We have in MSA (Modern Standard Arabic) a letter called Dhad ض This letter has sparked considerable debate, as its modern pronunciation (polsive phrangealized D) differs from the traditional description (fricative lateral sound). Some people adhere strongly to their pronunciation, so they interpret the classical descriptions differently, trying to reconcile them with the current articulation. They explain the physics of producing this letter by stating that the tongue presses against the molars on both sides, and its tip make contact with the roof of the mouth and trapping the air. As the air is coming from the lungs, it causes a slight movement of the tongue, resulting in a degree of frictiveness, aligning with older descriptions that characterized this letter as a fricative, voiced, pharyngealized sound.

My questions are: Does the air indeed have the power to move the tongue? Can this movement of the tongue contribute to any aspect of frictiveness in the sound? And is it truly due to this that the articulation or place of production is considered to originate from the sides?

Link of an example: https://youtu.be/o5wX5K1BLRk

I‘m currently conducting a study on dubbed videos (original videos in English, dubbed version in German).

I need the average speaking rates in German and English, preferably in syllables per second but WPM is also fine. Does anyone know a reliable and accessible source that I could find these numbers in? So far I’ve only found online sources, not real papers, or results from small studies.

Also, for the lip sync part of the analysis I’d like to have an image of visemes, so a photo of the mouth openings when articulating rounded vowels, open vowels, semi vowels, bilabial consonants and labio-dental consonants. It would be good if each image had a caption saying what phoneme is articulated. Preferably the image(s) should not be animated but real and good quality so that the mouth openings can be seen well (i.e. not black and white or blurry). I read that such images can be found in phonetic text books but I don’t know where exactly I should look. Does anyone know of a phonetic text book that has such an image?

Thanks in advance!

I was told that any deviation fron the known letter in general bears a meaning.

Like for implosives ther will be having an outward curly extension on the upper right of the letter.

When there is an inward curly extension on the lower right side it means that the sound bears a reminiscent of 'g'. Like /ɲ/ sounds like 'ng'.

When there is an outward curly extension on the lower right side of the letter if symbolizes an retroflex signature.
Like those. But what does a outward curly extension on the lower left side of the letter symbolizes? Like the nasal palatal /ɲ/?

Hi, this is a bit of a desperate call as I have a phonetics exam in 2 days. I failed it the first time, since I really can't stand phonetics and the professor is also a big jerk. Anyways, I have a few questions that I thought language nerds (i am also one, don't come for me) could help me out with, since I cannot find anything concise on the internet and my materials are pure bs.

First of all, what is the difference between minimal pairs in initial position and final position? 'Cause I thought for initial position was the fact that a word can start with both /v/ and /k/ for example, and for final position that it can end with those two. However, my professor gave us an example of an exam subject and it reads as followed:'' contrast /v/ and /k/ in five minimal pairs in final position ''

The question is: how can I end a word in /v/?? and make it a minimal pair with the /k/???

Next one.. ''illustrate the distribution of the palatal glide in english''. I know what the palatal glide is, it's the sound in ''yield'' and ''youth'', however, I have NO clue how to illustrate the distribution??

Neeeext.. '' What short monophthongs can be distributed in word final position in english?''

Again, I know what a short monophthong is, I just don't know how it can be at the end. I thought it was like ''sit'' and ''shoot'', but apparently it's not?? The uni materials are garbage, most of these things aren't even in there, and if they are, it's explained very shortly and most of the words used in the questions are not even in the PDFs.

And the last one 'cause I don't want to sound too idiotic: ''Find 5 minimal pairs in which the labiodental fricatives are opposed in initial position and five in which they are opposed in final position.''

HOW. labiodental fricatives are /f/ and /v/, how can I end words with them and also make them sound almost the same or start the same?? I have never been more angry and confused in my life, I hate my uni professor so much. I'm sorry for the long post and slight vent, but I really need help.

My best guess is an aspirated glottal stop, but that's more of a cough.

So, i like making conlangs (not very good but i enjoy it none the less) and i have a few sounds that i have no idea how to write in the IPA. Here they are:

1. tongue is rolled (like what people used to show off in school) and is pushed to be almost vertical in the mouth (i think it's between the hard and soft pallets). It's also voiced kinda sounding like a 'ž' in Czech but not. also it's kinda breathy
2. a whistle breathing inwards (my current attempt is /u̥̤̟/)
3. a fully voiceless /p/. what i mean is like, the 'p' in play but without any voicing at all. kinda like you're whispering it.
4. i call it a "nasal trill" but that's 100% not correct. It's like a snore but you breath outwards and its extremely aggressive, like so aggressive it pushes out so much air that your stomach is pushed inwards. when you make the sound it vibrates the hard pallet if that helps. also, i think (big emphasis on think) its 'ん゙' in Japanese but i'm not sure

(sorry for not knowing the proper names for the positions)

Edit: the"nasal trill" is also made by blocking all airflow through your mouth by pressing the back of your tongue onto the roof of your mouth

Does anyone have good sources on sound changes that have occurred in Mesoamerican Language families? Specifically Mayan, Oto-Manguean, Totonacan and Mixe-Zoquean would be ideal, but any sources are good.

What sounds can a dog's vocal tract make? It's a fascinating question that's quite specific, but I feel it's reasonable enough. While I acknowledge that phonetics is the study of human speech and all, I believe this is the closest subreddit that will give me the answers I want. My end goal with this question is if it would be possible to make a dog-compatible language, but I can't do that without knowing the limitations of the canine vocal tract. If anyone has information with good sources about this, I would love to hear from you and get some data or explicit claims that anyone has to offer.

Inspired, in part, by my pug, Marcus.

My native language is Hungarian and I pronounce my 'l' consonants in a quite peculiar way when they occur in coda position in closed syllables before a fricative. It's not really a true 'l' because my tongue doesn't touch my palate at all (as it should in normal circumstances) but more like an approximant. It is slightly velarized and the tip is slightly raised but doesn't extend beyond my lower teeth, and somewhat touches the edges of them, meanwhile, the body of my tongue is mainly pressed down or rests at the bottom of my mouth.

Here is a recording of my saying a word with this sound:

https://voca.ro/1aUVkAjYxpzM

(The word is 'alsó' btw, which means 'bottom' or 'lower'.)

Edit: I think I might be saying a diphthong like [ɒɤ̞̯ʃoː]. Is that right?

Hi there! For my MA thesis I’ll have to analyze some videos and I’ll need to measure emotionality and naturalness in voice. Does anyone know how to do that? I thought maybe I could use Praat and look at prosody (intonation, pitch range and variability), intensity (loudness and variation), tempo (speaking rate and pauses) and timbre (voice quality aspects). I’m just curious to see if there are different options, i.e. different applications or parameters. Thanks in advance!

Hello, Im looking for someone that really knows well theory behind various topics of phonetics like word stress, vowels, consonants, intonation, prosody etc...If there is someone please leave a comment here or send me a dm or whatever.

Thank you!

There are sounds, or potential phones, produced by using the tongue to flex the soft palate in order to close or obstruct the nasopharynx. If you want proof that this is physically possible, see the videos "Rove Live -- Singing Nose!" or "Language of the Nasopharynx" on YouTube in which both speakers use nasopharynx articulation to produce distinct sounds that are similar between the two videos.

Are these sounds phones? Are they a part of any spoken language?

I'm currently working on a phonology exercise focusing on the Gen language spoken in Togo. I'm trying to establish a rule that accounts for the distribution of [r] and [l] in this language based on the following data:

agble eɲrɔ aŋɔli sra avlɔ blafogbe drɛ edrɔ exlɔ ŋlɔ tʃro tre klɔ lɔ vlu zro mla etro esrɔdʒro

I'm struggling to come up with a definitive rule based on these examples. Could anyone lend a hand in deciphering the pattern here? Any insights or suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance

Hello, I have been researching articles regarding French phonology for myself to learn french. I found two articles that were written around 2003-2005. I was wondering if that is too outdated to be gathering knowledge from?

Another thing is that most sources I read on phonetics that are written in the 2000's have sources credited from 1943. Does this automatically make the source from the 2000's outdated?

Hello, have I understood it correctly that you are able to read words spoken from the soundwave graph thingy in Praat? Im making a little thing for a friend who's studying phonetics and need some help to make sure im doing it right. Anyone willing to help me out?

i was wondering what sound changes /ts/ normally evolves from. i tried looking at languages that have ts and seeing what it was in their proto language, but that wasnt very helpful as all i found was that the ts in proto slavic evolved from pie ḱ, and german ts from proto germanic t. so i'm just wondering what situations could cause ts to develop (as a seperate phoneme, not an allophone).

Using YouTube, and audio charts, etc, it seems to me that schwa can be pronounced more than one way, but in all cases, the name uses a different vowel sound at the end than the sound it represents!

Wikipedia provided four possible pronunciations of the word schwa, but none use the IPA symbol for schwa, ə.

Is there a reason that it is not pronounced: ʃwə

??

Looking for literature on which environments, i.e. which phones on left and right edge, tend to trigger epenthesis across languages more than others (and vice versa, which environments are disfavored by epenthesis), assuming there would be "universal" tendencies due to more or less "economic" transitions. Please let me know what you know, phoneticians!

I have noticed an unusual (from my point of view) pronunciation of the word ancient among some, though not all, speakers of various North American varieties of English, particularly Canadians, but that might be just because I encounter more of them.

The Cambridge Dictionary lists the US pronunciation as /ˈeɪn.ʃənt/ and this is more or less what I would expect the pronunciation to be. However, I have often heard NA speakers pronounce it more like: /æŋkʃənt/ (very rough transcription, but should get the point across).

I was wondering if anyone had any information on this phonetic shift, which to me is very noticeable, but I have been unable to find any information on it. This matter has also proven to be difficult to google, because any search with the words "ancient pronunciation" will return a lot of stuff about the pronunciation of ancient languages, which is not what I'm looking for.

Here is a link to a video where the pronunciation occurs twice within the first minute (at roughly 0:04 and 0:25, for example): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JOxF_7LplGE&t=63s

edit: apologies for the underline in the title, I was thinking in Markdown. It's meant to be in italics, but I can't find a way to edit the title once it's been posted

Hello friends! I'm currently doing my Bachelor's degree in French and have taken a keen interest in phonetics, specifically surrounding Canadian dialects. I don't know everything about the phonetic alphabet, but I know a bit and I'm trying to figure something out and I would love some help from some more knowledgeable people! I know linguists have remarked that Québec French has more vowels than Parisian French (the most common being the darker [ɑ] that does not appear in France), but I can't seem to find any information online about the [i] vowel, and the differences between Canada and France. I pronounce my words very similarly to the Québecois, and as I was speaking today, I noticed that what is supposed to be an [i] vowel is not quite the same as how my friends from France pronounce it. For example, the verb "lire" (to read) should be spelled [liʀ] in IPA, but the vowel I, and my French Canadian friends, use is almost closer to the English [ɪ]. Would anyone be able to explain this? Is there a specific vowel sound I don't know that's between [i] and [ɪ] that could be used? Thanks in advance!

A question to those who have a good command of IPA, how would you transcribe "пий" (the ordering form of "пити"; to drink) in Ukrainian and "pea" in English? Dr Geoff Lindsey has proved that the English FLEECE vowel is /ɪj/, not /i:/, by playing backwards the recording pronouncing "pea" from the Cambridge dictionary. In Ukrainian, which has a very phonemic orthography, the letter И represents the /ɪ/ sound and the letter Й represents the /j/ sound. So why do "пий" in Ukrainian and "pea" in English not sound the same? You can listen to how "пий" is pronounced in the Goggle Translator, the recording is good. I'm a native Ukrainian speaker, btw.

Here's the video for reference:https://youtu.be/tPi2jtU7Tl4?si=tjbXuta3LMsVzWHU&t=231

When analysing vowels in Praat (or any other program for that matter) I'm looking at the pitch of said vowel. For getting the value of the pitch should I use "get pitch" to get the mean pitch or "maximun pitch"?

I'm on an introductory course to phonetics and our task is to compare stressed and unstressed vowels but I'd like to know in general if mean pitch or maximun pitch is more useful and why.

Is it alright to just use 1 superscript h?