According to BBC and Merriam-Webster, sixth can be pronounced as sikst-th. But how? It seems quite impossible to me to pronounce k, s, t, th, 4 consonants in a sequence.
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1Just imagine saying "six Thors" and stop before "o".– dubiousCommented Feb 16, 2023 at 10:46
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See also what English word has the most consecutive consonants?, which is about orthography (writing), but lots of the examples also have lots of consonant phonemes together.– Stuart FCommented Feb 16, 2023 at 12:19
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1I'm curious what kind of answer you are expecting - a video or sound recording? a detailed anatomical description of how to move your mouth? comparison with other English words or other languages? a declaration that it is in fact possible or impossible?– Stuart FCommented Feb 16, 2023 at 12:22
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The discussion is at english.stackexchange.com/a/144952/15299– John LawlerCommented Feb 16, 2023 at 18:09
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1 Answer
Don't think of the 's' and 't' as separate letters, they are the digraph 'st' which means that you have three sounds to articulate, not four. In fact, although it's not a standard trigraph like 'str' or 'phr', you could treat 'kst' as a trigraph so you only have two sounds.
I find the idea of two successive 't' sounds both awkward and odd myself, even as parts of a trigraph and a digraph, and I don't recognise the described punctuation but I can make the "trigraph and digraph" approach work.
