5 ms·
Interestingly enough, IPA actually does have a way of distinguishing these sounds. The Spanish t is always unaspirated [t]. But the English t can sometimes be u
by doomrobo 5y ago
Interestingly enough, IPA actually does have a way of distinguishing these sounds. The Spanish t is always unaspirated [t]. But the English t can sometimes be unaspirated [t] as in "stamp" or aspirated [tʰ] as in "too"
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aspiration_(phonetics) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aspiration_(phonetics)
- lainga 5y agoMaybe that's what I'm thinking of! I associate just 't' with 'tʰ'.
- leephillips 5y agoThat’s interesting, but the Spanish unaspirated t and the English one are different phonemes. The tongue is in a different position. If I forget and use the English t, my Spanish teacher stops me. The difference in sounds is quite obvious. So how, in IPA, do you spell the difference?
- jgwil2 5y agoThere are a bunch of subscripts/superscripts that describe the exact place of articulation but are omitted in most contexts. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voiceless_dental_and_alveolar_plosives#Varieties https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voiceless_dental_and_alveolar_...
- thaumasiotes 5y ago> but the Spanish unaspirated t and the English one are different phonemes. The tongue is in a different position. That is not what "phoneme" means. They are different sounds, but they aren't different phonemes in either language; to be different phonemes, the same language would have to consider them different. Neither does -- in both cases, one is "/t/" and the other is "weird /t/".
- leephillips 5y agoThanks for the correction. I’m not a linguist (obviously). Just teaching and learning a foreign language.
- jdmichal 5y agoSpanish <t> is dental, which requires the dental diacritic: [t̪] However, since there is no alveolar [t] in Spanish, it will generally just be transcribed as /t/ rather than having to put the diacritic on all the time.
- DonaldPShimoda 5y agoIt's more complex. Spanish phonology dictates a denti-alveolar pronunciation of /t/, while typical English phonology (USA, England, etc.) uses purely alveolar /t/. So in Spanish, the tip of the tongue hits the back of the teeth, which doesn't happen in English. This distinction is not rendered in the IPA glyphs or any diacritic that I'm aware of.
- thaumasiotes 5y agoIs it not the t̪? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dental_consonant https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dental_consonant
- DonaldPShimoda 5y agoI think it's not perfect, because (I believe) Spanish /t/ is usually denti-alveolar and not fully dental. I don't think there's a way to express that specific aspect of it, though I'm also not a linguist so I may be mistaken!
- leephillips 5y agoThat’s what I’m talking about. The Spanish t is almost like an unaspirated English th.
- DonaldPShimoda 5y agoAspiration is a separate phenomenon. English also has unaspirated plosives — they just mostly only occur in word-final positions, like the <t> in "pat", and they are not contrastive with their aspirated versions. What I was talking about was how the Spanish /t/ has the tip of the tongue just a bit further forward, so that it touches the back of your teeth. English /t/ is, for most people, purely alveolar, so there's no teeth contact.
- leephillips 5y agoAgreed. But some Spanish speakers pronounce t with the tongue quite far forward, between the teeth; that’s what I meant by comparing it to an unaspirated English th. But I think we are getting into regional variations now. It’s even more crucial with d. An English native speaker who is a beginner in Spanish will pronounce tened in a way that will be interpreted by Spanish speakers as tener.