Questions tagged [phonetics]
The study of the production and perception of sounds or "phones".
760
questions
1
vote
0answers
16 views
“Voiceless labialized velar plosive” or “labialized voiceless velar plosive”?
The /k/ in the word "cool" is often labialized i.e. round lips and is transcribed as [kʷ]. How do linguists say its name in phonetics?
Voiceless labialized velar plosive
or
labialized ...
2
votes
1answer
69 views
/t/ sound is pronounced like [ts] in British English
My question is about the sound /t/ being pronounced more like [ts] in British accent. For example,
The words like Tomato, Peter, water, task, Tom, talented, take the /t/ sound is definitely not ...
0
votes
2answers
46 views
What is the difference between a glide and a semivowel?
Is the following distinction made by this university lesson between glides and semivowels standard?:
Glides include speech sounds where the airstream is frictionless and is modified by the position ...
1
vote
1answer
59 views
Phonetic vs phonological consonants: What is the difference?
I come across such distinctions in quite a few places such as in this Wikipedia article, Voiceless glottal fricative, where it states: "The voiceless glottal fricative, sometimes called voiceless ...
0
votes
0answers
23 views
Guessing phoneme duration for english words
Is there an existing method or dataset, which, given just a word in English (no context), could give a best guess as to how long to make each phoneme when recreating it as speech? Obviously the true ...
0
votes
0answers
30 views
Are voiced true nasal fricatives the same as breathy nasal stops?
True nasal fricatives, formerly known as nareal fricatives, are fricatives whose airflow is only through the nasal cavity. In extIPA, they are notated by [ ͋], e.g. [m͋].
That would mean the mouth is ...
3
votes
0answers
54 views
Differences in realization of intrusive-r and linking-r?
Are there any good papers that have investigated this? I seemed to notice this with some speakers on television that their intrusive-r's seemed less pronounced than their linking-r's.
I did find a ...
0
votes
4answers
103 views
are there any languages that have sounds in diphthongs that don’t occur in isolation?
essentially i am doing an assignment for class in which we are building a pretend vowel system for a pretend language based on sound files we are given. i had two diphthong files with 5 other files ...
3
votes
2answers
247 views
/ðæs saɪd/ versus /ɡʊb bɔɪ/ - Assimilation of place versus manner
Good day
I am facing a problem to distinguish between assimilation of place and assimilation of manner
So in Peter R's book he said that (AOM) is much less noticeable, and he provided examples which ...
2
votes
0answers
46 views
How to read a spectrogram?
I read some materials online How to Read a Spectrogram, Reading Spectrograms: Consonants, Reading Spectrograms: Vowels. I still have no idea how to analyze a spectrogram. Could anyone explain with the ...
1
vote
1answer
146 views
What causes a glottal stop after some silence before a vowel?
I recently asked a question Do we pronounce the vowel at the beginning of the word with a preceding glottal stop? on the English site and received a very good answer.
According to the answer on that ...
-1
votes
1answer
40 views
Deruny, deruni or deryni? [closed]
What is the correct spelling of potato pancakes, If we take the Russian or Ukrainian origin of the word? Deruny, deruni or deryni?
A google search for the etymology says deryny
And Wikipedia:
Potato ...
1
vote
0answers
34 views
Terminology about elongating a monothong or a diphthong by duration and tone
Which terminology is applicable when a monothong or diphthong is elongated in duration and with a slightly higher pitch? Would it be vowel breaking or fracturing or something else?
Example 1 (...
0
votes
1answer
58 views
How to write these rules in features?
I was wondering how do you write these rules in features using the minimum number of features to describe the segment(s) targeted by the rule in the input. I am still super new to linguistics! Thank ...
2
votes
1answer
178 views
English speakers inserting R in French words
I teach French to people from various background and first languages, but one thing that most English speakers do (even very proficient ones sometimes) is adding R sounds in words. Saying 'droi' for &...
2
votes
1answer
78 views
Is my textbook wrong about phonetic transcription?
brand new here with (I hope) a simple question.
Yesterday I had my first linguistics class and the professor mentioned a difference between phonemic and phonetic transcription. He said for e.g. that a ...
7
votes
1answer
132 views
Why are sound changes regular?
Say, there is a word that used to be pronounced [ten] but gradually shifted to [tin]. I get it. There is always variety in how people pronounce words. Throw in some population dynamics, and the median ...
3
votes
2answers
175 views
Source to look up pronunciation of phonetic script
Can anyone recommend a book that a non-linguist can use to look up and pronounce words written in phonetic script?
For example, Wikipedia has this written down: "[ɛks’pɑzətɔri]". I want to ...
5
votes
3answers
956 views
What is the name of this sound change, and do we have it in English?
I'm a Persian, I'm from Iran, and I speak Farsi.
Here, we have a very strange rule that we turn آ into و in informal conversations.
For example:
خانه = house (formal) /kh a ne/
خونه = house (informal) ...
3
votes
2answers
372 views
Voiceless alveolo-palatal affricate in english?
The "officially" voiceless alveolar-palatine affricate does not exist in English. But I can clearly hear it in the sentence "Ouch that hurt" (when the computer reads this sentence ...
1
vote
1answer
63 views
“Aesthetics” of languages/Categorisation by phonetics?
TL;DR: Are there any categories for comparing languages based on properties like vowel range and sonority, e.g. the amount of "hard" elements (plosives etc.) or syllable frequency/rate of ...
2
votes
2answers
143 views
Are there any languages in which meaning is formally embedded in the speed at which a word is spoken?
If such a language does exist I assume it would be difficult to teach or learn.
4
votes
2answers
315 views
IPA diacritic for “no oral release” of nasals
Is there a diacritic in IPA for explicitly marking a nasal consonant as orally released (like coda nasals in careful speech in English) or having no oral release (like coda nasals in Cantonese)?
In ...
1
vote
1answer
108 views
Is /ɧ/ a sibilant?
Is /ɧ/ a sibilant? It sounds like a sibilant to me but I'm not sure. I didn't find any evidence so I really have nothing else to include in my question.
The sj-sound (Swedish: sj-ljudet [ˈɧêːˌjʉːdɛt])...
0
votes
1answer
50 views
Differences between /ᵐb/ (prenasalization) and /mb/
What's the difference between prenasalized voced plosive /ᵐb/ and just the sound /mb/, if any? I've watched this video where /ᵐbʷ/ is pronounced, and I'd pronounce /mbʷ/ in the same way.
1
vote
1answer
142 views
About the “ᵊ” superscript in IPA
I apologize for a diletant question but does "ə" in "piᵊŋ" indicate a secondary articulation? I couldn't find it in the list of "Co-articulation diacritics" on Wikipedia'...
5
votes
1answer
187 views
What makes /l/ an approximant, instead of a fricative?
My understanding of approximants is that they are produced without the tongue coming into direct contact with any of the articulators in the mouth, which is true for /w/ /r/ and /j/. But /l/ is ...
3
votes
2answers
153 views
Are false cognates something languages tend to create?
It could easily be my own bias but I feel like false cognates are suspiciously common. Do similar meanings tend to acquire similar sounds in language evolution? Have there been any studies whether ...
1
vote
1answer
83 views
Is the phenomenon of liaison developed by dark L in British English in some areas?
There has been discussion about the dark L being heard as a vowel by L2 learners, though this view is often denied and corrected by L1 speakers, who point out that the dark L is indeed a consonant ...
9
votes
3answers
2k views
Is there a reason that /w/ isn't represented on the IPA chart?
The sound that represents the English <w>, as in "week", is the voiced labio-velar approximant /w/. In the "Consonant" section of the Wiki page for the IPA, however, /w/ isn'...
5
votes
4answers
1k views
Can languages restrict their number of distinct syllables when written by syllabaries?
Disclaimer: I am not a linguist, please provide any corrections for terminology.
From How languages compare with the number of different syllables from all words?, Yoon Mi Oh's thesis counted the ...
8
votes
2answers
801 views
How languages compare with the number of different syllables from all words?
Note: I am not a linguist, please provide any corrections for terminology.
I would like to find some approximate data (if it exists) comparing several languages with the number of different syllables ...
2
votes
1answer
184 views
What does it mean to say a language is phonetic?
I have often heard phrases like "Sanskrit is phonetic and Hindi is not". But what does it mean to say a language is phonetic?
A language is separate from the script we choose to write it in ...
0
votes
2answers
224 views
Is Sanskrit 100% phonetic?
Even though many languages are still written in Devanagari, they have a problem of schwa deletion. But that problem doesn't exist in Sanskrit. I know that almost all languages have phonetic ...
13
votes
3answers
254 views
term for gibberish intended to resemble specific language
Is any term identified, among linguists, for an effect by which some speech or text has no meaning, and yet superficially resembles, by following certain patterns, speech or text from
a particular ...
3
votes
1answer
157 views
Is h↓ the correct IPA representation of the ingressive “fast gasp”, meaning “uh-huh”, in French?
Spoken French has two ingressive forms of "yes". One is "ouais" [wɛ↓], equivalent to "yep" in English. The other is a "pure" ingressive sound, described ...
7
votes
1answer
849 views
What is the correct term for a “lazy L”?
This question is about a mild form of a specific speech pathology that seems to be gaining prevalence in Australia and if there is a term for it. It is not an "accent" issue, because it can ...
1
vote
1answer
120 views
Does anyone actually use /æ/ as an emphatic article?
In the movie "Wayne's World" (1992), Mike Myers's character (the titular Wayne) says "I don't even own æ gun, let alone many guns that would necessitate an entire rack." To my ears ...
0
votes
0answers
66 views
Praat script to remove boundaries for certain intervals
I'm new to Praat scripting and am trying to figure out a way to delete boundaries for consecutive intervals with a particular label (in my case, "sp"). The "sp" denotes silence, ...
0
votes
1answer
68 views
Confounding factors in the perception of foreign vowel sounds
I'm having a strange experience trying to reproduce a token of ɛ / æ from a native speaker of Thai. When I play my attempt back it sounds like a reasonable copy, but looking at it in Praat, the ...
0
votes
2answers
51 views
Finding articulatory profiles
I have two questions. The first is how is it better to call such pictures? Is the term 'articulatory profile' alright? The second: is there a place on the internet or elsewhere which contains many ...
6
votes
2answers
2k views
Is it a coincidence that words ending in -ooch in English tend to be colloquial? If not, why?
There are several words in common English usage that end in -ooch:
brooch
cooch
gooch (these two refer to body parts)
hooch (alternatively written "hootch")
klooch
looch
mooch
pooch
scooch
scrooch
...
2
votes
1answer
55 views
The reason for a partly voiced hold in I’d
In I’d take ’d t can be pronounced as [t] with the first part of the hold voiced (the second one and the plosion with aspiration are voiceless).
How is it better explained: is it because of [ai] (...
1
vote
0answers
138 views
Aspiration of p, t, k in English
I'm trying to figure out when exactly p, t, k should be aspirated in (American) English.
Here's what I found here:
Voiceless stops are aspirated at the beginning of a word, and at the beginning ...
1
vote
1answer
123 views
Citing Praat script APA
I'm currently using a Praat script I found online and I would like to cite it in my thesis.
Does anyone know whether there is a specific APA format for citing Praat scripts?
I've tried looking into ...
1
vote
1answer
101 views
Volume and speed of exhaled air in different languages
In the days of COVID-19 people are concerned with breath and speech micro-droplets and how far they travel without a mask.
This video I saw in Twitter, posits that Japanese people have it better ...
4
votes
1answer
82 views
How can I learn to produce “harsh voice”
I'd like to work on my ability to identify creaky and harsh voice. Creaky voice is not a huge problem - I already have a reasonable idea of what that sounds like and there are a million YT videos ...
1
vote
1answer
56 views
How much intra-speaker variation is there in the cardinal vowels?
I realise that the cardinal vowels are supposed to be fixed points of reference, but then we don’t all have exactly the same equipment. I am wondering whether vowel frontness etc. is really defined (...
1
vote
1answer
82 views
What is the dividing line between phonetics and phonology? [duplicate]
From my understanding, Phonetics is the study of physical aspect of sounds, including how sounds are produced (articulatory phonetics), how they are perceived (auditory phonetics) and the physics ...
0
votes
1answer
71 views
Characterising a difference in the realisation of a vowel
When I've looked at Thai in the past I've noticed that there is something different about the vowel transcribed as /ʉ/ or /ɯ/ when it follows certain consonants, especially /m/. The same goes for the ...
