Two of the sounds from the clip linked below are from words beginning with the letter “t.” the other two sounds from the clip are from words beginning with the letters “ch.”
Can you spot the two t’s?
Unfortunately, this poll can never put the issue to rest since people will always be able to say (once they’ve heard the originals) that the speaker is in fact pronouncing one or more of the ‘t’ words with a ‘ch’ sound at the beginning instead of a ‘t’ sound. What we would really need is a separate poll, answered by different people than those answering this one, opining as to whether the speaker is saying “t” or “ch” at the beginning of the two t words. But such an arrangement can’t really be made on a forum like this one. (ETA: I may be able to work out some kind of method by making this poll public–but I am not sure of that since anyone doing the other poll would have been able to see the results of this one first–and here its sounds–and that’s likely to skew the other poll…)
Basically, then, for now, this poll is the best method I can come up with.
The poll question is: Which of the two sounds (first, second, third, fourth) from the linked clip are t sounds.
The only one that sounds like “t” to me is 4. Since I had to choose another “t”, I almost picked from among the other three at random. Hopefully, others who have a similiar experience will say so in a posted message like this one, because it could be helpful when you interpret the results. P.S. Good job learning new software so quickly!
I was going to put a “none of the above option.” Then I decided I should force participants to choose one… thinking something I now suspect may have been confused, about testing whether people were able to pick up on the difference even if only with difficulty.
I see that only myself and Indistingishable have participated in the poll so far. Come on, KneadtoKnow and Onomatapoeia…sometimes you gotta just bite the bullet and commit!
Baal, okay. Poll fatigue is quite forgivable. But after a good night’s rest, you might want to consider going for it. We need to get that sample size up into statistically valid territory!
Considering there are over 60 responses in the other thread, I’m tempted to declare that I won’t reveal the correct answers til I’ve got at least 50 responses over here…
[spoiler]Okay, my second spoiler was wrong. But it’s still the only one you could possibly claim was a [t], as it sounds like stop is at the end.
And my first spoiler is wrong about any of them being non-[t] stops, I think. They all have a definite /ʃ/ (sh) sound in them (except the first, where it may be a (ch as in German ich).[/spoiler]
If having different people answer is sufficient, then you ought to be able to pull it off just by putting them in a different order for the full words. However, I’m not sure the first premise is sound. If the other responders know that there is a possibility that the person is saying “ch” instead of “t”, they may pick it out, when, ordinarily, they wouldn’t notice.
If that’s the case, then the only way to have done it here would have been to have the full words first, asking us what the words are and if there’s anything weird about the way any of them sound, and then had this poll, again with the answers out of order. And you’d have to have the first poll close before the second one started.
Then again, for all I know, that’s what you did.
Also, one more fix to the above post:
I guess the sound before the [t] in the first one could be a heavily aspirated [h], perhaps just the speaker breathing heavily before starting.
BTW, the difficulty in distinguishing may be because “ch” actually contains a [t]. It’s IPA is [tʃ]. You make a [t] and transition directly into an [ʃ], sounding them nearly simultaneously.
I’ll put up the full-word sound clips later today.
So few responses! If you’re not responding because you think only one sounds like a t, please feel free to register that in the thread.
A couple of people above have hinted or joked that there is trickery afoot–so let me say officially that there is no trick here. Everything I say in the OP is straightforwardly true.
Problem is, since I need to be using the same sound clips as sources for the clipped off versions, anyone with access to both polls can fairly easily simply compare the clips either by ear or using software like Audacity.
I think I agree (not sure what is meant by “the first premise”) but what surprised me and interested me in the other thread was the fact that the great majority of people were voting that not only do they themselves say ‘t’ in ‘truck’ but that the recorded pronunciation was also saying ‘t’. To me the recording is manifestly, obviously and without question saying ‘ch’.
I know that’s the convention, but I think there’s controversy to that analysis, and I certainly am strongly inclined to disagree. T and CH have completely different tongue positions. Moreover if the confusion were due to this, shouldn’t people be hearing a lot of t’s rather than a lot of ch’s when listening to the linked-to clip?
Agree with JKellyMap, although they all do sound quite different. Three was softer and a bit more ambiguous than 1 and 2, so it was my second choice for a T.
I am not sure that any of this is very objective, though. Isn’t what we hear going to depend a lot on precisely where you choose to make your edit?
Incidentally, if Eric Schwitzgebel is even close to being right (and I am inclined to think he maybe), there may be no true fact of the matter about phenomena like this:
