When lip reading, “white girl” does not look like “whack girl” — they produce different visual mouth shapes. Here’s why:
1. Different Vowel Visemes
“White” (sound /aɪ/, like “eye”) begins with a narrowing mouth (slight puckering) then opens wide as the vowel shifts.
“Whack” (sound /æ/, as in “cat”) features a wide-open jaw with relaxed lips.
These shapes are visually distinct when watching someone speak – there’s no confusion between them.
2. Distinct Final Consonants
“White” ends with a /t/ sound: lips are open, tongue hits the roof of the mouth, then quickly snaps shut.
“Whack” ends with a /k/ sound: the back of the tongue raises to touch the soft palate – a different gesture entirely.
So the mouth and throat movements at the end of each word are not confusingly similar.
3. Context + Mouth Movement Patterns
Studies show that lip readers rely heavily on context, facial cues, and movement patterns – not just static visemesreddit.comen.wikipedia.org+1backup.injoyhearing.com+1.
Since “white girl” and “whack girl” use different vowels and ending consonants, experienced lip readers would almost never confuse the two.
4. Viseme Overlaps vs. Here
It’s true that some phonemes look alike on the lips (like /p/ vs. /b/, or /t/ vs. /d/), leading to homophenes en.wikipedia.org.
But in this case, the vowel shapes (/aɪ/ vs. /æ/) and final mouth closures (/t/ vs. /k/) are visually distinct, avoiding that ambiguity.
Bottom line:
Even without sound, “white girl” and “whack girl” are visually distinguishable via lip reading. The differing mouth spans between vowel and consonant sequences make them unlikely to be confused by a skilled observer.