According to BBC and Merriam-Webster, sixth can be pronounced as sikst-th. But how? It seems quite impossible to me to pronounce k, s, t, th, 4 consonants in a sequence.
Asked
Active
Viewed 101 times
-4
-
1Just imagine saying "six Thors" and stop before "o". – dubious Feb 16 '23 at 10:46
-
See also what English word has the most consecutive consonants?, which is about orthography (writing), but lots of the examples also have lots of consonant phonemes together. – Stuart F Feb 16 '23 at 12:19
-
1I'm curious what kind of answer you are expecting - a video or sound recording? a detailed anatomical description of how to move your mouth? comparison with other English words or other languages? a declaration that it is in fact possible or impossible? – Stuart F Feb 16 '23 at 12:22
-
The discussion is at https://english.stackexchange.com/a/144952/15299 – John Lawler Feb 16 '23 at 18:09
1 Answers
0
Don't think of the 's' and 't' as separate letters, they are the digraph 'st' which means that you have three sounds to articulate, not four. In fact, although it's not a standard trigraph like 'str' or 'phr', you could treat 'kst' as a trigraph so you only have two sounds.
I find the idea of two successive 't' sounds both awkward and odd myself, even as parts of a trigraph and a digraph, and I don't recognise the described punctuation but I can make the "trigraph and digraph" approach work.
BoldBen
- 17,171