# Distinction between /t/ and /d/



## Perkele

I noticed that while articulating /d/ my tip of tongue is raised to meet the alveolar ridge and my tongue is somewhat curled back. The same doesn't happen with its alleged voiceless counterpart. My intuition says that in my speech the main distinction is in place and manner of articulation rather than voice.

When paying attention to the articulation, it instantly reminded me of AmE allophone of intervocalic /t/, as seen in words like _ci*t*y_ and _be*tt*er_. Actually, in my pronunciation, they seem to be one and same.

From a phonological point of view /d/ not being a stop would make sense, since the class /p t k/ is a whole lot more convenient than /p t d k/. In this case, lenition makes even more sense because the phoneme itself is a product of lenition (d < t) and it appears almost exclusively in environments prone to lenition (ie [+vocalic]_[+vocalic]).

How do other natives pronounce /d/? Is it simply a voiced counterpart of /t/ or are there more essential distinctive features?


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## japanilainen

Just out of curiosity, isn't "d" in English almost identical with Swedish "d"? I noticed that all the Finnish journliasts have no problem pronouncing "Jacob Söderman" for example.


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## Perkele

If you refer to /d/ as in *d*ust and not the intervocalic flap as in ci*t*y, there shouldn't be any major differences in the way one perceives the sounds (especially if one is fluent in neither of the languages). There most likely are differences to be found in the way the sounds are actually produced but they don't make for enough distinction to be caught on by the average listener.

I haven't studied Swedish any more than I have had (the pleasure) to so I can't give you a better answer. [d] represents very very similar sounds in all languages so you won't find big variation. I'm curious to find out if /d/ really is a good representation of the Finnish sound that traditionally has basically been regarded as a voice*d* dental stop.


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## Ben Jamin

Perkele said:


> If you refer to /d/ as in *d*ust and not the intervocalic flap as in ci*t*y, there shouldn't be any major differences in the way one perceives the sounds (especially if one is fluent in neither of the languages). There most likely are differences to be found in the way the sounds are actually produced but they don't make for enough distinction to be caught on by the average listener.
> 
> I haven't studied Swedish any more than I have had (the pleasure) to so I can't give you a better answer. [d] represents very very similar sounds in all languages so you won't find big variation. I'm curious to find out if /d/ really is a good representation of the Finnish sound that traditionally has basically been regarded as a voiceless dental stop.


 In many languages 't' and 'd' differ only by the voicing or not voicing of the consonant, the place of articulation is the same. In English they are more "raised" (alveolar) than in other Germanic languages, but still have the samearticulation place. The feature you describe must be a property of the Finnish language. I have observed that Finns tend to pronounce initial D (in foreign words, I do not know of any native Finnish words beginning wit a D) almost as an 'R'.


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## Perkele

It wouldn't be economical for Finnish to use Voice as a distinctive feature since it is (allegedly) used as such only in the case of /t d/. Also, it is a very hard concept for a native Finnish speaker to grasp. Unlike English, there are no other cases in Finnish language in which voice distinguishes two phonemes. Only case that comes close is /f v/ which is distinguished by manner of articulation (/v/ is a semi-vowel) and this is recognized by linguists. It is logical for the pair /t d/ to act in a somewhat similar fashion, looking for a different feature than Voice.

In my pronunciation /t/ is a dental stop and /d/ is a alveolar flap thus making the distinctive feature Voice redundant.

Finnish words beginning with /d/ are all loan words (or dialectal). Alveolar flap is indeed a very r-like sound so it's no wonder you had that perception. The sound is similar to Spanish sound in pe*r*o and the aforementioned intervocalic realization of /t/ in AmE be*tt*er. Some speakers actually pronounce /d/ as a trill.


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