How can I learn to distinguish them? as far as I know the uvular fricatives are pronounced more back in the mouth while their velar counterparts are pronounced more forward in the mouth.
I'm asking this question because my native language has back fricatives /x ɣ/ their phonetic realization varies between velar [x ɣ] and uvular [χ ʁ] according to speaker and I still can't figure out how I pronounce them.
I hope this sub is right place for this question.
Something I've noticed in some speakers (primarily AAVE) is that /k/ sounds more like [q] or even [qχ] (or /k̠/ or /k̠͡x̠/) in some environments. It seems to happen primarly in a /kr/ cluster, but it I've also noticed a few cases where it occurs near an L (this could have something to do with the American English L usually being velarized in all positions).
Take "Cash Machine" by DRAM (an AAVE speaker), for example.
> I copped a second set of goldens, these ones way more colder
> I'm in the sky like all the time and now it's no layover
> My records all across the wave and there was no payola
> This money new, these hundreds blue, I'm talkin' no Crayola
> My credit card is a plastic bankroll
"Crayola" and "across" are the strongest examples in that verse AFAICT, as they sound the most retracted and especially in "across" I swear I hear some affrication. Interestingly, the /k/ in "colder" sounds pretty postvelar, maybe under influence from the back vowel and velarized L, but later in the song he says it again and it sounds pretty normal and velar to me.
I've done some looking around and can't find any documentation of this. Aside from AAVE speakers, I've noticed this most in California/PNW English, but to a lesser extent.
I'm from a country which pronounces the "r" consonant, and this makes it harder to learn how to pronounce the uvular r.
Do you have any advice, tips, tricks on how I could pronounce it?
See the map on pg. 6 of the PDF linked here. The uvular R became common only in urban centers of Iraq and the Maghreb. It can't be a coincidence that it only developed in cities and nowhere else, so what's the explanation? Thanks 😊
This sound is so difficult, and most of the time I would pronounce the ר like a French R. After about two months of casual practice with ר, now I can sort of pronounce it if I say it slowly... with some difficulties in words like בדרך כלל and מקרר.
Has any non-native speakers of Hebrew been able to pick up the Israeli ר? If not the uvular trill, do you do an alveolar tap (Spanish, Russian R), or a French R?
I’ve been trying but I’m not sure if I’m doing it right
I’ve been working on the voiceless velar fricative recently, and I thought that it sounded a bit excessively raspy and guttural. I brushed it off until I realized that I was actually doing a uvular trill. Turns out that makes it sound way harsher than it’s supposed to. I can make the sound properly when isolated (like when hissing like a cat), but whenever I plop it next to a vowel, my uvula gets in the way again. Any tips on how to make it sit still?
So this is my problem: I am a finnish speaker with a speech defect where I use uvular R instead of a R trilled with my tongue. It really has made my life miserable at times, as it can be troublesome when my throat is sore and I also would wish to learn to trill the R for other languages, such as spanish.
Thing is that, I have gone through A LOT of material to learn it. I am capable of vibrating the tip of my tongue a bit, but the main problem is that I just am unable to stop my uvular R. Like when my tongue vibrates, I feel a lot of vibration in my throat as well. In fact, my uvula vibrates audibly even when I breath.
I just wonder how I could stop that from happening?
Also a thought crossed my mind: I have always had problem with snoring. Could it be that my tonsils are somehow causing my uvula to vibrate so easily? Maybe by making space in my throat narrower and forcing more air thru by the uvula?
What is the origin of q for the voiceless uvular plosive? Was it sooner used in the IPA or in the transcription of Arabic?
Saw a video on the history of French by Nativelang where the uvular French R came around the time of Napolean, making it relatively modern and also making my life a lie. Before that was French R trilled or rolled?
I was always under the impression that the guttural r came from some germanic language from Middle Ages or prior.
Many people have an impaired uvula or none at all and since many languages have uvular consonants, how do you managed to get around these difficulties related to pronunciating words in languages that have them?
Salut. So I've been using Glossika for the past month (it's not bad, pricey though, but it's not bad) and essentially it's two french speakers reading off different premade sentences with broad transcription (though with elements like secondary articulation, /tʰʲ/).
Anyways, I've noticed both speakers, though one does it more often, will pronounce "bien" or "un" with a rhotic sound, but nothing uvular like /χ ʁ ʀ/, more forward towards the alveolar ridge or palate like /ɹ/ or even /ɻ/. Example: "..., Il y en a un" /il i ɒ̃n̪ "aɐ̃˞"/. https://voca.ro/1aXr5smiHFxQ With one of them, he says "bien" like how it's typically pronounced, so I don't think I'm confusing the nasal for a rhotic.
And another thing, when after "(Qu')Est-ce", que is just said with a /t/, not /k/. Example: "Qu'est-ce qu'ils regardent" /kʲɛs "tʰʲil" ʁəɡaʁd̪/ (not /kʲil/) https://voca.ro/19RTFD5nDPhV and "Est-ce que l'autobus arrive ?" /ɛs "tʰʲø" lot̪obys aʁiv/. https://voca.ro/1bLTJTSjxLMC
I'm wondering if there's a regional accent, or several, that does this/these or if french could be their second language? I've listen to plenty of hours of french and never heard these, especially the strange nasal. Thanks to all that respond.
(Ps. I'm not a trained linguist, so my terminology and transcription (the one in "quotes") is probably off, sorry)
Edit: Links
Update: It's Quebec French
Classical Hebrew used an alveolar /ɾ/ (this is the same sound as the single R as in Spanish pero) for ר.
Language planners in midcentury Israel often prescribed this alveolar /ɾ/, though listening to most current Israelis it's clear that Yiddish-influenced /ʁ/ (or another similar uvular sound) has largely won out. Of course, even today there remain some speakers from traditions who continue to use the /ɾ/ pronunciation instead.
I'm curious about sociolinguistic perceptions of /ɾ/ vs. /ʁ/ in modern daily life in Israel today, so these questions are really geared at Israelis who've grown up in Israel:
- If you use /ɾ/, are you immediately presumed to be foreign?
- Would any person growing up in Israel today use /ɾ/ or would doing so be seen as a relic from their Sephardic/Mizrahi grandparents?
- Are there any examples of /ɾ/ use in modern Israeli media?
Thanks!
So there I am, browsing Quora because I'm bored. I read this question:
https://www.quora.com/Why-is-it-that-wrong-is-spelled-like-rong-because-you-cant-hear-the-w-anyway
asking why "wrong" isn't spelled "rong". Alright, not very interesting. Look down into the answers:
> You’re wrong (no pun) about the ‘w’, it’s the rounded form that dominated in the most spoken dialects, so that initial /r/ is always rounded in Californian, Canadian, General American and in greater London. It’s far from silent, but you should know that it indicated rounding of the ‘r’ sound, not the consonant that begins ‘way’.
All good so far. But here's something strange:
>‘Wrong’ for example is [ ʁʷɑ̃ːŋ ] in Californian and [ ɹʷɑ̃ŋ ] in General American.
I'm sorry, did he just use a voiced uvular fricative to transcribe the rhotic in Californian English? What?
So I went to check out this guy's other answers, as one does. And lo and behold: https://www.quora.com/Do-all-American-people-pronounce-the-word-strength-as-strangth >Should the ‘a’ in ‘strangth’ mean the vowel at the end of ‘stray’ ( /stre/ ) then most but not all Americans say /streŋθ/. That comes out as [ stʁẽːŋ̥kθː] in my accent, with a long vowel and long final consonant.
Narrow but, benefit of the doubt, accurate transcription aside, he again insists that Californians use a voiced uvular fricative as their rhotic.
Perhaps I'm mistaken, and someone can forward me a paper on the different rhotic sounds of American English. In that case, feel free to rip me apart in the comments. This guy does seem to know what he's talking about, other than this one quirk, so I could easily be mistaken.
Asking for a rather complex linguistics project
This happens in syllable onset or word initially, and especially when the voiceless stop precedes [o], [u], or an [l]:
/pʰ/ ͢ /p͡x~p͡χ/
/tʰ/ ͢ /t͡x~t͡χ/
/kʰ/ ͢ /k͡x~k͡χ/
It seems like this doesn’t happen to /t͡ʃʰ/, but I assume that’s because of the palatal and fricative nature of this phoneme, unless someone has noticed it happens to this phoneme too?
Also, /k/ seems to become /q/ before a back vowel or /ɫ/.
Here I'll be sharing the phonology of the next language in the Gemmilëan tree. As usual, criticism is encouraged. I have grammar but it's kinda boring. If anyone wants to see some cooler things like honorifics or copulas, I might make a post, but I don't know how much interest there is for that on this sub. This will cover the evolution from old Gemmilëh to Zánys ['t͡sɑ.nɨs] and also come at you with a few problems.
First of all, why am I continuing the line at all? The short answer is because I've accomplished my goals for Gemmilëh Proper (however simple those goals may've been), and am now setting out to make another conlang. Just... directly descended from old Gemmilëh. I'm not quite done writing my grammatical and cultural goals yet, and I'm having a few issues with the phonological goals, so I've decided to come here. Starting with the phonology of Old Gemmilëh,
Consonants:
| Gemmilëh | Labial | Alveolar | Lateral ^(1) | Palatal | Velar/Glottal |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nasal | m, mː <mm> | n, nː <nn> | ɲ <ñ>, ɲː <ñn> | ||
| Vcl. Stop | pː <p> | t, tː <tt> | k, kː <kk> | ||
| Vcd. Stop | b | d | |||
| Vcl. Fric | s, sː <ss> | ɬ <hl> | ç <c>, çː <cc> | h | |
| Vcd. Fric | z, zː <zz> | ||||
| Sonorant | r | l | j | ɰ <g> |
Vowels:
Gemmilëh has vowel harmony, splitting only back vowels. The corresponding rows are not pair, as no consistent pairs exist. u usually becomes ɨ, o usually becomes ɤ and the other way around, but anything else is a toss-up.
| Rounded | Unrounded | Both |
|---|---|---|
| o | ɨ <y> | i |
| ɑ <a> | ə <ë> | ɛ <e> |
| u | ɤ <õ> |
Now here, I will go through the fifty-ish sound changes between the two languages, and then show you the modern phonology at the end. Sorry for the wall of text, if sound changes don't interest you, skip to the end. (Also if anyone can help me put these in a SCE, specifically vowel harmony, please drop a suggestion in the comments).
- r > Ø after velars
- Geminate fricatives lengthen previous vowel and ungeminate
- VçV > VʝV
- after h ɰ, i ɨ u ɤ ə ɛ o > e ə o ɑ a æ ɒ
- ɰ > x non-word-initially or between voiced segments
- vowels before coda h lengthen, then the h is lost.
- h > Ø, lengthening any previous sounds
- ɛ a > e æ
- æː {eː iː} > e i
- ɒː {oː uː} > o u
- ɑː {ɨː əː ɤː} > ɤ ɨ
- In unrounded words, u o ɒ > ɨ ɤ ɑ
- In rounded words, ə ɨ ɤ ɑ > ʊ u o ɒ
- {Vu Vʊ Vo Vɒ} {uV ʊV oV ɒV} > Vw wV
- {Vi Ve Væ} {iV eV æV} >
I absolutely love Hebrew, but the uvular (''French'') pronunciation of rêš always sounded so counterintuitive to me, especially considering the vibe around the Aliyah and the revival of Hebrew; it was all about a return to the roots. That's why I supposed that the early adopters of a new Hebrew standard would have treated the issue of pronunciation in a similar fashion.
As far as I know, the uvular resh was introduced by the Ashkenazim, whose Yiddish was influenced by the Lower Germanic r. [I also heard some Jews in Iraq pronounced it in an uvular way.]
But Israel (officially) counts 2.8 million Ashkenazim, against 3.2 million Mizrahim and 1.4 million Sephardim. Assuming the latter two Jewish groups as well as the Arabs (1.9 million) pronounced the resh as an alveolar trill, how did the uvular pronunciation become so widespread?!
My second question is: Do some people in Israel still pronounce the resh as a trill? Does the trilled resh bear any sociolinguistic connotations? Is it associated with Arabic? Is a trilled resh frowned upon? Or do some Mizrahim/Sephardim still proudly opt for it?
Any information is most welcome.
שלום מהולנד!
These fricative consonants are staples in Classical Arabic and seem to be absent in pretty much every other major or semi-consequential Romance language.
Top of th1e sub lol. H2ow are y'all doing. I'm h3orrible
Where did the Voiced uvular come from in French? Was it from Celtic or Germanic languages?
I truly cannot tell the difference between these two. I've actually seen many arguments about it online with regards to German Ach-laut, Hebrew Khaf, and Arabic Kha, and still haven't quite managed to distinguish them in speech and pronounce them myself. Obviously one is pronounced with the back of the tongue near the uvula and the other with the back of the tongue near the soft palate but either my tongue or my ears are failing me, as I can't make the distinction. The one possibly useful (if correct in the first place) piece of information I've found is the velar cannot trill while the uvular can, so if while holding it there is a gurgle, it is uvular. However, the only alternative I can manage simply feels and sounds more like a pharyngeal to me.
Are there any methods I could undertake to understand this? I can certainly pronounce at least one, if not both, but it's unclear which is which.
Over the years, I've noticed that some speakers of Standard American English realize the voiceless stops /k/, /p/, and /t/ as /kχ/, /pχ/, or /tχ/ (I'm not sure if that is the correct IPA, but imagine it the "pr" in the French "près") when they precede certain mid or open vowels. For example, at times I hear people realize /klæs/ as /kχlæs/. It can be heard very clearly in this video at 1:01 when he says "point" or at 1:34 when he says "close."
I'm just wondering, has a paper been written on this phenomenon?
I don't want to step on anybody's toes here, but the amount of non-dad jokes here in this subreddit really annoys me. First of all, dad jokes CAN be NSFW, it clearly says so in the sub rules. Secondly, it doesn't automatically make it a dad joke if it's from a conversation between you and your child. Most importantly, the jokes that your CHILDREN tell YOU are not dad jokes. The point of a dad joke is that it's so cheesy only a dad who's trying to be funny would make such a joke. That's it. They are stupid plays on words, lame puns and so on. There has to be a clever pun or wordplay for it to be considered a dad joke.
Again, to all the fellow dads, I apologise if I'm sounding too harsh. But I just needed to get it off my chest.
Hey,
I've been learning German for a couple of years now but /still/ cannot pronounce the German R sound. I know the way Germans pronounce it is different all across Germany, some roll the R or some use the uvular R, etc, but I cannot do any.. haha. This makes me totally avoid common words like Hören, Sprechen, Regen and what not, which is starting to feel stupid and embarrassing. I am able to correctly pronounce the ch sound in words like Auch and Machen though, *thankfully*.
I've tried watching a bunch of youtube videos and reading articles, trying all sorts of tricks like gargling water but have not managed to pronounce it.
Has anyone please got any tips/tricks or is having similar problems? How did you learn to do it?
ps. I'm native British and have a typical 'proper' British accent when speaking English lol.
Thanks so much in advance!
I cannot roll my rs at all. So many people have tried to show me and I've spent hours watching YouTube videos. However, I can do the uvular trill R sound seen in French and German perfectly. I know this is used in some Dutch dialects. Would I be better off using an English R sound or going with a uvular trill when speaking Dutch?
I just made whatever sound I’m talking about and curious if it has a name since it technically should be a consonant.
Do your worst!
This happens in syllable onset or word initially, and especially when the voiceless stop precedes [o], [u], or an [l]:
/pʰ/ ͢ /p͡x~p͡χ/ /tʰ/ ͢ /t͡x~t͡χ/ /kʰ/ ͢ /k͡x~k͡χ/
It seems like this doesn’t happen to /t͡ʃʰ/, but I assume that’s because of the palatal nature of this phoneme
Also, /k/ seems to become /q/ before a back vowel or /ɫ/.
