The word-nerd has entered his final form.

Nicely done gentlemen.

g͡bɣ͡β

Why is the distinction between between voiced affricates and voiced fricatives (i.e. /z/ and /dz/) much rarer and unstabler than the distinction between voiceless fricatives and voiceless affricates (i.e. /s/ and /ts/).

Examples of what I mean:

English has both /ʒ/ and /dʒ/ but there are basically no minimal pairs.

Japanese lost the distinction between [z] and [dz] very quickly after [dz] developed as an allophone of /d/.

Hungarian phonemically distinguishes /z/ and /dz/ except at the beginning of a word.

Polish distinguishes 3 pairs of these but minimal pairs seem to be not too common.

In Middle Chinese /ʑ/ and /dʑ/ merged in speech.

Does anybody know any languages where such distinctions are highly important? I can produce and hear the differences but the difference seems too small to be consistent to me (maybe because I do not speak any languages that makes such a distinction).

I know that ɦ isn't really a true "voiced glottal fricative" but is ʔ͜ɦ counts as affricate?

For as long as I can remember, when pronouncing alveolar plosives when they’re immediately followed by /ɹ/, for some reason it’s always turned into an alveolar/post-alveolar affricate for me. i.e. /t/ -> [t͡ʃ] / _ɹ and /d/ -> [d͡ʒ] / _ɹ. This happens in both word-initial and word-medial position, so “tree” becomes [t͡ʃɹi], “drew” becomes [d͡ʒɹu̟w], “atrophy” becomes [æt͡ʃɹəfi], and “Andrew” becomes [æ̃nd͡ʒɹu̟w]. When I hear other people say words like these, I hear them the same way that I pronounce them, though I can see how this could be a perceptual bias. However, when I took Intro to Linguistics, I got points taken off of homeworks for transcribing it that way. More recently, in my Phonetics and Phonology class, we were transcribing random words and one of my classmates expressed that he also pronounces it this way. No one else in the class did, though, and our professor seemed taken aback and it seemed like he didn’t believe us. I was wondering if this is a documented phenomenon, and if not if anyone has ever heard of this happening. If it’s relevant, I was born in Boston and lived there until I moved to Connecticut when I was 3.

I have a degree in Linguistics & am an ESOL teacher. I'm trying to learn Korean off my girlfriend, but I'm having trouble identifying the voiced vs. unvoiced alveolar affricates when listening. From what I've seen online they form them with a flatter & lower tongue than in English, but I don't think these show up on the IPA. Their /s/ also sounds a little (or a lot?) different. Can anyone shed some light?

For example (both voiceless versions below, i.e. pronouncing "-ttle"):

alveolar stop -> alveolar approximant (i.e. "regular t" to "regular l") here.

alveolar lateral affricate (the word "little" pronounced) here, I think. In fact, the same channel as the first one seems to say little with an alveolar lateral affricate as well?

Is there a rule that people tend to follow? Any tendencies depending on situation or social class?

I'm not a linguist so sorry if I'm getting the IPA terms wrong.

... So do you guys hear this? Also does this just occur "naturally" because they use the "θ" sound while others use "s" sound.

In some English dialects /t͡ʃ/ and /d͡ʒ/ are pronounced more front - like [t͡ɕ] and [d͡ʑ]. Also /tr/ and /dr/ consonant sequences in some English dialects are pronounced as retroflex consonant sequences [ʈʂ] and [ɖʐ]. If /tr/ and /dr/ sequences changed to retroflex affricates, so would /t͡ʃ/ and /d͡ʒ/ pronounce as alveolo-palat affricates [t͡ɕ] and [d͡ʑ] for better contrast with retroflex affricates?

Although the voiceless alveolar plosive can still be found between vowels in many English dialects, the way that the "t" in "whatever" is pronounced in most of Canada and the United States is that of the voiced alveolar flap.

Is it known when the plosive switched to a flap in these positions and at what point it became more common that using plosives in the United States and Canada?

As the title says I'm searching for papers talking about this phenomenon, or at least a middle-step; I've found some articles about velarization of /l/ in albanian, catalan and spanish, but found nothing about the occlusion of /ɫ/.
Want to know more, if this is even a thing

edit: I want to say that this curiosity of mine is caused from my southern-italian town's dialect, which is a unicum in the linguistic continuum, turning almost all the /l/ in /g/. ex. the italian for bed, /lɛt:ɔ/, turns into /git:ə/ etc.

I want to speak Turkish, which just happens to have three different 'R' sounds. I already learned to say Voiced Alveolar Flap and Trill in Spanish, but its Turkish version -which is rather soft- and allophones are quite tricky.

According to one source (pg.25), Turkish has

1. /ɾ/ (voiced alveolar flap) intervocalically,
2. /ɾ̞/ (voiced alveolar tapped fricative) word-initally,
3. /ɾ̞̊/ (voiceless alveolar tapped fricative) word-finally and before a voiceless consonant.

• /ɾ/

Definitely different than the Spanish /ɾ/, hear the difference yourself: Spanish, Turkish1, Turkish2. Spanish sounds much more explosive or I'd say vigorous, which is identical to my Turkish /ɾ/. I wonder how I can tone it down. Plus, it's so difficult to say the second Turkish word, 'ararım', if you try to make the /ɾ/ sound like in 'para' as your tongue needs to move really fast to make that sound twice. There must be something I am doing wrong.

• /ɾ̞/

On Turkish Phonology Wikipedia page, it says " the constriction at the alveolar ridge narrows sufficiently to create frication but without making full contact". This one was descriptive enough, I can make the sound, though I need some practice; you have to make sure your tongue isn't touching your alveolus by accident. However, I have a few concerns; hear the difference for the same word in the following set of footage: Radyo1, Radyo2, Radyo3

• /ɾ̞̊/

For this sound, Turkish Phonology says the same thing as the previous one (I guess it only makes sense if you don't let your tongue touch your alveolus b

I know English and French. Neither of which have required me to learn this consonant.

I am trying to learn the IPA (or at least, most of it) and as a part of that I need to know how to actually pronounce every consonant. I have managed to pronounce everything else on the official chart (the one that comes in image form) - to varying degrees of success, of course - but I can't get this trill going at all.

I have seen wildly different methods and strategies thrown around, all of which seem to be aimed at AmEng speakers and none of which have worked for me so far. I don't have a tongue-tie or anything, and I do know the trill works, but it's like my tongue is always simultaneously too stiff and too loose. Does anyone have any suggested methods/learning techniques? What worked for you?

Ps. I know this is a cheeky 2-in-1, but why are some consonants not on the official chart? The full Wikipedia chart seems to be twice the size! Does the official one only include common/relevant sounds?

ᶮɟʝʷ

I am having *extreme* difficulties trying to pronounce it. Is it simply pronounced with the relatively easy to pronounce voiced palatal lateral approximant?

It's just very hard for me to link these two sounds together. I know they are both voiced alveolars but I just can't seem to find common characteristics between them when I speak. I try to say /z/ quickly with small pauses between each repetition and try to transform it into /ɾ/ but it just doesn't happen. On the other hand, when I do the same thing with /d/ it works like magic.

Shameless linguistics noob askin' another question here, so be patient.

I'm sure there are much better examples of this, but I've noticed that in Danish, a lot of words with [t] get transformed into [d].

The prefix 'ud-' is is 'ut-' in Swedish: 'utbildning' versus 'uddanelse', 'uddale' versus 'uttal', etc.The word 'ut' by itself stays the same though. Adjectives like 'sød' are 'söt' in Swedish [and 'søt' in Norwegian, and the cognate 'sweet'], 'arbejder' <> 'arbeter', etc etc. You get the point.

Please correct me if I'm wrong [I've never even been close to Denmark before]. I could also make the guess based on my minimal research that [k] gets voiced into a [g]: based on words like 'og' <> 'och', or 'sprog' <> 'språk'.

The word 'supermarket' is written as 'supermarked'. I can't find any resources for English loanwords into the Danish language - probably because I'm searching in English and not Danish - but I'm wondering if this too happens to loanwords which are assimilated into a Danish imitation instead of being pronounced exactly like it is in English.

So is there a term for this voicing? Thanks!

I recently discovered that what I thought was a ʃ was really ɕ all alonɡ and similarly for tʃ dʒ and ʒ beinɡ palatal variants. Usually people know the latter and want to figure out a way to get to the palatals, but I need to take the opposite direction. I managed to figure out how to pronounce the post alveolars, but for the most part I can only do it with a lot of focus. If there was anybody who has been through a similar situation, what did you do to get comfortable with ʃ ʒ and etc?

Affricates happen to be the type of consonant I'm most confused about in the IPA, so I'm not very sure about what would precedent (I don't know if that's the word I'm looking for, quarantine has made me forget how to think straight; if it's wrong, please correct me and I'll change it to that or "qualify") for an affricates. We have (too lazy to copy paste any more unicodes, sorry) [ch] and [j] which are the most common affricates for languages that do have them and makes some intuitive sense, even while considering the fact my knowledge of language is biased. And then, we have [ts] and [dz]. I have not much to say except "my English-is-my-second-language-but-I'm-better-at-it-than-my-native-tongue-but-it-doesn't-even-any-affricates-besides-what-English-has-so-it-isn't-a-valid-excuse looking arse thinks its a consonant cluster". Because as far as I know, they're made by changing the manner of articulation, usually plosives to fricatives, and is done in one succession but that could still be a consonant cluster. So then, what actually does count as an affricate, and when does it become a cluster? In other words, what makes affricates, affricate?

On the other hand, there are some other affricates besides these that I think could count. With use of either [th] sound and moving the manner of articulation to their /s/ or /z/ voiced/voiceless counterpart, a whistle-esque [th] sound is made. Does this count as an affricate? Have any natlangs been recorded to use this? Do any of your conlangs happen to as well?

Please do tell!

So, imagine a language with the stops /p t k/ and affricate /t͡s/. At this point, the language doesn't have /ks ps/ clusters in the onset, or in as many places as /t͡s/, leading to an analysis as a separate phoneme. But, what if the language develops /ks ps/ clusters through vowel elision, or some other sound change. Now, after said change, /ps ks/ occur in all the same positions as the affricate /t͡s/. Would this warrant a reanalysis of the he affricate as a cluster, or the other /Cs/ clusters as affricates?

I was looking around at how to pronounce the name of the !Kung people, a Khoisan group, and it seems it’s pronounced like /!χũː˦˥/. i’ve been trying for quite a while and I cant seem to get it down. how the hell do you pronounce click-fricative affricates???

help is much appreciated lol

This post by u/Jyappeul about romanization got me thinking about my own.

Right now, I am just using IPA for my language. This works fine in handwriting, but typing clicks and glottal stops is cumbersome. I'm trying to find an alternative.

Original IPA

This is a lightly corrected version of Nothing Gold Can Stay.

nisːutanʃi nisːumiʔaxanǀi intsaːma ŋkaːŋa
nisːumiʔasiːnʃi ʔamwifːaʔa antsa ma fiʔaw
nisːumputaw nisːumiʔaxaǃaw nsuǂaʘwi
ŋkiːma ma ʔunawʃu ʔatiaxːataw intsaː
ma nisːumantalaw, nisːujufaʔa xaǃaw ma xaǃaw
ma ʔunawʃu nisːujufaʔa Itini ma ntinʃi
ma ʔunawʃu nisːujufaʔa ʔimja ma mjataw
nisːunʃisuːmwama ʔanʃufːaw tanʃi

Sidetrack: 500 years ago...

I started wondering what my language would look like if Spanish colonizers were the first ones to romanize it.

Rules

/x/ = &lt;j>
/k/ = &lt;c> or &lt;qu>
/ŋ/ = &lt;ñ>
/ʔ/ = &lt;h>
/ʃ/ = &lt;x>
/ǂ/ = &lt;k'>
/ǀ/ = &lt;ts'>
/ǃ/ = &lt;t'>
/ʘ/ = &lt;p'>
/j/ = &lt;y>
/w/ = &lt;u>
/s/ = &lt;z> or &lt;c>
Geminate consonants and vowels are written as double (i.e. /aː/ = &lt;aa>)

Everything else according to IPA.

Colonial Spanish Romanization (strict)

Nizzutanxi nizzumihajantz'i intzaama ñcaaña
Nizzumihaziinxi hamuiffaha antza ma fihau
Nizzumputau nizzumihajat'au nzuc'ap'ui
Ñquiima ma hunauxu hatiajjatau intzaa
Ma nizzumantalau, nizzuyufaha jat'au ma jat'au
Ma hunauxu nizzuyufaha Itini ma ntinxi
Ma hunauxu nizzuyufaha himya ma myatau
Nizzunxizuumuama hanxuffau tanxi

Colonial Spanish Romanization (loose)

That's probably a pretty strict version of the romanization, and my guess is a Spanish priest of the time would probably not encode as much information.

• word-initial glottal stops would be ignored
• &lt;i> would probably be used where &lt;y> (/j/) is above
• geminates would probably not be doubled (although some Google searches of old texts show geminate l in nahuatl)

Nizutanxi nizumihajantz'i intzama ñcaña
Nizumihazinxi amuifaha antza ma fihau
Nizumputau nizumihajat'au nzuc'ap'ui
Ñquima ma unauxu atiajatau intza
Ma nizumantalau, nizuiufaha jat'au m

I cant pronounce aspirated affricates

what should I do? I need my [ʔ̬ɦʰ]s

Edit. Unfortunately it looks like this change can't be made as a simple mechanical substitution. I'm afraid it would require too many changes done case-by-case. I respect the promise of stability of Pandunia 2.0 and abandon this idea of simplification if it can't be done so that it's straightforward and easy for everybody involved.

There is one improvement idea that I threw in the air but didn't really consider before we finalized Pandunia version 2.0: trimming unnecessary consonants from Pandunia's phoneme inventory.

According to chapter 1 of The World Atlas of Language Structures, the consonant inventories in world's languages are categorized by size as follows:

• small: 6-14 consonants
• moderately small: 15-18
• average: 19-25
• moderately large: 26-33
• large: 34 or more consonants

Pandunia's consonant inventory could be trimmed down to moderately small, to 18 consonants, by merging s with sh and z with j. I modified the word list accordingly on my own computer and, to my surprise, there was a very low number of minimal pairs, i.e. words that differ from each other by only one phoneme, involving the aforementioned sounds.

There is only one minimal pair involving z and j.

zebra 'zebra' – jebra 'algebra'

There are eight minimal pairs involving s and sh, which is also a low number and it wouldn't be difficult solve the conflicts by slightly modifying or changing the other word in the pair.

dus 'bad' – dush 'shower'
sal 'salt' – shal 'scarf, shawl'
sam 'same' – sham 'evening'
se 'oneself' – she 'thing'
si 'be' – shi 'Mr or Ms'
sim 'ism' – shim 'heart'
sir 'secret' – shir 'poem'
siti 'town, city' – shiti 'lose, miss'

If this change is carried out, Pandunia would have moderately small consonant inventory with only three sibilants and affricates: /s/, /tʃ/ and /z~ʒ~dʒ/. It would probably be best to use the letters s, c and z to represent them. (There would be little reason to maintain ch anymore after sh was out.) Then Pandunia's alphabet would be:
A B C D E F G H I K L M N O P R S T U V Y Z

We pronounce ض as ظ

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I’m personally a /kx/ enjoyer but I like /ɟʝ/ too

For a natural conlang that allows affricates such as CH in English would that conlang need to have complex phonotactics allowing a double consonant onset or coda? So would my conlang need to have a syllable structure like (C)(C)V(C)(C) to accommodate affricates? Or can affricates count as one consonant and the syllable structure classified as simple such as (C)V(C)? If the affricate is not a foreign imported consonant would a natural conlang need to have had a (C)(C)V(C)(C) structure sometime in its historical development even if at the current stage no other double consonants are permitted in the onset or coda? Would a natural language develop a CH affricate if at no time in the evolution of the language was a stop followed by a fricative allowed?

I want to speak Turkish, which just happens to have three different 'R' sounds. I already learned to say Voiced Alveolar Flap and Trill in Spanish, but its Turkish version -which is rather soft- and allophones are quite tricky.

According to one source (pg.25), Turkish has

1. /ɾ/ (voiced alveolar flap) intervocalically,
2. /ɾ̞/ (voiced alveolar tapped fricative) word-initally,
3. /ɾ̞̊/ (voiceless alveolar tapped fricative) word-finally and before a voiceless consonant.

• /ɾ/

Definitely different than the Spanish /ɾ/, hear the difference yourself: Spanish, Turkish1, Turkish2. Spanish sounds much more explosive or I'd say vigorous, which is identical to my Turkish /ɾ/. I wonder how I can tone it down. Plus, it's so difficult to say the second Turkish word, 'ararım', if you try to make the /ɾ/ sound like in 'para' as your tongue needs to move really fast to make that sound twice. There must be something I am doing wrong.

• /ɾ̞/

On Turkish Phonology Wikipedia page, it says " the constriction at the alveolar ridge narrows sufficiently to create frication but without making full contact". This one was descriptive enough, I can make the sound, though I need some practice; you have to make sure your tongue isn't touching your alveolus by accident. However, I have a few concerns; hear the difference for the same word in the following set of footage: Radyo1, Radyo2, Radyo3

• /ɾ̞̊/

For this sound, Turkish Phonology says the same thing as the previous one (I guess it only makes sense if you don't let your tongue touch your alveolus b