#linguistsics

that REALLY bothers me. in reference to email, Shirley says "I mark you as spam." Pierce replies, "who's Pam?" on the surface the joke makes sense. because the -s at the end of "as" and the s- at the beginning of "spam" blend together, it could sound like "as Pam". but it doesn't. Shirley pronounces "as" as /æz/ (like most Americans), and "spam" is pronounced as /spæm/. so to start off, the -s in "as" can't blend with the s- in "spam" because they're two different sounds, [z] and [s]. secondly, the -p- in "spam" isn't aspirated, but the p- in Pam IS aspirated  making them sound very different to American English speakers.