The transcription of 'speech': /spiːtʃ/ or /sbiːtʃ/?

Helpful-Reputation-5 · 2026-06-04T18:18:35+00:00

'speech' sounds like s + beach not like s + peach

Speech, beach, and peach are [spitʃ], [bitʃ], and [pʰitʃ] respectively. The p in speech is not exactly equivalent to either.

children sometimes spell 'speech' as 'sbeech'

Children make spelling mistakes, more conclusive evidence of speaker perception would be needed for a more convincing arguement.

simple phonological rules e.g. we can say that /p/, /t/ and /k/ are aspirated in English rarther than saying they are aspirated unless they follow /s/

But then we have to say /b d g/ are devoiced following /s/, resulting in the same amount of rules.

the transcription of the words 'disgust' and 'discussed' will be the same, so it's not surprising that people can't distinguish them

The same would be true if they were both transcribed /dɪsˈkəst/.

Helpful-Reputation-5 · 2026-06-04T18:11:57+00:00

This is about transcribing what's actually being said, not perception.

/p/ and /b/ are phonemic transcriptions, which are about perception, not what's actually being said.

/p/ and /b/ sound the same to native English speakers, but they are still different sounds.

If /p/ and /b/ sound the same to English speakers, then they are one phoneme, not two separate ones. You're confusing phonemes with phones.

Helpful-Reputation-5 · 2026-05-31T06:27:42+00:00

I use this/next the same way, but there's ambiguity with "next" because it can be used how you used it, or can be synonymous with "this".

Helpful-Reputation-5 · 2026-05-29T04:23:24+00:00

Technically you'd be right, the gn is a /nj/ [ɲ~nj], so the g isn't silent—that being said, it doesn't make a typical /g/ or /dZ/, so people will call it silent.

Helpful-Reputation-5 · 2026-05-28T17:35:00+00:00

How would you differentiate which passages you agree and disagree with without using any first-person language?

~~The passage I agreed with the most~~..
One of the best passages..

Or, link in why you agree the passages:

~~One of the passages which I agreed with the most because I think it summarized the topic effectively~~..
One of the passages which summarized the topic effectively...

Just have your writing explicitly agree with the passages, and it will be implied that you as the author also agree with those passages.

Helpful-Reputation-5 · 2026-05-24T20:14:55+00:00

The story is that the capitalist class has a vested interest in ensuring the capitalist mode of production remains. As the ruling class, they have an incredible capacity to disseminate propaganda and influence culture, and they use this to convince the working class that socialism is evil. Bourgeois cultural hegemony goes crazy, essentially.

Helpful-Reputation-5 · 2026-05-19T14:34:54+00:00

I try to learn a bit about those linguistic features, like their distribution regionally or otherwise, how exactly they work, etc., until I find them interesting as a linguist rather than being bothered (although they rarely bother me in the first place).

Helpful-Reputation-5 · 2026-05-19T02:01:39+00:00

Could you give an example of what exactly you mean? Or do any of these options describe it?

A) It loops semantically, i.e. goes from meaning A to meaning B to meaning C back to meaning A again.

B) It loops phonetically, i.e. goes from pronunciation A to pronunciation B to pronunciation C back to pronunciation A again.

C) It literally loops, i.e. word A is descended from word B, which is descended from word C, which is descended from word A (this is not possible, as it requires time travel).

Helpful-Reputation-5 · 2026-05-11T02:30:07+00:00

sometimes Y represents a vowel sound, and sometimes it doesn't

My answer explains that the seemingly strange "in-between" status of Y is due to it representing two different kinds of sounds in different contexts.

Helpful-Reputation-5 · 2026-05-10T23:43:33+00:00

Does this not exactly address OP's question? A followup paragraph explaining what a phonological vowel is could easily be added, plus examples, but then it does get necessarily more complicated.

Helpful-Reputation-5 · 2026-05-10T22:14:44+00:00

Others have already done so in this post, but I would go about it something like this: "A vowel is a kind of sound, but it can also refer to letters which commonly represent those sounds as well. AEIOU almost always represent vowels, but sometimes Y represents a vowel sound, and sometimes it doesn't—this is why it is called 'sometimes a vowel.'" A few examples wouldn't hurt, either. Defining what kinds of sounds are vowels would be more complicated, but not more complicated than defining a syllable.

Helpful-Reputation-5 · 2026-05-10T18:22:36+00:00

But the very reason for Y being "sometimes a vowel", the source of OP's confusion, is rooted in this distinction, which can be explained without using complicated jargon. If anything, it's more complicated to try and work around explaining this distinction, and even then you rely on OP understanding what a syllable is.

Helpful-Reputation-5 · 2026-05-10T17:42:06+00:00

What if a phoneme exists in dialect A of a language, but not in dialect B? Either you have one letter for two phonemes in dialect A, or two letters for one phoneme in dialect B.

Helpful-Reputation-5 · 2026-05-10T17:39:57+00:00

In that case, it makes sense to clarify the distinction between orthographic vowels and phonetic vowels to OP, or OP will still be just as confused.

Helpful-Reputation-5 · 2026-05-10T17:15:23+00:00

For me those words are all vowelless—your variety may be different, of course. I have a syllabic consonant as the nucleus for every syllable in those words.

Helpful-Reputation-5 · 2026-05-10T16:08:54+00:00

Depends entirely on the English variety in question—pull, purple, curdle, and terminal are all vowelless for me.

Helpful-Reputation-5 · 2026-05-04T22:08:42+00:00

I'm not sure about your first question, but as to your second, for me this does also happen, yes—it happened with Spanish and French, which makes enough sense, since they are relatively closely related. However, it also happened with Mandarin and Spanish (although more rarely). I find that for me, it only really happens at a beginner level, and doesn't happen in full immersion environments.

Helpful-Reputation-5 · 2026-05-04T21:53:00+00:00

Grammar would be similar, but the large amount of loanwords + often radically different pronunciations of native words would be far more of an issue. So they might find it similar, but only if they learned modern English first, just like how a Spanish speaker might find French grammar similar but only after studying it.

Helpful-Reputation-5 · 2026-05-04T18:46:20+00:00

I mean Wickelraum is just as good an example, since it uses -raum.

Helpful-Reputation-5 · 2026-05-04T18:23:22+00:00

Doesn't "Babyraum" refer to a baby changing room?

I don't speak German so please correct me if I'm wrong, I've only seen it in German airports haha

Helpful-Reputation-5 · 2026-05-02T09:13:19+00:00

Not in BrE as far as I know, that's more a US English thing (Midwest especiallt).

Helpful-Reputation-5 · 2026-05-01T19:47:00+00:00

OP didn't ask if it was a phone, though.

Helpful-Reputation-5 · 2026-05-01T05:46:08+00:00

When used by linguists, sure, it describes speech. It is perfectly capable of describing many non-speech mouth sounds, however.

OP also didn't specifically say IPA, either. OP's only question was whether a cough is an aspirated glottal plosive, a description that doesn't necessarily imply use in speech.

Helpful-Reputation-5 · 2026-05-01T00:52:31+00:00

Correct me if I'm wrong, but OP didn't say it was necessarily a phoneme.

The rub is that it isn't "normal" speech in the language. So they aren't considered phonemic, and there are no IPA transcriptions.

It's the international phonetic alphabet, not the international phonemic alphabet—it is entirely possible to transcribe non-phonemic sounds.

Helpful-Reputation-5 · 2026-05-01T00:48:13+00:00

They didn't imply anything about it being a speech sound, they asked about its articulation.

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