''sense'' and ''cents''

I pronounce ''sense'' and ''cents'' the same way. Do any of ye do the same thing? I don't really see how you could manage to say ''sense'' without that intrusive /t/ sound.

I'm asking, because some dictionaries insist that they're not pronounced the same way.

the dictionary is wrong, they are pronounced the same. Just different contexts.

They're showing phonemic representations. On the phonetic level "sense" and "cents" are pronounced the same by many speakers (including me). Some make an argument that "sense" is still phonemically /t/-less because research on how people say it has sometimes shown that while people have a phonetic [t] there, it's not as prolonged as the one in "cents" or otherwise phonetically different. Whatever you think of it phonemically, it has a phonetic [t] for a lot of people. For me:

<cents> /sEnts/ --> [sEnts]
<sense> /sEns/ --> [sEnts]

Some people claim they pronounce them differently, as well as such words as "bends" and "Benz".

or wright and right
piece and peace

its endless. Is english the only language so stupid

<<Do any of ye do the same thing?>>

Albert,

Why do you keep using the archaic word ''ye''? I've looked through the threads and noticed that you've done it several times.

cause he is a knight or a night

Is Albert really using the classical "ye" (old-fashoned, nomintive case of you), or the modern informally-pronounced form sometimes written as "yeh", "ya", "ye", "yuh", etc?

English is indeed a language known of it's simplicity eg. genderless.but also notorious for using the same written words which can be used in multiple contexts and also the fact most of it's spelling is not based on a phonetic alphabet. (Though American English is making a step ahead and has made progress towards a more of a phonetic friendly spelling system.)

There was a recent programme about a German Company designing pototype robots which could recieve commands via speech. An German Engineer of the Company said that Pototype Robots have been made for the French, Spanish and German languages. Unfortunately with such mulitple contexts of words in the English Language they have not been successful having a pototype Robot who could understand English commands 100%.

I would say that English isn't the only language with this problem but when compared with the total of such words, English is indeed the leader.

For me, "cents" and "sense" are not homophones, being:

"cents" : /sents/ -> [sE~ts]
"sense" : /sens/ -> [sE~nts]

You have /e/ in ''cents'', Travis? Isn't /e/ the vowel in ''make''?

Whoops, I miswrote there. I meant:

"cents" : /sEnts/ -> [sE~ts]
"sense" : /sEns/ -> [sE~nts]

And yes, it is the vowel in "make" in my dialect, but I accidentally wrote the wrong vowel.

What do ye think about spelling this sentence this way? This is how Truespel spells it:

I think it makes sense that the candy costs fifty cents. I'll go thank them for not making the price any higher.

''Ie thheenk it maeks sents that thu kandee kausts fiftee sents. Ie'll goe thhaenk them fer naat maekeeng thu pries enee hieyer.''

http://www.truespel.com/en/

As you can see, truespel spells ''sense'' and ''cents'' the same way.

The problem with Truespel here is that it is not being purely phonemic in nature, in that it is including a purely epenthic consonant which does not actually correspond to any phoneme. And hence it does not distinguish cases where [t] actually corresponds to a phoneme (such as "cents" in my dialect) from cases where it does not (such as "sense" in my dialect).