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pronunciation of DISGUISE
My dictionary says it is [diz'gaiz], but all speakers seem to pronounce it [dis'kaiz], that is we have [sk] (voiceless consonants) instead of [zg] (voiced consonants). Why is that? Could someone explain it to me please?!
Many thanks.
I pronounce it [dI"skaIz] (and technically, for me, the syllable break occurs before the [s], rather than between the [s] and [k], because the [k] is unaspirated). I guess it's common to pronounce it that way because the original /g/ assimilated to the unvoiced /s/ of the prefix "dis". Other pronunciations I've seen listed in dictionaries are [dIs"gaIz] (the unassimilated form) and [dIz"gaIz] (the form your dictionary listed, in which the historical /s/ has assimilated to the voiced /g/).
The same phenomenon occurs for me with "disgust", which I pronounce [dI.skVst], homophonous with "discussed". One interesting thing is that this does *not* happen for me in the case of "disgrace". The Merriam-Webster online dictionary lists [dI"skr\eIs] as an alternate pronunciation along the lines of "disguise" and "disgust", but I pronounce "disgrace" as [dIs"gr\eIs].
/dIskaIz/ is correct. /dIsgaIz/ sounds pretentious and should be avoided.
http://dictionary.cambridge.org/define.asp?dict=CALD&key=22297&ph=on
Cambridge Dictionary only has [dIz'gaiZ] Cambridge Dictionary of American English: [dIz'gaiZ] http://dictionary.cambridge.org/define.asp?key=disguise*1+0&dict=A
I think after an S, there's always a tendency to shift G to K. It's just easier to say.
The main matter is that in most English dialects, one never actually gets [sg] at least within individual words, but rather /sg/ always becomes [sk]. On a more generalized basis, in most English dialects, one cannot have adjacent plosives or fricatives in words which differ in *realized* voicing, and if you do end up with such phonemes with differing lenis/fortis values adjacent to each other, (only) the voicing of one will change to match the other.
>>Cambridge Dictionary only has [dIz'gaiZ] [snip] Cambridge Dictionary of American English: [dIz'gaiZ] << That looks nothing like how I've ever heard "disguise" here, which is practically invariably [dIs."kaIz] or [dIs."kaIz_0], but which never has [k_h] in it.
<<I myself pronounce it /dIskaIz/, not /dIzgaIz/ which sounds odd to me.>>
<</dIskaIz/ is correct. /dIsgaIz/ sounds pretentious and should be avoided.>> Well, I will no longer go against native speakers' different dialectal pronunciations. I suppose this /zg/ voiced sound becoming a voiceless /sk/ obbeys some kind of linguistic speech process. Does anybody trully know about it? A clear explanation of this fenomenon is required. And saying this or that pronunciation is pretentious or akward is proven to be a stupid thing, now I know that. That's only your particular opinion, because you are not used to hear /dIzgaIz/.
>>The main matter is that in most English dialects, one never actually gets [sg] at least within individual words, but rather /sg/ always becomes [sk].<<
Right, I had been posting my message before seeing yours, Travis.
>>That looks nothing like how I've ever heard "disguise" here, which is practically invariably [dIs."kaIz] or [dIs."kaIz_0], but which never has [k_h] in it.<<
Whoops, I made a mistake in my above most: I meant to say "[dI."ska:Iz] or [dI."ska:Iz_0]". >>Well, I will no longer go against native speakers' different dialectal pronunciations. I suppose this /zg/ voiced sound becoming a voiceless /sk/ obbeys some kind of linguistic speech process.<< The thing is that they're probably representing how /sg/ is realized in some speech form, as [zg], even though I myself have practically never heard that, and instead practially always hear the same being realized as [sk]. The main thing is that /sg/ is consistent with such being potentially realized as both [sk] and [zg] in different dialects in the position in question, whereas underlying /sk/ or /zg/ would be less consistent with such, unless one were to posit that different dialects actually use different underlying phonemes for such, which I see little reason to believe in this case.
<<Well, I will no longer go against native speakers' different dialectal pronunciations. I suppose this /zg/ voiced sound becoming a voiceless /sk/ obbeys some kind of linguistic speech process.
Does anybody trully know about it? A clear explanation of this fenomenon is required.>> Well, this is an example of what's called voicing assimilation. Sometimes, when two sounds appear next to each other in languages they pick up features from each other. For instance, if you're not familiar with the term "voicing contrast," feel your vocal chords when saying /s/ and then when saying /z/ (or /t/ and /d/). You'll notice that they're the same sound except your vocal chords vibrate when you say /z/ and /d/ but not when you say /s/ and /t/. Apparently, with the example of "disgust," and assuming there was a historical /g/ there, then for some speakers the /g/ has experienced devoicing as a result of the previous unvoiced /s/. Sometimes it works the other way around, however. For instance, for many Spanish speakers the sound for the /s/ in "mismo" or "rasgo" is actually produced as a [z] because it's accommating the following voiced consonants /m/ and /g/. We would still indicate the sound as underlying /s/ since [z] is not phonemic in Spanish. For many Spanish speakers, the words are pronounced as follows: 'mismo' /mismo/ --> ["mizmo] 'rasgo' /rasgo/ ---> ["razGo] Compare to these words which don't experience this in Spanish, since they're not followed by voiced consonants: 'lagos' /lagos/ --> ["laGos], not *laGoz (a form preceded by asterisk means it doesn't occur) 'taza' /t_dasa/ --> [t_dasa], not *t_daza However, if something like the final /s/ in 'lagos' is followed by a voiced consonant, it is likely to experience voicing assimilation (in dialects that have this--some dialects do other things with /s/ in such positions): 'los lagos de Patagonia' /los lagos d_de pat_dagonja/ --> [loz "laGoz De pat_da"Gonja] If you're unfamiliar with X-SAMPA for Spanish, check out this IPA <-> X-SAMPA conversion chart I use: http://www.diku.dk/hjemmesider/studerende/thorinn/xsamchart.gif Anyway, back to "disguise," I also say [dI"skaI:z]. |