Re: nasal(ized) taps and flaps

On Thu, Jun 14, 2001 at 04:37:10PM -0600, dirk elzinga wrote:
> While de-lurking briefly, I found this.
>
> On Thu, 14 Jun 2001, David Peterson wrote:
>
> > And another thing, why can't there be a nasal flap?  The /n/
> > in "never" sounds a lot different than the "nn" in
> > "running".  If I were to replace both with a stop-like
> > sound, "never" would get a /d/, "dever", and "running" would
> > definitely get a flap.  Am I just crazy that I can hear and
> > feel this difference?
>
> You are not crazy, and there is in fact such a thing as a nasal
> flap (or tap), though it's probably best to call it a nasalized
> flap, for aerodynamic reasons.
Ok, so what IS the difference between taps and flaps?

> Some varieties of English (like
> mine) distinguish 'winter' from 'winner' only by the presence of
> a nasalized flap in the former and a [n] in the latter, at least
> in casual speech.
Hmm. I'll have to pay attention to people around here (myself included),
since I had noticed that the two often sound the same, but sometimes I have
an impression that they're not *exactly* the same.

--
Eric Christopherson | Rakko