But you certainly can say “let’s” and not just “le’'s” right? We don’t have it word-initial in a standalone context, but it exists. Certainly, it should be pronounced then, right?
No because in careful speech for example “let’s” is pronounced as “l-e-t-s” while in languages that do have the “c” sound, even with careful, slow pronounciation its “l-e-c”. English, like every language, has rules about clusters and its basically a rule that “s” always has to be farther away from the syllable nucleus(the vowel basically) than the stop(t in this case). This results in “step” being valid but “tsep” not being valid. Theres also the extra layer of brits being more european so they often pronounce it as “cunami” while americans pronounce it as “sunami” from what i gather. Also another thing is that english doesnt have any base words that distinguish the “c” sound, theyre always loanwords and you can pronounce them as “s”
But you certainly can say “let’s” and not just “le’'s” right? We don’t have it word-initial in a standalone context, but it exists. Certainly, it should be pronounced then, right?
No because in careful speech for example “let’s” is pronounced as “l-e-t-s” while in languages that do have the “c” sound, even with careful, slow pronounciation its “l-e-c”. English, like every language, has rules about clusters and its basically a rule that “s” always has to be farther away from the syllable nucleus(the vowel basically) than the stop(t in this case). This results in “step” being valid but “tsep” not being valid. Theres also the extra layer of brits being more european so they often pronounce it as “cunami” while americans pronounce it as “sunami” from what i gather. Also another thing is that english doesnt have any base words that distinguish the “c” sound, theyre always loanwords and you can pronounce them as “s”