Wolfe's brilliance or my denseness?

Lee Berman · 24 May 2011, 17:41 · from 2011-May.txt.gz

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From: severiansola at hotmail.com (Lee Berman)
Date: Tue, 24 May 2011 13:41:47 -0400
Subject: (urth) Wolfe's brilliance or my denseness?
Message-ID: <SNT123-W44D511ECCD8D0F91978D11CF750 at phx.gbl>

>Jeff Wilson- How do we know Casdoe is a Kazz, then? I thought it was Kass-Dough.

Well, regional and individual dialects differ. But "Z" is the voiced analog of the
unvoiced "S" sound. "D" is voiced.

It is a general linguistic rule in AmE (thanks to Antonio for that abbreviation) that 
an "S" placed mid-word will be voiced if the next consonent is voiced and unvoiced if the
next consonent is unvoiced.

"T" is an unvoiced consonent.  "M" is a voiced consonent. So the word "plastic" is pronounced 
"plas-tik" while the word "plasma"is prounounced "plaz-ma".

Speech really is different than spelling in many cases. Jeff, I don't know about you, but when
I try to say your "Kass-dough" out loud my tongue trips and  stumbles in the middle. 

Voiced "Kazz-dough" comes out smooth. So does unvoiced Casto as "Kass-toe". But switching from 
unvoiced to voiced in mid-word is awkward for most AmE speakers. Thus the "S" - "Z" phonemic rule.

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