Ship or Chip? Untangling S and SH
Dutch treats S and SH as closer cousins than English does — a small tongue shift keeps 'ship' from drifting toward 'chip' or 'sip.'
Research on how Dutch and English listeners perceive fricative sounds found something interesting: Dutch listeners rate 's' and 'sh' as more similar to each other than American English listeners do. That perceptual closeness in your native language can make the two sounds harder to keep distinctly separate in English production too, especially since Dutch doesn't lean on this contrast as heavily. In English, though, 'ship' and 'sip' rely entirely on this difference. For 's,' the tongue tip sits close behind the top teeth; for 'sh,' the tongue pulls back slightly and the lips round a little more. Try this: say 'sip,' 'ship,' 'sip,' 'ship' slowly, exaggerating the lip rounding only on 'ship.' Watch yourself in a mirror if you can — the lip shape difference is very visible. Small tongue and lip adjustments, big clarity gain.
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Sources (1)
- Perception of Fricatives by Dutch and English Speakers — Keith Johnson, Molly Babel, 2007
- Dutch listeners rated [s] and [ʃ] as more similar to each other than American English listeners did, due to Dutch phonological alternation involving these sounds.
- Dutch listeners perceived [t] and [s], or [t] and [ʃ], as more similar because [t] is absent from the native Dutch inventory.
- Reaction times in a speeded discrimination task were highly correlated with perceptual ratings, indicating that general auditory similarity drives perception while language-specific effects are superimposed.