رضا: no I still don't get it

Lamby: This phonological process is called assimilation if it is any help :-)

رضا: Yes I understand what you mean now but I still don't think that it works on that example. It's two seperate words..ten cats..etc. therefore you pause between words so the 'n' stays the same.
Well it stays the same for me........

Lamby: So I win, huh? Assimilation is when a sound changes the pronunciation of another sound. It mostly changes just the place of articulation.

Ten birds is actually in rapid speech said : tem birds

That's because /n/ is a voiced, alveolar, nasal sound and /b/ is voiced, bilabial, nasal. When they come together, /n/ changes into /m/ which is voiced, bilabial, nasal.

As you can see, it is easier to pronounce /m/ and then /b/ than /n/ and then /b/.

Now see if you can get it about my other examples.

رضا: no, I still don't say 'tem boys' when I say ten birds fast!
Maybe I'm paying too much attention in pronouncing them correctly?

Lamby: I made a mistake about saying tem boys instead of ten birds! Just misplaced the words. In rapid speech, you may say tem birds, instead of ten birds.

رضا: And yes, many may not say tem birds if they are too careful about what they say. But you don't deny that you say DiJ you .... instead of DiD you .., do you?

رضا: dij you? hmmmmmmm no sorry I can honestly say that I say 'did you'

It's all very interesting....I think alot about the way I say things as I have a two year old child, who speaks very well, and is learning new words every day, so I am careful she learns it properly.

* I have to keep editing my posts as I'm typing too fast & making mistakes with my spelling lol

Lamby: Oh come on! It's not wrong to say Dij you.
You mean you clearly pronounce the last /d/ sound in did and the /Y/ sound in Yes?

رضا: yes really! If I was being lazy with my speech it would come out 'did ya' instead of 'did you'

Lamby: No. You're quite right. In many words such as 'incredulous' the American pronounciation differs from the British. They say that word /inkrejeles/ but you say it /incredyeles/. So you don't tend to mix differnt sounds together. But they do. I'm waiting for Walter to respond now!

Lamby: If you do, then I take it you don't say "That's whaCH you said." either. Or "ThiSH year, we're gonna visit Boston." ???

رضا: no I don't say those either! Im English not American & those examples you have given sound more like an American accent to me.......I could be wrong????

رضا:
Assimilation can and does occur, but I don't think ten birds is a very good example. I can hear the /n/ when I pronounce it. I agree that the other examples you mentioned sound more American than British. But I'm not entirely comfortable with generalizations such as "Americans say /inkrejeles/ and Brits say /inkredyeles/". Such patterns may hold in many cases, but certainly not in all. And some of these differences are subtle enough that they can easily vary from region to region, from person to person, and from occasion to occasion.

Blue-eyed should be hyphenated. A blue-eyed person is a person with blue eyes; a blue eyed person is a blue person with eyes. (I don't think I have ever seen blueeyed as one word without a hyphen, and it looks quite uncouth.) It's up to you to decide whether you want to count vowels across the hyphen, but the y should be counted as a vowel. But perhaps this is moot. You mentioned the word queue; its past participle can be spelled queuing or queueing.

It's not uncommon to have four consecutive consonantal sounds. Think of words like explain, exclaim, and extract. Or perhaps backstroke. Now that we're thinking about swimming we mustn't forget the breaststroke, which has a string of five consonants. I can get six if you let me use a two-word phrase such as next spring.

Correction: queueing is of course the present participle, not the past participle, of queue.

6 letter vowel word:
AIOUEA (a genus of plants of the laurel family)

Lamby:

Sequoia has all five vowels in a seven letter word.

Facetious has them in alphabetical order.

I'm told meaiou is an alternative spelling to meow, but I don't believe it.

As for consonants, hmm. How about syllables? I know a word with one syllable that has eight letters in it. It's a noun, so adding "s" will make it a nine letter word with one syllable.

That ten bird stuff further down sounds ridiculous. They're all pronounced the same. Ten is ten. A real tongue twister can make you talk funny.

The sixth sick sheikh's sixth sheep's sick.

Walter Montego:
I had to look up 'sequoia' a red wood tree.

Love the word 'facetious'!

Never heard of meaiou spelled like that?

Hmm I'll have to think of that one! :o)

LOL at your tongue twister!! Had to say that very very slowly!

Lamby: Sequoia is a common word in California. There's a few of forests with them. They are the largest living things on the earth. I've seen one that had a path around it and the first branch is 100 feet up and it's 6 feet in diameter. General Sherman Tree it's called. There's a few of them that have tunnels cut through them and you can drive a car through a tree. The coastal redwoods are the tallest trees in the world. Whole groves of them over 200 feet high. I think a few of them get over 300 feet. These trees aren't as big around as the sequoias in the Sierra Nevada mountains. It's amazing to see them. They're so huge. No tap root either. I've never figured out how the keep from tipping over. Some of them do get blown over in big storms though. I remember seeing them laying on the ground. I wouldn't want to be around there when one of those goes. It's a fast growing tree. I believe they're planted and harvested like other woods too. The big ones that I'm talking about can be over a 1000 years old.

Walter Montego: wow they really sound amazing! I love trees! Lungs of the Earth :o)

Lamby: http://www.sequoia.national-park.com/info.htm#tree

I suppose there's probably one for the coastal redwoods too. And since it's a National Park there will be an official web site.

And for this page the alternate spelling. Sequoyah