Assorted Language Questions

[Bonyduck Campersang]

Do you also produce "real" as "rill"?

 

[Gori the Grey]

No. Reel.

 

[Bonyduck Campersang]

I say rilly.

I can't tell if you're twisting my spanner, but I've never heard anyone pronounce it that way

 

[Gori the Grey]

I mean sometimes I say reel-y

But there's a movie clip where the person says rilly. It'll come to me and I'll post it. Very end of this:

 

[Valka D'Ur]

I can't tell if your twisting my spanner, but I've never heard anyone pronounce it that way

"Really" is one of those words that tend to be pronounced in different ways, depending on context and if the speaker wants to be precise or casual. There's nuance to it.

 

[sophie]

yeah I say really both ways

 

[QarQing]

Do you pronounce "really" the way you pronounce "real" and add a "-ly" or do you pronounce the "real" in "really" differently from how you pronounce "real"?

If that makes sense

I think it depends on the dialect

 

[Arwon]

Do you pronounce "really" the way you pronounce "real" and add a "-ly" or do you pronounce the "real" in "really" differently from how you pronounce "real"?

If that makes sense

I think the vowel in "real" is usually a shorter diphthong for me, and in "really" it's a longer single vowel But that's far from universal in Australian English and I'm not sure it's even fully consistent in my own ideolect.

 

[Gori the Grey]

Kevin will help you out:

He says his second vowel is the re of red, but then listen to him say it fast and it sounds like rilly to me.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

Yep. He said "rilly". That's so ridiculous.

 

[PhroX]

I hadn't thought about it before, but I do indeed say "really" very close to "rilly" much like Kevin there.

Unless I'm doing a drawn out sarcastic "oh reeaaally?". Then it sounds more like real.

 

[Gori the Grey]

Yep. He said "rilly". That's so ridiculous.

Wait until you also hear him saying ree-diculous.

New question: what's the right verb for what an object with kinetic energy does with its energy when it hits an object (like a ball hitting the ground). "Disburses"? You physicists will tell me it's "transfers," I suppose. That would be clear if it were one billiard ball hitting another. You'll tell me it's true even if the two objects are of vastly incommensurate size. Still, I want a better verb, more common-sense verb, for what happens to kinetic energy in a collision.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

Disperses.

 

[Bonyduck Campersang]

Do you pronounce the 'c' in 'cap' differently from the 'k' in 'sky'?

 

[Gori the Grey]

I don't think so. They sound the same to me.

 

[sophie]

Do you pronounce the 'c' in 'cap' differently from the 'k' in 'sky'?

cap is aspirated, sky is not.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

cap is aspirated, sky is not.

Can the average person tell the difference?

 

[Arwon]

Depends on the language. They're meaningfully different sounds in Hindi - aspirated and non-aspirated are different phonemes, there would be words distinguished only by the difference, and they are represented by different letters:

In English they're the same phoneme, just pronounced differently in different contexts. You can hear that they're different sounds if you listen for it - there won't be a little puff of air on the k sound in sky, similar to the difference between the P in "Pots" and "Stop". But both sounds map to the same thing as understood by English speakers so there's no reason to ever need to hear it.

 

[sophie]

Can the average person tell the difference?

What arwon said, but also some languages don’t do it at all, which can make it really obvious by its presence. It’s one of the main contributing sources for why English speakers frequently have such a bad/thick accent when speaking Spanish.

You can test it for yourself. Hold your hand in front of your mouth and say cap, and then say sky. You should feel a puff of air when you say one and not the other. That’s the aspiration.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

The puff of air comes when the "p" is pronounced. I don't notice it when pronouncing the "c".

Or maybe I should test this when I'm not sitting in front of a fan (it's another scorcher of a day here).