6 ms·

English is not my first language so I wouldn't presume I know more than people at Merriam Webster - but that sounds iffy to me. Sure, I don't say deb-t, but isn

by eozoon 5y ago

English is not my first language so I wouldn't presume I know more than people at Merriam Webster - but that sounds iffy to me. Sure, I don't say deb-t, but isn't the b still there as a plosive / stop? If it were just spelt "det" I feel like it'd have a more prominent t sound. It also seems strange to say it would have been better to get rid of it when we definitely need the b in "debit" and "debenture", isn't it better to keep the b, if just for clearer etymology?

ncmncm 5y ago
No, there is nothing there at all. If you look on a sonograph, "debt" and "det" sound exactly identical. Anybody who imagines English pronunciation should match spelling can't possibly know much of anything about English. Let's not get started on how many British pronounce "drawing".
- robbedpeter 5y ago
  Drawring lol. That r just magically appears after ahh or ohh, and almost everyone is shocked when you point it out.
  - Threeve303 5y ago
    Drawring is how it is pronounced in Warshington and Chicargo as well.
  - kwhitefoot 5y ago
    It varies. My pronunciation of drawing definitely does not include an r. Perhaps it has changed over the last 65 years of my life. Or it is a regional pronunciation. I suspect that more young people include the r.
    - CRConrad 5y ago
      > My pronunciation of drawing definitely does not include an r. Oh, I'm quite sure it does. :-)
  - boondaburrah 5y ago
    Ah yeah the boston 'r' will do the same thing - appearing as needed to separate two vowels.
    - Koshkin 5y ago
      Well, Bostonian accent is an extreme case - they would say “today’s agender: the question of genda.”
  - denton-scratch 5y ago
    "Droring" seems to me to be regional in British English. I hear it more in the North and in London. As a child, I had elocution lessons from a scouser in Liverpool. She insisted on pronouncing the word "with" as "hwith", with the "th" hardened as in "thought", rather than softened as in "the". As a consequence I misspelled "with" for many years. Try to avoid taking elocution lessons from someone with a non-standard accent! I enjoy regional pronunciations. I don't want them ruled to be somehow incorrect. But I deplore incorrect usage, such as "literally" to mean figuratively. M-W says that figuratively is a correct usage of literally, even though it means the exact opposite.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - tsimionescu 5y ago
      Figuratively, literally can mean figuratively, even though literally it means literally. But joke aside, literally is basically a figure of speech used for emphasis - it seems strange to me to say it means figuratively. If I hear someone say "I was so embarrassed I literally died", to me that transmits emphasis, which is different from both the proper sense of "literally" and the proper sense of "figuratively". If someone said "I was so embarrassed I died", this is still a figurative use, just less emphassised. The addition of "literally" is not there to clarify that they don't mean real death, as it would imply if "literally means figuratively" was what was happening.
      - ncmncm 5y ago
        Linguists call this usage a "generic intensifier", where whole meaning is stripped away and just means "more". They circulate in and out of fashion as they grow tired. Recently we had "exponentially", correctly meaningful only to describe a series of numbers growing at rate out of all proportion, or sometimes decaying. Lately we have "incredibly", correctly meaning "unbelievably", which has somehow attained greater and longer currency than usual, used even in constructions like "incredibly honest". "Unbelievably" had its day. We have had "deeply", "madly", many others. Ancient ones include "very", which has almost entirely lost its original meaning of "truly", which has itself been a generic intensifier, and been weakened. Any adjective or adverb may completely flip meaning by ironic use, and sometimes back again, such as "terrific", which once meant close to "horrific". "Plausible", literally "believable", meant in the early 20th century more frequently "unbelievable" or "unlikely". In living memory, "likely" meant "unlikely", as in "a likely story". The extremum of ironic usage is "yeah, right".
  - saalweachter 5y ago
    I grew up near the Wabash ("wal-bash") river in Indiana.
- srcreigh 5y ago
  English. Emphasis on the ish.
pessimizer 5y ago
> If it were just spelt "det" I feel like it'd have a more prominent t sound. If it were just spelled 'det' the vowel would start jumping around. You'd have to go 'dett' or even 'dette' in order to avoid 'deet'.
- thaumasiotes 5y ago
  > If it were just spelled 'det' the vowel would start jumping around. You'd have to go 'dett' or even 'dette' in order to avoid 'deet'. Huh? None of this makes any sense.
  - pessimizer 5y ago
    There are no markers in 'det' that one can use to figure out whether the vowel is long or short. 'ee' is always long, and 'ett(e)' is always short. English has far more vowels than letters. 'ee' is an old digraph that always afaik means long-e, and ett(e) is a french borrowing that will always indicate short-e. 'deat' would work for long-e, too, probably, although 'ea' is much squirrelier (turns into a couple of diphthongs.)
    - thaumasiotes 5y ago
      > There are no markers in 'det' that one can use to figure out whether the vowel is long or short. 'ee' is always long, and 'ett(e)' is always short. For one thing, the evolution of the pronunciation isn't going to take the spelling into account unless the word gets a lot rarer. But even if it did, there's only one way you could pronounce "det". It would rhyme with bet, get[1], jet, let, met, net, pet, set, vet, wet, and yet. The spelling is fully unambiguous. This is the paradigm context for distinguishing "long vowels" from "short vowels" - det must be short just as dete must be long. You could no more indicate a "long E" with "det" than you could indicate a "long A" with "mat" or a "long I" with "hit". > although 'ea' is much squirrelier (turns into a couple of diphthongs.) What? What diphthongs? As far as I can think of, the closest you get to a diphthong with -ea- is as in "near", which is still just /i/ plus whatever you get as you reposition your tongue. [1] "get" is such a common word that its pronunciation has evolved in some nonstandard dialects. But of course it hasn't moved to the FLEECE vowel; it's moved to KIT.
frutiger 5y ago
> If it were just spelt "det" I feel like it'd have a more prominent t sound. In other examples, the prominent “t” sounds and the vowel seems to vary based on emphasis. Compare: 1. Marriage? We only just met yesterday! 2. I’m not really sure, I think I met him four or five years ago.
- inciampati 5y ago
  How are these different? What is changing?
  - CRConrad 5y ago
    The word "met" is first more, then less emphasised. As I understood the GP's point, it was that the more "explosive" emphasis on the whole word also changes the quality of the final 't' to a harder plosive than the relatively softer one in the sentence that is more about exactly when it was.

by eozoon 5y ago

ncmncm 5y ago

No, there is nothing there at all. If you look on a sonograph, "debt" and "det" sound exactly identical. Anybody who imagines English pronunciation should match spelling can't possibly know much of anything about English. Let's not get started on how many British pronounce "drawing".

robbedpeter 5y ago
Drawring lol. That r just magically appears after ahh or ohh, and almost everyone is shocked when you point it out.
- Threeve303 5y ago
  Drawring is how it is pronounced in Warshington and Chicargo as well.
- kwhitefoot 5y ago
  It varies. My pronunciation of drawing definitely does not include an r. Perhaps it has changed over the last 65 years of my life. Or it is a regional pronunciation. I suspect that more young people include the r.
  - CRConrad 5y ago
    > My pronunciation of drawing definitely does not include an r. Oh, I'm quite sure it does. :-)
- boondaburrah 5y ago
  Ah yeah the boston 'r' will do the same thing - appearing as needed to separate two vowels.
  - Koshkin 5y ago
    Well, Bostonian accent is an extreme case - they would say “today’s agender: the question of genda.”
- denton-scratch 5y ago
  "Droring" seems to me to be regional in British English. I hear it more in the North and in London. As a child, I had elocution lessons from a scouser in Liverpool. She insisted on pronouncing the word "with" as "hwith", with the "th" hardened as in "thought", rather than softened as in "the". As a consequence I misspelled "with" for many years. Try to avoid taking elocution lessons from someone with a non-standard accent! I enjoy regional pronunciations. I don't want them ruled to be somehow incorrect. But I deplore incorrect usage, such as "literally" to mean figuratively. M-W says that figuratively is a correct usage of literally, even though it means the exact opposite.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - tsimionescu 5y ago
    Figuratively, literally can mean figuratively, even though literally it means literally. But joke aside, literally is basically a figure of speech used for emphasis - it seems strange to me to say it means figuratively. If I hear someone say "I was so embarrassed I literally died", to me that transmits emphasis, which is different from both the proper sense of "literally" and the proper sense of "figuratively". If someone said "I was so embarrassed I died", this is still a figurative use, just less emphassised. The addition of "literally" is not there to clarify that they don't mean real death, as it would imply if "literally means figuratively" was what was happening.
    - ncmncm 5y ago
      Linguists call this usage a "generic intensifier", where whole meaning is stripped away and just means "more". They circulate in and out of fashion as they grow tired. Recently we had "exponentially", correctly meaningful only to describe a series of numbers growing at rate out of all proportion, or sometimes decaying. Lately we have "incredibly", correctly meaning "unbelievably", which has somehow attained greater and longer currency than usual, used even in constructions like "incredibly honest". "Unbelievably" had its day. We have had "deeply", "madly", many others. Ancient ones include "very", which has almost entirely lost its original meaning of "truly", which has itself been a generic intensifier, and been weakened. Any adjective or adverb may completely flip meaning by ironic use, and sometimes back again, such as "terrific", which once meant close to "horrific". "Plausible", literally "believable", meant in the early 20th century more frequently "unbelievable" or "unlikely". In living memory, "likely" meant "unlikely", as in "a likely story". The extremum of ironic usage is "yeah, right".
- saalweachter 5y ago
  I grew up near the Wabash ("wal-bash") river in Indiana.
srcreigh 5y ago
English. Emphasis on the ish.

pessimizer 5y ago

> If it were just spelt "det" I feel like it'd have a more prominent t sound. If it were just spelled 'det' the vowel would start jumping around. You'd have to go 'dett' or even 'dette' in order to avoid 'deet'.

thaumasiotes 5y ago
> If it were just spelled 'det' the vowel would start jumping around. You'd have to go 'dett' or even 'dette' in order to avoid 'deet'. Huh? None of this makes any sense.
- pessimizer 5y ago
  There are no markers in 'det' that one can use to figure out whether the vowel is long or short. 'ee' is always long, and 'ett(e)' is always short. English has far more vowels than letters. 'ee' is an old digraph that always afaik means long-e, and ett(e) is a french borrowing that will always indicate short-e. 'deat' would work for long-e, too, probably, although 'ea' is much squirrelier (turns into a couple of diphthongs.)
  - thaumasiotes 5y ago
    > There are no markers in 'det' that one can use to figure out whether the vowel is long or short. 'ee' is always long, and 'ett(e)' is always short. For one thing, the evolution of the pronunciation isn't going to take the spelling into account unless the word gets a lot rarer. But even if it did, there's only one way you could pronounce "det". It would rhyme with bet, get[1], jet, let, met, net, pet, set, vet, wet, and yet. The spelling is fully unambiguous. This is the paradigm context for distinguishing "long vowels" from "short vowels" - det must be short just as dete must be long. You could no more indicate a "long E" with "det" than you could indicate a "long A" with "mat" or a "long I" with "hit". > although 'ea' is much squirrelier (turns into a couple of diphthongs.) What? What diphthongs? As far as I can think of, the closest you get to a diphthong with -ea- is as in "near", which is still just /i/ plus whatever you get as you reposition your tongue. [1] "get" is such a common word that its pronunciation has evolved in some nonstandard dialects. But of course it hasn't moved to the FLEECE vowel; it's moved to KIT.

frutiger 5y ago

> If it were just spelt "det" I feel like it'd have a more prominent t sound. In other examples, the prominent “t” sounds and the vowel seems to vary based on emphasis. Compare: 1. Marriage? We only just met yesterday! 2. I’m not really sure, I think I met him four or five years ago.

inciampati 5y ago
How are these different? What is changing?
- CRConrad 5y ago
  The word "met" is first more, then less emphasised. As I understood the GP's point, it was that the more "explosive" emphasis on the whole word also changes the quality of the final 't' to a harder plosive than the relatively softer one in the sentence that is more about exactly when it was.