Donkey and monkey

[benlizro@xxxxxxxxxx]

I've suddenly become aware that in my English "donkey" and "monkey"
seem to have a geminate /k/. At least, "donkey" is not an exact rhyme
with "honky" or "shonky", and "monkey" is not an exact rhyme with
"funky" or "flunky". And that's what the phonetic difference seems to
be.
Should I worry?

It reminds me of the fact I think I mentioned here a few years ago,
that I have geminate /t/ in "thirteen" and "fourteen". I doubt if the
two cases are related, except insofar as they show how phonemic
differences in the shape of common words can persist for years
unnoticed.

Of course geminates are common in English when two of the same
consonant come together at a morpheme boundary, as in "hot-tub" or
"sackcloth". But I don't see any such explanation for these cases. I
don't even have my pronouncing dictionaries here at the moment, so I
don't know whether these pronunciations are recognized variants.
Anybody know? 

Ross Clark