(urth) Wolfe's brilliance or my denseness?

[Jerry Friedman]

> From: Lee Berman <severiansola at hotmail.com>

> >Jeff Wilson- How do we know Casdoe is a Kazz, then? I thought it was  
>Kass-Dough.
> 
> Well, regional and individual dialects differ. But "Z" is  the voiced analog of 
>the
> unvoiced "S" sound. "D" is voiced.
> 
> It is a  general linguistic rule in AmE (thanks to Antonio for that 
>abbreviation) that 
>
> an "S" placed mid-word will be voiced if the next consonent is voiced and  
>unvoiced if the
> next consonent is unvoiced.

The only pronunciation of "disdain" at the on-line Merriam-Webster and American 
Heritage dictionaries is with an /s/, though.
 
> "T" is an unvoiced  consonent.  "M" is a voiced consonent. So the word 
>"plastic" is pronounced 
>
> "plas-tik" while the word "plasma"is prounounced "plaz-ma".
> 
> 
> Speech really is different than spelling in many cases. Jeff, I don't know  
>about you, but when
> I try to say your "Kass-dough" out loud my tongue trips  and  stumbles in the 
>middle. 
>

I'll bet you have no trouble saying "smoke" or "Cass does" with an /s/.

My intuition for "Casdoe" is a /z/, though, like yours.  I doubt it matters.

> Voiced "Kazz-dough" comes out smooth.  So does unvoiced Casto as "Kass-toe". 
>But switching from 
>
> unvoiced to voiced  in mid-word is awkward for most AmE speakers. Thus the "S" 
>- "Z" phonemic rule.

Jerry Friedman doesn't think it's a rule but mostly agrees.