User talk:Arbitrary username/archive20061009

Geminating "with them"
Hi there, Arbitrary username.

I see that, last month, someone removed "with them" as an example of gemination, saying "'with them' moves from unvoiced to voiced consonants at the boundary; This isn't really gemination, is it?", and that, today, you reïnserted it, saying "Seems a good example to me. I've not heard 'with' pronounced with unvoiced 'th'; which dialect would that be?"

I happen to disagree with some of the ideas in both your and the other editor's summaries.

Basically, my experience, listening to native speakers of English from the U.S., Canada, Britain, and other countries, as well as those who have English as a second language, is this:


 * On its own, with is pronounced by some, and  by others.


 * On its own, them is basically always pronounced.


 * Obviously, there are utterances of "with them" that lack th gemination.


 * In "with them", there sometimes is true gemination—in which case the two ths are given the same sound.


 * When the ths in "with them" are geminated, is more common than.

When I say "with them", the ths are unvoiced. While I acknowledge that some geminate it with voiced ths, I must say that that feels almost as weird to me as geminating "buzz saw" with feels.

Years ago, hearing my Italian friend say, I told him not to voice the th; so I can understand that some of those on one side or the other of the voiced/unvoiced-with fence may be surprised to find the other pronunciation.

But I can assure you there are tens, if not hundreds, of millions of persons who pronounce "with" with unvoiced th.

(I think, generally, when a voiced consonant is followed by its unvoiced consonant, and gemination occurs, the change is to make them both unvoiced, rather than voiced. Just [z] for "buzz saw" sounds very odd to my ears, as does just [d] for "wanted to".)

President Lethe 04:14, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

Re: UNITeS
While the db-copyvio says "Commercial content provider", it is standard for all copyright violations posted within the last 48 hours.--digital_m e (TalkˑContribs) 19:59, 15 July 2006 (UTC)

Iron Curtain Final.svg
hey, I figured out my mistake, it should have red lines across as my old image had. Kseferovic 01:09, 3 October 2006 (UTC)