News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

A comment on The Awful German Language (1880). Parent comment

Re:The Awful German Language (1880) by yorwba on Saturday October 06, 2018 @07:39AM (#18154620)
Looking at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:IPA/Khmer the language does seem to have some fun sounds.

But English has a consonant between 'b' and 'p' ('pʰ' in IPA) as well. Just consider the difference between 'ban', 'span' and 'pan'. The 'p' in 'span' is not as forceful as the 'p' in 'pan', and they're actually different consonants.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:The Awful German Language (1880) by jfk13 on Saturday October 06, 2018 @08:12AM (#18154726)
> The 'p' in 'span' is not as forceful as the 'p' in 'pan', and they're actually different consonants.

Yes, they're phonetically different, but in English the difference is not phonemic; they're allophones of the same consonant.

[ Parent | on HN ]