Linguist Forum
Specializations => Phonetics and Phonology => Topic started by: zoltankr on July 21, 2015, 05:29:22 AM
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Hello, as far as I know in casual connected speech the pronoun "he" is usually reduced to /i/. The question "Is he here?" will probably sound like: /ɪzi ˈhɪər?/
My question is this: If I drop the "h" in the question "What's he like?" do native speakers will still understand it?
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Understand? Sure, assuming the rest of the pronunciation is relatively clear.
It is possible to produce "what's he like" and "what see like" with the same pronunciation, but they might also differ.
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Thanks for your answer. I tried to pronounce it below.
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It might be confused with "What's it like" and h-deletion facilitates that confusion, but the high vowel is the main contributor. If a native speaker were to h-delete, I doubt there would be any confusion, but with non-native speakers, we adjust our perceptual filters and contemplate possibilities that we wouldn't otherwise entertain (deletion of coda t before l). If you ran an experiment on speakers and gave them a choice he/it, I suspect most people would vote for "he". You could try "what see" vs. "what's he" but it doesn't sound like "what see" to me.
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Your recording sounds fine. I imagine that someone listening to you would get used to your pronunciation.
Certainly it will be clearer (for a native or non-native speaker) without deleting any sounds, but it might not sound very natural in casual speech.
In terms of the recording, the two problems I hear are:
1. Intonation.
2. The vowel in like.
But it's perfectly understandable. Just non-native.
Also, my ears are expecting American English. You might have British English as a target, which would be a little different. Either way, I understand it. I wouldn't worry so much about these little details. Just have conversations until it becomes natural.
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I agree that the recording is perfectly good English pronunciation, although it is clearly not my dialect of English. The h-deletion process is very common in unstressed contexts in American English. In more casual speech, you'll also hear roughly "wussylike", because the [ts] cluster can feed assibilation (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assibilation).
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Thank you. I finished reading two books on accent reduction: "Mastering the American Accent" by Lisa Mojsin and "The American Accent Guide" by Beverly Lujan. I've been working hard to improve, but I need to practice more. One thing is theory and the other is putting it into practice ;) I tried to stress the content words: 'What' and 'like'. Thank you again. Your feedback is greatly appreciated.