Re: Donkey and monkey

[Harlan Messinger <hmessinger.removethis@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

benlizro@xxxxxxxxxx wrote:
> 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".

It occurred to me that I have a kind of a "catch" between syllables in 
"thirteen" and "fourteen" but I don't think I'm geminating them. Saying 
them while paying attention and hoping Heisenberg's uncertainty 
principle isn't coming into play, I do believe it's a glottal stop.

Doing the same thing with the way my internal aural memory presents 
"monkey" might be said with some English accent or others (I know you're 
from New Zealand but I don't have a ready supply of NZ corpus in my 
head) I feel a similar catch, but it's nasal. Is there such a thing as a 
nasalized glottal stop?

> 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.