Linguistic term of the day

gemination (root: ‘geminus;’ Latin, ‘twin’)

Gemination, in phonetic terms, is the doubling of consonants, hence ‘geminating,’ or making ‘twin.’ Arabic and Italian are well known for their geminated consonants, and there are other languages where this occurs. In many cases, a gemination of a consonant changes the meaning of a word altogether.

Example:

note (Italian): ‘musical note’ or a written ‘note’
notte (Italian): ‘night’

Gemination does occur in English, but is probably unrecognizable to the normal native speaker’s ear. Occurrences in English are usually spread over regional areas, and happen in certain dialects. It’s very possible speakers of British English (RP: Received Pronunciation), will geminate the ‘t’ in words like ‘matter,’ (though it doesn’t affect the meaning) whereas speakers of American English would pronounce the double tt sound with a tapped r (sounds like a ‘d’ phonetically, which is altogether another linguistic subject).

Arguments ensue among linguists as to whether gemination actually occurs in English. So the question is, do you geminate? How do you pronounce ‘roommate’? Can you clearly recognize two ‘m’ sounds?