r/linguisticshumor • u/NebularCarina I hāpī nei au i te vānaŋa Rapa Nui (ko au he repa Hiva). • Feb 17 '25

Phonetics/Phonology Pronunciation of <c>

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u/Fast-Alternative1503 waffler Feb 18 '25

English has free variation which is kinda cursed. Honestly worse than Zulu and Xhosa. And iirc Vietnamese might do the same thing?

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u/moonaligator Feb 18 '25

english <c> be like: "pacific ocean", 3 different realizations

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u/QwertyAsInMC Feb 18 '25 edited Feb 18 '25

add in "coercion" and you have 4 different realizations

edit: also indict if you want to count no sound as a separate realization

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u/walnutpal Feb 18 '25

Only in some dialects, others it still uses /ʃ/. I had to google whether some people use /ʒ/ to find out what your fourth realisation was haha

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u/ProfessionalPlant636 Feb 18 '25

Ive only ever heard [ʒ] in coercion. Which leads me to assume this is a classic American versus everyone else pronunciation.

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u/walnutpal Feb 19 '25

In my search I saw Wiktionary had both options listed under General American, so I assumed it varied, but [ʒ] must be more common if you've not heard the alternative!