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#1
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#2
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| We say them all the same way. |
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#3
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| Are you sure they pronounce all the same? I need to give a class on that subject. I thought "too" sounded a little longer than "two" for instance. How is the phonetic transcription for these words? |
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#4
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| All the same: [tu]. |
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#5
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| 'The journey to the conference was fine, but coming back the traffic was terrible.' (Stressed: /tu:/.) 'I've been to London many times.' (Usually unstressed: /tə/.) 'Too' is of its nature stressed, and I can't imagine an unstressed form of 'two'. These two are pronounced the same. But in 'There were too many to count' there are two pronunciations - except in the case of contrastive stress (for example, correcting a misplaced preposition; Language learner: "There too many for count"/Corrector: "You mean 'There were too many to count.'" b PS Academic students of linguistics may find my use of "/" confusing; it's not right, I know, but it's what most language learners use (in my experience PPS Last edited by BobK; 16-Jun-2009 at 14:49. |
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#6
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| Ooh, good point Bobk. |
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#7
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| Ok guys, thank you very much for your help. All your tips were very useful, the class I gave focusing on the subject was fine. However, as I researched more on the subject, another doubt occurred to me: The sound /t/ in English. For example, we know there is a difference on the beginning /t/ sound of the words 'to' and 'tooth'. However on the phonetic transcriptions for these words which I found, the /t/ sound was the same. Is there a differente phonetic symbol for these two /t/ sounds? Another examples: tea X teeth - tomato X two - top X today - took X tomorrow |
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#8
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| Quote:
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#9
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| No* - an initial "t" makes the sound [t] With some consonants the place of articulation of the consonant varies with the following vowel: the difference is slight, and it's not worth bothering language students with it, but - for example - the /k/ phoneme produces slightly different sorts of [k] in the words 'keep' 'call' 'car' 'cool' 'Kyle' 'kill' and so on (because /k/ is a palatal consonant, and the palate is in a different position because of the following vowel in each case). But this isn't so with the /t/ phoneme; it's a dental, and the teeth (usually!) stay where they are. b *This was addressed to the post before Raymott's |
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#10
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| Quote:
Dental [t] occurs in some languages, such as Hindi, which has त and थ as dental [ta] and [tha] to contrast with their retroflex [t]s. But a good English [t] goes nowhere near the teeth, nor retroflexively. |
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