Re: Subtitutes for English /T/ and /D/

On Jul 21, 7:37 am, Seán O'Leathlóbhair <jwlaw...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
It seems a little odd for two sounds to be simultaneously "almost
indistinguishable" and belonging to different phonemes. Doesn't the
use as different phonemes mean that they are (fairly) reliably
distinguishable?

They might not be distinguishable to all listeners. Anglos listening
to Malayalam can't make any sense of it to start with and even when it
starts becoming comprehensible, they can't tell
1) the open allophone of /i/ (realized partway between [e] and [E] but
a wee bit closer to [e]) from the frontal allophone of /a/ (realized
as a retracted [E]) or
2) a noun ending with a ramshorn from an adjective ending with the
central vowel [@].

Representing a ramshorn as [r], a minimal pair of the latter would be
[kVl.:.r] - an alcoholic beverage made from coconuts
[kVl.:@] - crooked (i.e., unethical)

.