Week 6

One of our instructors, who is not a native English speaker, always insists that we have to release the plosive consonants (p, t, k, b, d, g) in English words, even in cases like ‘echidna’, where the plosive ‘d’ is followed by a nasal consonant. I have learnt before that plosives followed by a nasal are usually nasally released, but not orally, so I was in doubt of what she suggested. Few days ago, interestingly, another instructor, a native speaker of American English, commented that word-final plosives should be unreleased in English. But suddenly I was confused again, because I also recalled the fact that, Cantonese speakers often do not release word-final plosives because they are unreleased in Cantonese, but released in English. So who is right and who is wrong? So I turned to my linguistics professor in CUHK instead. She explained to me that English plosives in word-final position can be either released or unreleased. Spoken in isolation, they are often released, but in connected speech, they are more than often unreleased. I was satisfied, and once again amazed by the beauty of linguistics and language.