Questions tagged [pronunciation]
An informal term referring to the verbalized form of words specific to a language. Can also refer to particular individual's pronunciation, as in an accent or a pathology, or a specific speech event, as in a mispronunciation.
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Does word order and word choice influence how a word is pronounced?
I'm curious about the connection between word order/grammar and how that influences the way we pronounce a word, particularly in reference to dialect.
For example, if we take the word 'going' and ...
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Pronunciation of Emma and Emma's [migrated]
According to Wiktionary, Emma pronounced as /ˈɛmə/ but I hear it more like /ˈɛmɑː/, however when it comes to pronouncing Emma's, I hear it like /ˈɛməz/ and I hear a clear schwa there.
Here are the ...
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Why doesn’t a language modernization initiative adopt pure phonetic spelling?
Given that there are language associations that work to standardize languages’ orthography, vocabulary, grammar, etc., why is it not more common to use phonetically accurate spelling?
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How did Otto Jespersen figure out the Great Vowel Shift?
How did Otto Jespersen figure out the Great Vowel Shift?
Surely, there were no pronunciation audio recordings available.
How did he know how British people had pronounced vowels centuries ago?
Have ...
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Are there any languages with greetings that could be easily mixed up with other phrases? [closed]
I'm currently writing a script in which a character tries to use a machine translator, but it fails and shocks/offends the person she's trying to talk to. Are there any languages I could use that have ...
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In the Romanian language standard accepted pronunciation, is **noștri** pronounced differently from **noștrii**?
In the Romanian language standard accepted pronunciation, is noștri pronounced differently from noștrii? Could you share any link to a document / book confirming this?
As a native speaker, I do not ...
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Reason for silent letters in languages
Why are there silent letters in languages?
I understand that there may be not any reply to this question. But if there is one, I am curious.
Like in French: Je ne parle pas français.
Why is it not ...
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How did ⟨x⟩ become /ʃ/ in Iberian Romance?
In Latin, ⟨x⟩ stood for /ks/. I'm a native Portuguese speaker and nowadays in my language this letter can also have the sounds /gz/, /s/, /z/ and /ʃ/. It seems relatively straightforward for me that /...
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Pronunciation of D sound in British English
I could be wrong about this, but the D sound in British English (RP) sounds a little different from the American counterpart. Often when I hear the words "Lady", "Ready", "...
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does modern Hebrew have spelling pronunciations?
A spelling pronunciation is the pronunciation of a word according to its spelling when this differs from a longstanding standard or traditional pronunciation. Words that are spelled with letters that ...
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Is pronouncing loanwords according to their "native" pronunciation stigmatised across most cultures and languages?
This old CollegeHumor sketch highlights an interesting phenomenon: it's often frowned upon or disapproved of, at least in the US and England, to pronounce a loanword according to the phonetics of the ...
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Lateral Approximant v. s. Lateral consonant
Reference
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voiced_dental,_alveolar_and_postalveolar_lateral_approximants#Velarized_alveolar_lateral_approximant
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquid_consonant
...
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Name for motivation for synchronic reduction phenomena such as elision or fusion
Especially in spoken language, phenomena like elision or fusion occur fairly frequently, and often to an extreme degree. Take the German sentence 'Das ist ein Besen.', which I might (though not always)...
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What is the name of this Hebrew pronunciation at 0:58?
The pronunciation is guttural but at the same time the pronunciation is the kind of pronunciation that Classical Latin and the Romance languages have! For example, the pronunciation of the Classical ...
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How can I tell the difference between types of assimilation?
I am currently studying linguistics (new to the subject) and I have a challenging time understanding the different assimilation forms.
So far we studied these:
Assimilation of voicing only (place and ...
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What is the name of the thing that the tongue does on the syllable pri in Classical Latin, Spanish, Italian, and Brazilian Portuguese? [duplicate]
What is the name of the thing that the tongue does on the syllable pri in Classical Latin, Spanish, Italian, Brazilian Portuguese, and possibility other Romance languages?
Since Classical Latin has ...
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What is the name of the category for the vibrations that the tongue does in linguistics?
There are guttural sounds such as the French R so I'm guessing that there is name for the category of speech sound in which the tongue vibrates! For example, in the words pater, et rubente http://www....
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Characterizing the "tonality" or the tone of a language
I can illustrate my question with an example. I started by learning German. To me German sounds very articulated, sharp and clear. I then studied Italian. Italian sounds singing, fluid, warm and ...
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How accurate are Google's pronunciations of Welsh words?
I'm a complete beginner in Welsh and it would be very convenient to use Google Translate to show me how to pronounce words and phrases. Can a native speaker or advanced learner tell me if using Google ...
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It is easier for foreigners to pronounce names in languages with more syllables?
I noticed that many cultures do not pronounce names in other cultures correctly.
For example, Fattahilah in Java, becomes Faletehen in Dutch and it becomes Jenahtopolo in Chinese (don't know which ...
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Native English speakers: worse understanding of other accents?
In this video, Lily Tomlin (an American) doesn't really understand what Kevin Bridges is saying at all with his Scottish accent. She also says she doesn't fully understand what Chris Hemswoth (an ...
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AmE feature related to American multiculturalism?
I speak with a (General) American accent. Native non-American English speakers sometimes tell me that "you pronounce every single syllable in every word." I've also stumbled upon very ...
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is this sound [j]? [closed]
is the sound in this recording [j]? or is it just [i]? I feel like all my post-vocalic /i/'s are Pronounced like [j] but I'm not sure.
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How is the word 'second' phonologically split into syllables?
The Cambridge dictionary says that the word 'second' is uttered as /ˈsek.ənd/, in which the first syllable is /sek/ and the second is /ənd/. My question is thus the following: why doesn't this word ...
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is it possible to forget how to pronounce a phoneme that exists in ones native language?
now I know this might seem like a strange question (I'm not sure if I'm using the correct tags) but hear me out.
I'm a native speaker of the Georgian language(a Kartvelian Language) who's been living ...
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is my Pronounciation of [ɤ] and french nasal vowels and [ɲ] correct?
Right now I'm trying to learn how to pronounce different vowel sounds in IPA and i wonder if I'm Pronouncing [ɤ] right.
ɤ
I've been trying to learning French for a long time and I wonder if my ...
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When teaching word stress to ESL students, is it worth teaching secondary stress placement?
I often incorporate stress training into my classes as it is very important for intelligibility (as better awareness of stress placement will give students clearer speaking and better listening skills)...
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Pronunciation of "ll" in the Romance languages
I have noticed that all the Romance languages (Spanish, Galician, Catalan, Portuguese, Romanian, Italian, and French) usually pronounce the "ll" like the "y" in "yacht". ...
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How to exactly pronounce IPA
I'm a native Korean speaker, and I somtimes have trouble pronuncing some of the sounds which is not used or not distinguished in Korean.
For example, ɛ and e are equivalent to Korean phoneme ㅐ and ㅔ. ...
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Are there languages without the /j/ sound as in English "yellow"?
There are many languages without the /w/ sound as in English world, as in French oiseau, as in Spanish fuego, and as in Mandarin wang (the last three respectively mean bird, fire, and king). Some ...
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Korean tense/lax vs. English tense/lax
Looking at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_phonology and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_phonology, English has "tense" sounds: "p", "t", "ch", and &...
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Does aspiration propagate to the following vowel?
My native language is Korean, which is notorious for its three-way distinction (plain vs. tense vs. aspirated) of (non-nasal) stops. As such, I tried to analyze my own pronunciation.
Then I found that ...
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IPA confusion, difference between these vowels?
I am having trouble hearing the difference between these vowels based on this website for the IPA and would appreciate if someone could tell me the differences and how to pronounce them.
ʊ and ø
ə ...
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Do men have more trouble than women pronouncing alveolo-palatals (like ɕ)? Or are there other physiological factors involved?
I'm curious based on would-be standard samples such as
provided on Wikipedia;
compare the same [male] speaker there trying to show the difference between (alveolo-palatal) ɕ and (palato-alveolar) ʃ.
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Wikipedia sound samples: vocal fry?
In seems to me that in Wikipedia's sound samples for the vowel sounds, there's often some vocal fry, especially in the back vowels. Vowels like ɑ
æ
ä
e and to a lesser extent:
ɤ
o
ɜ
œ. Do you concur? ...
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What is the phonetic realization of /ɣ/ and /x/ in Georgian? are they velar? or are they actually uvular?
I'm confused as to which symbol should I be using when transcribing Georgian with IPA.
as native speaker of Georgian myself, I feel my /ɣ/ and /x/ sound more like uvular than velar.
I could be wrong ...
user35957
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Consonant clusters in English - how many exist exactly?
I am really struggling to find a complete list of all consonant clusters that are possible in the English language. Can anyone point me in the direction of one?
I have spent hours looking online with ...
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Are there any tonal languages with syllable-final consonants that are not unreleased, or even aspirated?
All the tonal languages I have some familiarity with, Mandarin, Thai, Lao, Vietnamese, and Cantonese either lack stop consonants in syllable-final position, or allow only "unreleased" stop ...
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The correct/consistent pronunciation of -ae in English [closed]
There are many Latin words in English that contain -ae-, including proper names in biology (Archaea, Rosaceae), generic scientific terms (larvae, medusae), Church Latin (Summa Theologiae) and more &...
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Languages without phonemes?
Based on my understanding and reading of Wikipedia, phonemes help distinguish one word from another and each phoneme is an "abstraction over of a set (or equivalence class) of speech sounds (...
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Where does Google's pronunciation notation come from?
When you search for "X pronunciation" on Google, it shows the "Sounds like x·y·z" box with phonetic respelling. Does anyone know if this respelling system is based on a particular ...
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Difference pronunciation of the word cometh in Middle English and Early Modern English?
Does anyone know how you pronounce the root vowel of the word cometh in ME and EModE? What is this particular sound change called?
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ʃ pronounced with tongue
Some people pronounce their [ʃ] not in the 'classic' way but by curving the tongue and bringing it forward toward the upper set of teeth.
Here's an audio example I've created.
My question: is there a ...
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Is there a name for the idea of having grammatical rules for the purpose of easy pronunciation?
For instance, in German you'll have Der Mann singular, Die Männer plural, instead of, say, Die Männen. It seems this is because you don't want to over-expose the speaker to the "n" sound.
...
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Adding Sounds and Slowing Pronunciation for "Proper Speech"
I routinely hear a relative add syllables to words to sound more "correct." "menu" becomes "men-a-you." "Daily" becomes "day-uh-lee." It seems to be ...
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Why are phonemic transcriptions used in English pronunciation courses (instead of phonetic ones)?
I'm doing an English pronunciation course. There, I'm asked to pronounce, for example, the following:
/i:/
In each case, I'm presented with articulatory and mouth position guidelines. However, if I ...
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What were the pronunciations of PIE velar stops?
What might be the pronunciations of PIE "plain velar" series *k *g *gʰ, the "palatovelar" series *ḱ *ǵ *ǵʰ, and the "labiovelar" series *kʷ *gʷ *gʷʰ ?
Was the *gʰ same as ...
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How did Greek loanwords with 'ae' come to be pronounced [i] in modern English?
There are a bunch of Greek loanwords in English that orthographically include the vowel sequence 'ae'. Examples include:
aegis
aether
aeon
The 'ae' vowel here is pronounced [i] in English, but at ...
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When we talk about front and back vowels in the vowel chart, does it refer to the position of the tip of the tongue or the whole body of the tongue?
This question came to me when I was trying to distinguish between [a] and [ɑ]. The former exists in my native language and the latter is the one that I'm trying to form. My question is: Since it is a ...
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Praat 16,000 Hz
When I opened an American English Podcast in Praat, the area below 16,000 Hertz were all gray or dark. Then I speak some sentences in japanese then the area below 8,000 hertz were dark.
How do english ...
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