3 ms·
The vast, vast majority of English speakers will nasalize the o in tone, and the vast, vast majority of even the small fraction who don't will still pronounce t
by torstenvl 4y ago
The vast, vast majority of English speakers will nasalize the o in tone, and the vast, vast majority of even the small fraction who don't will still pronounce the o farther back than they would for rose.
Try this. Pinch your nose closed with your thumb and forefinger. Say "tone" but stop before you articulate the n.
Now do the same with "rose," stopping before you articulate the s.
I'm betting you felt a lot more vibration in your nose on the first one.
There might be a small number of heavy-NCVS speakers for whom there is truly no difference. David Boreanaz, perhaps. Bobby Generic's mom, likely.
- wizofaus 4y agoCan't say I detect a difference. Might be an Aus-E thing: https://youglish.com/pronounce/rose/english/aus https://youglish.com/pronounce/rose/english/aus https://youglish.com/pronounce/tone/english/aus https://youglish.com/pronounce/tone/english/aus But I would have thought I use -əʊ- for both, which is what's shown as the Br-E pronunciation for both words on that site.
- torstenvl 4y agoThat's what's shown for the phonetics, yes, but we aren't talking about phonemes, we're talking about phonological effects, specifically the anticipatory assimilation of [n] into the preceding vowel. (Note: One wonderfully weird thing about English is that different types of phonological assimilation happen in different directions, e.g., voice assimilation happens the other way, so "fads" is pronounced as if it had a "z" at the end and "putz" is pronounced as if it had an "s" at the end, i.e., "fadz"/"puts" rather than "fats"/"pudz")