31 ms·

I may be crazy but I feel the ghostly presence of the “b”. For instance say “let let let let det” Now say “let let let let debt” Train a neural net on a few

I may be crazy but I feel the ghostly presence of the “b”. For instance say “let let let let det” Now say “let let let let debt” Train a neural net on a few million samples of native English speakers reading these, and I think it could predict which prompt was read with >50% accuracy, even if each person was only shown one of the prompts.

dougmwne 5y ago
In my accent it is pronounced with an extra breathy “H”, deht vs. det.
- Moto7451 5y ago
  I’m from Southern California and pronounce it the same way.
deberon 5y ago
I don't know if you're crazy, but I just said "let let det" about a dozen times to myself in my office ;)
quitit 5y ago
Maybe some accents don't pronounce the b at all, but its presence definitely affects how I pronounce the word, I'm sure I'm not alone in this either. The difference is that my lips touch and close when pronouncing "debt", while they stay entirely open if pronouncing "det" (e.g. in "determined"). The change of airflow imparts a soft "peh" before the "t", making the word sound like a softer form of "dept" rather than identical to "det". I appreciate that spelling in english can be more historical than phonetic, and this might be a case of the tail wagging the dog.
- nh23423fefe 5y ago
  I'm from New England. I pronounce both det and debt exactly the same. As for debt versus determined. Those are both the same except the vowel is slightly different. debt like head vs determined like head or hit But I couldn't even hear how to put a "puh" sound in the word
  - falcolas 5y ago
    Midwest, same pronunciation of debt/det. Determined has a long 'e' for me. Dee-ter-mind (the 'i' is like 'in', not mind)
    - Koshkin 5y ago
      > a long 'e' Note that the term 'long' here refers to the quality of the vowel and not the quantity.
      - falcolas 5y ago
        Correct, yes.
  - pharke 5y ago
    > But I couldn't even hear how to put a "puh" sound in the word The comment you're replying to describes it somewhat but since accents can drastically affect how we move our mouths during pronunciation I'll describe how I go about it. "det" by opening your lips slightly and pulling the corners of your mouth back, the tip of the tongue begins pressed against the gum line of your upper incisors, it is then pulled down quickly as you exhale, the jaw moves down slightly and your lips remain open but do not change shape. "debt" by having the lips parted slightly but relaxed forming more of an "O" shape, the tongue is lightly pressed against the back of the top incisors but more flatly with more of the top of the tongue touching, as you exhale the tongue and lower jaw are pulled down but before you finish exhaling the lips are closed which truncates the sound softly. It's important to not close the lips too soon or too quickly otherwise you will wind up pronouncing "dept" with a sharp "puh". You're aiming for the very end of the exhalation and a soft closure to avoid any smacking sound. The major difference seems to be that "det" is spoken from the back of the mouth whereas "debt" comes from the front. The former sounds more inline with a New England accent and the latter with an English accent.
  - micromacrofoot 5y ago
    I'm also from New England and pronounce it differently, note that the difference is outrageously slight... "debt" is ever-so slightly longer than "det"... best I can place it is that "debt" is pronounced further back in my mouth and "det" is more toothy.
- merpnderp 5y ago
  I just spoke both words several times paying attention to my lips and seemed to have the same response as you. The b in debt does distinctly change the sound of the word for me. Maybe a better example is I don't open my mouth as much for debt as I do for met.
  - Koshkin 5y ago
    > I don't open my mouth as much This could probably be explained by having to actually move the muscles when opening the mouth in order to pronounce 'm'.
- dav_Oz 5y ago
  In phonology you can account for that level of detail with "narrow transcription" it is often helped by recording the sound or even MRI[0] (sagittal section) Since it does not significantly alter the meaning of the word if you briefly close or not close your lips (bilabial "preparation") before articulating the dental plosive "t" it is omitted in the "broad transcription". Another related example as a foreign speaker before articulating "psychology" I will form the unvoiced bilabial plosive "p" with my lips before executing "saɪˈkɑlədʒɪ". [0] https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=YIUvX7hebBA https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=YIUvX7hebBA
libertine 5y ago
I'm not a native english speaker, though I think I'm fluent speaking it... all of this to say that despite the sound being very similar, my lips movement differs between "det" and "debt": It my sound stupid, but when I say "det" my lips tend to remain bit open, when I say "debt" the word ends with my lips closed ahaha I doubt it makes any noticeable diference, and it's probably due to my native language influence.
- jdavis703 5y ago
  I’m a native English speaker and I can feel there’s a slightly different muscle I’m using to pronounce debt vs det. It certainly feels physiologically different to pronounce it. But then, I actually can’t really here any aural difference.
  - libertine 5y ago
    So it would boil down to visual perception of those who are listening to us, if that subtle difference helps in comprehension.
  - gamerDude 5y ago
    Also native English speaker. I find the I am breathing out on the e in debt but not det. So it gives a slightly longer and softer e. But hardly noticable and I thought I would say it the same before analyzing my words.
ahartmetz 5y ago
When you first try to teach someone pronunciation of your language, you may think about that kind of thing for the first time. "The tongue needs to be further forward", "the stress is on the other syllable", "that sound is between a and e", "there's a sort of tiny break here" etc. Much of it you can't even see in phonetic spelling.
kmm 5y ago
It's very interesting people think so, and I've heard similar statements about the <c> in "scent". Yet linguistically, it really doesn't hold up. Words are built up from phonemes, which undergo some alterations depending on their order and the context to become the phones (as in sounds, not telephones) which are actually pronounced. But this allophonic variation is never dependent on the spelling of the word†, and the word "debt" is in all dictionaries transcribed with three phonemes: /dɛt/. The set of phonemes in the English language is also limited and the consonants clearly demarcated, a hypothetical ghostly "b" phoneme would not go unnoticed. I have no doubt that if we made a native English speaker pronounce a list of nonsense words and hid "det" in there, the spectrogram would be identical to that same speaker pronouncing "debt". And that said spectrogram would be nearly identical in the tail end to that of "set" or "net". EDIT: † To be clear, spelling pronunciations do exist, but when they happen the actual phonemic content of the word is altered, e.g. the "l" in how some people say "salmon" is a full blown /l/, changing /ˈsæmən/ into /ˈsælmən/, not a subtle l-like sound.
- xeromal 5y ago
  Regarding scent, I definitely notice a difference in my Appalachian brain. I feel like the s sound is more drawn out with the <c> present.
  - Koshkin 5y ago
    I wonder if this might be a mental artifact of being aware of the spelling. Kids probably would hear no difference between 'scent', 'cent', or 'sent'.
    - WorldMaker 5y ago
      Thinking about it from my dialect, I do think there is a stronger voicing on the "s" in "scent" and "cent" but not the "s" in "sent" (might even be as distinct as /s/ versus /z/? But probably with a partial-voiced marker on one or the other?). Also, I think "cent" is the only one where the vowel seems always forced, not schwa-ed /ə/. It's not always the case, but there can be a reason to believe that spelling differences may have arisen in such cases from trying to explain subtle distinctions that mattered to someone's dialect before a lot of the modern work went into the IPA and actually capturing those subtle differences.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
travisgriggs 5y ago
So you feel that you somehow owe something to the b, but don’t have the wherewithal to pay up on the pronunciation of it. But it can’t just be removed from the ledger of letters used to compose the word. How very fitting. I love life’s little ironies.
werdnapk 5y ago
I'm on team "I pronounce them both the same way". No difference in how I say them at all with my Canadian "accent".
thaumasiotes 5y ago
> I may be crazy but I feel the ghostly presence of the “b”. > Train a neural net on a few million samples of native English speakers reading these, and I think it could predict which prompt was read with >50% accuracy One of the first things you learn in linguistics is that people's judgments about their own pronunciation are not reliable at all.

dougmwne 5y ago

In my accent it is pronounced with an extra breathy “H”, deht vs. det.

Moto7451 5y ago
I’m from Southern California and pronounce it the same way.

deberon 5y ago

I don't know if you're crazy, but I just said "let let det" about a dozen times to myself in my office ;)

quitit 5y ago

Maybe some accents don't pronounce the b at all, but its presence definitely affects how I pronounce the word, I'm sure I'm not alone in this either. The difference is that my lips touch and close when pronouncing "debt", while they stay entirely open if pronouncing "det" (e.g. in "determined"). The change of airflow imparts a soft "peh" before the "t", making the word sound like a softer form of "dept" rather than identical to "det". I appreciate that spelling in english can be more historical than phonetic, and this might be a case of the tail wagging the dog.

nh23423fefe 5y ago
I'm from New England. I pronounce both det and debt exactly the same. As for debt versus determined. Those are both the same except the vowel is slightly different. debt like head vs determined like head or hit But I couldn't even hear how to put a "puh" sound in the word
- falcolas 5y ago
  Midwest, same pronunciation of debt/det. Determined has a long 'e' for me. Dee-ter-mind (the 'i' is like 'in', not mind)
  - Koshkin 5y ago
    > a long 'e' Note that the term 'long' here refers to the quality of the vowel and not the quantity.
    - falcolas 5y ago
      Correct, yes.
- pharke 5y ago
  > But I couldn't even hear how to put a "puh" sound in the word The comment you're replying to describes it somewhat but since accents can drastically affect how we move our mouths during pronunciation I'll describe how I go about it. "det" by opening your lips slightly and pulling the corners of your mouth back, the tip of the tongue begins pressed against the gum line of your upper incisors, it is then pulled down quickly as you exhale, the jaw moves down slightly and your lips remain open but do not change shape. "debt" by having the lips parted slightly but relaxed forming more of an "O" shape, the tongue is lightly pressed against the back of the top incisors but more flatly with more of the top of the tongue touching, as you exhale the tongue and lower jaw are pulled down but before you finish exhaling the lips are closed which truncates the sound softly. It's important to not close the lips too soon or too quickly otherwise you will wind up pronouncing "dept" with a sharp "puh". You're aiming for the very end of the exhalation and a soft closure to avoid any smacking sound. The major difference seems to be that "det" is spoken from the back of the mouth whereas "debt" comes from the front. The former sounds more inline with a New England accent and the latter with an English accent.
- micromacrofoot 5y ago
  I'm also from New England and pronounce it differently, note that the difference is outrageously slight... "debt" is ever-so slightly longer than "det"... best I can place it is that "debt" is pronounced further back in my mouth and "det" is more toothy.
merpnderp 5y ago
I just spoke both words several times paying attention to my lips and seemed to have the same response as you. The b in debt does distinctly change the sound of the word for me. Maybe a better example is I don't open my mouth as much for debt as I do for met.
- Koshkin 5y ago
  > I don't open my mouth as much This could probably be explained by having to actually move the muscles when opening the mouth in order to pronounce 'm'.
dav_Oz 5y ago
In phonology you can account for that level of detail with "narrow transcription" it is often helped by recording the sound or even MRI[0] (sagittal section) Since it does not significantly alter the meaning of the word if you briefly close or not close your lips (bilabial "preparation") before articulating the dental plosive "t" it is omitted in the "broad transcription". Another related example as a foreign speaker before articulating "psychology" I will form the unvoiced bilabial plosive "p" with my lips before executing "saɪˈkɑlədʒɪ". [0] https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=YIUvX7hebBA https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=YIUvX7hebBA

libertine 5y ago

I'm not a native english speaker, though I think I'm fluent speaking it... all of this to say that despite the sound being very similar, my lips movement differs between "det" and "debt": It my sound stupid, but when I say "det" my lips tend to remain bit open, when I say "debt" the word ends with my lips closed ahaha I doubt it makes any noticeable diference, and it's probably due to my native language influence.

jdavis703 5y ago
I’m a native English speaker and I can feel there’s a slightly different muscle I’m using to pronounce debt vs det. It certainly feels physiologically different to pronounce it. But then, I actually can’t really here any aural difference.
- libertine 5y ago
  So it would boil down to visual perception of those who are listening to us, if that subtle difference helps in comprehension.
- gamerDude 5y ago
  Also native English speaker. I find the I am breathing out on the e in debt but not det. So it gives a slightly longer and softer e. But hardly noticable and I thought I would say it the same before analyzing my words.

ahartmetz 5y ago

When you first try to teach someone pronunciation of your language, you may think about that kind of thing for the first time. "The tongue needs to be further forward", "the stress is on the other syllable", "that sound is between a and e", "there's a sort of tiny break here" etc. Much of it you can't even see in phonetic spelling.

kmm 5y ago

It's very interesting people think so, and I've heard similar statements about the <c> in "scent". Yet linguistically, it really doesn't hold up. Words are built up from phonemes, which undergo some alterations depending on their order and the context to become the phones (as in sounds, not telephones) which are actually pronounced. But this allophonic variation is never dependent on the spelling of the word†, and the word "debt" is in all dictionaries transcribed with three phonemes: /dɛt/. The set of phonemes in the English language is also limited and the consonants clearly demarcated, a hypothetical ghostly "b" phoneme would not go unnoticed. I have no doubt that if we made a native English speaker pronounce a list of nonsense words and hid "det" in there, the spectrogram would be identical to that same speaker pronouncing "debt". And that said spectrogram would be nearly identical in the tail end to that of "set" or "net". EDIT: † To be clear, spelling pronunciations do exist, but when they happen the actual phonemic content of the word is altered, e.g. the "l" in how some people say "salmon" is a full blown /l/, changing /ˈsæmən/ into /ˈsælmən/, not a subtle l-like sound.

xeromal 5y ago
Regarding scent, I definitely notice a difference in my Appalachian brain. I feel like the s sound is more drawn out with the <c> present.
- Koshkin 5y ago
  I wonder if this might be a mental artifact of being aware of the spelling. Kids probably would hear no difference between 'scent', 'cent', or 'sent'.
  - WorldMaker 5y ago
    Thinking about it from my dialect, I do think there is a stronger voicing on the "s" in "scent" and "cent" but not the "s" in "sent" (might even be as distinct as /s/ versus /z/? But probably with a partial-voiced marker on one or the other?). Also, I think "cent" is the only one where the vowel seems always forced, not schwa-ed /ə/. It's not always the case, but there can be a reason to believe that spelling differences may have arisen in such cases from trying to explain subtle distinctions that mattered to someone's dialect before a lot of the modern work went into the IPA and actually capturing those subtle differences.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

travisgriggs 5y ago

So you feel that you somehow owe something to the b, but don’t have the wherewithal to pay up on the pronunciation of it. But it can’t just be removed from the ledger of letters used to compose the word. How very fitting. I love life’s little ironies.

werdnapk 5y ago

I'm on team "I pronounce them both the same way". No difference in how I say them at all with my Canadian "accent".

thaumasiotes 5y ago

> I may be crazy but I feel the ghostly presence of the “b”. > Train a neural net on a few million samples of native English speakers reading these, and I think it could predict which prompt was read with >50% accuracy One of the first things you learn in linguistics is that people's judgments about their own pronunciation are not reliable at all.