Questions tagged [phonetics]
The study of the production and perception of sounds or "phones".
776
questions
3
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2answers
203 views
Is the reduction or disappearance of alveolar trill [r] a cross-linguistical phenomenon?
The sound [r] has become several other sounds, such as in English [ɹ], French [ʁ], Norwegian [ɾ] etc., while it is still widely found in the languages world-wide.
Besides, are there any assumed ...
1
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2answers
55 views
Where to download phonetic word list for Dutch/ Nederlandse fonetische woordenlijst downloaden
I cannot find phonetic word lists / dictionaries online for Dutch.
Please provide me with a url.
What do you use?
What is available?
2
votes
1answer
202 views
Dental plosives without top teeth
I have practically never had my front right tooth because of skateboarding, and even before that I crawled off onto a parking block - after that I learned Vietnamese without retroflexing the S. Now im ...
0
votes
1answer
80 views
Dental plosive with no apical obstruction
Can I have a paper which describes dental plosives by the two rows of teeth as opposed to contacting the dental area with the tongue ?? I mean the air needs obstructed and the posterior most place of ...
1
vote
1answer
79 views
Where to download phonetic word list for English
I need phonetic word lists / dictionaries for English.
I did not assume that this would be hard to find online.
What do you use?
What is available?
1
vote
2answers
579 views
What is a natural class in phonology? How to use phonological features to identify classes?
What are natural classes in phonology? Can phonological features make a set of segments a natural class?
For example, is there any way to make a natural class out of the set:
[k, x, q,χ]?
What ...
3
votes
1answer
326 views
What are partially voiced stops (as in Danish)?
In researching the Danish language, I've read about a series of stops [b̥ d̥ ɡ̊]. What are those? Apparently they are different from the commonplace voiced stops [b d ɡ] and the voiceless stops [p t k]...
3
votes
2answers
354 views
Has the Russian way of pronunciation been affected by frost?
I am a student learning both English and Russian, and I find the Russian pronunciation to be very different from the English one. A few months ago I made a detailed post on the Linguistics SE to ...
2
votes
1answer
107 views
Equivalent “окающие и акающие" translation in the English language?
It's a question from phonetics and it's (I hope you recognized it) from Russian language “окающие и акающие, секающие и шекающие".
I've tried versions like “retaining the unstressed “o” and “a” and ...
0
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4answers
203 views
Does [s] before [b] always become [z]?
There is a Persian word اسبابكشی asbābkeši and it is quite difficult to stick strictly to the transcription saying there is [s] before [b]. The assimilation of [s] to [z] before a voiced stop is ...
0
votes
2answers
141 views
What is this Cree sound in IPA?
https://nehiyo.ca/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/uy-uyiwak.mp3
I have been trying to find an equivalent to this sound. The language is Canadian Plains Cree. It's not "i" as in bite or fight.
Is there an ...
4
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4answers
828 views
What do these subscripts/superscripts mean in IPA?
Here is an example of a sentence from the Glossika course in Taiwanese Hokkien:
The "Phonics" line is the IPA line. (The "Typing" line is the Tâi-lô romanization; I don't know where the "...
6
votes
1answer
406 views
In what circumstances is d devoiced in English?
I have noticed that speakers of languages which have /d/ and (unaspirated) /t/ as distinct consonants are sometimes unsure whether my natural pronunciation of the English name "Dan" starts with a /d/ ...
3
votes
3answers
241 views
Are the nasal portions of prenasalized consonants syllabic?
Prenasalized consonants occur in a number of natural languages. https://wikivisually.com/wiki/Prenasalized_consonant
When I hear someone pronounce a word that begins with a prenasalized consonant, ...
1
vote
0answers
77 views
Past of verbs such as “long” and “wing” [closed]
Assuming their past is regular, are they pronounced as /wɪŋd/ and /lɑːŋd/ or does a [gd] surface at the end?
0
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2answers
150 views
Do we have acoustic phonetics alphabet?
After looking for something like this, I have found only IPA as a system that tries to represent human sounds with symbols; but there is an argument that IPA does not actually represents the sounds ...
3
votes
0answers
98 views
The schwa in [meɪkəθ] for *maketh* in KJV English
This Wiki article seems to suggest that words like makes had lost their final syllable schwa in normal speech already by Chaucer's time (palmeres > palmers is the example they give). The rule, as ...
0
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2answers
124 views
Why are dental sounds rare?
Dental stops are rare in the languages of the world (other than in Australia). Most languages outside of Australia containing dental stops belong to Indo-European, Uralic, Kartvelian, and Dravidian. ...
13
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3answers
12k views
Is the “p” in “spin” really a “b”?
Daniel Everett claims in Don't Sleep, There Are Snakes (Ch. 11) that the English "p" and "b" in "pin" and "bin" are separate phonemes, since they alone distinguish the words "pin" and "bin," whereas ...
2
votes
1answer
27 views
annonation file from xwaves to praat
There is a speech corpus (IViE: http://www.phon.ox.ac.uk/files/apps/old_IViE/) which provided annoated speech files in the following format:
signal Cambridge_sentences/Q_no_morph/q2cma.d
type 0
...
1
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2answers
132 views
/o/ -> /u/ change in Persian xānum خانم ‘mistress’
Is it correct to describe /o/ -> /u/ change in خانم xānum as nasalisation under the influence of the following /m/? What does general phonetics say about it? One Persian teacher said /m/ has nothing ...
4
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2answers
2k views
French letters in English
The English language has a great amount of borrowings from French. But why aren't such letters as "ç"(façade) and "é"(café, protégé) changed if they don't exist in the English alphabet and there are "...
0
votes
1answer
116 views
Praat, R, or something else for phonetic analysis?
I need to do phonetic analysis of several dozen brief tokens. Specifically, I want to extract FFT/LPC profiles of fricatives, and would like to experiment with different algorithms for creating ...
7
votes
1answer
243 views
Affrication-like sound in palatal plosive [c]
When I compare the plosive sounds in an IPA table with recordings (like this or this), the sound of [c] stands out to me as noisier and more turbulent than the rest of the series [p, t, ʈ, k, q, ʔ]. ...
1
vote
1answer
101 views
Why do English words comprising of one syllable and ending with a y sound with a vowel preceding it correspond to German words ending in a g sound?
Few examples:
Lay-legen
Day-tag (I know that the d here shifted to a t due to a sound change described in Grimm's Law)
Slay-(Er)schlagen
I am aware of the fact that German and English share a common ...
2
votes
1answer
116 views
Why are PIE C+glide clusters so rare?
I noticed that *Cj/*Cy (depending on if one uses IPA or IEist notation) and *Cw sequences are rare in PIE (with most being the result of schwebeablaut or regular ablaut). Among sequences that aren't ...
0
votes
3answers
323 views
Long vowels in the world languages
The English language has long and short vowel sounds. Short and long vowels also exist in some other languages. And it's interesting to know when native English speakers come to let it be the Czech ...
-1
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1answer
104 views
Modern phonetics and the word “sure” [closed]
How true is it that there is a modern phonetical tendency in the English language to pronounce the word "sure" rather like"shore", but not a classical "sure"?
0
votes
2answers
137 views
Are there any letters in the International Phonetic Alphabet that are considered universal?
English is full of sounds that are difficult for people of other cultures to hear and pronounce. H (for the French), L (for many Asian languages), Th (for pretty much everyone), etc.
What, if any, ...
2
votes
1answer
137 views
Understanding VOT
I am a third year bachelor student of Linguistics. It would be nice if I don't get mean comments, because I genuinely do not understand what I am about to ask.
I have to write a paper on phonetic ...
0
votes
2answers
166 views
/i:/ as in feet and /i/ as in city
Please explain the difference between /i:/ as in feet and /i/ as in city and very. I presume it sounds the same except that the 2nd one is shorter. Am I right?
0
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1answer
79 views
What is the phonetic transcription of the Lithuanian name Austėja? [closed]
I do not know how to transcribe this name.
1
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1answer
201 views
What does unreleased voiced stop mean?
There is [d̚] in the official IPA chart, and it's very confusing for me. My native language is Korean, whose unreleased stops are either voiceless or nasal.
If a voiced stop is unreleased, that would ...
1
vote
1answer
52 views
Are there any standards for the manual modification of fundamental frequencies in Praat?
While analysing pitches with Praat, I'm often faced with the problem, which is, I must modify the F0 data manually since there are always some octave up points or other points which is impossible to ...
10
votes
2answers
482 views
Do voiceless approximants exist? What is the consensus among phoneticians/phonologists?
Voiceless sounds that are produced with supralaryngeal configurations that would be considered approximants if voiced are attested in languages (i.e. [j̊], [l̥], etc.), but none are found to contrast ...
2
votes
3answers
228 views
Source of syllable statistics of languages?
I wish to compare the syllable diversity and length distributiin of different languages. En-Fr to start with, phonetically even more than in writing.
I want to check the theory that short word short ...
4
votes
1answer
382 views
Is the study of triphthongs a must to master English phonology?
Most universities in India are teaching only pure vowels (monophthongs), and diphthongs. Now we find triphthongs. ...
Is the study of triphthongs a must to master the phonology of English? ...
7
votes
2answers
3k views
Phonetic distortion when words are borrowed among languages
When languages borrow words from other languages, they sometimes deliberately distort words to make them phonetically easier to pronounce.
For example, when Japanese speakers are taught the word "...
2
votes
2answers
194 views
Phonetic characters of Arabic emphatic consonants
My native language is Korean. I'm not learning Arabic, but I'm curious anyway.
Refer to the following link for the letter names I recorded myself: Arabic pharyngeal consonants
I think I can ...
4
votes
1answer
217 views
How to measure auditory distances between vowels
(Followup to this question, also related to this answer.)
The Handbook of the International Phonetic Association (1999: 11–2) defines the values of cardinal vowels as follows:
[T]wo fully front ...
3
votes
1answer
167 views
Is it possible to recognize place of articulation of consonants through spectrograms?
I am trying to undestand how PRAAT works and to recognize consonants through spectrograms. I Know that it's possible to distinguish fricative consonants from nasal ones (for example) but is it ...
-3
votes
4answers
160 views
What is the most universally understood way to represent the “ay” sound of “CAKE” substituting the standard a for a single character?
I am making up an imaginary word to be used as a name.
Right now I seem to have it ending in "tata", but want it to be clear it is pronounced as "tay-tah" not "tah-tah"
I admit that I do not know my ...
2
votes
2answers
178 views
Is it possible to speak like a native speaker of English by mastering the phonology?
I know some professors of phonetics teach phonetics(in a country like India) in a laboratory almost similar to that of the native speakers.But when they come out of the class their pronunciation does ...
3
votes
0answers
32 views
Are there languages more suitable for loud or crowded situations than others? [duplicate]
I'm an Italian native speaker but I speak English everyday for work.
When I'm with English native speakers I often hear them asking to repeat words, especially if there's a lot of noise around.
I ...
2
votes
1answer
175 views
How many consonant clusters can a human being utter?
Most Indian languages have three consonant clusters.I think that English has got three consonant clusters.Example, strange.
I would like to know which language has got the most consonant clusters.
I ...
5
votes
1answer
186 views
Why were the formants of high and back vowels difficult to obtain? And why not anymore?
I was reading the second chapter of Three Areas of Experimental Phonetics by Peter Ladefoged (1967), in which he summarizes the studies he conducted in the 1950s and 1960s which demonstrated practical ...
36
votes
4answers
6k views
Why isn't “I've” a proper response?
Suppose someone asked me the question, "Have you completed the project?". A standard response would be "I have". Why does the equivalent "I've" sound so strange and never used as a replacement?
I am ...
0
votes
1answer
99 views
Relationship between Uvular and Dorsal Consonants articulation
I have a question regarding the physiological production of uvular and dorsal consonants. what are the physiological aspect of both consonants articulation? As uvular consonants articulated with the ...
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 ...
1
vote
2answers
158 views
Lengthened voiced stops and the airstream through the nose
I am going through Catford's Practical Introduction to Phonetics, experiments 31-32. After explaining how to produce voiced stops [b], [d], [g] by superimposing a closure upon the voiced air-stream, ...
