xkcd #2942: Fluid Speech

https://xkcd.com/2942

explainxkcd.com for #2942

Alt text:

Thank you to linguist Gretchen McCulloch for teaching me about phonetic assimilation, and for teaching me that if you stand around in public reading texts from a linguist and murmuring example phrases to yourself, people will eventually ask if you’re okay.

  • megane-kunEnglish
    36•6 months ago

    I didn’t get it until I started trying to say “hot potato” in the middle of a sentence, like “Look out! Hot potato incoming!”

    The ‘t’ in “hot” became more and more like a glottal stop as my tongue started to touch the gums of my top front teeth less and less.

    • @[email protected]English
      9•6 months ago

      Still, I don’t think I could uncover that alien impersonator.

      “I’m goa have some hot potato.”

      Too me the “t” (at most) emphasises the hotness. Am I wrong?

      • megane-kunEnglish
        2•6 months ago

        The alien impersonator was me all along!‌ HAHAHA!!!

        I mean, seriously, I am not a native English speaker, but even with my weird English accent, it only became weirder if I try to speak fast while keeping the emphasis on that ‘t’ at the end of “hot”. My native accent also probably lends to that glottal stop taking over the ‘t’ and merging it with the upcoming ‘p’ sound. It also helps that the two sounds (glottal stop and the bilabial ‘p’) are on opposite sides of my mouth, so I‌ can quickly sound them in succession. The end result sounded to me like an exaggerated “posh British” rendition, as if the alien watched way too much‌ BBC before invading Earth.

        It just sounded way weirder than I otherwise would be. I can’t really describe it.

      • @ChexMaxEnglish
        0•6 months ago

        Are you the alien? Nobody calls a potato for eating hot potato… If you’re eating a potato it’s going to be hot. Hot potato is referring to the game where you pass something along very quickly. It’s saying you’re all passing something along that no one wants to get caught with or stuck with, and it’s almost never literally, it’s usually taking about a responsibility being passed or something like that.