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Re: [YAEPT] Question about consonants in English

From:Jeffrey Jones <jsjonesmiami@...>
Date:Saturday, December 15, 2007, 2:05
On Fri, 14 Dec 2007 16:14:45 -0800, David J. Peterson
<dedalvs@...> wrote:
> >Luckily, in English we don't have to rely purely on voice to >tell us that a consonant is voiced. The best thing you can do >is learn to control vowel length: > >"bet" [bEt] >"bed" [bE:d] > >So let's say you can't do [d] at the end of a word. Given a choice >between... > >(1) [bEt] >(2) [bE:t] > >...an English speaker will hear the second as "bed". In fact, this >may be going out on a limb a bit, but I'd wager that a native >English speaker would find [bE:t] a more natural pronunciation >of "bed" than [bEd].
I'm afraid that definitely doesn't work for me. [bE:t] sounds like an emphasized version of "bet", while [bEd] is "bed" (and in fact I don't seem to lengthen the [E] very much; part of the extra length goes to the [d], despite the fact that the [d] is fully voiced). Digressing, I had to work a bit to pronounce final [t]. In normal speech I mostly use [?] there but sometimes [t_h] and when took away the aspiration, I found I was automatically shifting to a dental stop.
>-David >**********************************************************
*********
>"sunly eleSkarez ygralleryf ydZZixelje je ox2mejze." >"No eternal reward will forgive us now for wasting the dawn." > >-Jim Morrison > >http://dedalvs.free.fr/ > >On Dec 14, 2007, at 3°48 PM, Geijss Streijde 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 was wondering if you had any tips for me to improve my pronouncation >> of English, or if I just should keep using the [@] at the end of the >> words.
If you can make the [@] _extremely_ short it might work. BTW, do you really use a central vowel there ([3] represents a central vowel in CXS, the corresponding front vowel being [E])? If so that might be a problem too. But I suspect it's just a notational issue.
>> I look forward to your replies. >> >> Yours, >> >> Geijss Streijde >>

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Geijss Streijde <gijsstrider@...>