shudder/shutter

[birdeen's call]

Are these two words pronounced differently?

The Collins Dictionary gives the following pronunciations.
/ˈʃʌdə/
/ˈʃʌtə/

But I don't think it's true. I think "shudder" is pronounced exactly like "shutter" - with an unvoiced /t/, or rather the flap, [ɾ]. My first question is if I'm right about it. I'm almost sure I'm right it is so in General American, but how about other accents?

Another thing is that pronunciations in dictionaries are phonemic, so they use phonemes without any details. Maybe these are two phonemes realized with the same allophone? But that would contradict the definition of a phoneme, wouldn't it?

 

[Raymott]

Are these two words pronounced differently?

The Collins Dictionary gives the following pronunciations.
/ˈʃʌdə/
/ˈʃʌtə/

But I don't think it's true. I think "shudder" is pronounced exactly like "shutter" - with an unvoiced /t/, or rather the flap, [ɾ]. My first question is if I'm right about it. I'm almost sure I'm right it is so in General American, but how about other accents?
I say 'shutter' with a [t] and 'shudder' with a [d]. It kind of makes sense! I don't see any need for learning how to produce flaps, taps, trills or clicks for learners of English. You can always slip into a dialect if you need to spend a period of time somewhere, but even then it's not necessary.

Another thing is that pronunciations in dictionaries are phonemic, so they use phonemes without any details. Maybe these are two phonemes realized with the same allophone? But that would contradict the definition of a phoneme, wouldn't it?
The flap [ɾ] is an allophone of /t/ in some American dialects. /ˈʃʌtə/ and /ˈʃʌɾə/ are the same word. I don't think there are any minimal pairs with [t] and [ɾ]. They are two allophones of the same phoneme, /t/.
The only justification for learning [ɾ] would be if they were different phonemes - if */ɾ/* and */t/* were different words. I don't think this happens anywhere.
(The same applies to glottal stops. /ˈʃʌtə/ and /ˈʃʌ[FONT=&quot]ʔ[/FONT]ə/ are the same word.)

R.

 

[birdeen's call]

I say 'shutter' with a [t] and 'shudder' with a [d].

Thanks!

I don't see any need for learning how to produce flaps, taps, trills or clicks for learners of English. You can always slip into a dialect if you need to spend a period of time somewhere, but even then it's not necessary.

Well, I don't learn because it's necessary any more. ;-) I enjoy the comfort of learning what's interesting to me.

The flap [ɾ] is an allophone of /t/ in some American dialects. /ˈʃʌtə/ and /ˈʃʌɾə/ are the same word. I don't think there are any minimal pairs with [t] and [ɾ]. They are two allophones of the same phoneme, /t/.
The only justification for learning [ɾ] would be if they were different phonemes - if */ɾ/* and */t/* were different words. I don't think this happens anywhere.
(The same applies to glottal stops. /ˈʃʌtə/ and /ˈʃʌ[FONT=&quot]ʔ[/FONT]ə/ are the same word.)

I know [ɾ] isn't a phoneme. I don't think I agree with what you say about "the only justification". I'm just curious.

Do you mean no dialect and no accent has [ɾ] as an allophone of /d/? Even in America?

 

[Raymott]

I say 'shutter' with a [t] and 'shudder' with a [d].

Thanks!

I don't see any need for learning how to produce flaps, taps, trills or clicks for learners of English. You can always slip into a dialect if you need to spend a period of time somewhere, but even then it's not necessary.

Well, I don't learn because it's necessary any more. ;-) I enjoy the comfort of learning what's interesting to me.
Oh, I know that. I meant for students of English in general.
"One can always slip into dialect when one needs to." Better?

The flap [ɾ] is an allophone of /t/ in some American dialects. /ˈʃʌtə/ and /ˈʃʌɾə/ are the same word. I don't think there are any minimal pairs with [t] and [ɾ]. They are two allophones of the same phoneme, /t/.
The only justification for learning [ɾ] would be if they were different phonemes - if */ɾ/* and */t/* were different words. I don't think this happens anywhere.
(The same applies to glottal stops. /ˈʃʌtə/ and /ˈʃʌ[FONT=&quot]ʔ[/FONT]ə/ are the same word.)

I know [ɾ] isn't a phoneme. I don't think I agree with what you say about "the only justification". I'm just curious.
Again, I meant for the average learner of English. "There is no need for learners of English ever to produce a [ɾ]" Better?

Do you mean no dialect and no accent has [ɾ] as an allophone of /d/? Even in America?
No, this time I meant what I said. [ɾ] is an allophone of /t/. I suppose it follows that [ɾ] can't be an allophone of /d/ as well, since that would make [d] and [t] allophones, which, I believe, doesn't occur anywhere in English.
Of course, phonetically, some Americans might say [ɾ] in 'shutter' no differently from [d] in 'shudder', but if that became normal, the new reality would be that [t] and [d] are allophones in 'shutter'-type words.

I should make clear that this is all to the best of my knowledge. If there is any native speaker living in a community that uses [ɾ] and [d] interchangeably, that would be interesting to hear about.
If that were the case, differentiating 'ladder' and 'latter' etc. would need to be done from context.

 

[birdeen's call]

I should make clear that this is all to the best of my knowledge. If there is any native speaker living in a community that uses [ɾ] and [d] interchangeably, that would be interesting to hear about.
If that were the case, differentiating 'ladder' and 'latter' etc. would need to be done from context.

I do hope someone'll say it. I'm almost sure I hear some Americans pronounce these words in the same manner. I can be wrong because I'm not young and my ears aren't to be trusted.

I shall look for it on the web too. If I find something I'll post it here (probably with new questions ;-)).

 

[BobK]

I do hope someone'll say it. I'm almost sure I hear some Americans pronounce these words in the same manner. I can be wrong because I'm not young and my ears aren't to be trusted.
Same here. I'm told they sound the same in some American accents, and they do sound the same to me. For many years the song Ghost riders in the sky, conjured up for me a surreal image involving airborne http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghost_writers ;-)...

b

 

[Raymott]

I do hope someone'll say it. I'm almost sure I hear some Americans pronounce these words in the same manner. I can be wrong because I'm not young and my ears aren't to be trusted.

I shall look for it on the web too. If I find something I'll post it here (probably with new questions ;-)).

Speech defects don't count.
Also if the speakers in the community can differentiate the sounds, but others can't, that doesn't count either.

 

[riquecohen]

I do hope someone'll say it. I'm almost sure I hear some Americans pronounce these words in the same manner. I can be wrong because I'm not young and my ears aren't to be trusted.

I shall look for it on the web too. If I find something I'll post it here (probably with new questions ;-)).

Your ears certainly can be trusted. If you have ever been to New York, where I was born and raised, you surely have heard shutter and shudder pronounced exactly alike. I can´t make a definite statement about the rest of the U.S.
I´m proud of my N.Y. accent, which will probably be extinct soon and replaced by a new N.Y. accent, as a result of the arrival of new immigrant groups.

 

[Tullia]

Your ears certainly can be trusted. If you have ever been to New York, where I was born and raised, you surely have heard shutter and shudder pronounced exactly alike. I can´t make a definite statement about the rest of the U.S.
I´m proud of my N.Y. accent, which will probably be extinct soon and replaced by a new N.Y. accent, as a result of the arrival of new immigrant groups.

Indeed; it seems to me similar to "Whadda ya gonna do aboud id?"[What're you going to do about it?], and variants, which I associate with NY accents, especially Italian-American ones somehow - possibly as a result of too many bad Mafia movies, of course!

 

[riquecohen]

Indeed; it seems to me similar to "Whadda ya gonna do aboud id?"[What're you going to do about it?], and variants, which I associate with NY accents, especially Italian-American ones somehow - possibly as a result of too many bad Mafia movies, of course!

You´re right, Tullia, although some of those movies were great. At one time (early to mid-20th century,) the population of N.Y. was roughly 1/3 Italian-American, somewhat less than 1/3 eastern European Jews and about 1/3 Irish-American The remainder were Blacks, Latinos and various other groups. It was primarily from the first 2 groups that the stereotypical N.Y. accent derives. As immigration patterns have changed dramatically, the influence of these new immigrants´ languages (Chinese, Korean, Spanish, etc.) is increasingly felt in N.Y. speech.

 

[birdeen's call]

Thanks for all your replies. I've just found the following paragraph in article Phoneme from Wikipedia.

Biuniqueness is a property of the phoneme in classic structuralist phonemics. The biuniqueness definition states that every phonetic allophone must unambiguously be assigned to one and only one phoneme. In other words, there is a many-to-one allophone-to-phoneme mapping instead of a many-to-many mapping.

The notion of biuniqueness was controversial among some pre-generative linguists and was prominently challenged by Morris Halle and Noam Chomsky in the late 1950s and early 1960s.

The unworkable aspects of the concept soon become apparent if you consider the phenomenon of flapping in North American English. In the right environment, this flapping can change either /t/ or /d/ into the allophone [ɾ] for many affected speakers. Here, one allophone is clearly assigned to two phonemes.

"It's always darkest under the street lamp", as we say in Polish, which means that you often fail to look for things in the most obvious places. ;-)

 

[BobK]

...
"It's always darkest under the street lamp", as we say in Polish, which means that you often fail to look for things in the most obvious places. ;-)

The closest we get that is 'We couldn't see the wood for the trees' (unusual use of 'for'; it means 'The trees stop us from seeing the wood'.

(Come to think of it, it's not at all the same - except for the problem of not seeing what's obvious.)

b

 

[riquecohen]

The closest we get that is 'We couldn't see the wood for the trees' (unusual use of 'for'; it means 'The trees stop us from seeing the wood'.

(Come to think of it, it's not at all the same - except for the problem of not seeing what's obvious.)

b

In AmE it´s "We couldn´t see the forest for the trees." I particularly liked the Polish saying. Perhaps that can be equated with "If it were a snake, it would´ve bit me."

 

[Dorsai]

I can't comment on American pronunciation, or local accents within the UK, but for me "Shudder and Shutter" are different.
In shudder the "dd" is voiced.
In Shutter the "tt" is not voiced, and would be said the almost the same as:
"I shut her in the closet"