# Stück Kuchen (pronunciation k-k)



## twinklestar

I am listening the MP 3 for a dialogue from my German textbook.

Is there any sound linking between Stueck and Kuchen?  It sounds to me it is pronounced as "Stue Kuchen" for the following sentece.

_Moechten Sie noch ein Stueck Kuchen?_

Some Chinese told me that his teacher of German said there's almost no sound-linking in German. Is it true?

Thank you!


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## berndf

twinklestar said:


> Some Chinese told me that his teacher of German said there's almost no sound-linking in German. Is it true?


No that is not true. There is considerable sound linking in German but not nearly as much as e.g. in French. I guess that is what your teacher meant.

Identical consonants in adjacent words generally become long, e.g. _i*m M*eer_ = [ɪ*mː*eːɐ] or _Stüc*k K*uchen _= [ʃtʏ*kː*uːxn̩] or _der Man*n n*ahm_... [deɐ ma*nː*aːm...]. This is about the only case where long consonants still play a role in modern German.


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## twinklestar

Thank you very much for helping me out. Have a good day!

PS. It was not my teacher but a teacher of another Chinese, who majored in German.


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## Hutschi

And it is optional. If you speak especially articulated (besonders deutlich), you do not link it. If you speak fast, linking is generally done in these cases.


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## twinklestar

Hutschi said:


> And it is optional. If you speak especially articulated (besonders deutlich), you do not link it. If you speak fast, linking is generally done in these cases.



I see. I was not sure what I was hearing on the MP3. It sounded to me there's just one "k" between the two words. I've understood.

Thank you!


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## berndf

Hutschi said:


> And it is optional. If you speak especially articulated (besonders deutlich), you do not link it. If you speak fast, linking is generally done in these cases.


I doubt that. I would always link _im Meer_. The only difference between articulate and casual pronunciation would be how much attention it pay to the length of [m:].


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## berndf

twinklestar said:


> It sounded to me there's just one "k" between the two words.


Listen to it again and listen for the length of the k. As long consonants usually play not role in German, you have probably never been taught to listen for them.


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## bearded

berndf said:


> Listen to it again and listen for the length of the k


Is it really possible to lengthen plosive consonants?  I once read that it is just an apparent lengthening, and in reality what becomes longer is the silent interval or pause before the consonant.
With m it is of course different, as m is not plosive.


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## berndf

bearded man said:


> Is it really possible to lengthen plosive consonants?


I am surprised you ask. Long plosives are a common phenomenon in your language. You insert some time between closure and release: _spaghe*t*_[closure only]_-_hold your breath_-_[release only]*t*_i_.


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## bearded

berndf said:


> I am surprised you ask. Long plosives are a common phenomenon in your language. You insert some time between closure and release: _spaghe*t*_[closure only]_-_hold your breath_-_[release only]*t*_i_.


I know.  But the phonology specialist objected precisely against the concept of Italian  ''double consonants'' in the case of plosives, affirming that a plosive cannot be actually doubled. In his theory, it would be _spaghe(prolonged pause)+ti.  _I regard it as a rather disconcerting theory, though, and that's why I asked. When you say _spaghet(hold your breath) _he says here there is only a silence, i.e. no sound is actually uttered.


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## elroy

bearded man said:


> Is it really possible to lengthen plosive consonants?


 Definitely.  You have geminated plosives in Italian  (for example, _fatto_, as opposed to _fato_).

In Arabic, every single consonant can be geminated, and gemination is phonemic, so we have minimal pairs such as _kataba _and _kattaba._


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## berndf

bearded man said:


> I regard it as a rather disconcerting theory, though, and that's why I asked.


So do I. The claim makes only sense, if you insist that measured silence cannot be part of "sound". I guess everybody who had any knowledge of music would find that idea completely strange. Pauses are as important as notes in a score.


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## bearded

elroy said:


> Definitely.  You have geminated plosives in Italian  (for example, _fatto_, as opposed to _fato_).
> In Arabic, every single consonant can be geminated, and gemination is phonemic, so we have minimal pairs such as _kataba _and _kattaba._


I know all that, but please see my #10.


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## berndf

bearded man said:


> In his theory, it would be _spaghe(prolonged pause)+ti._


The closure in _spaghet-_ is clearly audible and its absence would sound identifiable "wrong". In my mind this refutes the theory straight away.

Coming back to German: I know they aren't all really German words but given the productivity of composite nouns they could well be: _Bar-tender, Bart-ender_ and _Bart-tender_ are perfectly well distinguishable. If this theory were right then at least two of the three should be indistinguishable.


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## elroy

Yes, unreleased stops are definitely perceptible.  That's why in American English, _cat_ (with an unreleased stop) sounds different from the non-word _ca_.  Korean is known for unreleased stops, and there has been at least one study demonstrating Korean speakers' ability to distinguish perceptually between different unreleased stops (for example, _t_ and _p_).  The constriction blocks the air flow, and that affects both the production (by definition) and the perception of the utterance.

This theory skips over the constriction as if it were irrelevant.  We don't just have a pause followed by a release, we have a _constriction_ followed by a pause followed by a release, and that's crucial.  If it were just a matter of having a longer pause followed by the consonant, then the constriction would need to start after the pause, which we know it does not.  If it did, we would have a longer _vowel_, which we don't.

Arabic actually has a trio of words that nicely exemplifies these differences:

_kataba_: short vowel, constriction, release
_kattaba_: short vowel, constriction, pause, release
_ka:taba_: long vowel, constriction, release


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## Dan2

bearded man said:


> But the phonology specialist objected precisely against the concept of Italian ''double consonants'' in the case of plosives, affirming that a plosive cannot be actually doubled. In his *theory*, it would be _spaghe(prolonged pause)+ti._


I've always thought it was _spaghet(prolonged pause)ti.  _But this isn't theory, it's an empirical question.  During the silence either the tongue is down (="speghe<silence>ti") or up in /t/-position (="speghet<silence>ti").

More generally on the question of whether a stop (plosive) consonant can be doubled:  I think that thinking about phonetics requires attention to both acoustics (what you can measure at the end of a microphone cable) and articulation (what the tongue, etc., are actually doing).  Even though acoustically there is no sound being "doubled" in comparing "fato" and "fatto" (other than the sound of silence), articulatorily there is a very real lengthening of the consonant in "fatto": a lengthening of the /t/ gesture.


elroy said:


> Yes, unreleased stops are definitely perceptible. That's why in American English, _cat_ (with an unreleased stop) sounds different from the non-word _ca_.


Agreed.


elroy said:


> there has been at least one study demonstrating Korean speakers' ability to distinguish perceptually between different unreleased stops (for example, _t_ and _p_).


I think we can do this in American English too.  I find it unnatural to release the /t/ of "cat".  The "p" of "cap" can go either way, but even if unreleased I think "cap" is distinguishable from "cat".


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## bearded

Dan2 said:


> thinking about phonetics requires attention to both acoustics (what you can measure at the end of a microphone cable) and articulation (what the tongue, etc., are actually doing).


 Yes, and probably the author of that theory (whose name I forgot) takes only acoustics into account, and does not consider a silent articulation important.


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## Kajjo

For the example _fat-to_ I always thought that you close and pre-form the first t, but no plosive comes. Then on saying the second t, the ONE plosive sounds occurs. That would mean for me that there is no real gemination in t-t, but of course the sound of t-t is completely different from just -t. So, it would be more a kind of definition whether to call that gemination or not. But I never heard an Italian saing to plosive t-t sounds after each other in such words. There are no two plosives, but closure, pre-formation and pause.

So I guess, we all agree, but use different terminology and that is what the claim BM mentioned is about.



berndf said:


> _Bar-tender, Bart-ender_ and _Bart-tender_ are perfectly well distinguishable


Yes, if I pronounce them in German, there definitely are TWO plosive sounds and a significant pause in Bart-tender.



> Pauses are as important as notes in a score.


Indeed. Rhythm is generated by pauses, not by beats, my teacher always said.


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## bearded

Kajjo said:


> So, it would be more a kind of definition whether to call that gemination or not. But I never heard an Italian  saying two plosive t-t sounds after each other in such words. There are no two plosives, but closure, pre-formation and pause.


That is correct.  It was indeed the core of my above question.


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## berndf

Kajjo said:


> So I guess, we all agree, but use different terminology and that is what the claim BM mentioned is about.


No, the disagreement is real and not terminological. You are arguing like the opinion BM quoted that the _t _*is* the release. Elroy and I argue that _t _*is* the entire sequence _closure - building up pressure - release_ and not just the last of the three steps. A long _t_ *is* _closure - building up pressure - holding it - release. _In an Italian _-tt-_ the closure is audible in the first syllable and the release audible in the second, as you can clearly hear here.

If German were the only language then this discussion would indeed be terminological as we aspirate each end every _t_ independent of position in the word and therefor all _t_s have an audible release. In other languages, like American English, this is different. In initial _t_s. only the release is audible, in intervocalic _t_s both (ignoring the colloquial flapped intervocalic _t_ in the context of this discussion) and in final position only the closure is audible (an "unreleased t"), as you can hear here (listen to the first two AmE speakers, NipponJapan and planetliz). Although it "consists" only of a closure and no release, it is still a perfectly valid _t_.



bearded man said:


> That is correct. It was indeed the core of my above question.


That is why I prefer to call it a _long t_ and not _two_ _ts_. But you can equally analyse it as a sequence of an unreleased and a released _t_.


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## Kajjo

berndf said:


> Although it "consists" only of a closure and no release, it is still a perfectly valid _t_.


Hm, I do not hear a t at all in those examples. I seriously doubt that these examples constitute "perfect English pronunciation". I all dictionaries I know, the "t" is clearly pronounced plosive.



> That is why I prefer to call it a _long t_ and not _two_ _ts_. But you can equally analyse it as a sequence of an unreleased and a released _t_.


Yes, calling it a "long t" seems more appropriate than the term "two t".


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## berndf

Kajjo said:


> Hm, I do not hear a t at all in those examples.


That is not surprising. As I said, in German this does not occur and you have therefore no reason to be conditioned to perceive it. But I am sure, when listening to GA speakers for a bit of time you do subconsciously adjust.

You said you spent a few years in London. Then you should be used the the SE-colloquial glottalized _t_ (_fat_ = [fæ?]) which is also usually unreleased in final position.

Final _t_s in RP are all released for the same reason as in German, viz. because even final _t_s are all aspirated. In GA, aspiration is restricted to the onset of stressed syllables. There are registers where all voiceless plosives are aspirated but that is solemn Sunday church or public speaking language and sounds unnatural to the ears of native speakers, about as if you said in German _aber _with a real consonantal _r_ at the end instead of volcalizing it to [ɐ] as in old stage pronunciation.


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## Dan2

Kajjo said:


> Hm, I do not hear a t at all in those examples. I seriously doubt that these examples constitute "perfect English pronunciation".


If by "English" you mean "from England" you are correct.  But for American English (Bernd uses the term GA), planetliz's and Nippon's pronunciations are unobjectionable and the word is unambiguously "fat".


berndf said:


> American English ... ignoring the *colloquial *flapped intervocalic _t_


Not _only _colloquial.  The "flapped /t/" is standard in all registers in the US.  One fails to flap only as a "spelling pronunciation" ("I said his name was Fet-ter, not Fed-der") or to imitate the British.


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## berndf

Dan2 said:


> Not _only _colloquial. The "flapped /t/" is standard in all registers in the US. One fails to flap only as a "spelling pronunciation" ("I said his name was Fet-ter, not Fed-der") or to imitate the British.


I have listened to varying opinions on the register status of this phenomenon. And I prefer to stay on the safe side. Everybody agrees it is natural in colloquial registers.


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## elroy

bearded man said:


> Yes, and probably the author of that theory (whose name I forgot) takes only acoustics into account, and does not consider a silent articulation important.


 But even acoustically/perceptually there's a difference.


berndf said:


> You are arguing like the opinion BM quoted that the _t _*is* the release. Elroy and I argue that _t _*is* the entire sequence _closure - building up pressure - release_ and not just the last of the three steps. A long _t_ *is* _closure - building up pressure - holding it - release. _


 Yes!

By their nature, plosives consist of a constriction blocking the air flow completely and a sudden burst whereby the air is released at once.  For each plosive, it is the release of air that results in the sound we are used to associating with that plosive.  We probably associate the post-release sound with the plosive because that sound is the most salient, easily identifiable part of the utterance.  However, as Bernd and I have shown (and as many studies have shown), the constriction itself is perceptible.

To give another example, Korean has the following minimal pair: _ik-ta_ and _it-ta_.  In each of the first syllables, the consonant is not released.  When I was taking introductory Korean, my class consisted primarily of native speakers of American English, and the teacher was a native speaker of Korean.  We had a quiz one day in which the teacher dictated words for us to write down.  She dictated one of these two words (I can't remember which) and the vast majority of the class thought she meant the other one and wrote that one down, so almost everyone got that question wrong.  I later spoke about this with some Korean native speakers, and they uniformly agreed that _perceptually_, the two words were as different as night and day.  I asked a Korean native speaker to test other Korean native speakers by saying the words in turn and having them identify them, and she kind of rolled her eyes, as in "This is so silly.  Of _course _they're gonna get them right.  The words are totally different!".  (And sure enough, they got them right immediately and effortlessly.)  She reacted the way I would react if someone asked me to see if a native speaker of American English could distinguish between _car _and _tar_. 

The constriction is a crucial part of a consonant - any consonant - whether articulatorily or acoustically/perceptually.  Maybe the duration of the sound-heard-upon-release is the same whether a plosive is geminated or not, but the duration of the consonant _as a whole_ is clearly different.  Articulatorily, the constriction is held for longer when the consonant is geminated, and acoustically, we hear something different.  Our ears are attuned to perceiving the constriction and not just the release.  The consonant is a product of the constriction, the buildup of tension, _and_ the release.

The only difference between plosives and other types of consonants is that with other types, the constriction is not a complete constriction, so the air flow is not blocked completely, and the most salient acoustic signal is present throughout the entire utterance.  There is no release.  So for fricatives, for example, the constriction and the flow of air coexist, so there is not a point at which there is a constriction but we don't hear the sound we are used to hearing.  With plosives it's different because the articulatory steps are sequential rather than simultaneous, but the constriction is just as crucial a part of the articulatory process.  I'm fairly certain that if you were to slice a spectrogram of a [t], for example, and have listeners hear only the release and what follows, many will have trouble identifying the sound and/or distinguishing between it and a similarly truncated [p], for example.


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## berndf

elroy said:


> To give another example, Korean has the following minimal pair: _ik-ta_ and _it-ta_. In each of the first syllables, the consonant is not released.


It is actually quite possible that this existed in the history or Romance too but got lost through assimilation. After all Italian _fatto_ [fatːo]~[fatto] has developed out of Latin _factum_ [faktʊ̃]. It is not a compelling but the easiest explanation that the /k/ was unreleased. Compare this recording of a hypothetical single released _factum_ [faktʊ̃] contrasted with the double released pronunciation of German _Faktum_ [fakʰtʰʊm].


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## Dan2

berndf said:


> It is actually quite possible that this existed in the history _of_ Romance too


Unreleased stops exist in modern Spanish: "acto", "apto".  (I believe these are later borrowings from Latin rather than representing normal Latin-to-Spanish evolution, but all I'm pointing out here is that unreleased stops exist in modern Romance.)


berndf said:


> Compare this recording of a hypothetical single released _factum_ [faktʊ̃]


Qui est orator?


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## berndf

Dan2 said:


> Qui est orator?


Ego ipse orator eram.


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