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Re: English {phth} (was: Hellenish oddities)

From:Eric Christopherson <raccoon@...>
Date:Friday, November 24, 2000, 20:22
On Fri, Nov 24, 2000 at 07:41:31AM +0000, Raymond Brown wrote:
> At 9:02 pm -0500 23/12/00, Robert Hailman wrote: > >"H. S. Teoh" wrote: > [....] > >> > Is <phthong> pronounced with [fT] in English? I would think it'd just > >>be [T] > >> > (but I'd probably say [fT] just to be different). > >> [snip] > >> > >> I pronounce it as [fT]. > > > >On it's own, I say it [T], in words like <diphthong> I say [fT]. [fT] is > >just too hard to begin a word with for me. > > Yep, that the normal English practice - same as we don't normally pronounce > the initial p- in Ptolemy, pterodactyl, ptyalin etc. But elsewhere we do > pronounce the -p-, e.g. helicopter.
I sometimes muse about how <parapsychology> should be pronounced /p{r@psai"kal@dZi/, but I suppose the silence of the second <p> is due to its being coined from the word <psychology> in which it is also silent.
> But medial [fT] is interesting in that in colloquial speech one often hears > [pT] - years ago when "diphtheria" was, sadly, occurred more often in > speech, one heard it pronounced [dIp'Ti:ri@] more often than not IIRC. And > I've definitely heard people talk about ['dIpTONz].
I admit that medial [pT] of that type seems more natural to me, but I tend to chastise myself for using it (even though I don't believe in prescriptive linguistics -- shame on me!) I think I've also heard people say /pt/, but I'm not too sure; however, I am sure I've heard people pronounce /st/ in words like <anesthesia> where I always say /sT/. -- Eric Christopherson / *Aiworegs Ghristobhorosyo