Questions tagged [voicing]
a property of speech sounds that arises by vibration of the vocal folds. For example, the "s" sound in English "zoom" is voiced, but the "s" in "sea" is voiceless.
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Whispered Voiced Consonants
Is there a difference between voiced and unvoiced consonants when whispering, which as I understand it, does not use the vocal cords? I know it sounds silly to ask because we can all understand ...
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Can all languages be "whispered" equally well?
Watching a movie recently I found I couldn't make out the dialogue because it was all whispered.
I turned the volume up, and had no problems hearing everything. It seems to me that all words are ...
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Whispering in languages heavily dependent on pitch or phonation distinctions
When whispering in English all (segmental) phonological distinctions can – as far as I am aware – still be made, which may be due to redundancy (or simply because voicing is optional). I even ...
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What is the difference between voiced and voiceless stop consonants?
As a native speaker of American English, when I was listening to the difference sounds in this IPA chart, I was really surprised when I realized that I could not differentiate between p/b, t/d, and k/...
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Can a stop be both voiced and aspirated?
One day while discussing things with my friends, we came across the topic of trying to pronounce the sound [gh].
No such symbol actually exists in the IPA to my knowledge, but hypothetically it would ...
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Does Mandarin Chinese have phonetically voiced plosives, fricatives, or affricates (besides "r" = [ʐ] / [ɻ])?
The various Wikipedia articles covering Standard Chinese all seem to agree that Mandarin does not have voiced plosives, fricatives, or affricates except for [ʐ] / [ɻ], written in Pinyin as "r".
But ...
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Diachronic devoicing of initial lenis plosives in English
I get the impression that in the "classical Received Pronunciation" of English during phonetician Jones's era, the lenis plosives /b/, /d/, /g/ (and probably the affricate /dʒ/ as well) in initial ...
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Languages with a three-way distinction between voiced, aspirated, and unaspirated stops
I thought I had asked this question here previously but it turns out that I asked about ejectives rather than aspirated stops.
So this time I would like to ask whether there are languages that have a ...
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Understanding Voiced Consonants
I've been having some trouble understanding how is it that what differentiates, for example, /p/ from /b/, is the vibration of the vocal chords, present in /b/, but not in /p/. From what I have read ...
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Is voicing a gradient scale?
In one online linguistics community, I read the statement that "voicing is not all-or-nothing and that it is a gradient scale." This got me thinking: is this statement true or false? I guess it may be ...
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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/ ...
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Does the initial part of voiced consonants always have a low pitch?
The spectral graphs in the accepted answer of "What is the difference between voiced and voiceless stop consonants?" shows that in English, the initial part (before the stop release) of voiced stop ...
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Correlation Between Voicing and Place of Articulation?
So after studying the phonologies of many languages, I've noticed the pattern that consonants produced towards the front of the mouth are more likely to be voiced, while those produced towards the ...
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How do breathy-voiced stops work?
Are breathy-voiced stops (like [dʱ]) only breathy-voiced during the closure, with the vowel being completely modal-voiced, or do they make the vowel begin breathy-voiced, the way an aspirated stop ...
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Difference between voiced and lenis consonants in English
What is difference between voiced and lenis consonants in English language.
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The soft Spanish "t" (other languages are available)
Recently I have noticed that some languages have a sound which is somewhere between the "traditional" d and t. An example of this is the name "Roberto", pronounced by a Spanish or Italian speaking ...
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Do any languages have half-voiced affricates?
While hearing something on the radio in Lisbon, I heard this phrase:
A lei diz que tu não podes... (The law says you can't...)
The word that interests me the most is the last one podes which is ...
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Limitations of the parrot speech?
I was seeing a video of a parrot speaking Korean,
and I thought the way the parrots distinct between aspiration.
As I am not Korean, I really do not know.
What kind of distinctions a parrot can make ...
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Does Lakhota contrast voicing in stops?
WALS Online lists Lakhota as only having a voicing contrast in fricatives (referencing a study by Richard Carter in 1974). However, its Wikipedia article says that it has phonemic voiced bilabial and ...
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Mechanism of glottal stop - effect on tension in vocal cords
I understand that vocal pitch basically depends on tension in the vocal cords, which I'm visualising in terms of the cords being stretched along their length.
I understand that the glottal stop is ...
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Voice Onset Time, Onsets, Codas, and Pre- & Post-Aspiration
Whilst we're all familiar with voicing on an intuitive and/or phonological level, the actual acoustic phonetics are somewhat less intuitive to many of us.
The main way of formalising this intuitive ...
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Anglicisation of the voiceless velar fricative [x]
The voiceless velar fricative [x] is present in the English word yech, and sometimes loch, but is often enunciated as [h] or [k] when English speakers pronounce calques or foreign names.
Is [h] or [k]...
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Does assimilation of voice produce different phonemes, or just allophones?
During assimilation of voice, voiced consonants become voiceless and vice versa: s - z, d - t, etc.
cats ([ts])
dogs ([ɡz])
missed ([st])
whizzed ([zd])
Are these sound pairs different phonemes, or ...
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IPA Pronunciation of Unvoiced Consonants Seems Like Voiced
This might be a trivial question, but it seems to me that certain unvoiced example pronunciations for IPA sounds resemble the voiced one. For example, on this site:
http://www....
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What is known about the voicing of Hittite consonants?
Most consonants in Hittite appear in two variants, conventionally called "voiced" and "voiceless": "voiceless" consonants are written twice in a row, while "voiced" consonants are written only once. ...
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If we can say the following sounds when whispering
In learning about the IPA consonants, a big distinction is between voiced and unvoiced consonants.
When whispering however, we use no voice (I think). Yet, I feel like I can still hear these voiced ...
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Do Persian Jews voice Hebrew ק?
I recently saw the Hebrew name יעקב transliterated into (American) English by Persian Jews as Yaghob. I find this curious (because the ע isn't transliterated, but that's a question for another time, ...
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Evidence of connections between f0 and a physiological parameter?
I have the impression that physiological parameters like e.g. the size of neck will alter their f0. It's just an impression but it seems to hold - I can usually guess someone's neck size over the ...
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What does "fine-grained voicing distinctions" for consonants mean according to IPA?
In the Handbook Of The International Phonetic Association is mentioned this paragraph:
Voicing distinctions are actually more fine-grained than implied by
this two-way distinction [voiced and ...
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non-aspirated voiceless stops versus their voiced counterparts before a vowel
Is there a real distinction in say, a spectrogram, between unaspirated voiceless stops and their voiced counterparts before a (voiced) vowel? For example, /ka/ and /ga/. Are they actually different ...
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Why are voiced ejectives impossible?
Sounds made using the glottalic egressive airstream mechanism (one of the six main airstream mechanisms, and also of the four that are actually phonemic in natural human languages) are known as ...
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Is unvoiced & unaspirated a category of speech?
I know there is 'voiced & unaspirated' and 'aspirated & unvoiced' categories of speech. I have heard there is a 3rd category. What is it?
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Aspiration of voiced consonants
I have read in the wikipedia about aspiration that "voiced consonants are seldom actually aspirated", unlike their unvoiced counterparts. It does not seem so to me. Assuming that aspiration is the ...
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Are voiced stops in English articulated in the same manner as their nasal counterparts before the stop release?
I have a question regarding the initial part of stop consonants in English.
Let's take /b/, the voiced bilabial stop consonant, as an example. When I produce this consonant, prior to the stop release,...
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What is it called when a person pronounces the letter t in the word "metal" as something more similar to a d sound?
What is it called when a person pronounces the letter t in the word "metal" as something more similar to a d sound? And what is it called when a person stresses the t in the word "metal" to be more ...
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Is the consonant [b] always voiced across languages? What about [p]?
Is the consonant [b] always voiced across languages?
What about [p] being voiceless?
Similarly, is [k] always voiceless across languages?
Basically, I am taking what I know in English and wondering ...
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If any phonologies / languages make a distinction between voiced/voiceless nasals, approximants, vowels, trills, or flaps
So there are voiced/voiceless stops and fricatives in many languages, but I'm wondering if there are the same sort of voiced/voiceless distinctions for nasals / approximants / trills / flaps / ...
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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, ...
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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-/ ...
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How does passing air through a narrow glottis cause vibrations?
I'm studying phonetics as part of a Linguistics degree, and in my textbook, the author discusses how we make our vocal folds narrow, almost touching, such that air passing through vibrates. This is ...
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Why does "s" in Portuguese sound like /z/ between vowels?
I am a native speaker of Portuguese and for a long time I've wanted to know why some of the rules of the language are the way they are. I am very fond of linguistics and of learning languages, but I ...
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Are there Tai languages (or Tai-Kadai) which have a voiced velar stop phoneme?
Thai and Lao each have three series of stops, unvoiced unaspirated, aspirated, and voiced.
For labials and alveolars, all three exist, but for velars there is no voiced stop.
Is this the case for ...
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What is the nature of the (voiceless) aspirated "m" in Hmong?
Hmong is a dialect continuum spoken across several countries in Southeast Asia.
One prominent characteristic is the "aspirated m" (IPA m̥ or mʰ) found in some varieties. This is the reason behind the ...
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Tenuis nasal consonants
We know that, for plosives, when the voice onset time is before the closure event, the consonant is voiced, like [b]; if about the same time, it is tenuis, like [p]; if after, it is aspirated, like [...
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Is /v/ cross-linguistically semi-voiced and powerless in devoicing preceding consonants in case of regressive assimilation? How to explain it?
In Danish, /v/ is semi-voiced, like a combination of [f] and [v], though /f/ does exist in Danish phonology.
Russian features general regressive assimilation of voicing, but this rule doesn't apply ...
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What is the difference (if any) between a prenasalized voiced bilabial plosive and a voiced bilabial plosive with prolonged closure?
The consonant [b] can be prevoiced, so it would seem, at least at first blush, that prolonging the closure for this plosive would entail prenasalizing it. I've tried to produce it without ...
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Voiced obstruents (and sonority in general)
I (think that I) understand that sonorants are sonorous because airflow is continuous, non-turbulent, and so resonate at such a frequency that the vocal tract acoustic filter amplifies them. And I ...
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Standard Deviation Of Fundamental Frequency Of Males and Females [closed]
I know that it fundamental frequency is usually considered to be normally distributed, and that females have a higher variance in their distribution than males. What is the variance of the fundamental ...
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What are the most distinctive differences in the glottal wave between modal vs breathy phonation?
I understan that with modal phonation the glottal wave has a triangular shape, whereas with breathy voice, the source wave is closer to a sine wave. This means that the higher harmonics are more ...
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phonetics name of vibration in the wind pipe [duplicate]
A very angry, sonorant voice may have the vocal lips, wind pipe and whole throat vibrating.
For example, we may see this as phoneme in e.g. imitation of a wolfs growl, "grrr", a game show's bad-...
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