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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   4522 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for January 16, 2026

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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Don't even bother with trying to get the true ㄹ sound unless you learned Korean or Japanese from a young age. I'm convinced it's one of the most unintuitive sounds in the world for an English speaker. It's like halfway between an American "R" and "L" but leans more "R" at the beginning of a syllable and more "L" at the end of a syllable. Just using American "R" and "L" in that way is probably as close as most can get.

It seems unintuitive because it's two different sounds: at the start of a syllable it's a tapped r like in Spanish and at the end of a syllable it's more or less the same as the English l. Native speakers consider it one sound because there's only one letter for it, the same way English speakers think of the voiceless th at the start of "think" and the voiced th at the start of "then" as the same sound because they're written the same.

the same way English speakers think of the voiceless th at the start of "think" and the voiced th at the start of "then" as the same sound because they're written the same.

Of course we don't think of these sounds as the same - it's the difference between "teeth" and "teethe".

A better example would have been how the T at the beginning of “ten” is a completely different sound than the T at the end of “net”. (You make the former sound by touching your tongue to the part of your mouth right behind your teeth, but you make the latter sound by closing your vocal folds, no tongue involved at all.)

But of course, this example is harder to explain precisely because we think of those two Ts as being the same sound.

But of course, this example is harder to explain precisely because we think of those two Ts as being the same sound.

Your post really confuses me, because they are the same sound. And, contrary to your argument, I make the T sound on both words by touching my tongue behind my teeth.

Wait, you use your tongue even for the last T in a sentence like “Back in the day, people used to talk about surfing the net”? Huh. Between you and sarker, I’m becoming increasingly convinced that this is just a weird quirk of a regional American accent that I assumed everyone else had.

Yeah, I do. I just checked that sentence and I naturally use my tongue on the last T.

Idea for Friday Fun Thread: Share voice recordings to compare English accents and for evildoers to analyze and replicate

I think the point is that there are several different ways to pronounce this, and Anglophones typically will not differentiate between them.

But I'm not a linguist, so I probably am wrong.

A better example would have been how the T at the beginning of “ten” is a completely different sound than the T at the end of “net”. (You make the former sound by touching your tongue to the part of your mouth right behind your teeth, but you make the latter sound by closing your vocal folds, no tongue involved at all.)

Are you a bong or something? Both of those are /t/ for me.

Even in non-glottalizing dialects of English, aspirated and unaspirated T sounds are differentiated in Mandarin but not in English.

I’m an American, born and raised. (And I certainly don’t pronounce water as “wo’uh”.) In careful speech, sure, I’ll pronounce the final as an alveolar stop, but when just talking normally, if “net” comes at the end of a phrase, then I’ll pronounce the last as a glottal stop.

A T sound is a T sound. You can't say it's only a half.

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