Skip to main content

pronunciation - Why are 'student' and 'suspend' not pronounced as written?


I am a Chinese student beginning to learn English. I am curious to know why the word student is pronounced with the sound of d instead of t. Likewise, why is the sound of b used instead of p when people say suspend?



Answer



The 't' in student is not pronounced like a 'd'. You just think it is because there is a mismatch between the consonants in the Chinese language and the consonants in English.


Pinyin uses the letter 'd' for an unaspirated voiceless alveolar stop (represented /t/ in IPA), and the letter 't' for an aspirated voiceless alveolar stop (represented /tʰ/ in IPA). English uses the letter 'd' for an unaspirated voiced alveolar stop (represented /d/ in IPA), and the letter 't' for a voiceless alveolar stop, which is either aspirated (/tʰ/) or unaspirated (/t/) depending on its position in the word. Since there are no voiced stops in Chinese, you're not used to distinguishing between stops depending on whether they are voiced and unvoiced, so you don't hear the difference between a /t/ and a /d/, while /tʰ/ sounds different from both of them.


In words beginning 'st', 'sp', and 'sk', I believe all dialects of English use the unaspirated unvoiced stops ('sd', 'sb', and 'sg' in Pinyin), and in words beginning 't', 'p', 'k', they use the aspirated unvoiced stops ('t', 'p', and 'k' in Pinyin). Thus, at the beginning of words, the consonants 't', 'p', 'k' are distinguished from 'd', 'b', 'g' both by being aspirated and by being unvoiced. In the middle of words, things are more complicated; here, the consonants 'd', 'b', 'g' are distinguished from 't', 'p', and 'k' by being voiced.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Is there a word/phrase for "unperformant"?

As a software engineer, I need to sometimes describe a piece of code as something that lacks performance or was not written with performance in mind. Example: This kind of coding style leads to unmaintainable and unperformant code. Based on my Google searches, this isn't a real word. What is the correct way to describe this? EDIT My usage of "performance" here is in regard to speed and efficiency. For example, the better the performance of code the faster the application runs. My question and example target the negative definition, which is in reference to preventing inefficient coding practices. Answer This kind of coding style leads to unmaintainable and unperformant code. In my opinion, reads more easily as: This coding style leads to unmaintainable and poorly performing code. The key to well-written documentation and reports lies in ease of understanding. Adding poorly understood words such as performant decreases that ease. In addressing the use of such a poorly ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Is 'efficate' a word in English?

I routinely hear the word "efficate" being used. For example, "The most powerful way to efficate a change in the system is to participate." I do not find entries for this word in common English dictionaries, but I do not have an unabridged dictionary. I have checked the OED (I'm not sure if it is considered unabridged), and it has no entry for "efficate". It does have an entry for "efficiate", which is used in the same way. Wordnik has an entry for "efficate" with over 1800 hits, thus providing some evidence for the frequency of use. I personally like the word and find the meaning very clear and obvious when others use it. If it's not currently an "officially documented" word, perhaps its continued use will result in it being better documented.
Post a Comment
Read more