Quote Originally Posted by maxmixiv View Post
It seems to me, we don't often "prolong" consonants in fluent speech, unless it can change a meaning.
For example we usually make difference between Ане and Анне ,
but easily could say колега in place of коллега
Oh, thank you maxmixiv so much for reminding me of sonants /л/, /м/, /н/! Frankly, I was not thinking of them when I was writing the answer; it was stupid of me to focus only on /п/, /т/, /к/. Meanwhile, your examples ARE worth considering. I absolutely agree that in fluent speech we hardly ever ‘prolong’ /л/ (коллега, миллилитр, коллаж, etc) or /м/ (коммерция, комментарий, коммуна, etc). However, this does not apply to /н/, as you illustrated with ‘Ане’ and ‘Анне’. As far as I understand, your example with /н/ does not refer to exceptions (please, correct me, if I’m wrong) – it’s a rule: in ‘обманная’, ‘туманный’, ‘конница’ we articulate the ‘prolonged’ /н/, while in ‘обмана’, ‘туманы’, ‘конец’ we pronounce /н/ as a single sound. Am I right?
Can I deduce from the above said the following RULE:
In speech we ‘prolong’ the consonants /п/, /т/, /к/, /б/, /д/, /г/ and some others, if in writing they’re represented by relevant double letters (e.g. ‘подай’ – single /д/, ‘поддай’ – ‘prolonged’ /д/; ‘Игорь, погода’ – single /г/, ‘пирог горит, помог горю’ – ‘prolonged’ /г/); and in the same way we ‘prolong’ one of the three sonants – it’s /н/. (????)
Или я изобретаю велосипед?
Is there any rule about it?

P.S. It’s just occurred to me, that in ‘бессонница’ the priority of ‘doubling’ the sound goes to /c/, while /н/ is either vaguely prolonged or not prolonged at all. Is it because there’s a sort of ‘competition’ between /c/ and /н/, where /c/ ‘defeats’ /н/ (for the reason of occurring in the stressed syllable)? Look at ‘сонный’ – /н/ doesn’t have any ‘competitors’ here, so /н/ always sounds ‘prolonged’.