Re: retroflex consonants

From: "Joe" <joe@...>
Subject: Re: retroflex consonants


> nk it may be likely that the native speaker with whom you spoke wasn't
> > looking at things from an objective point of view (in much the same way
> > that a native English speaker, though clearly no one with linguistic
> > training, might swear that "th" constitutes two sounds).
> > Czesc,
> >     Josh
>
> Sorry, I missed this bit.  Guh?  |th| DOES constitute two sounds: [T] and
[D].
> While the difference can't be proven to be phonemic(although /tiT/'teeth'
> versus /tiD/'teethe',is a possibility) I can hear the difference, and a
lot
> of others can too.
It is phonemic, "teeth" and "teethe" being an example.  Same for "wreath"
and "wreathe".  But I think what the original poster meant was that some
people might think that "th" is not a digraph, that the "t" and the "h" each
represent a single sound.  Which is obviously absurd, but it can happen.

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