Continuing the discussion from Three men freeze to death in a friend's backyard and aren't found for three days:
They are often pronounced the same, or with a difference that is difficult to discern. I think that’s true across the US. But they are not homophones by dictionary definition. They can be pronounced correctly with the ‘T’ and ‘D’ distinctly different. However, the reality is in this country we speak Mercan which has no truck with such niceties.
I also object to the term “lazy speech.” It’s just a dialect variation. I can say them with a clear “t” or a clear “d” without any extra effort – it just sounds weird in my dialect.
The process by which a T between vowels is voiced approximately to a D is called “flapping”. According to the Wikipedia article, it is “a prominent feature of North American English” and also occurs in “Australian, New Zealand and (especially Northern) Irish English, and more infrequently or variably in South African English, Cockney, and Received Pronunciation”. It is not laziness or a disdain for “niceties”, it’s a dialectical difference.
They’re not homophones for me. I hear and say a difference.
Philly person here. Pronounced identically.
NYC area here. I feel like I say the T in hearty, and that they sound slightly different, but I could just be thinking I do since I know that’s the word I’m saying. Now I’m not sure anymore.
I’m also from the NYC area and I’m pretty sure I say them the same. If I were trying to differentiate (“Wait, is it party harDy or party hearTy?”), I would pronounce them differently, but normally they’re homophones for me.
It is my privilege to extend to the OP a laurel…and hearty handshake.
I follow linguists who talk about how words can be homophones in one dialect but not another.
I do not believe there is any additional requirement other than pronouncing them the same way.
The only person I’ve ever known (in the US) who pronounces them differently is an ex-theater person who’s been trained to clearly pronounce the “T” in nearly every instance. It sounds stilted.
Different for me, mid-Atlantic.
Different for me too here in SoCal.
Different for me in the upper Midwest. Maybe because we have Hardee’s restaurants here (known as Carl Jr’s elsewhere), which are not hearty.
Upper Midwest (grew up in Wisconsin, live in the Chicago area). The two words aren’t quite homophones when I pronounce them; while I don’t pronounce the “d” in “hardy” the same way I’d pronounce it in “hard,” the sound isn’t quite a “t” sound, either.
When I saw the two words in the thread title, I heard them differently in my head, so I assume I would saw them differently as well. The difference is subtle, but it’s real.
Is there a less objectionable way to say “not taking care to enunciate clearly or to distinguish between phonemes that sound almost the same?”
Different for me as well, and I have vocal habits inherited from my PENN/MASS father, and a lifetime of habits from various places in the Southwest (mostly NM and CO).
But…
Spending a lot of time working on phones and a good bit working with iffy voice-to-text options, I spend a bit more effort than the norm to fully enunciate my words, so I’m an outlier on many fronts.
Right, “laziness” isn’t really the appropriate word here, but it’s something more like lack of precision. In my world, “t” and “d” are different letters with entirely different sounds. But, sure, there’s a dialectical aspect to it. The typical British accent especially tends to distinctly accentuate “t” sounds as differentiated from “d” sounds, the American one often not at all, and the Canadian one somewhere in between.
My pronunciations tend to be strongly influenced by how words are actually spelled. Which is not better or worse than anyone else’s dialect, and is obviously influenced by a subjective sense of how a particular spelling should be pronounced, but I dislike the idea of slurring or entirely skipping consonants or vowels that are right there in the printed word!
You may be pronouncing it as an alveolar flap, kind of like in the American pronunciation of “water,” which sounds like “wadder” to British ears, but isn’t quite the same “d.” I think that’s what I’m doing.
And sticking to sounds exactly as they are written is nonsense, especially in the English language. “Knight,” anyone? “Often”? (Though many hypercorrect to pronounce that “t.” I admit, pronouncing that “t” slightly irks me, for some reason, even though I live for dialectal variations and embrace regional pronunciations. They add color to the language.)
Seems about right!
You must really hate Worcestershire sauce, then. 