this post was submitted on 06 Jun 2024
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xkcd #2942: Fluid Speech

https://xkcd.com/2942

explainxkcd.com for #2942

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Thank you to linguist Gretchen McCulloch for teaching me about phonetic assimilation, and for teaching me that if you stand around in public reading texts from a linguist and murmuring example phrases to yourself, people will eventually ask if you're okay.

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

hɒʔpteɪdəʊ

[–] [email protected] 8 points 4 months ago (3 children)

And in my case, it'd be more like /gna/. And yes I do pronounce the "t" in hot potato.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 4 months ago (2 children)

I feel like it's the glottal T. I know for me, personally, my tongue doesn't touch my teeth, but there is still a T sound. I am not British, though I am from Jersey (New).

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago

I am from Jersey (New) too, and we love our our glottal stops. Once I was telling someone from out-of-state that I was from Trenton, and even after I said it three times, they still said they'd never heard of it. And I realized it's because we pronounce it almost like "chre'in". I don't really pronounce the "nt" in the middle, it's just a gap.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago

My tongue definitely touches the teeth/roof of mouth there. I do swallow the vowels though.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 months ago (1 children)

You pronounce the t in hot and then pronounce the p of potato?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Yeah. If I try going faster, it turns into "ht'ptayto". Like a hard stop with tongue against the roof of the mouth before the teeth.

Although admittedly, this is self-reporting.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago (1 children)

I'm sitting here trying to replicate what that sounds like from your description and I've only succeeding in sounding like a madman.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago

Different accents, then.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 4 months ago (2 children)
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