Mysteries of Existence

Like other teachers of elementary phonetics to native English-speaking (NS) students, when teaching I would regularly set exercises in ‘doing transcription’. I would give the students a passage of English in ordinary spelling. Their task would be to convert it into phonetic transcription.

This is a valuable exercise for NSs as much as for non-native speakers (NNS). It familiarizes them with the phonetic symbols. It makes them conscious of the difference between spelling and pronunciation. It alerts them to the characteristics of connected speech as opposed to individual words in isolation.

Good students sail through this task. The weaker ones often find it remarkably difficult. I would frequently have to point out that write does not actually begin with a w-sound, nor looked end with a d-sound (still less a syllabic d̩). The first vowel in particular is not normally pronounced ɑː, and the second vowel in information is not ɔː. Orthography has a distressingly dazzling effect on the phonetically unsophisticated.

Setting and marking (AmE ‘grading’) transcription can also be valuable for the teacher. Early in my career I noticed some students transcribing exist as ɪkˈzɪst (and similarly with example, exhausted, exams, etc). Since the usual pronunciation is ɪɡˈzɪst, I was inclined to mark ɪɡˈzɪst as wrong. (Initial e- or ə- rather than ɪ- in this word is OK, of course, though you might have to check that that's what the student genuinely says, and is not just spelling-driven.)

However some students protested: they really do pronounce the word as ɪkˈzɪst. I checked it out, and they appeared to be correct. I came to realize that some speakers in the southeast of England, at least, have an unexpected dissimilation of voicing in these words. Their kz in exist seems to be different both from the ɡz of eggs or big zits and from the ks of exceed.

Their k in this word, being a fortis plosive, is also a candidate for glottal reinforcement: ɪkʔˈzɪst.

Convinced now of their reality, I decided to include these variants in LPD. But no other dictionary seems to recognize their ɪkˈzɪstəns.