Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Henry Churchyard" <churchh AT usa.net>]

Pointing out junctural phenomena in English might be a useful first
step to make English-speakers aware of Italian double consonants when
teaching them in person -- but if used as an example over an e-mail
list, it's more likely to lead to confusion between people of varying
degrees of phonetic sophistication who have in mind different speech
styles, speech rates, dialects, etc. (since the different perceptions
and semi-naive intuitions which you mentioned in your own posting
can't be reconciled by appeal to actual spoken utterances).  The
example of languages which have a word-internal phonemic consonant
length contrast is conceptually much clearer for this purpose.

--
Henry Churchyard   churchh AT usa.net   http://www.crossmyt.com/hc/