Discussion Groups / English Usage / February 2010

In my previus posting, I got very previous comment from
Jerry Friedman:
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In brief, most North Americans devoice final stops and fricatives.
We
can tell "rise" from "rice", "lathe" from "laith", and "sad" from
"sat" because we make the vowel last a little longer before the
"voiced" consonant (the first in each of those pairs).  At least some
of us, including me, also pronounce some vowels with the mouth more
open before a "voiced" consonant.
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This is very precious because I think I've never found books and
anything here
giving the knowledge.

So I picked up two instances which I suppose might fit devoiced
consonants
as said by Jerry Friedman.

http://www.lightstriking.com/test/12.wav   clothe
http://www.lightstriking.com/test/17.wav   scythe

1) clothe: the last consonant (th, or ð) could have been voiced, but
not heard. SO it must be devoiced.
2) scythe: The same thing could be said about this case.

What this indicates is that it's quite hard for non-natives to tell
apart,
becuase it must be done
only  by the subtle length of a vowal before the consonant.