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DanielLC comments on Open thread, July 28 - August 3, 2014 - Less Wrong Discussion
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You can have multiple consonants in a row on the same part of a syllable, but it's restricted.
Most of them seem to have the same place of articulation. For example, n and t are alveolar. m and p are bilabial. Thus, ant and amp are allowed, but anp and amt are not.
s and z don't seem to have to follow alveolar consonants, but s, which is voiced, must follow a voiced consonant, and z, which is unvoiced, must follow a voiced consonant. I also can't help but suspect this has to do with the fact that in English, you make words plural by adding an s or z at the end. There might be a vowel placed before it, like in bridges, but it might have caused us to get better at sticking those letters directly after consonants. Can someone who speaks a language that doesn't do that comment on this?
It's hard to stick a bunch of consonants together, so you're only allowed to if there's extenuating circumstances. By contrast, vowels are easy. r is easy, so it's a vowel.
"Amt" is a word in German. It is pronounced exactly as it looks, plus a glottal stop at the start.
Where are you getting these rules?
Surprising. It's not that hard to say "amt", but it's not any easier than just "mt". The syllable has a vowel in it, but
I don't know if that's just an odd word, or if Germany has different rules. For all I know, they frequently have syllables without vowels. I would expect them to follow the same rules, since English is a Germanic language, but I guess getting rid of almost all of their words would lead to getting rid of almost all of their rules about what words are possible.
They're rules that I noticed English tends to follow, and the rules seem to make words easier to pronounce.
It only tends to follow them. Exceptions abound; that is not a problem for the exceptions, but for the rules. An exception is not something that fails to obey the rule, it is something the rule failed to explain.
I think that not all, but a lot of the causality is the other way around: whatever your native language does is easier for you.