The "tse" sound

[Biopolitics]

Dear Forum members,
I'm just curious whether the "tse" sound that occurs in other languages like German, Dutch, Greek, Italian, and Russian, is totally nonexistent in English?. Does a native speaker of English consider it just a combination of two independent consonants (like in the tse-tse fly) and not a special phonem? To my knowledge, Italian songs have "breaks in continuity" (staccato) in their melodies thanks to this sound (denoted by the letter z). And what about words like blitz, Ritz (the hotel name), etc.?

 

[jutfrank]

Can you give us an example of the sound you have in mind?

Obviously, the combination of sounds /t/ and /s/ is incredibly common in English, so I presume you're thinking of something other than the sound that occurs, for example, in:

its
hats
blitz

Or perhaps you're asking about cases where this combination of sounds appears in the middle of a word, not at the end? The only one I can come up with right now is 'hatstand'.

 

[Biopolitics]

The point is it's one coherent entity, not just two independent sounds. I think It's called an affricate in phonetics. Examples? My native German has zu (pronounced tsu), a preposition roughly equivalent to to in English, a rather similar language. And Russians might correct me but I think their monarch was traditionally called a tsar. I would be happy to pronounce this sound for you because it has a special musical appeal to me. To my knowledge, it's missing not only in English but also in French and Spanish

 

[jutfrank]

I see. Yes, the German voiceless alveolar affricate /ts/ is very similar in quality to /ts/ in English. You can barely hear any difference at all.

 

[5jj]

The difference is that the German /ts/ is an affricate, a single phoneme.. The English /t/ and /s/ are separate phonemes.

 

[Biopolitics]

There are tons of examples of people combining two (or more) consonants and declaring this a new phoneme. For instance, Greek has the affricate ps ; the musical Italian language has dz along with ts

 

[5jj]

People do not 'declare' a new affricate. Most people have not the slightest idea what an affricate is.

 

[Biopolitics]

Sorry please for the dealy in answering. Historically, the German /ts/ came into being over one millenium ago, as a result of a change in the original sound /t/ during a major phonetic transformation period in which also many /p/ sounds became /pf/ sounds. This transition took place in official High German but not in other German dialects such as Low German (Plattdeutsch). However, I have the feeling that some people, especially in Austria and Switzerland, still perceive the /ts/ sound as a composite one. At the same time, it seems to me that in languages like English where the /ts/ phoneme lacks any official acknowledgment some speakers might envision it, at least implicitly, as a new entity not reducible to a bare combination of /t/ and /s/. Take words like blitz or Ritz. Doesn't this composite sound give them some special musical quality? BTW, the same considerations concern the voiced counterpart /dz/ which for some strange reason is missing in German but so prominent and musical in Italian.

 

[Piscean]

it seems to me that in languages like English where the /ts/ phoneme lacks any official acknowledgment some speakers might envision it, at least implicitly, as a new entity not reducible to a bare combination of /t/ and /s/.

Have you any evidence to support this belief?

Take words like blitz or Ritz. Doesn't this composite sound give them some special musical quality?

No.