Search results for 'tag:Nouns tag:Consonants' matching tags 'Nouns' and 'Consonants'

Re: id/t/d

Philip — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 15:27:10 GMT

CB's explanation is 100% right on. It is a linguistic question dealing with phonology.

By the way, the same principle is in play with the plural noun ending 's/es': 's' after a non-voiced consonant (lamps, desks); 'z' after a voiced consonant or a vowel (dogs, monkeys); and 'iz' after the sound of 's' or 'z' (classes, noises).

The same with the third person singular of the present tense of verbs: 's' (hits); 'z' (plays); and 'iz' (misses).

(Printing note: in my examples, and in CB's, the vowel indicated as 'i' should be the schwa (Ó) sound.

Re: Puzzle about the pronunciation of the word 'THE'

yizhivika — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 20:04:16 GMT

Hi Mathew,

Yes, as Mister Micawber says, native English-speakers instinctively know which pronunciation of 'the' to use before a noun (or an adjective + noun), but I can see that it may be a problem for some people learning the language.

As you have yourself noted, we generally use the 'thee' version before a vowel (as in 'the apple'), and the "theh' version before a consonant (as in 'the pen'), and the reason native English-speakers know which version to use, is because they read (or think of) the two words together, not separately!

From your name, I would guess that your mother-tongue is probably Mandarin Chinese (Ni shi zhong guo ren ma?), and if so, then you'll know that there's sometimes a similar situation in Chinese with tones (e.g. 'bu' meaning 'not' is normally pronounced as a fourth tone, but changes to a second tone when followed by another word that is pronounced with a fourth tone), and the only way you know which tone to use is by thinking of the two words together, not as individual characters.

By the way, there is an exception to the general rule of pronouncing 'the' as 'theh' before a consonant, but it's a special case, as the 'the' is being used less as a definite article, and more like an adjective. For example:

"Beijing is the (pronounced as 'thee') place to be this August!" (because of the Olympic Games!).

Re: A 7-letter word

Tanit — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 16:45:07 GMT

Mister Micawber
.
Seven letters and common...

Tissues? >> No, but you can keep two vowels and a consonant.
Traffic? >> No, but in my word there's a double consonant in the same place as in "traffic" (not an "f," though).
Toenail? >> Mm ... somewhat (indirectly) related to my noun.
Trouble? >> No, but you can keep a vowel and two consonants.

Re: Yank's four-letter word

Yankee — Sun, 10 Feb 2008 15:16:57 GMT

- It begins with a consonant.
- There is only one syllable.
- Yes, it is something that humans can do.
- And as a noun, it is something humans can give or receive.

Re: "s" and "z"

Pter — Wed, 23 Jan 2008 15:41:41 GMT

Thank you very much CJ, Zerox, and Carson. You all have given me very valuable advices. After reading through all you said carefully, and then watching a couple of English TV programmes, I believe I can now tell the difference! The ending /z/ in most cases are much shorter, voiced but less audible than the hissing sound of the ending /s/. Now, I found out what's the problem. Those sound files I was listening to are from a pronouncing dictionary. And perhaps in trying to make them as clearly audible as possible, both the ending /s/ and ending /z/ are spoken very "clearly" and become unnatural.

For people like me that learn English as a second language, we are often influenced heavily by our mother tongue. This is like looking at something through a piece of tainted glass. In those aspects where our mother tongue has big differences with English, unless we are told the rules explicitly, we often never realize how people really say them in English just by listening. My mother tongue does not have any voiced consonants and consonant clusters, therefore, it is quite a challenge for me to learn how to pronounce a cluster of voiced consonants, such as /-ndz/, /-gz/, /zd/.

Again, thank you very much to you all. You really helped me a lot!

=======================
EDIT:

Let me summarize what I have learnt here plus a little that I have discovered myself.

1. Final voiced consonant (b, d, g, l, m, n, ng, r, v, voiced th) + s ---> /z/
2. Final voiceless consonant (f, k, p, t, voiceless th) + s ---> /s/
3. Final vowel + s ---> no rules, except when any of the following rules apply
4. Some words that can be used both as verb and noun/adjective ---> verb: /z/, noun or adjective: /s/
5. Words ending in -as, -is, -os, -us:
when the s is part of the word in its basic form (not plural or third party singular verb) ---> /s/
when the s is added to make it a plural or third party singluar verb ---> /z/
6. Words ending in -ces, -des, -oes, -shes, -ses, -zes ---> /z/
7. Words ending in -sis, -nce, -nse, -ss (including -less, ness), -sce ---> /s/
8. /z/ is more common than /s/ overall

Re: "s" and "z"

Carson21 — Wed, 23 Jan 2008 10:25:56 GMT

I don't know what you guys are all on about with devoiced /z/. It's not a devoiced /z/, it's just /s/. In the example that someone above used, "vases"... I don't know about up North or across the pond (either one), but American Standard has that as /s/ in the medial and /z/ in the final. Well, if you pronounce the <a> like you do in "bratwurst" or "father", then the medial would become /z/.

Pter, the basic rule is this: final <s> becomes voiced to /z/ when it is final in most verbs and/or after a voiced stop (/g b d/ etc). It remains unvoiced /s/ for most nouns and adjectives. It also can voice when the closest (previous) consonant was already /s/. (Abuses, vases, faces, places)

Here's the other basic rule that will probably help you, even if at first it seems to be "maddening the unhelpful": In English, there are a million rules, and every rule has a million exceptions. English is probably as far removed from a loglang as you can get, so it helps to just accept what you learn at face value and imitate it, rather than trying to figure out "why". You can ask "why" all day and use up all the time where you could have been moving on to the next rule. Look at the general rule for each case, then apply it. You learn irregularities as you go (much like learning Spanish verbs).

The perfect example of an exception: assess. It has /s/ in the medial AND final. D'oh! Just have to remember that one.

As for how important it is that you learn the difference between /s/ and /z/... I don't think it's that big a deal. If the spelling shows <s>, then saying /s/ or /z/ won't make much of a difference if your goal is to just be understood. They're allophones, essentially. We could drop <z> from our orthography and get along just fine. However, if your goal is to sound like a native speaker, then, yes, it's quite important that you can make the distinction.

Last, if you pronounced all <s> as /s/... You might sound strange to most people in the UK and the northern United States (plus the commonwealth), but anywhere in the West, Southwest, South East, and Border states in the US, no one would think twice about it! There are a lot of people in those regions that speak English as a second language with Spanish as their first, and they tend to always use /s/ for <s> , regardless of typical conventions.

Re: convenient/convenience store

Arvsworld — Wed, 21 Nov 2007 11:59:45 GMT

She has a part-time job in a (not an) convenience (not convenient) store.

The noun-phrase is not convenient store. It's "convenience store."

In addition, we traditionally use "AN" when the next word begins with a vowel sound, and we use "A" when the next word begins with a consonant sound.

an apple
an elephant
an igloo
an owl
an umbrella

a banana
a cat
a dog
a flea
a goose
etc.

Re: Spelling of Plural noun /vs/ the Third-person-singular verb inflection.

Loojka — Sun, 28 Oct 2007 01:42:06 GMT

Digger36 wrote:

But what about the SPECIAL cases of the inflection on the 3-rd person singular;
      it seems less obvious, as in these cases ..
    he destroys / ~~destroies~~         sand dunes
    he ~~trys~~ / tries                  jumping high
    he ~~carrys~~ / carries            the load
    he ~~emptys~~ / empties        the glass of milk
    he ~~finishs~~ / finishes         the task
    he ~~flys~~ / flies                  the airplane
    he loafs / loaves                on the couch
would appreciate reasoned choices in the above and some rule(s).

Thanks,,

Change y into ie only when it ("y") is preceded by a consonant.
Add es when a word ends in s, sh, ch, x or o.

Re: When do i use a,an in the sentence?

Anonymous — Wed, 24 Oct 2007 20:33:53 GMT

Pronunciation is the only determining factor.

If the noun or adjective being used starts with a VOWEL SOUND, then it should be preceded by "an." Here are some examples:

An apple, an argument, an uncle, an old man, an amazing story, an autobiography.

If the noun or adjective being used starts with CONSONANT SOUND, then it should be preceded by "a." Here are some examples:"

A book, a record, a candlestick, a unicorn (note that a hard "u" is pronounced as if it began with a "y" as YOO-ne-corn), a wonderful idea, a standing ovation.

We english native speakers still can't agree on historic. (a historic vs. an historic) I vote for "a historic event"

Re: just to... A weird doubt

Yankee — Sat, 06 Oct 2007 16:45:53 GMT

Kooyeen wrote:
Yes, but it's not correct to say that one consonant is not pronounced at all.

Ah, but I do think it is correct to describe "stop pushing" that way -- at least at normal, unstressed conversational speed.

Your example with "used to do" (as in "I used to live in Germany") is not a good comparison. The reason the comparison is not good is that the only other word pronounced like the first three letters in the expression "used to do" is the NOUN "use". I think that's as much (if not more) the source of the spelling mix-ups as the fact that the D in "used to do" is not pronounced.