#linguistsics

[chapmangamo]

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[bananabellina]

so there's this joke on Community

that REALLY bothers me. in reference to email, Shirley says "I mark you as spam." Pierce replies, "who's Pam?" on the surface the joke makes sense. because the -s at the end of "as" and the s- at the beginning of "spam" blend together, it could sound like "as Pam". but it doesn't. Shirley pronounces "as" as /æz/ (like most Americans), and "spam" is pronounced as /spæm/. so to start off, the -s in "as" can't blend with the s- in "spam" because they're two different sounds, [z] and [s]. secondly, the -p- in "spam" isn't aspirated, but the p- in Pam IS aspirated  making them sound very different to American English speakers.

EDIT: I know my phonetic notation is SUPEr wrong, but I don't really care