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Rex May - Baloo wrote: > > on 2/26/02 9:17 PM, Mike Wright at darwin@hidden.email wrote: > > > Ray Bergman wrote: > > > > [...] > >> The sound before a word beginning with a vowel is a glottal stop. > > [...] > > > > In some languages, such as Arabic or Hokkien, it is phonemic, but in > > others, such as most (all?) English dialects, it is not, and often > > occurs only after a pause. If I say, "That is an ugly old owl", I can > > do it without a single glottal stop. > > And I do as well. In my dialect, tho, I use a glottal stop in 'button'. Do you mean to say that your tongue tip doesn't touch the alveolar ridge until you get to the /n/, but that your glottis actually closes prior to that? If you stretch it out, do the syllables break as /bV? n-/? (/n-/ is syllabic "n"). For me, the /n-/ and the closing of the glottis seems to be simultaneous, but when I stretch it out, I switch to /bV tn-/. In fact, I may actually be saying /bVtn-/ in the normal version, and the voicing of the /n-/ just feels like the glottis closing. In neither case does it feel like the nice, clear phonemic /?/ of Arabic or Hokkien. -- Mike Wright http://www.CoastalFog.net _______________________________________________________ "When they wired us humans up, they really should have labeled the wires--don't you think?" -- Ed