Talk:Phonological history of English consonant clusters

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G-dropping
Can someone give us more information on how common it is to pronounce present participles (or gerunds) with "ɪn" at the end instead of "ɪŋ"? In what parts of Britain is it the normal way of speaking? (I think it's quite widespread, at least among country folk. I know a woman from Somerset who does it all the time, and Scottish people often do.) What percent of people do it in America, or what percentage of the time? (I find that I use both.) Eric Kvaalen (talk) 06:20, 25 September 2017 (UTC)

G-dropping or assonance in old poetry?
Some old poetry is cited as evidence that -ing was pronounced -in' in prestige speech, but it could equally be assonance. Further discussion of this is needed to determine which happened, or if both happened to various degrees. Danielklein (talk) 01:41, 14 July 2019 (UTC)

yod/u coalescence
If i understand this page correctly, the pronunciation of "pleasure" with /j/ is common in UK English despite this unexplained edit, but apparently /ˈplɛʒjʊə/ is more common than /ˈplezjʊə/, though they sound equally rare and weird to my New England ears. Our article doesn't mention these issues at all. --Espoo (talk) 20:55, 26 July 2019 (UTC)
 * I read the page as saying that the coalesced form of pleasure,, is common in British English, which maybe implies that the un-coalesced form is not common. Pleasure is more commonly coalesced than some of the other words mentioned, like tune, where the is in a stressed syllable. I don't remember ever hearing  or , and the OED Online only gives . — Eru·tuon 23:39, 26 July 2019 (UTC)
 * I haven't heard anybody pronounce it other than or (in rhotic varieties)  in BrE. The second vowel is a schwa, there's just one consonant preceding it, and it's palato-alveolar. Kbb2 (ex. Mr KEBAB) (talk) 12:04, 27 July 2019 (UTC)

Another kind of American yod-dropping
In American English there's another form of yod-dropping that I don't think exists in Europe. It affects unstressed "u" in words like "executive", "deputy", which some Americans -- perhaps a minority, but not a very small one -- will pronounce [ɪɡˈzɛkəɾɪv], [ˈdɛpəɾi]. It would be appreciated if this could be included in the article. Does it only affect certain words or is there a clear rule for it? 178.4.151.74 (talk) 21:01, 22 November 2019 (UTC)
 * I've heard (or perhaps ) for "regulate" and  (or perhaps ) for "manipulate" in Welsh English, but it could be idiolectal. LPD gives  as a non-RP variant of "regulate". Kbb2 (ex. Mr KEBAB) (talk) 13:59, 23 November 2019 (UTC)
 * Thanks. Yes, these two words are also affected in American English, I think. So whether or not this form of dropping exists also in the British Isles, it should be included in the article. But as I said, I don't know much about it except that I've heard fairly often from Americans. 178.4.151.74 (talk) 23:17, 25 November 2019 (UTC)
 * I'm American, and I can say with pretty high confidence that the yod-dropping cases you mention are NOT standard, nor are they common, and are likely confined to specific regional and class dialects (e.g., 'Okie' or 'hillbilly' speech; maybe some black dialects, maybe also some parts of Canada). I think mentioning it in the article would be highly UNDUE, though, because it is by no means common, and it certainly should not be implied that this is a American-English wide tendency. 2600:1702:4960:1DE0:5D57:A2A:70F7:A033 (talk) 00:05, 21 October 2021 (UTC)

NG - coalescence
How reliable is the 1982 source we have for this? I'm pretty sceptical that NG is a new phoneme in English dating from only the 16th century - because all the most closely related European languages also have this as a separate phoneme in native words (with minimal pairs existing) while it is rare in other European languages - and also there was a separate anglo-saxon rune for NG, but not for any other 2-consonant clusters.

LK cluster - walk, talk, caulk, chalk, etc
As someone who has had life-long difficulty in hearing most consonants, I was surprised to find dictionaries completely omitting any "l" sound in the pronunciations of these "aulk" words. I've always only half pronounced the "l" in them, slightly raising the mid-back of my tongue rather than the tip. But I say "milk" the same way, with an "l" that's less than clearly enunciated. Can someone point me to a discussion of the "l" sound in this cluster? Milkunderwood (talk) 03:30, 7 June 2020 (UTC)


 * I do the "half-pronounced l" thing for "caulk", to differentiate it from "cock"; but talk and tock, walk and wok (the latter maybe shorter vowel), chalk and chock are all homophones in my speech, as are stalk and stock. I do pronounce the l in words like palm, calm etc, which goes against what dictionaries say they're pronounced. 2600:1702:4960:1DE0:56:E639:97D:1433 (talk) 20:09, 16 November 2021 (UTC)

Pos[t]man, col[d] cuts, ban[d] saw
The "Medial cluster reductions" section says "Examples of stops that will often be elided in this way include the [t] in postman and the [d] in cold cuts or band saw."

I don't have access to the cited book, but I can say for a fact that in over half a century living in Oregon, Arizona, and California, I have never heard these words pronounced with the [t] or [d] elided. It would sound very "off" to hear them that way.

Could this be a regional thing? Are there other places where words like these are pronounced without the [t] or [d]?

Michael Geary (talk) 14:10, 30 August 2020 (UTC)

"Why does English have silent letters" listed at Redirects for discussion
A discussion is taking place to address the redirect Why does English have silent letters. The discussion will occur at Redirects for discussion/Log/2021 April 21 until a consensus is reached, and readers of this page are welcome to contribute to the discussion. NotReallySoroka (talk) (formerly DePlume) 03:25, 21 April 2021 (UTC)

Dutch vinger
/ˈfɪŋər/ (cf. Dutch vinger /ˈvɪŋər/)

The Dutch say /ˈfɪŋər/ and not /ˈvɪŋər/ as initial /v/ is devoiced. 2A01:CB0C:CD:D800:2487:4AE5:1F2C:57A2 (talk) 09:14, 6 October 2021 (UTC)


 * Not for all speakers. See . --Florian Blaschke (talk) 14:00, 20 September 2022 (UTC)

Orang-outang as a single morpheme
Within the section on NG-coalescence the implication that the word ‘orang-outang’ (there spelt ‘ orangutan’) is a single morpheme can be found. However, as the hyphenated spelling helps demonstrate, it is rather a compound word; ‘orang ’ could be viewed as the first morpheme (since it occurs both independently and in compounds such as ‘orang-outang’ and the immensly rare coinage ‘ orangoid’), while ‘outang’ (or ‘utan’) might be thought of as a cranberry morpheme (especially considering the juxtaposition of ‘orang-outang’ (or orang-utan) and ‘orang-pendek’). The velar nasal of ‘orang’ could thus be seen as morpheme-final despite, which would contradict what is stated in the article (perhaps due to the rifeness of the non-hyphenated spelling in America). I do not have any expertise in the field, but what I have written seems very sensible; please correct me if I am wrong. Maciuf (talk) 13:12, 9 January 2022 (UTC


 * Spelling is almost always irrelevant when determining language structure. The structure of the word isn't going to change depending on how it happens to be written in a given era. There is no morpheme "orang" or "outang" in the English language (i.e. they lack any meaning on their own and you can't combine them with other morphemes to form a new word or compound). As far as I can see, the word orangutan is unambiguously composed of a singular morpheme.--Megaman en m (talk) 13:47, 9 January 2022 (UTC)


 * ‘Orang’ has a meaning on its own (although that is rather a contraction of ‘orang-outang’ than anything else); nevertheless, I agree with your reasoning. Thank you for the reply --Maciuf (talk) 14:48, 9 January 2022 (UTC)

More examples
‘Banbury’ is often pronounced ‘Bambury’ (and often misspelt!), ‘hand bag’ is often pronounced ‘ham bag’ and in certain accents like Brummie, West Indian and some Southern American varieties ‘kept’ is often pronounced ‘kep’. Overlordnat1 (talk) 13:07, 6 June 2022 (UTC)

The transcriptions given for yod-rhotacization are unlikely.
I've checked the original source, and I've checked actual Memphis dialects. Transcription with a trill seems very unlikely to be realized in real life. Rather, a rhotacization of the following vowel and maybe an additional rhotic approximant somewhere in the mix seem much more likely, and are actually attested in recordings I could find.

Although it goes against the reference, I could only find something that sounded like [y˞] (rhotic [y]), and not [ru] Mustard, huh? (talk) 22:29, 1 July 2024 (UTC)