Questions tagged [phonetics]
The study of the production and perception of sounds or "phones".
775
questions
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2answers
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What is the exact position of the tongue for [ n ] in these circumstances?
Hi I am an English learner, and I recently had this question about pronouncing n sound. I understand the standard way of pronouncing n sound is to put my tongue behind the top teeth, however, when I ...
0
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1answer
72 views
Does the English word 'six' violate the Sonority Sequencing Principle?
I'm aware that it's spellt with an X, however phonetically it's [ks]. According to the SSP, plosives should come after fricatives word-finally. Does the spelling with an x stop it from violating the ...
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2answers
60 views
Why does /zd-/ require more effort even though both the consonants have the same voicing?
In most language, the rule for combining consonants is that they should have the same voice. For example: in English, a word can never start with /zt-/ but can start with /st-/. It's not that /zt-/ ...
4
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1answer
92 views
How can the continuum s-sʲ-ç-ɕ-ʃ-ʂ be described in technical terms?
To me, it seems clear that there is a continuum between this group of sounds, as all of them (apart from ç, which I will touch on later in the post) are sibilants, and the only difference between them ...
3
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1answer
30 views
Unmoving F1 / formant below F1?
I'm trying to understand some basics, hope this is an ok question.
Here's a recording of me producing /i/, /ɛ/, /a/: https://namakajiri.net/misc/i%c9%9ba.webm
nevermind the transition between the ...
9
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1answer
135 views
Why does Polish have male and female accents?
This is particularly interesting to me as I can't seem to find any information on the topic, but, having listened to numerous Polish speakers from both sexes, the male─female pronounciational split is ...
5
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3answers
96 views
What is the name of the category that describes the ways a number can be read?
About 6 days ago, I asked this question in the English Language and Usage section but have yet to receive any answer. In hindsight, the lack of answers is entirely understandable since that was not ...
0
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2answers
54 views
What cues would you look for in this spectrogram to figure out the word? [closed]
(It is produced in American English and the word is one syllable. The time scale is arbitrary so feel free to ignore it.)
I was wondering what cues everyone would look for when reading this, and ...
2
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1answer
67 views
Are there any attested languages with a VCV or VC syllable structure?
In Googling this question, I found out about Arrernte, which is arguably VC(C). Are there any other languages which have been argued to be a VCV language? And is there any reason why they're so rare ...
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2answers
3k views
How did Ancient Greek 'πυρ' become English 'fire?'
fire is derived from the Ancient Greek πυρ. My question is: how did the plosive become a fricative?
I believe pyre is also derived from πυρ; why is it that pyre didn't also undergo this "...
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6answers
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Is the sound “ř” unique to Czech?
Czech has special sound which to me seems to be a voiced trilled r. It is written as "ř".
Wikipedia describes it a different way: A raised alveolar trill, and uses the IPA notation [r̝].
Czech ...
4
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1answer
482 views
When plotting vowel space, why does using F2-F1 better resemble the idealized vowel chart than using F1?
When plotting the chart of the acoustic space of AmE vowels, we can represent F1 values on the y-axis and F2 values on the x-axis, like a chart on the page Formant Frequencies.
Alternatively, we can ...
12
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9answers
5k views
Is there an easy way to type IPA?
I'm currently using the virtual IPA keyboard on TypeIt, but it takes forever. Is there an easy way to type IPA? I've found this list of Unicode keyboards on SIL.org but I'm not too sure how to ...
0
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1answer
88 views
What is the difference between m̥, mʰ, and mʱ?
I am looking at Help:IPA/Nguni and Help:IPA/Welsh, and wondering what the exact difference is between these sounds, and if there are any good audio recordings (or if you can make one!) showing how ...
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1answer
69 views
Why there are few aspirated fricatives in the world?
Since there are many aspirated stops and affricatives in the world's languages, why there are few aspirated fricatives in the world? Are there any differences per se between them that make it hard to ...
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5answers
1k views
Is it feasible to create an IPA adaptation for cats?
I was trying to transcribe my cat's noises into IPA. For example, her wanting to be petted is like [njæː] or [njaː]. But purring doesn't seem to fit any existing notation, except maybe [ʜ]. Has anyone ...
3
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1answer
73 views
/ɫ/ interacting with /ɨ/ in Russian: Pharyngealized, uvularized or velarized?
In the Russian language:
/ɫ/ is pharyngealized
/ɨ/ velarizes the preceding consonant.
In words such as лысый, /ˈɫɨsɨj/, is ɫ velarized, uvularized or pharyngealized?
I was unable to find any ...
2
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0answers
70 views
What is the official/correct orthography for Alsatian / Elsässisch German?
As per the Wikipedia article on the Alsatian language (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alsatian_dialect#Orthography) the orthography
includes the latin letters A,B,C ... X,Y,Z and the following vowels ...
0
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1answer
81 views
Is there Wis-consin and Wi-sconsin?
This is so subtle that I don't know if I'm imagining it. I think I hear two different pronunciations of this word. Are these really distinguishable? Wikipedia says /wɪ ˈskɒnsɪn/, but their audio link ...
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3answers
2k views
When should I use /ə/ or /ɪ/ and why does it seem like they're not used correctly?
So I'm trying to learn the vowel sounds of the IPA, and I'm looking at the words "temerity" and "moment" in AmE. What is especially confusing is that first word, where wiktionary lists the ...
0
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1answer
38 views
Approximant and vowels
Are there vowels considered as approximants, since some linguists consider /iː/ as high glide?
I'm not sure of it but I remember I read an article about it.
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1answer
199 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 ...
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2answers
217 views
Do animal sounds have linguistic symbols or classifications?
Wondering if animal sounds have any formal classification or linguistics symbols like the IPA.
For example:
Chicken sounds (pretty awesome, done by a human)
Cat sounds (purr, like trilled t, or ...
0
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2answers
102 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 ...
3
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1answer
85 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 ...
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1answer
71 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 ...
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0answers
24 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 ...
3
votes
2answers
289 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 ...
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4answers
141 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 ...
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0answers
32 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
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0answers
57 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 ...
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1answer
159 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 ...
2
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0answers
101 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 ...
3
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5answers
6k views
Sounds that humans make with their mouths
I'm interested in a list of sounds that humans make with their mouths.
I'm not looking for
speech sounds
sounds that take a non-average skill (such as beatboxing)
sounds that cannot be made with the ...
2
votes
1answer
183 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 &...
7
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1answer
137 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 ...
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1answer
42 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 ...
12
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2answers
724 views
Do dialects without the meet-meat merger neutralize the distinction in some contexts?
For many dialects of English (including my own) multiple historical lexical sets are merged into one "FLEECE" set (this diaphoneme can be represented with IPA /iː/).
I've read about the basics of the ...
0
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1answer
67 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 ...
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0answers
36 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 (...
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1answer
85 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 ...
3
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2answers
180 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 ...
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3answers
963 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) ...
2
votes
1answer
284 views
Does the southern pronunciation of Jenny have a triphthong in it?
You know when Forrest Gump yells Jenny's name and it sounds like "Jenneay". I'm wondering if there actually is a triphthong at the end there, or of it is a figment of my imagination. I ...
3
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2answers
382 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 ...
3
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2answers
243 views
How these close sounds are distinguished in native language
This is not a comprehensive list but just a few snippets from languages that have a few consonants that sound pretty much the same to me. I wanted to ask how I can learn to hear the difference between ...
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1answer
111 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])...
1
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1answer
64 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 ...
0
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2answers
281 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 ...
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2answers
144 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.
