Am in a bit of a quandary here so I would appreciate all the help I could get.
Are the end sounds in lunch/french the same as in rich/teach? My boss says it’s the same - ch. All the dictionaries that we’ve consulted indicate that they are indeed the same - ch. But to me they’re not! The end sound of words ending in nch all sound more like sh than ch sounds to me. Am I going mad?
Consider these: lunch, brunch, bunch, branch, clench,quench, wrench, french, bench against these: rich, arch, birch, church, beach, search, leech, approach, teach. Same spelling different sound in my humble opinion.
I believe its just you dear.
I think you are going mad, your words not mine 
They sound the same to me; maybe they sound different to you because most of the ones in the former category are preceded by “n”?
Where are you from? Maybe it’s part of a regional dialect or something…
I agree, they are all pronounced the same.
OK thanx point taken they’re the same. To The Count thanx for calling me dear , no one has done that for ages and a special thanx to creztor for the smiley. It made me feel less like a fool and nemesis you’re probably right just a regional difference(I’ll blame my mom for that) and now if you will excuse me I have to start looking for a place to bury my head in the sand.
At least my cats believe me.
[quote=“JoHo”]Am in a bit of a quandary here so I would appreciate all the help I could get.
Are the end sounds in lunch/french the same as in rich/teach? My boss says it’s the same - ch. All the dictionaries that we’ve consulted indicate that they are indeed the same - ch. But to me they’re not! The end sound of words ending in nch all sound more like sh than ch sounds to me. Am I going mad?
Consider these: lunch, brunch, bunch, branch, clench,quench, wrench, french, bench against these: rich, arch, birch, church, beach, search, leech, approach, teach. Same spelling different sound in my humble opinion.[/quote]
They’re the same sound in my experience: “ch”.
[quote=“JoHo”]OK thanx point taken they’re the same. To The Count thanx for calling me dear , no one has done that for ages and a special thanx to creztor for the smiley. It made me feel less like a fool and nemesis you’re probably right just a regional difference(I’ll blame my mom for that) and now if you will excuse me I have to start looking for a place to bury my head in the sand.
At least my cats believe me.[/quote]
Don’t worry about it; if there’s one thing I’ve learnt, it’s that the more you look at/say a word, the stranger it seems. When I think about how to spell words (or even say them), I make mistakes when I get carried away thinking about it… relax…
It’s almost Monday; go teaCH some students!
I see where you are finding the sound from, but I believe it is our consciousness making the differentiation as the two sounds are indeed differently pronounced yet sound the same. I have successfully argued that the letter ‘Y’ for example instead of being taught as commonly sounding like ‘Yu’ should be taught as most commonly sounding like ‘Ee’ and this works far better for all students which are learning the use of phonetics for spelling and reading. The same goes for ‘B’, ‘D’ ‘P’ not having a sound, but depending upon letters that follow such as 'Ba’loon and 'boo’k, 'di’g, 'pa’nic etc.
For practical purposes, I agree with those who say that it’s the same sound. However, from a technical, phonetic, standpoint, I believe sulavaca’s right.[quote=“sulavaca”]I see where you are finding the sound from, but I believe it is our consciousness making the differentiation as the two sounds are indeed differently pronounced yet sound the same.[/quote]Right. I think that due to the preceding sounds they end up being pronounced slightly differently but are perceived as the same phoneme. That’s why we perceive them as being the same – our brains are wired to process meaning-bearing phonemes, and tend to skip over smaller, phonetic, differences.
In fact, though we perceive words as being made up of a neat set of discrete sounds, they’re not really. When analyzed, neighboring sounds merge into and affect one another. Our brains perform a miracle in processing the jumble of sound.
I’ve tried pronouncing them with an /sh/ ending, and it is clearly different.
rich v. rish
I’m not sure that “ch” has different allophones in English. I know it does in German, but I’m don’t believe it is true in English.
If there are two allophones of /ch/ the second allophone will not be the equivalent of /sh/. /sh/ and /ch/ cannot be allophones of the same phoneme. Consider Witch and wish.
[quote=“R. Daneel Olivaw”]I’ve tried pronouncing them with an /sh/ ending, and it is clearly different.
rich v. rish
I’m not sure that “ch” has different allophones in English. I know it does in German, but I’m don’t believe it is true in English.
If there are two allophones of /ch/ the second allophone will not be the equivalent of /sh/. /sh/ and /ch/ cannot be allophones of the same phoneme. Consider Witch and wish.[/quote]Actually, I think you’re right. I don’t think that the “ch” in lunch is much different from the one in “rich”. And even if it is different, it’s certainly not enough to make one of them sound like “sh”.