![]() This situation is familiar because it is even more pronounced in English. Two or three successive letters may represent a single phoneme, as inĬonversely, a single written consonant may serve to indicate more than one phoneme, as in A firm grasp of the relationship between spelling and pronunciation is naturally also essential. ![]() The subject of German consonant clusters is best dealt with in terms of phonetic, not orthographic consonants. The material is likely to be familiar to many readers, albeit presented in a different, perhaps more systematic perspective than is normally encountered. The consonant clusters normally encountered in German phonology will be inventoried and contrasted with English. The remaining clusters of consonants are samples of the subject of this article. ![]() These words contain ten and fourteen phonemes respectively, of which only two or three are vowels. A language that can produce lexical items such as entsturzt and kraftstrotzend adopts a strongly marked position among the world's languages with respect to the involvement of consonants in its sound system. Statistical studies show that the burden of text intelligibility is carried principally by the consonants, to a greater extent than most languages. The reputation of the German language as being consonant rather than vowel oriented is commonly appreciated and justifiable. THE VOICE TEACHER IS REGULARLY BESET WITH CHALLENGES in the studio regarding consonant clusters in sung German, as is the singer who approaches any vocal work in the German language. It's always worth clicking to check (and no. the cluster /stθ/ is liable to be simplified by elision of the /t/ : /ðə bes θɪŋ/Ĭelce-Murcia et al, Teaching Pronunciation, Cambridgeĭon't forget that Amazon often has both new and used copies of the books you want at prices much cheaper than those shown in their links. ![]() This will also occur across word boundaries- eg in the best thing. In connected speech, consonant clusters are frequently simplified even by native speakers to make them easier to pronounce - for example, fifths will often be pronounced /fɪθs/ rather than /fɪfθs/, eliding the /f/ to reduce the number of consonants to be pronounced together. For example, the ends of the word long or with are not consonant clusters because, although written with two letters, they are pronounced with one consonant sound only : /lɒŋ/ and /wɪð/. Notice that we are talking here about consonant sounds - not letters of the alphabet. This may cause problems for learners whose L1 does not permit such long clusters - eg Spanish speakers.ĭifferent languages permit different consonant clusters - eg in Polish the cluster /bzd/ exists whereas it does not in English For example, the word sprite /spraɪt/ contains the syllable initial consonant cluster /spr/ while the word ranks /ræŋks/ has the syllable final cluster /ŋks/ the words fifth spring contain the cluster / fθspr/.Įnglish permits up to three consecutive consonants in initial position in a syllable (as in sprite above) and up to four in syllable final position - eg glimpsed /glɪmpst/. A consonant cluster is a series of two or more consonants occurring at the beginning or end of a syllable, or between them.
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