK]

1: Put your finger on your Adam's apple (voice-box/larynx - the bit that sticks out at the front of your neck) and say /ssssssssszzzzzzzzzzsssssss/. The vibration you feel switching on (for /z.) and off (for /s/) is voicing. You can do the same with other pairs of phonemes, like /fffffffffffvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvffffffffffffffffffff/

It's harder to feel with an affricate like /ʧ/ or /ʤ/ (because it's not continuous). But the difference between ʧ and ʤ is that the second one is voiced; the shape of the mouth, and the relative positions of tongue and teeth, don't change.

2 I don't know what your teacher is talking about. But then again I don't know what you're talking about, as the characters between your "//" are obviously not phonemic (that consonant cluster occurs in no English word, though it may occur in continuous speech at word boundaries* - like /felt'helpləs/)! What you want is /ɵ/. Whether in Black American this makes a /t/ sound, I don't know.

b

PS * - including composite words like 'cart-horse' and 'port-hole'

[BobK]

PPS re Black American pronunciation: I do know that in BBE (Black British English) there'a a tendency, particularly among speakers with a Jamaican background, to say "tanks" for "thanks"; I can't imagine an English teacher suggesting that this was standard though.

b

[BobK]

I keep hearing more of these 'internal word boundary /t'h/' words; the latest is 'shorthand'.
(No rest for the linguistically curious!)

b

PS Oh no, won't they go away? "Cigarette-holder". This has got to stop.

[belly_ttt]

1) My teacher's not from Jamaica
2) about joke and choke, in the dictionary I saw the pronunciation as this: /dZ/ (joke) yet in this website howjsay.com it sounds like / tS/.
Same thing goes with dictionary.com
How come?

[BobK]

Originally Posted by belly_ttt

1) My teacher's not from Jamaica
2) about joke and choke, in the dictionary I saw the pronunciation as this: /dZ/ (joke) yet in this website howjsay.com it sounds like / tS/.
Same thing goes with dictionary.com
How come?

1 I didn't say he was - I just gave that dialect as an example.
2 The sound at the beginning of "joke" is definitely voiced; the /tS/ is wrong. (To prove it's voiced, try whispering it. You can't. You end up saying "choke".)

b

[belly_ttt]

I know./ But have you tried the site I gave you?

[BobK]

Originally Posted by belly_ttt

I know./ But have you tried the site I gave you?

Why should I? None of your posts includes a link. You've mentioned dictionary.com, but if it contains misinformation I can't help.

b

[belly_ttt]

ah, you go to howjsay.com and dictionary.com and put in joke and choke to here the difference. Because they sound kinda the same so I happened to pronounce them wrong. ANy feedback?

[BobK]

They're different on howjsay.com. The voicing isn't very clear on 'joke', but the absence of voicing is much clearer (to me) on 'choke'.

On dictionary.com the sound files for those two words are corrupt; don't try to copy them. The IPA transcription is right though: '/dʒoʊk/' and '/tʃoʊk/' (although many transcribers would use a schwa for the first part of the diphthong).

b
PS When asking for comments on a particular web page, copy the URL from your browser and paste it into the forum (like this: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/choke ). It saves time for teachers - and when time is short a potential replier might not have the time to work out which page you mean, so they might not reply at all.