Re: Love Those Double Vowels (was: Diving In...)

On Thu, 8 Nov 2001, Adam Walker wrote:

> So there are several of them then.  English *does* have minimal pairs for
> /T/ and /D/.
>
> Thy / thigh
> Thin / then
> ether / either
> with her / wither
>
> Now, admitedly, thy is archaic, the second one depends on dialect, and the
> last one involves reduced speech, and even the third one probably doesn't
> contrast in many dialects, but for my dialect I found 4 mp's in about 5
> mins.
I don't have any of those minimal pairs. I never say 'thy', /TIn/ vs
/DEn/, /i:T@/ vs /aiD@/ and /wIT3\/ or /w@D3\/ vs /wID@/. I never knew T
and D were different sounds before I said them over and over again, so
although I made the distinction in the pronunciation of most words, I
didn't realise it and wouldn't really be saying it was phonemic for my
dialect.

Tristan