English complex

undertaker Monday, June 13, 2005, 16:39 GMT

1)Does the Americans sometimes omit the “d” sound from pronunciation as in “understand” and such.
2)I often find difficulty in speaking out when linking “d” with “the” as in
“build the house” but I notice that the Americans don’t.

What can I do?

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Damian in Edinburgh Monday, June 13, 2005, 17:00 GMT

UNDERTAKER: Does the Americans = do the Americans.

Why do some posters in here choose the names they do? Maybe Undertaker is undertaking the task of learning English. In the UK anyway, an undertaker is a funeral director.

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Chamonix Monday, June 13, 2005, 17:03 GMT

"an undertaker is a funeral director"

Interesting.. I would never have thought about such a meaning...
I wish I could find an web site about British meaning of certain words or expressions.

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Cro Magnon Monday, June 13, 2005, 17:27 GMT

undertaker Monday, June 13, 2005, 16:39 GMT :
<=1)Does the Americans sometimes omit the “d” sound from pronunciation as in “understand” and such. =>

I always pronounce the last "d" in words.

<=2)I often find difficulty in speaking out when linking "d" with "the" as in
“build the house” but I notice that the Americans don’t.
What can I do? =>

Maybe pause briefly after "build".

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Travis Monday, June 13, 2005, 17:40 GMT

I myself tend to often reduce intervocalic /nd/ clusters to just [n], and hence I'm likely to omit the /d/ from words such as "understand" if they are followed in the next word by another vowel or if the /d/ is in an unstressed syllable and I'm speaking informally; however, I do not generally do so word-finally with words that are in isolation. Note however, though, that the cluster /ndz/, both intervocalic and word-final, is invariably reduced to [nz], such as in the word "hands" (/h{ndz/ --> [h{~:nz]) or the name "Lindsay" (/"lIndzi/ --> ["5I~:n.zi]).

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zarafa Monday, June 13, 2005, 22:15 GMT

=> undertaker Monday, June 13, 2005, 16:39 GMT

=> 1)Does the Americans sometimes omit the “d” sound from pronunciation as in “understand” and such.
2)I often find difficulty in speaking out when linking “d” with “the” as in
“build the house” but I notice that the Americans don’t.
What can I do?

Undertaker, when I say "build the," I place my tongue as if to say a "d" but I don't release it before saying "the"; instead, I just move my tongue into the position for "th." This has a slightly different sound than just leaving out the "d." There's probably a proper term for this phenomenon, but I don't know it.

An undertaker is a funeral director in the U.S., too. It's not a common usage today, however—one encounters it mainly in old Hollywood Westerns, as it was commonly used a century ago. But people still understand it.

I believe the word is probably just the equivalent of "entrepreneur" in French, except that the French word is applied to anyone who undertakes tasks for money or works for himself; no connection to mortuary science is implied.

Getting back to the original post, yes, Americans do occasionally omit the "d" in "understand," (I've probably done it myself), but I don't think anybody does it with complete regularity.

"-nds" words, on the other hand, are reduced to /nz/ about 75% of the time in American speech. That's not a huge difference, though, since the shift between /n/ and /z/ almost produces a slight /d/ sound.