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

From:Robert Hailman <robert@...>
Date:Friday, November 24, 2000, 21:44
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.
Interestingly enough, I do pronounce the initial P in "Ptolemy", but not in any other "pt"-initial words.
> 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].
Glancing at "diphthongs", [pT] is consistently what comes to mind - in any other word I'd pronounce it that way, I've just learned that [fT] is correct in that one case. I guess my mind just has trouble breaking down "phth". If it was spelled "fth" I wouldn't have any trouble with it. -- Robert