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

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...

>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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