Re: [YAEPT] Question about consonants in English

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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