Why Are Some Words Homophones? Alveolar Flapping!
Some words are homophones in American English but not in British English. Why? Because Americans do something called “alveolar flapping.”
Neal Whitman, Writing for
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Why Are Some Words Homophones? Alveolar Flapping!
A couple of months ago, I answered a listener’s question about how to remember the meanings of the adjectives hearty, spelled H-E-A-R-T-Y and hardy, spelled H-A-R-D-Y. I said that the words were confusing because their meanings overlapped somewhat, and this is true, but there’s another reason for the difficulty in keeping these words straight: They’re homophones!
Some Words Are Homophones in American English but Not British English
At least, they’re homophones in American English. In British English, though, they’re not; they’re pronounced [hɑrti] and [hɑrdi]. Actually, they’re not pronounced that way, either; they’re pronounced in any one of the many accents of British English, which I won’t embarrass myself by trying to imitate. The point is, the T in [hɑrti] sounds like a T, and the D in [hɑrdi] sounds like a D.
In fact, there are many pairs of words that are homophones in American English because we pronounce a T in one of them like a D. For example, there’s ladder the device that you climb, and latter as opposed to former. There’s riding as in horseback riding, and writing as in Quick and Dirty Tips for Better Writing. (If you’re listening to this podcast for tips on equitation, sorry; this isn’t the podcast for you.) There’s Bode as in Bode Miller, and Boaty as in Boaty McBoatface. This phenomenon is also what lets us make a rhyme when we say Work smarter, not harder.
How Alveolar Flapping Makes Some Words Homophones
So why do we do this in American English, and how long have we been doing it? First, we need a word for what to call this pronunciation quirk. The linguistic term for it is alveolar tapping or alveolar flapping. The word alveolar refers to the alveolar ridges in your mouth. What are those? I’m glad you asked. The alveolar ridges are the bony, gum-covered ridges behind your front teeth. You have an upper one and a lower one, but when phoneticians talk about an alveolar ridge, they’re almost always talking about the upper one, because that’s where you put the tip of your tongue to make so-called alveolar consonants. T and D are alveolar consonants; so are N and a few others. Go ahead and make a T, D, or N sound right now, and you’ll feel your tongue-tip on your alveolar ridge.
An alveolar tap or flap is made by putting that tongue tip on the alveolar ridge so quickly that it doesn’t really stop the airflow the way a true T does. Some phoneticians have argued that there’s a difference between tapping and flapping, which I won’t try to describe here. These days, the opinion seems to be that whatever difference there is isn’t important, so tap and flap are often used as synonyms. I’ll use the word flap, since it seems to be somewhat more popular.
You’re Most Likely to Flap a Consonant Between Two Vowels
Why do American English speakers sometimes use alveolar flaps for T’s? We can get a partial answer by noticing exactly when we do it. The most common situation for T to turn into an alveolar flap is when it’s between two vowels, the first one stressed and the second one unstressed. This is exactly what happens in latter, writing, and Boaty.
That doesn’t cover quite everything, though. Notice that the consonant R can follow the first vowel, as in hearty. Also, the first vowel isn’t always stressed. Sometimes both vowels are unstressed. This happens in words such as rickety, where the second and third syllables are unstressed, and the T between them gets flapped. Flapping doesn’t happen when the second syllable is stressed, as you can hear in words like attach, where the T at the beginning of the second syllable sounds like a T. But even this rule has exceptions. For example, in the phrase look it up, the pronoun it is unstressed and the preposition up is stressed, and American English speakers still flap the T in it. In fact, phonologists are still trying to pin down exactly when flapping does and doesn’t occur, but it’s safe to say that by and large, it happens between vowels.
The first known complaint about Americans flapping was published in 1919.
This means that flapping is a kind of assimilation—a change that makes one sound more like a neighboring sound. When you pronounce a true T, you momentarily shut off your voice by completely closing your vocal folds. When you say vowels, though, you’re using your voice. So when a T comes between vowels, the voice has to stop for the T and then start again after it. On the other hand, flapping a T between vowels allows the voicing of the vowels to continue uninterrupted all the way through, so it’s a labor-saving change.
Now if you’re saying, “Well, that’s true enough, but it doesn’t explain why only speakers of American English do it,” you’re exactly right. In fact, this question can be asked about any sound change in any language, that spreads only through a certain speaker community in that language. It’s one of the main questions in historical linguistics and sociolinguistics, so that’s where we’ll leave it for now.
When Did Americans Start Flapping?
What about the question of when American English speakers began flapping their T’s? This goes back to December 16, 1773, when American colonists in Boston were protesting the English T-tax. They voiced their disapproval by voicing the T.
OK, just kidding. The change seems to have happened more than a century later than that. The following summary comes from a thorough review of the research on alveolar flapping by Kenneth De Jong, published in 2011, which I’ll put in the transcript. The earliest source he cites is a book titled The Pronunciation of Standard English in America, by George Philip Krapp, published in 1919. In it, Krapp wrote that “in relaxed and slovenly speech, … a voiceless [t] in voiced surrounding becomes voiced…. (p. 100)” Krapp gave several examples, and noted that rated, spelled R-A-T-E-D, is hard to distinguish from raided, spelled R-A-I-D-E-D. He didn’t go so far as to call them homophones, though. De Jong notes that this was a question that troubled phonologists in the 1930s: When you voice a T, doesn’t that just turn it into a D? And in that case, how do speakers hear the difference between words like rated and raided, latter and ladder?
In researching this question, phoneticians discovered that the T’s weren’t actually turning into D’s; they were turning into what we now call alveolar flaps. So did that mean latter and ladder weren’t homophones after all, and that there was some subtle cue that distinguished them if you listened carefully? Well, no, because they eventually came to a startling realization: D’s were turning into alveolar flaps, too! Listen, I’ll pronounce all three sounds for you. For a T, I’ll carefully pronounce the word latter [lætɚ], as in the former and the latter. For a D, I’ll carefully pronounce the word ladder [lædɚ], the thing that you climb on. And now, for the alveolar flap, I’ll pronounce it [læɾɚ]. Did you hear the difference between the true D and the flap? If not, you’re not alone. It took phoneticians more than a decade to realize there was a difference.
In the early 1940s, a researcher named Victor Oswald did an experiment and found that, for example, if you carefully pronounce the T in latter [lætɚ], listeners who are writing down what you say will probably spell it L-A-T-T-E-R, but if you carefully pronounce the D in ladder [lædɚ], some listeners will spell it L-A-D-D-E-R and some will still spell it L-A-T-T-E-R. They can’t tell whether they’re hearing a true D, or an alveolar flap that could be either a D or a T. Even now, according to De Jong, trained transcribers don’t always agree on whether they’re hearing a D or a flap.
Even trained transcribers often can’t tell whether they’re hearing a D or a flap.
An inconvenience for American English speakers of flapping our T’s and D’s is that it creates so many homophones, which can cause confusion. There is a benefit, though, if you’re trying to learn a language such as Spanish or Italian, because they also use alveolar flaps. The difference is that Spanish and Italian speakers treat the flap as an R sound! So if you’ve ever had trouble pronouncing a Spanish or Italian R, take heart, because you’ve probably been pronouncing this sound for years, and just thinking of it as a D.
I’ll close with a sentence that will force me to say as many alveolar flaps in a row as possible. When Neal sent me this script, it was so perfect that I was amazed how well [hiɾɛɾɪɾəɾɪt] (he’d edited it).
Kenneth de Jong (2011) “Flapping in American English,” The Blackwell Companion to Phonology, Vol. V; edited by Marc van Oostendorp, Colin J. Ewen, Elizabeth Hume, and Keren Rice. pp. 2711-2729.
That segment was written by Neal Whitman, an independent researcher and writer on language and grammar. He blogs at literalminded.wordpress.com, and tweets @LiteralMinded.
Image courtesy of Shutterstock.