User:Midi file man

I'm Midi_file_man (MIDI is supposed to be capitalized, I wasn't thinking about it when I made this account), from British Columbia, Canada.

Studies and Interests
I've a wide range of interests, which I will list here:
 * Computer Science, especially cryptography, hardware, and programming.
 * Engineering, especially electronics and metal fabrication.
 * LGBT rights
 * Linguistics, especially grammar, morphology, orthography, phonology, phonetics, and syntax.
 * Mathematics, especially algebra, logic, and set theory.
 * Music, especially music theory and Balkan music.
 * Neurology, especially neuroplasticity and adult neurogenesis.
 * Physics, especially nuclear, particle, and quantum physics.

Alveolar Affricates In English
As a native English speaker, I'm certain that my dialect, as well as similar dialects such as General American and Received Pronunciation use the voiceless alveolar affricate,, and the voiced alveolar affricate, , as allophones of the consonant clusters, and , respectively, that occurs only at syllable codas.

Based on the definition of an affricate as a stop consonant released as a fricative, I have to conclude that an unreleased stop followed by a fricative would be phonetically equivalent. In phonetics, for the definition of a consonant cluster to be distinct from an affricate, a stop consonant followed by a fricative must be released. For example, the word "cats" is almost never pronounced as / but rather, /, which is phonetically equivalent to /. The same reasoning can be used for the word "lads," phonetically spelling it as /.

I have my own hypothesis as to why this allophone occurs: the consonant clusters are a fortis while the affricate is a lenis. People naturally tend towards easier pronunciation, causing a wide range of phonetic phenomena (e.g. palatalization). This can manifest as failure to release a stop consonant in certain situations, including this one.