XPost: alt.english.usage, alt.usage.english, nl.taal   
   From: Silvano@noncisonopernessuno.it   
      
   Kees van den Doel hat am 18.12.2025 um 07:25 geschrieben:   
   > In article <10htmc6$3arla$1@dont-email.me>, peter@pmoylan.org says...   
   >   
   >>> As a non-native speaker, can you hear, and make, the difference   
   >>> between ?We built this city on rock and roll? (not one of my favourite   
   >>> songs by the way; don?t know why) and the present tense variant ?We   
   >>> build this city ???   
   >   
   >> In that case, you have to listen to vowel length. The vowel in "built"   
   >> is short and sharp. The vowel in "build" lasts just a bit longer.   
   >   
   > Right on!   
   >   
   > It's like  in Italian, where  doubled consonants just  shorten preceding   
   > vowels.   
      
   May I question your knowledge of my mother tongue? The pronunciation of   
   double consonants in Italian is definitely longer than that of single   
   consonants, unlike e.g. in English, French and German. About long vowels   
   in Italian: they should be there, if double consonants could shorten   
   them, but a monolingual Italian dictionary explains long vowels to   
   Italians using the "native" Italian words meeting and csárdás.   
      
      
   > "I build this wormhole using  24 magnets and it will work" has a   
   > liaison between d and t but  "I built this wormhole using 23 magnets and   
   > it didn't work" differs in the stop on t.   
   >   
   > Of course  'd' is voiced and  't' not, which is  another difference, but   
   > the English 't'  is more aspirated than in  most civilized languages and   
   > the 'd' I'm  not sure about, as most English speakers  are drunk most of   
   > the time in my experience.   
      
   Now I see. You're trolling.   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)