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Re: Question about consonants in English

From:Gary Shannon <fiziwig@...>
Date:Saturday, December 15, 2007, 1:04
--- Geijss Streijde <gijsstrider@...> wrote:

> Hello people, > > Thank you for taking your time to read this message. > > As English is my L2, I have a tiny issue with the pronouncation of it > and was wondering if you had any pointers on how to correct my > pronouncation. > > The problem is that in my L1 it is impossible for a word to end in a > voiced consonant, as such I find it impossible to do this in other > languages. > > An example I can give is the following. The word 'Bed' I pronounce > naturally as [b3t], and if I try really hard to voice the /d/ it comes > out as [b3.d@] or [b3d.d@]. >
I'm not familiar with your notation since phonetics is not at all interesting to me, but paying close attention to how I pronounce "bed" there is "almost" a vowel following the final "d". Pronouncing it "beduh" is much closer to the American pronunciation than "bet". But instead of fully pronouncing the final vowel sound, just "think" it. Looking at the wave form of spoken "bed" in an audio editor it's clear that the vocal chords keep producing sound after the release of the "d", but only for a short time, at at a lower level than a normal vowel. The other thing I notice is that the 'd' is held closed for a short time while being voiced. You cannot prolong the pre-release portion of "t" because no sound is being made until the release, but the closed "d" does make a voiced sound prior to its release. Try pronouncing "bed---d" with a prolonged "d" and see how much different it is from trying to pronounce "bet---t", which cannot be pronounced because the "t" cannot be prolonged. ("d---d" indicates a single prolonged "d" sound, not two separate "d" sounds.) --gary