By Difference between, Consonants

8. Why do you say “She is a one-eyed teacher” and not “She’s an one eyed teacher”? (Focus on a phonetic explanation) The article an is used before vowel sounds, not vowel letters. The word one is pronounced wun. The w is not a vowel sound even though the o in o-n-e is a vowel. So a must be used...

Nestor_fes wrote: 8. Why do you say “She is a one-eyed teacher” and not “She’s an one eyed teacher”? (Focus on a phonetic explanation). Although 'one' begins with a vowel, it is pronounced with the sound of a consonant - 'w'. 9. Miss Justine Fair listened to the two Chilean students...

I am not infatuated with the software that runs this site. Often I cannot post a message. I wrote a lengthy response to this, and then suddently everything disappeared. I think that this second writup will be shorter. Forbes wrote:Imagine a language in which: “The man hit the table...

Imagine a language in which: “The man hit the table with a stick” is “Copoloteko tipadela tisadure asutariki bu.” In this sentence co = a classifier indicating that we are talking about something animate polo = man te = a nominative case marker ko = the speaker wishes to emphasise the...

I think you could add "r" in some varieties of English. Whether a consonant is syllabic depends partly on the speaker and partly on the perception of the listener; some would analyse these syllables as containing a schwa vowel. I for one would say that there was no difference between "button"...

Ricky, The English speaker hears the difference between 'b' and 'p' as the difference between a voiced and an unvoiced consonant. The Chinese speaker hears the difference between 'b' and 'p' as the difference between an unaspirated and an aspirated consonant. Initial 'p' as in 'pot' is an...

/ch/ is pronunced in the same manner that I explained, and it is somewhere between /t/ and /sh/. The only difference between /ch/ and /dz/ is something linguistics refer to as unvoiced/voiceless and voiced. In the articulation process of a voiced consonant, /dz/ for example, the vocal cords are...

American and British English differences have nothing to do with this. Herb is the only example of difference between the two. 'An hotel' is archaic but may still be used by old-fashioned writers. The rule that somebody mentioned above is correct: an + 'h' when the first syllable is...

Initial p, t, k are aspirated. The same consonants after 's' are not aspirated, so they will definitely sound different to a non-English speaker. If your native language is Chinese, then you make contrasts between aspirated and unaspirated sets of consonants. To us English speakers it...

The /t/ in question (between /n/ and /s/) is but one of many "sycophant consonants" which occur naturally because of the way we must make transitions between consonants with certain movements of mouth, tongue, lips, etc. Dictionaries usually transcribe something fairly close to phonemes, not...