It slightly bugs me, because we don’t pronounce the “t” in listen or moisten.
I pronounce and hear the two words identically.
In fact, all the homophones sound identical to me (Mary merry, etc).
Uh, yes?
You can clearly pronounce something with a flap, or clearly pronounce it with a hard dental. One sound or the other isn’t inherently clearer than the other. (Are you referring to a certain shape of an acoustic wave? If science has a precise term for this, I doubt it’s “clarity.”)
Nop, not that either. Each is “precise.”
It’s not “nonsense” just because there are specific exceptions, any more than English grammar as a whole should be declared “nonsense” just because there are special exceptions.
And then there’s the marvelous aristocratic English name “Featherstonehaugh”. There’s a community college not far from here presumably named after one such gentleman. Its name: Fanshawe College. The moral: after centuries of slurring and mispronunciation, one may as well give up and change the spelling to acknowledge some modicum of respect for the association between how words are spelled and how they’re pronounced.
In exactly the same vein, regarding that wonderful sauce you mention which is an essential ingredient in a good Caesar, note the surname of one of the principal characters in the Wodehouse “Jeeves” stories: Bertie Wooster.
Shouldn’t it be “Woostah” for us N.A. ears in rhotic dialects? There’s an “r” that many Brits don’t pronounce, even though it’s right there in the written word (I suppose more accurately, it is used to “color” the preceding vowel.) I like my "r"s pronounced, dammit! Lazy bloody Brits!
There is a road near me called Orr Avenue. The first time someone gave me directions involving that road, I’d swear they said, “turn right on Whore Avenue”.
Ha, same here. When I read the OP I tried saying ‘hearty’ about 57 times, seeing if I say it the same as ‘hardy’, or not. I assumed I did say it differently, but if I do it’s very subtle. Clearly pronouncing a hard ‘t’ as in ‘heart-y’ does give the word a stilted sound. I think what I do is pronounce the ‘t’ not quite as a ‘d’ sound but not a hard plosive ‘t’, either; somewhere in between the two.
I’d have asked if it had been named after Bobby, but you’re in the wrong state for that.
haha - that’s what I thought of as well.
I’m from Philly and I think they are identical. Both the d and t pronounced with a tap on the roof of the mouth.
But not identical in my dialect are writer and rider. Not the middle consonant, but the initial vowel which is shorter in the first and a rare case in which length of vowel makes a difference in English. Similar comments for latter and ladder.
Incidentally, in Canada, it seems that people pronounce the t in often. Drives me nuts. But wait till you hear how they pronounce lieutenant. @wolfpup?
There was this woman who said something was a pidy. I did eventually figure out what she was saying. I think she was from New York, though; not positive.
They could also be effectively homophones because the speaker considers the phrase to be “hail and hardy” rather than “hale and hearty” and consequently the intonation is blurred.
Same here. Different vowel sound there. For me, it’s not really an issue of length, but the first gets more towards an “ah” sound to start the diphthong, and the latter more an “uh.”