By Vowels, Fricatives

It seems to me that the T's in often and soften would have become silent at the same time as the T's in listen, glisten, castle, whistle, bustle, etc. After all, both are patterns where a fricative leads from a lax vowel to a T just before a weak final syllable. Anyone know the history? CJ

I’m a native British speaker. I would tend to transcribe the same vowel in ‘train’ and ‘danger’ – !

Julielai wrote:Chinese does have vowel-less words, like ng. Phonetically, so are ri (日), si (四), and shi (是) since the i represents a fricative and not a conventional phonetic . Don't you think?

It is true that English has the phonotactic constraint that every word must contain a vowel. Orthographically, "y" may symbolize either a consonant, or a vowel (or a "semi-consonant" if you consider glides as such) However, it is NOT true that every language requires every word to contain a...

Yes, I do sound a little like John Wayne, pardner. No need to get in a twist, King-- my tongue is obviously doing something back there: it is all tensed up, controlling the air flow and who knows what-all. The discussion, however, is intended to get foreign students to differentiate their /r/...