Phonological history of English consonant clusters Puns

My mother tongue is French but I've also been speaking a dialect of Arabic since I was a kid as a result of my parents coming, well, from an Arab country you guessed it.

So I'm currently working on a conlang derived from the specific variant of the Arabic dialect I speak, and one of the distinguishing characteristics is its many consonant clusters. What phonological changes can you apply to them to make them disappear/"uncluster"? Would adding a filler vowel in between sound natural?

Thank youuu

Had a thought about the word “sphere” today, and how I couldn’t think of any other english words with the /sf/ cluster. I know that /θw/ and /dw/ are also very rare. Is there any data about which consonant clusters are the rarest in English? I had a quick google but there weren’t many sources answering this question specifically

edit: I was mostly asking about tautosyllabic clusters, primarily onsets because tons of weird clusters can be created in compound words but theyre across morphemes+across syllables so they’re not as true of a cluster as an onset like /sf/

I feel that this question must have been answered before, but my search skills were not great enough to produce something. From what I've read, all instances of moraic consonants (spelled ん and っ) come from a loss of earlier /u/, i.e. a reduction of earlier /mu/ and /tu/. This makes me wonder how they came to be, since both む and つ still seem to exist in the same positions where ん and っ appear.

I am at the very beginning of learning Japanese, so please gloss examples. Thank you.

edit: The absence of a suitable flair makes me wonder whether this is the right subreddit for this question. Should there be a more fitting one, I apologise.

Different voicings (wiktionary confirms this) and a plosive followed by fricative within the same morpheme (apparently -th used to be an affix but is no longer productive).

No particular insights here, just not something that you would expect to encounter.

Looking at early Indo-European languages (Latin, Ancient Greek, Sanskrit) as well as some of the reconstructed proto-languages descended from PIE (Proto-Germanic, Proto-Celtic), they all seem to have had a somewhat simpler syllable structure than what is generally given for PIE. I haven't actually come across a source that spells this out, so perhaps my judgement is just flat out wrong here. But it does seem, looking through cognate lists for example, that PIE is full of consonant clusters that just don't show up in the daughter languages. Of course, cluster simplification is a common process that happens all the time, but when I took historical linguistics in undergrad it was drilled into us to avoid reconstructing a feature in a proto-language that doesn't show up in any of the daughters —unless you really, really have to. And I guess I assume that's the answer, that there's just no way to explain the various correspondences otherwise. Still, from the perspective of a layman who has never formally studied IE linguistics, it's always seemed slightly implausible that PIE is so much more consonant-y than the early attested IE languages are. I would love it if someone knowledgeable about IE historical linguistics could give me some insight on this.

A couple hours ago someone asked the question of what is the rarest consonant cluster in English so I thought I'd may as well ask the opposite. I wonder if this question will be easier or more difficult to answer.

My guess is /tr/ but I'm probably wrong

I realize this is a sensitive issue about discrimination, but an important one. I've had a number of students who are coming to English from Spanish, and have difficulty with "consonant clusters" and so they say "estar" for "star" or "eschool" for school, or "eSprite" for "Sprite" (the soda).

The unfortunate reality is that error, in the US, is heavily associated with less-educated Spanish speakers learning English. The blunt truth is that if you continue in that error, people will think less of you. So in the interest of "keeping it real" I'd like to suggest that anyone who might have that habit make a list of words beginning with consonant clusters like "stable", "strange", etc. and sit down with a native English speaker and go down the list, over and over, until you are comfortably able to say them without adding an initial vowel. Eliminating that initial vowel will make a huge difference in how you're perceived. Pardon my bluntness, but I hope this tip is useful for everyone!

So I’ve noticed that I pronounce words like “twin” and “twice” with a fricative sound at the start, something like [ˈt̠ɹ̠̊˔ʷw̥ɪn] and [ˈt̠ɹ̠̊˔ʷw̥aɪs] respectively. Is this a regular feature of American English? If so, why does this occur? Is it related to the frication of “tr” and “dr” in AE (and other varieties)? I’ve tried looking it up but haven’t found anything. Thanks!

I've searched and googled and binged and haven't found it. Help! :-) Thanks. I also searched for ''english consonant clusters frequency list''.

The "gy" consonant cluster doesn't show up too much in English -- I can think of "argue", "ague" and not much else. However, my last name is Gill and the pronunciation I use, which seems to be the most common, is "Gyill."

I can't really think of any other words where a "y" is inserted like this. I wouldn't pronounce "gild" or "Gilbert" like this, so it really seems to be an anomaly.

• Is there an explanation for this insertion in "Gill"?
• Are there any other examples of y-insertion before a short I vowel?

Thanks! And I apologize if I butchered any terms.

Why are /ʧ/ and /ʤ/ considered independent phonemes in English rather than consonant clusters? In the case of /ʤ/ is it because of spelling it with a single letter, because if so that would leave me wondering why /ks/, /gz/, /kʃ/, and /gʒ/ aren't independent phonemes as well because they can all be spelled with the just the letter "x" in:

six

exit (I've read this word in particular has a 50/50 split in both the US and UK)

anxious

luxurious

and even then /ʤ/ is sometimes spelled "dg" like in judge, and that still doesn't explain /ʧ/.

plain p (p~b) ㅂ t (t~d) ㄷ tɕ (tɕ~dʑ) ㅈ k (k~ɡ) ㄱ

tense p͈ ㅃ t͈ ㄸ t͈ɕ ㅉ k͈ ㄲ

aspirated pʰ ㅍ tʰ ㅌ tɕʰ ㅊ kʰ ㅋ

So based on most material I can find, Korean stop consonants have a three way split between plain, tense, and aspirated. Plain is tenuis as an initial and voiced when in the middle of a word. Tense is a stiff voice and aspirated is aspirated.

From watching videos and asking native speakers to demonstrate however I hear the following:

Plain: light to moderate aspiration depending on speaker as initial and voiced in the middle of words

Tense: Unaspirated

Aspirated: Heavily aspirated

Can someone explain the analysis to me? Is it a difference in the speech mechanisms that just sounds like this?

Consonants here: https://youtu.be/DWDkz3KSs6g?t=2m12s

Thanks!

Hi there. For example, the word "consonant" (con-so-nant) has a consonant blend in the end ("nt"). But what about if there are two consonants together that are part of another syllable, such as "ns" ("n" in the end of the first syllable; and "s" in the beginning of the second syllable). Is that also considered a consonant cluster? If not, then what is the terminology? Thanks in advance.

from what I have found the OE word for write had come from IndoEu *wreyd- and *wrey- into proto germanic *wrītana and then OE wrītan. i found some sources saying that it had at one point merged with cognates of old frisian writa, old saxon writan, old high german rizan, old icelandic rita and so on. Is there a detailed explanation to the progression of phonological sound changes from IndoEu all the way to the OE writanan?

Strange question, I know, and maybe it's not meant for this subreddit since it's kind of about linguistics

In languages with rolled R's, when it's placed after another consonant like "T" or "D" both letters make a distinct sound. In others like English, it forms a blended single sound -- "tra" = "chra", "dra" = "jra", etc. The only difference I can tell between how these two sounds are formed is that "tra" is at the front of the mouth, and has a lighter tone to it, and "dra" is more in the middle-back of the mouth and has a deeper more tired sound.

Does the deeper/more tired tone cause any sort of psychological response vs. the lighter and quicker tone?

A bit of background as to why this weird thought crossed my mind: through the Wikipedia rabbit hole I found myself at the page for the country Bhutan, and noticed that in their language the country name is "Druk Yul". I mentioned it to a friend and he said it sounded kind of like an insult (maybe because with an 'n', it becomes "drunk"). Compare it to the sound of "Truk Yul" and that feeling of it being an insult seems to go away. I know this is anecdotal and subjective, but figured I'd ask anyways

I'm familiar more with English, Spanish, and French, but consonants usually end in a particular sound. In English it's /i/ (e.g. "B" is /bi/)

In Spanish it's /e/ (e.g. "B" is /be/)

In French it's /e/ (e.g. "B" is /be/)

But in all of these languages "K" ends with a different vowel (/ei/ in English, /a/ in Spanish and French). Why is this?

Good day,

I have this project on teaching English pronunciation for L2 learners, which proposes that a knowledge or awareness of English phonological history plays a role in ameliorating and supplementing learning strategies and memorisation. Subsequently, it provides the learner with a linguistic awareness of the dynamic and reasonable, non-arbitrary nature of language and that of its pronunciation and the orthographic representation of the pronunciation. Any suggested reads on this topic and general ones on learning theory that supports the proposition that learning and memorisation is more efficient when the learner is provided with 'the causes behind the current system and its intricacies' will be very appreciated.

Assuming two adjacent identical consonants in the same syllable, a consonant cluster does not form. Meanwhile, ee, oo, and aa (baa, bazaar, aah) each sound different from e, o, and a. (I can't find an ii word where it doesn't lead to another syllable, and words like vacuum and muumuu could otherwise be spelled with one u in those syllables.)

1: What are other languages that do this? I know Spanish, and of course ll and rr are digraphs for sounds different from what's represented by l and r.

2: For any language + writing system that does this, why is this the case?

It happens with the surname 박 becoming "Park", as well. As a fan of kpop, I find it shows up a lot there (e.g., 씨스타 as SISTAR, 피에스타 as Fiestar, 빠빠빠 as Bar Bar Bar).

I have a vague recollection of hearing somewhere that it's a way of tricking English speakers into pronouncing vowel sounds properly (by sticking an L or R before or after them), but I don't know where I heard it from.

Is it a recent phenomenon? Is it specified to English or does it happen with representing Korean names in other Latin-alphabet-based languages, too?

Hi everyone!

Is there a rule for when 'm' is pronounced as its own syllable? I've been using this source as one of my references and <mtoto> seems to be pronounced m-to-to, and <mdudu> as m-du-du while <mwalimu> seems to be pronounced mwa-li-mu.

Thanks in advance!