UniLang

The words "unaimed" and "unnamed" sound different to me. "Unnamed" seems to have a longer "N" sound.

I'm wondering if there are any other words that have such a distinction (to clarify, Englishwords where when a consonant is doubled, the pronunciation of that consonant is actually lengthened like in unnamed".

For the record, I'm a native English speaker.

Nechayev wrote:The words "unaimed" and "unnamed" sound different to me. "Unnamed" seems to have a longer "N" sound.

I'm wondering if there are any other words that have such a distinction (to clarify, Englishwords where when a consonant is doubled, the pronunciation of that consonant is actually lengthened like in unnamed".

For the record, I'm a native English speaker.

Yes, "unaimed" is [ʌnemd] and "unnamed" is [ʌnːemd] for me. There are other pairs like this, too.

It's almost the same in my speech...

It is almost the same, but do you generally notice the distinction? (If someone spoke one of the words to you, would you be able to tell which one it was?)

Also, does anyone else have examples of pairs like this? Preferrably with a consonant other than "n".

Nechayev wrote:It is almost the same, but do you generally notice the distinction? (If someone spoke one of the words to you, would you be able to tell which one it was?)

Also, does anyone else have examples of pairs like this? Preferrably with a consonant other than "n".

Here's a kind of contrived example, but the [s] is longer in the "Jess sand" example.

"When did Harry and Jess sand the boat?" [dʒɛsː]
"It's Harry, Jess and the boat." [dʒɛs]

Or here's one with /m/:

"Blame Mike" [blemːaɪk]
"Blame Ike" [blem aɪk]

The difference is subtle but there.

You have the right idea, but I'm looking for one word (or a pair of words for comparison) that distinctly has such a consonant lengthening.

They sound different to me when I say them.

syllables in "unaimed" are like un-aimed while syllables in "unnamed" are like "un-named"

That seems about right, Daniel -- thanks.

Though it seems that it is quite rare that such consonant lengthening provides a distinction, as there are no words that are like "head-ress" or "book-ase".

I think you've found what I was looking for, though.

Nechayev wrote:That seems about right, Daniel -- thanks.

Though it seems that it is quite rare that such consonant lengthening provides a distinction, as there are no words that are like "head-ress" or "book-ase".

I think you've found what I was looking for, though.

Actually I was just reading about the Cape Breton dialects, and that many Cape Bretons leave out the stress between words in the case of a "double sound", if you will...when crossing word boundaries, they drop one of the sounds. And they often do it in compound words as well.