Description
In Hindi phal (with aspira- ted p, or p with a puff of air after it) is different in meaning from. pal, with unaspirated p. In English, on the contrary, it makes no difference whether you put aspirated or unaspirated p before -æl; you still get the word pal, although one version sounds more familiar than the other. English insult with the stress on the first syllable is a noun, but insult with the stress on the second is a verb. No such stress contrasts are possible in, for instance, Czech and Hungarian. Different languages have thus different contrasts between sounds. If two languages happen to make the same contrasts between a certain pair of sounds, it will be easier for speakers of one of the languages to learn that contrast in the other: for instance, both English and German have a contrast between n (the last sound in sin) and n (the last sound in sing).
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