I am someone who learns languages, and one of my interests is sounding as close as possible to a native speaker.

Obviously skilled voice actors are very impressive in what they are able to accomplish with their voices, so I am wondering if anyone has seen any cross over into language learning?

Are there any resources or pearls of wisdom from the voice acting community which you think would be useful for those who are in the language learning community?

So today I re-watched some video about the wug test, and I realized that many pronunciation of <wugs> the plural morpheme doesn't sound that phonetically voiced to my ear. I also tried pronunciation of real words (on Forvo and Collins Dictionary) like <dogs>, <eggs>, <loads>, <beds> they all sound voiceless to me. But on the other hand <cars> sound a bit more voiced, and <caves> is clearly voiced for me. So I wonder what are the cues of voicing for the morpheme/forms and their weights in different environment. What are the papers that I should read?

So your voice sucks and so does mine but what if it didn't, what if you produced the sounds you wanted to make without much thought or effort?
I tried figuring this out myself and realised that like most problems i look at initially, I tend to look at the symptoms and sometimes miss the cause. This was the case with voice. One way of approaching new concepts and themes that has worked consistently is called first principles. Which really just stands for, what are the most basics truths i can establish about a given topic and build my understanding from there.
In complex systems it is easy to get lost and with voice I have done this for five years. After looking through all of the advanced techniques, learning lingo and going through denial about my voice I went back to basics, and what a fool I feel like. Hopefully this breakdown that I made for myself can help you on your journey to obtaining your confident and expressive voice.
(I'm no expert, I can only share what has helped me.)

Back to basics.

What is voice ?
I mean really, if its broken down into its components, what is it?
A bunch of sounds produced by some air vibrating some fleshy bits in a few different chambers.

Why does your sound the way it does?
The sound of a persons voice is a result of how its used, and within society, what is acceptable or expected becomes how it is developed. Each country/ community/ gender has its own set of expectations. And depending on how long you've used your particular fleshy bits and in what way will determine your voice. Of course the shape and length of your fleshy bits plays a part in this too. Your voice, like your body is uniquely yours, to do with it as you like.

So what is voice made of?
A bunch of little sounds that we recognize as language when combined together in a particular way. These sounds are called phonetics and outside of them we consider those sounds to be noise.
When your airway is unobstructed (tongue teeth and lips are out of the way) we can make sounds like AA EE II OO and UU known as vowels
And when it is obstructed it can make sounds like CUH TSS SHH known as consonants There are many more sounds that a person can make and the understandable ones are known as phonetics, these form the sounds of language.

Can I change my voice?
You sure can! In fact you already have, hundred's of thousands of times before. Your voice used to sound like a bunch of noise accented with some crying and

In 2016, it was announced that she had recorded all phonetic sounds, so in the future they could be used to recreate any word. These were apparently professionally recorded. It's 2019 now, and still no word on why they are not using them. We have Google Assistant and Siri that all have natural sounding voices, based on the same principal of using phonetics. So why have they not used Majel's recordings in future Star Trek movies or TV shows?

So this happened not long ago. I was lazing about, doing regular Saturday stuff (videogames, taking walks and other stuff) when I recived a call from an unknown number, so instinctively, I ignored it. But after about a minute or so, the number called again. So I thought, "Ok...? Maybe it's somine I do know but didn't save on my phone." and with that I answered the call...

There were words, probably automated, being said by a monotone voice, overlapped by a fairly loud static. After a short time, I realised that it was saying words in the phonetic alphabet. I immediately thought, "Write it down!" and so I wrote what I could. Most of the words words were too quiet to be heard over the static, but I got down the following. These were the words spelled:

JUNE

FILE

RAIN

PUSH

and OUT

Pretty weird. If anyone has had a similar encounter please let me know! Thanks for reading!

https://paperswithcode.com/paper/phonetic-posteriorgrams-based-many-to-many

https://twitter.com/ak92501/status/1334704071694049283?lang=en

https://hhguo.github.io/DemoEASVC/

So if I understand right you can change the characteristics of your own voice to sounds like another. As a music maker with a shitty voice I am REALLY interested in this. Anyone want to make a colab for us simpletons?

I saw an article (Thank you u/bernrad for linking it!) a few years ago tracing and analyzing the dialect used by Blink 182 and lots of subsequent similar artists. I love the idea of tracing dialects in music.

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I've been wondering about the "Indie Voice" phenomenon, also called "Hip singing." It's always struck me as being vaguely like an exaggerated Billie Holiday impression, and I'm curious if anyone has charted the phonetics or looked seriously into the history of its use.

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Edit: A few people have now sent me this awesome article by Ace Linguist! The IPA sound changes are exactly what I was looking for, particularly a look into trends in the diphthongization, and especially noting the R-vocalization (this part is cool, and makes a lot of sense articulation-wise -- the alveolar approximant is near the high front vowel).

Here's what I gather, in case for some reason you don't want to read the article: It looks like some of the dialect's diphthongs are closing and fronting most low/back vowels by assimilating toward an alveolar consonant that follows (e.g., ɛ > ɛɪ _ C[+alveolar] ), and others are opening (and/or rounding, by my ear) vowels that already precede a high vowel in a diphthong (e.g., /taim/ > [tɑim]). Maybe the latter is extra dissimilation to emphasize the range of the diphthong. I'm not sure I buy the pitch change argument. Altogether very interesting!

I’m thinking of the German first-person singular present suffix -e here, which is underlyingly /-ə/ but often, depending on diverse phonetic and discourse factors, surfaces as [-Ø], e.g. (ich) habe [ha:bə] -> (ich) hab’ [hab].

The thing is, the rule that deletes the schwa must occur after the regular process of word-final devoicing, since we hear [hab] instead of devoiced *[hap]. So at least in that instance, there being no other phonetic evidence of the inflection, it seems to me that the 1SG “suffix” surfaces only as a blocking of word-final devoicing. And if the schwa were to be deleted regularly at some point in the future, that would presumably be the only realisation available.

Now, I’m not sure if any of this is fully right; I speak German and it sounds right to me, but I’m not at all familiar with German linguistics, so I could be missing some major factor of analysis here. Regardless, I’m wondering if this hypothetical means of inflection actually occurs regularly in any of the world’s languages. Thanks in advance.

I am not military, just a regular civilian. Over the last few years there has been an uptick in business conducted by phone vs in person for me (and probably a lot of you too!), and a lot of in-person communication done through masks and plexi barriers. I found myself constantly repeating my name and email 2/3 three times on calls because “N” sounds like “M”, etc. To add an extra layer of annoyance, my name is a variation on a common name with one letter changed, and my last name isnt common either so I’d never get away with being Joe Smith where people could sort it out on their own. I was using stand-in words at the beginning, but that didn’t work as well.

Fed up, I printed, cut out and pinned the phonetic alphabet on my desk, wrote out my email in same, memorized it in a day and now I save myself and the person on the other end of the phone a bunch of irritation. Comes in really handy talking through masks too. Now work emails come in when they’re supposed to and I’m not repeating myself like a parrot all damn day long.

Hi! Tikorši is my first somewhat "good" conlang, so I'm very happy to show you some major features of it's phonology. I'm really looking forward to see some feedback, especially criticism about how naturalistic or logical some things are. Hope you'll enjoy it!

Syllable structure

Tikorši has a pretty simple (C)V(A)(C) syllable structure. In stressed position, C can be any consonant, V can be any vowel, A stands for (non-lateral) approximant. The coda consonant can be any sound except voiced stops or fricatives.

Consonants

Allophones:

/n t d s z ɾ l/ are dental [n̪ t̪ d̪ s̪ z̪ ɾ̪ l̪]

/n/ becomes [ŋ] before velars

/ɲ/ is realized as [j̃] before fricatives and optionally word finally

/t d k g/ become [ts dz kʲ gʲ] before /e i/

/k g/ are lenited to [ç~ɕ  ʝ~ʑ] before /y/

Cluster of /tʂ/ is realized as an affricate [t͡ʂ]

/ʂ ʐ/ aren't strongly retroflexed

/x ɣ/ are palatalized to [ç ʝ] before /e y/

/x/ might glottalize to [h] in coda

Clusters of /k/ and /x/ might be pronounced as [k͡x]

Cluster of /lɾ/ is realized as [r]

/l/ is a velarized [ɫ] before back vowels

/ʋ/ is realized as:

• [v] initially before front vowels
• [ʋ] initially before back vowels
• [ʋ~w] medially, with [w] mostly around back vowels
• [ʋ~w~∅] word finally

Voicing assimilation plays an important role. If there's an obstruent in the code, the next obstruent also must be voiceless, eg. šip (hair) + gaveset (forehead) = šipkaveset (eyebrow)

If there's an obstruent in the coda and the following sound is a sonorant, the obstruent is allophonically voiced, but it's not represented in the orthography, eg. lešnë [ˈleʐnə] (help n.)

Sections of two same consonants are prohibited and must be broken with an epenthetic vowel, usually a short /ə/. Phonetically though, double consonants often appear due to assimilation, as in talosši /'tɑlosʂi/ (flowery) being pronounced as [ˈtɑloʂːɨ].

*more under Vowel length

Vowels

/y/* and /ɒ/ occur only in stressed syllables

Vowel clusters are not allowed so if two vowels collide, they are separated by either /j/ or /ʋ/.

Allophones:

/æ/ is generally pronounced as [ɛ̞] but it's t

In Wikipedia it says it's this [ ʔ ] , but it's not, I'm looking for it because my name has this sound , and my french friend was trying to pronounce it but couldn't, so it kinda piqued my interest, and I couldn't think of a language that has this sound, and I started looking for this sound, but I didn't find it , so does anyone have any idea about this sound or if it exists in any other language, cause I think it's highly unlikely that it doesn't exist in any other language.

So I have been researching the topic for a while now and I am getting started on my first conscript. My question for the more experienced is basically this,

If I am working on a phonetic conscript, to what degree can I combine sounds and let context carry the rest? The difference between the voiced and voiceless dental fricative in Thigh and Thy for example. Surely context clues would shake out any confusion on that? Or I am terribly wrong, any thoughts or personal experience? For world-building reasons I am trying to create a conscript with as few characters as reasonably possible that still provides decently clear communication.

Thanks!

I‘m an italian-american who grew up in Northern NJ, alongside about a million other IA’s.

I never heard anyone say WHORE like they do in Sopranos 😂 particularly Chrissy & Ralphie. I try to pronounce it myself and i’m no where close.

Best phonetic spellings? I’ve seen a few posted on this subreddit, I read them aloud and still can’t seem to get it right!!

I have an assignment due tomorrow based off a reading so I need this answer ASAP :/ I’ve googled and can’t find it anywhere. I don’t know what they’re called. Hence why I’m making an individual post.

What do the phonetic symbols mean in this photo that have small letters/symbols to the right of them? Like the [s] with a small z next to it, the [h] with a small s, or the [h] with what looks like a carrot next to it.

I know what phonemes are but have never seen those smaller symbols next to them before.

Can anyone help? Thank you!

No one uses the NATO phonetic alphabet unless they're very engaged with the English language, so I started listening to how people gave serial numbers, and this is what I came out with. It skews very old-fashioned, but I love that, truth be told.

A - Anton

B - Bertha

C - Cäsar

D - Dieter

E - Emil

F - Friedrich

G - Gustav

H - Heinrich

I - Ida

J - Julius

K - Konrad

L - Ludwig

M - Martha

N - Nordpol

O - Otto

P - Paulus

Q - Quelle

R - Rudolf

S - Siegfried

T - Theodor

U - Udo

V - Victor

W - Walther

X - Xanthippe

Y - Ypsilon

Z - Zeppelin

My phonetic I mean with English alphabetical letters. Like McCree's ult is "Tsogani Tsinda" I believe. I don't need a translation to English I just want to know in a way how theyre actually pronounced/written

She thinks the “fauxnetics” we all make fun of (like “FOE-net-ticks”) actually make sense to the layman vs. the multitude of unfamiliar letters in IPA that one would need to learn, compared to using smaller words/syllables that laypeople are already familiar with as a guide to pronunciation.

She thinks it’s stupid to make fun of these transcriptions because using IPA is unknown & inaccessible (typing-wise) to most people, & therefore impractical.

Thus, she says our mocking of it makes us pretentious.

What say you, r/fauxnetics?

Edit: thank you all for your replies. I have learnt quite a bit about NATO alphabet I didn't know before and I've realised, the reason it confuses me is because I haven't really used it before and I now know why people use it. I also realised I may have been a bit too harsh on NATO and I may try to learn it properly in the future.

NATO phonetic alphabet is using the word Alpha instead of the letter A and Bravo for the letter B and so on.

When used to explain a letter close to each other like S and C then I can understand adding it on as extra information if it is asked for, but some people use it to explain every word without even a warning, just saying snake alpha tent for the word sat.

Which contradicts how I use whole words, because I use whole words to speed up the spelling process. So if I say it is spelt the word alpha then the word bet, you should get the word alphabet.

The only letter that may need the NATO phonetic alphabet is the letter c, because it can sound like s. But you can just emphasize s and whenever a c sounds like an s, you know it is not an s, because it is not emphasized.

Don't be like me, learn these if you regularly play with people in a wing. It can be very helpful!

http://usmilitary.about.com/od/theorderlyroom/a/alphabet.htm

My friend asked where we were headed, so I told him.

Ape, Mannequin, Unitard, Zod, Gorilla, Orgasm and then handing in merits in Xylophone, Imperial, Neanderthal, Crack, Apple.

I work a customer service job, and my boss asked me if I grew up with someone who was former military because he has heard me use the NATO phonetic alphabet before. When I told him no, he asked what triggered me learning it and when I said an Archer episode, he thought I was joking, lol.

vovolili l-allo raro?

Ok! I finally made an extensive phonetic outline for one of my conlangs. It’s here in an 11 (!) page PDF linked in the comments :D

In my own notes it’s referred to as L2, but to post on reddit i’ve been using the term Loaïnna - actually a borrowing from another conlang of mine, meaning “our language”. Strange that an endonym would be a borrowing, but I like the vibe, so it’ll do for now.

Loaïnna (or L2) is based of off Spanish. This is because I am familiar with Spanish, it offers a very clean phonology to work from, and the atmosphere of this imaginary world is very Iberian.

However, I’m most interested in allomorphy - when related word forms are obscured. For this I’ve researched Navajo and Old Irish (yes I know). I’ve taken creative liberty to nudge the Spanish verb from a standard synthetic typology into an agglutinative and, in some ways, polysynthetic one. So although you can successfully transpose Spanish vocabulary into L2 using the changes listed in the doc, the grammar introduces novel elements inexplicable through sound changes alone.

An example:

yò-de#dá > ìwði#ðá > ìwjiðá (eoïdá) “I give you”

yò-no-de#dá > ìwnuði#ðá > ìwnði#ðá > ìwnniðá (eonnedá) “I don’t give you”

yò-de-lo#dá > ìwðilu#ðá > ìwðlu#ðá > ìwdluðá (eodlodá) “I give it to you”

Here regular sound changes obscure the form of the word de, 2.SG.OBJ (Spanish te). Fun right?

Verbs evolve to have three principal parts, often warped by syncope, lenition and assimilation:

amá - ama - amlá (amar, ama, amará)

adeoná - aivina - aivinlá (adivinar - adivina - adivinará)

aoitá - avita - avirhá (abitar - abita - abitará)

And a few auxiliary verbs tucked in before the verb stem:

tù-me-bàs#amár > ðùmivàs#amá > ðùjmvàs#amá > ðujmmazamá (doimmasamá = tú me vas a amar)

There is an S-mutation and an N-mutation, with similar origins as the Celtic mutations:

nos#tomámos > nut#tumámu > nuttumám (nottomam = *nos tomamos) S+T=TT, etc

yò-no#bá > ìwnuvá > ìwnvá > ìwmmá (eommá = yo no *va) N+B/V=MM, etc

Scroll to the last page of the PDF for a full phonetic inventory, but highlights include the introduction of a full set of voiceless and labialized liquids /ɬʷ//ɾ̥ʷ/ etc due to the erosion of unvoiced plosives.

Anyway !! Check it out. This is also my first post on Reddit and first time really sharing a conlang, so thanks for checking it out <3

*Also wasn’t exa

LOL NOT SLEEPING, SPELLING (typo) I’m writing a short essay for college apps and I’m talking about pronunciation of a schools name (Bowdoin), I want to put the name in as the phonetic spelling of the name like: “BOH-din”, or “boʊˈdɔɪn” but I can’t really decide which way will illicit the reader to realize that that is 100% definitely the phonetic pronunciation.

Btw because the portal I’m using won’t allow me to italicize it I can’t do that.

I am looking for a website with chinese phonetic etymology but all I can find is etymology of characters. I am specifically looking for examples of [y]-final words deriving from this process, which I'm told exists for some etymologies: [ut]->[yt]->[y].

Thanks

This alphabet was developed specifically for the military to make clear communication over radio and avoid confusion.

Once you get used to it, you will find yourself to be quicker at spelling and understand spelling, as you will not need to find a work that start with letter you are planning to spell.