Hacker News Reader

Comment by pessimizer | Hacker News Reader

Pronouncing the 'b' in debt is just about impossible for anyone with an intelligible English accent. You have to shove a vowel in there which would likely result in 'debit', a different but related word that could create potential subtle and disastrous misunderstandings. Even if it were non-native speaker saying 'debit' when they meant 'debt' to another non-native speaker.

Maybe it'd be better to spell it 'degt'. Those consonants almost work smashed together, and 'deggit' or 'decked' would be confusing enough to get clarified.

edit: maybe people pronounce it like 'depth' with the 'th' replaced with a 't'?

View on HN

The only difficulty with "debt" from the perspective of English pronunciation is that B is voiced and T isn't. So you're right that "depped" or "debbed" would be more natural. But there's no need to add an epenthetic vowel.

As a Polish speaker, I have no problem pronouncing debt. Depth is debt-hhhh for me :)

Now you make me wonder if English speakers ever pronounce dept. literally.

Note: native English speakers don't pronounce "depth" with a t and h sound, they use a different consonant, where you basically bite the tip of your tongue and blow air over it, without engaging your vocal chords (the "th" in "the" is pronounced the same, but this time using your vocal chords as well - like the difference between 'p' and 'b').

I hate to contradict my sibling, but I've never heard anyone pronounce "dept." as anything other than "department."

We do in a different word: adept :)

This got me there by saying 'adebt' over and over again. Thanks.

> Now you make me wonder if English speakers ever pronounce dept. literally.

Not often, but "dept" if sometimes used as a short form of "department" in written form, and I've heard people pronounce it literally before. It certainly can be pronounced distinctly from both "debt" and "depth" by native english speakers.

> edit: maybe people pronounce it like 'depth' with the 'th' replaced with a 't'?

Yes, like that. Definitely not with a vowel. There's really no way to know for a non native speaker that the b is supposed to be silent, except by learning about it as a special case.

That's impossible in English though; 'b' is pronounced as a plosive, blowing through the lips as they open, while 't' is produced by tapping the tongue on the palate with lips open. So there is an interval between the 'p' and 't' which must be occupied by a vowel, typically a schwa.

'pth' is different because the same stream of air can be used for both consonants, with the tongue contacting the teeth just as the lips open, so any gap between the consonants is not perceived to native listeners.

Ah, but I'm a non-native speaker, I am not constrained by what is possible for native speakers. I suspect my 'b' is quite close to 'p' (but it's not exactly the same).

It'll probably sound like an accent to you, but then there are a thousand different native speaker accents, so that is OK with me.

So how do you pronounce "kept" then?

I think _scatters_ meant “bt” that combination is difficult to produce without introducing an additional vowel. The “pt” is easier.

It's possible, but strange, since b is simply the voiced form of p - you just need to vibrate your vocal cords for a moment longer when pronouncing "kebt" (since they were already vibrating to pronounce the vowel), compared to pronouncing kept.

Native English speakers can pronounce the unvoiced version in "kept", is it really hard to replace the voiceless 'p' with a voiced 'b'?

For what it's worth, "bt" is not a common combination in my native Romanian either, but it is not hard to pronounce.

Yes, it is harder to handle the transition of voiced B to unvoiced T than it is to handle the transition from unvoiced P to unvoiced T. If you try to voice the B, you will likely end up with a voiced D at the end “Debd”.

It can be done with lots of practice but native speakers don’t normally do this.

That's a bit strange, since the vowel is already voiced, but I do believe you - it just goes to show how complex our vocal apparatus and systems of pronunciation are.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com