4 ms·

for example, to this day I need to pay an inordinate amount of attention to tell "eyes" from "ice" I just find that obvious. Wherever I've been in the US, "eye

for example, to this day I need to pay an inordinate amount of attention to tell "eyes" from "ice" I just find that obvious. Wherever I've been in the US, "eyes" is drawn out, but "ice" is short. (Think of imitating a southern accent for "eyes.") The only people I've ever heard saying "eyes" so it sounds like "ice" are native German speakers and other Europeans. (My wife learned German for her Chinese/German comparative lit degree, so the way she says certain things in English sounds menacing to me like how a WWII German movie character says, "We have ways of making you talk!" In particular, when she says, "Your handwriting...looks like WORMS!") I wonder if being a music aficionado, having played an instrument, etc. helps with the tones. I've been playing traditional music for almost 40 years, and I even qualified to compete at what's basically the world competition once. I think it matters most what one got used to as a child.

yorwba 3y ago
> The only people I've ever heard saying "eyes" so it sounds like "ice" are native German speakers and other Europeans In German, many syllable-final consonants (in particular, "s") are always voiceless, but the English plural "-s" is voicet (which strangely enough none of my English teachers ever botheret to mention) so if you apply German phonological rules to "eyes" you get something that sounts identical to "ice". But Germans hafe no problem pronouncing "eyes" if the "s" is not syllable-final, e.g. in "Eisen" ("eyesn", iron). To learn to speak a languache like a natife, you neet to break habits of thought you didn't even know you hat.
totetsu 3y ago
Isn’t the point of difference that, eyes had a little slide in the first vowel, ‘ah-I ss’ and maybe a more voiced z like s And ice just has extended one ‘ah- s’ a and a more interdental friction s

yorwba 3y ago

> The only people I've ever heard saying "eyes" so it sounds like "ice" are native German speakers and other Europeans In German, many syllable-final consonants (in particular, "s") are always voiceless, but the English plural "-s" is voicet (which strangely enough none of my English teachers ever botheret to mention) so if you apply German phonological rules to "eyes" you get something that sounts identical to "ice". But Germans hafe no problem pronouncing "eyes" if the "s" is not syllable-final, e.g. in "Eisen" ("eyesn", iron). To learn to speak a languache like a natife, you neet to break habits of thought you didn't even know you hat.

totetsu 3y ago

Isn’t the point of difference that, eyes had a little slide in the first vowel, ‘ah-I ss’ and maybe a more voiced z like s And ice just has extended one ‘ah- s’ a and a more interdental friction s