English {phth} (was: Hellenish oddities)

> Date:         Fri, 24 Nov 2000 07:41:31 +0000
> From:         Raymond Brown <ray.brown@...>
> 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].
And then there's the combination sigma-phi, as in sphere.

In Danish (as in English) the official pronunciation is /sf-/, but
(unlike English) there really aren't any word in common use where it
is initial. In atmosf