"Cant-idates"
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The "what we do" page for the CANTWINVICTORYFUND starts by explaining that they "Run Cant-idates to lose spectacularly in gerrymandered districts".
For most U.S. speakers, the linguistic phenomena of flapping and voicing means that "cant-idates" and "candidates" are pronounced pretty much the same way, unless the speaker is trying to make the distinction clear by glottalizing the word-final /t/, or maybe aspirating it.
Some relevant earlier posts:
"Raising and lowering those tighty whities", 3/20/2005
"Metal v. medal", 11/27/2013
"Phonology in the comics", 5/6/2016
"Geddadavit?", 12/24/2016
"Weak t", 4/6/2017
"Consonant lenition + r-less perception = FUN", 8/16/2020
"Political flapping and voicing of coronal stops", 5/29/2022
"Ron's Princibles", 8/22/2023
kmh said,
November 12, 2025 @ 8:24 am
In the Lonely Island movie Pop Star: Never Stop Never Stopping, Tim Meadows' character tells Andy Samberg's character that he has an idea, but "You are going to like it," with his intonation and articulation leading to confusion: https://youtu.be/51c9_gcqm7g?t=50
Daniel Barkalow said,
November 12, 2025 @ 11:21 am
I feel like I could convey the difference in syllable break using timing, and signal that it's contrastive using pitch, provided the word is stressed. On the other hand, I think "cant-didates" would be more distinctive, although still identical when not stressed.
Philip Taylor said,
November 12, 2025 @ 12:26 pm
« For most U.S. speakers, the linguistic phenomena of flapping and voicing means that "cant-idates" and "candidates" are pronounced pretty much the same way » — would the same be true for "can’t-idates" (which is, I assume, the meaning intended) and "candidates" ? For this native speaker of British English, the vowel of "can’t" (/ɑː/) is very different to the vowel of "cant" and the first vowel of "candidates" (/æ/).
J.W. Brewer said,
November 12, 2025 @ 1:24 pm
For some substantial number of US speakers, including me, the first orthographic "d" in "candidate" is silent in ordinary casual speech, resulting in what wiktionary calls the "colloquial" pronunciation /ˈkæn.ɪ.dɪt/. Not sure that this blocks the "can't" variant, but it would make uttering it more self-conscious since it somehow feels like the changed letter that changes the meaning shouldn't be silent.
Philip Taylor: "cant" and "can't" have the same vowel for most AmEng speakers (because of the TRAP/BATH merger), as does "candid," so w/o the IPA glyphs we can't even follow the distinction you're trying to draw without knowing about British pronunciation.
Philip Taylor said,
November 12, 2025 @ 1:27 pm
Well, yes — that is exactly why I included the IPA glyphs, so I'm not really sure what point you are seeking to make …
Jay Sekora said,
November 12, 2025 @ 1:58 pm
I definitely flap /t/ and /d/ between two vowels if the second one is unstressed, but I‘m pretty sure I never do after /n/. So for me "candidate" and "can'tidate" is a minimal pair, as is "condescending" and "Kant ascending" (given that I use /ə/ in the second syllable of both). A couple other examples where I definitely pronounce /t/ instead of / ɾ/ are "interface" and "counter". (Interestingly, I do sometimes completely drop the /t/ in "international", although not always. Not sure what the distinction is there, might be that the preceding syllable is also unstressed, or it might just be the frequency of the "inter-" prefix.)
Bob Ladd said,
November 12, 2025 @ 5:29 pm
@Philip Taylor: I think J W Brewer's point was precisely that, because of the TRAP/BATH merger, it would never have occurred to most North American speakers that the difference between spelling it "cant" and spelling it "can't" could possibly make any difference here.
Bob Ladd said,
November 12, 2025 @ 5:40 pm
Also, I agree with Jay Sekora that /-Vntə-/ and /-Vndə-/ don't normally become homophonous in AmEng. SOMETHING kind of flap-like may be happening with the underlying /t/ (in e.g. winter, where I have a nasalized vowel followed by a flap), but the underlying /d/ (in e.g. windy, blender, landed) basically never becomes a flap.
HTI said,
November 12, 2025 @ 5:50 pm
TRAP and BATH were split, not merged.
Michael Watts said,
November 13, 2025 @ 11:03 am
I pointed this out on the post https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=25582 ; there's further discussion there.
Michèle Sharik Pituley said,
November 13, 2025 @ 6:10 pm
> TRAP and BATH were split, not merged.
Doesn’t merge mean they now have the same vowel sound & split mean they used to but don’t now? If so, then it’s a merge.
HTI said,
November 13, 2025 @ 9:18 pm
EModE /æ/ split into TRAP and BATH, and BATH merged with PALM. So you’re correct that it involves a merger, but the merger is the BATH–PALM merger, not the *TRAP–BATH merger as other commenters seem to have invented.
The merger allows the split to result in no new phonemes, i.e. ultimately a certain lexical subset moved from one phoneme to another (/æ/ to /ɑː/).
More briefly: the American (and several other dialects’) TRAP ⊃ BATH is conservative, not innovative.
Jarek Weckwerth said,
November 15, 2025 @ 8:17 am
@Michèle Sharik Pituley Doesn’t merge mean they now have the same vowel sound & split mean they used to but don’t now? If so, then it’s a merge. — No, split and merge are historical concepts. If the earlier state had no distinction, and the newer state has one, then it's a split, and that is the situation here.
Similarly, in the North of England (and parts of Ireland), there has been no FOOT-STRUT split, and the older configuration of FOOT=STRUT is preserved.
BATH=PALM is an example of a merger, but a slightly untypical one because both of the categories (TRAP and PALM) had existed before. A better example is the collapse of /e/ and /ɛ/ into one vowel, resulting in meet=meat. One of the categories is totally gone.