Re: THEORY: language and the brain [Interesting article]

Quoting Chris Bates <christopher.bates@...>:

> I would not worry about devoicing z in English! We don't contrast s
> and
> z too much I think since they used to be allophones in English, and
> while it is more usual to hear z and it might give you a bit of an
> accent saying s instead, most of the time it wouldn't cause you to be
> misunderstood or give you too much of an accent! (Except in the
> occasional odd pair that only contrast s and z, like house and to
> house)
> I think pronouncing T, D correctly is far more important than
> differentiating between s and z...
No-one's actually ever complained about my English* pronunciation on this
point - it's just an oddity in my English I've noted. No-one seems to care
about not voicing /Z/ and /dZ/ either.

* I've got complaints for the same error in German, tho!

                                                        Andreas

> >Maybe we should do a list of all conlangers who've not have trouble
> with [T]
> >and [D]? Despite much help from parents and teachers when I started to
> learn
> >English in fourth grade, I didn't master them till several years later,
> when I
> >borrowed myself a phonetics book, from whose descriptions I managed to
> get it.
> >Till I learnt to say 'em properly, I used [d] for /D/, and for /T/ [t]
> and
> >[f], with quite random distribution - I used to say [fIN] "thing" and
> >[tINk] "think".
> >
> >I also, perhaps more creatively, had trouble with voiced fricatives. I
> still
> >tend to devoice English /z/ and /Z/ way too often.
> >
> >                                                         Andreas
> >
> >
> >
>

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