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[–] 23 points 2 years ago (1 child)

"That that" spoken are two different sounding words so it makes sense. When it goes from verbal to written and I see it, I will almost always try to rephrase things to avoid that combo. It just jumps out as totally wrong.

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  • [–] 13 points 2 years ago (3 children)

    are they? I just said "I didn't know that that was how it is" out loud and both thats sound the same

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  • [–] 15 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    The A is slightly more emphasized in the second that. It's subtle

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  • [–] 3 points 2 years ago (1 child)
  • [–] 4 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    Could be. So you say them exactly the same and not an inflection shift?

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  • [–] 0 points 2 years ago (1 child)
  • [–] 7 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    Because you generally put more emphasis on the subject in English

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  • [–] 3 points 2 years ago

    In fluent speech, the conjunction (the first "that") is unstressed, and as a result some speakers reduce the vowel a bit toward schwa. However, if you told those speakers to carefully pronounce each word, I bet they would pronounce the conjunction and the pronoun the exact same same. A more common example of this kind of reduction is the word "to", which is almost always reduced to /tə/ ([tə] ~ [tʊ] ~ [ɾə] depending on dialect and surrounding words) in everyday speech when unstressed.

    Fun fact, you can reduce just about every unstressed vowel in English to schwa (if it's not already a schwa) and still be largely understood.

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