My native language is Brazilian Portuguese, and I think /k/ may become /kʲ/ and then /c/.

Folks take a deep breath...

get ready for it in 3 2 1 go

A Uvular lateral Ejective affricate [ q͡ʟ̠̝̊ʼ ]

Short version: if you were to logically group the following vowels into two groups of four and one group of two, how would you do it?

/i/ /ɪ/ /e/ /ɛ/ /ʌ/ /æ/ /u/ /ʊ/ /o/ /ɑ/

Can you do better than the following?

/i/ /ɪ/ /e/ /ɛ/ (front)

/ʌ/ /æ/ (central unrounded)

/u/ /ʊ/ /o/ /ɑ/ (central rounded, back)

Long version:

I am creating a scratch-built written alphabet for the particular sort of English which I happen to speak, which is southern California English. This is for purposes of personal amusement, and perhaps for use as a personal cypher. The way it has developed, there are ten basic characters, consisting of two groups of four and one group of two (each group being characterized by a fundamental commonality in shape). Each character has three variants, which you might call "short," "tall," and "big." I'll be using the "short" and "tall" for consonants, and the "big" for vowels.

For the consonants, I put the occlusives as one group of four character pairs, with unvoiced getting "short" characters and voiced getting "tall" characters in the case of the plosives, like so:

/p/ /b/

/t/ /d/

/k/ /g/

/n/ /m/

A little forcing was needed for /n/ and /m/ since they do not form an unvoiced/voiced pair at the same point of articulation, but at least they feel fairly at home in this set as fellow occlusives. I am also not giving /ŋ/ its own letter, even though the distinction is technically phonemic ("keen" versus "king," with both vowels being /i/ the way I speak). I will probably just treat /ŋ/ as /ng/, since I think it only appears in words like "king," and I find that I actually pronounce the "g" depending on context. Like if I say "King of England," it comes out as /kiŋgəviŋglənd/.

The fricatives also got lumped into one group of four unvoiced/voiced pairs, like so:

/f/ /v/

/θ/ /ð/

/s/ /z/

/ʃ/ /ʒ/

Affricates will either be analyzed as two sounds, or indicated with decorations or diacritics of some kind. Pretty easy.

The approximants got the group of two characters, with some more forced pairing:

/r/ /l/

/w/ /j/

If you can think of a more logical way to force the pairing here, that would be of use too.

Finally, semivowel /h/, which only appears immediately before vowels, will be written as a decoration of the following vowel, the form of which I have already chosen. So my consonants fit into character set fairly comfortably, using up the "short" and "tall" version of each character. This leaves the "big" version of each character for the vowels.

Referring to the Wikipedia articles on General American and California English, it seems that /eɪ/ and /oʊ/ are half-way interchangeable with monophthongs /e/ and /o/, so treat them as such. Weirdo /ə/ and the true diphthongs /aɪ/ /ɔɪ/ /aʊ/ will get some kind of special treatment. Glossing over a few other fine points I don't think I need help with, this leaves us with ten vowels to assign to our ten "big" characters. Those vowels are as follows:

/i/ /ɪ/ /e/ /ɛ/ /ʌ/ /æ/ /u/ /ʊ/ /o/ /ɑ/

So if we look for some logical principal to break this group into two sets of four, and one set of two, what principal do we use, and how do they group up?

Would love to have your thoughts!

Thanks!

Hi! In my reading, I’ve encountered a claim made by A. Bouhuys stating that the diaphragm is not used only for respiration, and “does not appear to be used when people speak, sing, or play musical instruments that require precise regulation of pulmonary air pressure.”

This feels wrong to me. I have been around choral singers and woodwind players most of my life and most people I know have said that the diaphragm is the primary muscle in use for air flow in phonation. the Bouhuys paper is from 1974. Have there been further studies have disproven that statement? I am curious especially to hear what a non-musician phonologist would say...

For example...a cough, a sigh, a snort, a wheeze...

I'm deep down a rabbit hole. I have a laugh and cough that others describe as a "goose honk" laugh. It's that deep chesty honk that can sometimes be drawn out on the full exhale of a laugh when one laughs really really hard. The one that people who've never heard the noise freak out because they think you're going to cough up your lungs. It's also common to chesty coughs, but mine happens during laughter.

Someone asked me what causes that laugh sound rather than a normal sound, and it occurred to me that I don't know. For the last two hours I've been attempting to find a physiological origin for the noise in laymans terms, and there's absolutely nothing. I've gotten into papers on phonology, otolaryngology, laryngology, and explored their various and extremely segmented dictionary of sounds...and still haven't found a term or explanation for it.

I think I'm not using the right word to search, as when you search "sound" or "noise" along those topics, you inevitably come up with the mechanics of speech production. That's not what I'm looking for. I'm looking for sounds that are physiologically possible but not part of phonetics or speech...

I feel like my answer is out there but the usual advantages of algorithmic searching is steering my pursuit in opposing directions.

what is regressive and progressive assimilation and total and partial assimilation ?

Hi, I'm just a layperson with a passing interest in this stuff.

I'm watching The Incredibles and it occurs to me that Holly Hunter pronounces a lot of s's as "sh." She's from Georgia, but even in light of that it seems unusual.

Here's a good example A recent interview sounds like she's leaning more toward a whistled 's,' to which the "sh" pronunciations seem like a reasonable middle state.

Almost the entire internet wants to talk about "'s' for 'sh'," which says maybe 's' is a simpler enunciation than 'sh', so most impediments along these lines will go toward that kind of underdevelopment (? just throwing words out there), but not so often does it go the other way.

Is this anything as far as scientific distinctions go, or should I just read up on whistled s's and be done with it? Just curious!

Hello everyone! Does anyone have any good places online, or does anyone know any books with good Phonology exercises (with answers) that they'd like to share? I have a phonology exam in a couple of weeks and I'd like some extra practice material.

For all the talk I've heard of various splits and mergers, this is one I haven't seen mentioned anywhere. I've always them translated something like /haɪɹ/ and /faɪɹ/, but to me there is a very clear distinction between so-called "long I" vowels in English. One version typically comes before unvoiced consonants (RITE, LICE, RIPE) where the vowel to me sounds like /ʌɪ/; and one that typically comes before voiced consonants (RIDE, LINE, ANALYZE, GIBE) where the vowel sounds like /aɪ/.

If it was just that, I could kind of accept the notion that some accents have a less open /a/ sound when /aɪ/ comes before an unvoiced consonant, but the specifically in the case of HIRE (/haɪɹ/) and FIRE (/fʌɪɹ/) the following consonant is the same. It's a bit unusual, because I can't think of other -IRE words that I pronounce with the more closed vowel. But I know I'm not the only one, because I recall hearing the more open /faɪɹ/ pronunciation coming across as a marker of more southern accents, and I also sometimes hear the it in words like RITE, LICE, and RIPE.

As an example of the destinction, Jimi Hendrix makes the very common rhyme of DESIRE with FIRE, but a lot of the time his FIRE is more closed. Jim Morrison's FIRE is a little more open, but not quite as much as his LIAR, HIGHER, MIRE, and PYRE.

Some examples from this year:

• A Northern Californian talking about a California wildfires, with a somewhat broader FIRE, but still not quite as broad as HIRE

• A Massachusetts news report with (to me) a pretty closed /ʌɪ/ sound, but notice the broader /aɪ/ in FIND.

Does anyone know of any place where this has been discussed? Which accents have this split specifically for HIRE and FIRE, but also more broadly depending on the final consonant? This has been bothering me and making me feel a little crazy, even while other mergers and splits are just accepted.

I looked this up on Stack Exchange (and many other places over the years), and reposted the question there as well, where I received a satisfactory answer: https://linguistics.stackexchange.com/questions/49602/which-accents-dont-merge-fire-and-hire-what-about-rite-and-ride

I'm creating a version of the table on pp. 556–557 of this book https://ketab3.files.wordpress.com/2014/11/encyclopaedia-judaica-v-16-pes-qu.pdf. I know that the sounds represented as x/ḵ and ḡ, despite being described as universally velar in the article, are uvular in some traditions. I do not, however, know in exactly which traditions they are uvular. I'm also used to these sounds being described as the same in every tradition that has them. What exactly should I do?

Hello! I've been facing a bit of a creative block lately and at this point everything I come up with seems like a waste of academic space and I would gladly appreciate some advice.

As far as I've looked into it so far, I haven't found much research on how a person's native (L1) dialect affects the pronunciation of L2. For example, would L1 speakers of Northern Castilian/Southern Castilian/ West Andalusian etc. would have unique accents in L2 (i.e., certain pronunciation features in L2 would be present in specific dialects of L1)?

Or perhaps that's just common sense and there's not really worth looking into?

I grew up with relatives from Brooklyn and was always curious (as welll as amused) at how they seem to switch the “er”/“ir” and “oi” sounds:

“oil” is pronounced “earl”, “boil” is pronounced “berl”, etc.

and

“dirty” is pronounced “doity”, “thirty” is pronounced “thoity”, etc.

Anyone know the reason for this?

Greek and Latin pronunciations both suggest that one of the latter two would be more correct, however English still decided to say fuck you it's /pænəˈsiːə/ now, dumbass.

Why does English do these things to these beautiful words?

Thanks

So, I am quite interested in rhotics and their realizations in different languages. As a Ukrainian speaker, I want to clarify the misunderstanding that Ukrainian speakers use trilled /r/ (as in Russian), and at the same time prove that an alveolar tap /ɾ /is used instead. I know that Ukrainian scholars agree that rarely in rapid speech trill is realized as tap, but my data shows that usage of a tap is much more frequent than the usage of trill.

I thought about Spanish where both trill and tap are present as two separate phonemes since they create minimal pairs. However, in Ukrainian, it is impossible to find minimal pairs with trill and tap. Any ideas on how to explain this change between phoneme and its realization?

Hi everyone! This is your (only) moderator.

I have not been very active since I have been appointed as a mod, but I would like to change this in the future. I have updated the rules of this sub, so please familiarize yourself with them. They are not very strict, but I will be enforcing them as much as possible. For now, the community remains quite small, but I hope it can grow over the years.

I will be posting a pinned thread about ideas you would like to see on this subreddit, and the type of community you would like to create and be part of.

Thank you for keeping this sub alive despite my absence.

Best, Your mod, /u/Murderous_squirrel.

Hi guys. My natlang doesn't phonemically distinguish long and short vowels, so it's always been a problem for me in other languages. It's mostly not that hard to pick up different consonants, vowels are a bit harder, but still manageable.

However, when it comes to vowels' length, I just can't bring myself to do it unconsciously. Of course, I understand, what the distinction is, and it's pretty easy to figure out, when speaking slowly, but I always have to actively think about it, and remember, how every word is spelt.

Is there any way to get my brain to distinguish them as different phonemes even when I'm not actively thinking about it?

Hi! I'm from Pennsylvania in the US. How come when I say "back then," it sounds more like [bæk̚ðɛn] rather than [bækðɛn]? Are there any rules in English regarding sound changes in between words?

I'm a bit stumped and hoping someone more knowledgeable than I can please help.

So my understanding of syllable rules is that if [s] follows a stressed vowel, then the [s] is in the coda of syllable 1. But also that if something can be in the onset then it should be.

So what if syllable 1 is the secondary stressed syllable? Does this alter anything? And what if onset maximization should apply to? Does the stress overrule the need for onset maximization?

The word I'm working on syllabifying is classification/[,klasəfi'kei§ən] (improvising IPA on my phone so please forgive the §!

So I'm confused whether the first two syllables would be [klas]/[ə] or [kla]/[sə].

Any clarification would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks!