Re: Yojimbo

Bart Mathias wrote:

There is a good reason why native speakers think that. It is because the articulation of the supposed [m] in "ten pence" is different from that in "temper." Most speakers speaking at a normal rate will touch their tongue to their alveolar ridge when they say the former but not the latter. I suspect that contact normally happens before the lips meet, though I can't cite any evidence.

Yes, I would imagine they do. That's what I feel I'm doing.

Can you cite any evidence for your claims?

Nope! It's something that came up way back in the mists of time when I did an MA in applied linguistics. It caused quite a debate then, too, but I do remember the conclusion, which is what I've been asserting here. It all seemed to be based on the idea that you couldn't really tell the difference until the moment of release, whereas what I think others here are saying is that they can be identified by the beginning of the sound. I'm pretty sure they can't be identified half-way through (if you listened to the middle part of someone saying nnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn and mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm I'm pretty sure you couldn't hear any difference).

Right now, though, I'm sitting here repeating the sounds again and again to myself to see if I can hear the difference from the way the phoneme *begins*. Even now I'm not sure! Sometimes I think I can. Other times I'm sure I can't. I'll have to get someone else to do it with me, to see if I can hear them and they can hear me.

You have equated your "ŋ" with "ng" above, and now you say it is the normal pronunciation of ん. ん doesn't have any one pronunciation that could be called "normal," beyond that it is nasal.

I can't remember the technical name, but doesn't the back of the tongue normally touch the top of the back of the mouth when saying ん, unless it is followed by a bilabial?

Japanese phoneticians (at least some) have claimed that unless followed by a consonant it is a uvular nasal. But it doesn't take much observation of native speech to see/hear that a final ん might just as well be pronounced [m:], [n:], [ղ], or most likely as a nasal vowel.

That surprises me. The place of articulation of the two "n"s in "Nippon" is quite clear and distinct. The first is with the tip of the tongue touching the alveolar ridge, and the second is with the back of the tongue touching the top of the back of the mouth.

But perhaps you don't mean final as in end of utterance, but rather as in end of word, in which case the pronunciation will differ depending on what follows it?

Phonemes are hypothetical constructs. No machine can detect them. I suspect you are thinking of sound spectrograms which can to a large extent make *phones* recognizable.

That's the one.

John
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