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RichardKennaway comments on Open thread, July 28 - August 3, 2014 - Less Wrong Discussion
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Upthrust. Backstop. Blackstrap (4 in a row!) Axminster (twice, -ksm- and -nst-). Schatzkammer. Opschrijven . All of these violate this proposed rule. Not to mention things like xłp̓x̣ʷłtłpłłskʷc̓, in a language that stretches the very idea of a syllable.
That should be "consistently pronounced." However the native speakers consistently pronounce something is right.
The concept of a consonant has fuzzy edges -- see polymathwannabe's comment. Why is this a problem?
If the data persistently fail to conform to rules abstracted from the data, it is the rules that are wrong.
After reading some of these comments, there are more exceptions than that, and I wrote it confusingly. So how about this: you cannot have more than one consonant at the same side of a syllable without extenuating circumstances. Having two of them have the same place of articulation (like the s and t in backstop), is a common one. s and z seem to only be possible to place after consonants that are voiced and unvoiced respectively. Neither can be placed after a ʒ (the second half of a j sound).
The pronounce it in a way that violates the theory of what can and cannot be pronounced in Japanese. As far as I can understand, the Japanese alphabet has one character for each syllable. Each syllable has one consonant, then one or more vowels, then possibly an n. There is no syllable "sem".
I don't know if they always pronounce it "sempai". I know it is at least sometimes written "senpai". I just meant that it's very common to pronounce that way, even though it shouldn't be possible at all. If they have gratuitous English that has a syllable ending in a consonant, they stick a vowel after it. For example, "red" becomes "redo" (and the d is particularly t-like, and the r is something that has no English equivalent).
Then the theory is wrong. Whatever is pronounced in Japanese can be.
In Japanese, "n" regularly sounds as "m" before "p". It's a rule!
1) The clusters in "upthrust" and "backstop" actually have three consonantal sounds, even if some of those sounds are written as digraphs. This debate is going to be very difficult if we're stuck to English or any language whose spelling makes little sense, if at all. Ghoti and all that.
2) Those clusters aren't in a single syllable. Up-thrust. Back-stop. Black-strap. Schatz-kam-mer. Op-schrij-ven. Apart from the exotic example you cite (and that time a Muppet tried to pronounce the entire alphabet as a single word), I haven't seen more than three consonants in a single syllable.
Yes. I wasn't intending them as examples of more than three, but of counterexamples to the rules that DanielLC proposed.
The original comment didn't talk about syllables.
"Firsts." On the other hand, a phoneticist might analyse the "ts" part as a single sound; except that on the phonetic level it appears to be two phonemes. So is (the sound represented in English spelling by) "ts" one consonant or two? Is the answer different for "tsetse" and for "firsts"? For "Katz" and for "cats"?
Linguistic categories are complicated.
My comment was confusingly written. If it's a single syllable, then you can only have one consonant without extenuating circumstances.