Voiced Labiodental Fricative Puns

Hello,

I have a Colombian friend whose name starts with V. She claims that her family and friends distinguish between v and b in their variety of Spanish, but I'm not convinced -- almost every time I used /β/ for orthographic "v" she thought I was saying /v/ - I think she distinguishes them because she's bilingual. Are there any varieties of Spanish where words spelled with v are pronounced with the voiced labiodental fricative?

She's going to ask her friends/family and I've asked her for recordings.

My first language only has the voiceless labiodental approximant sound and I can't really tell the difference between the two.

Sorry about the bad title. It should have been "can native English speakers differentiate between the voiceless labiodental fricative and the voiceless labiodental approximant?

My 10 month old is saying “bababa” and “mamamama” (which are the terms of endearment we use, so great stuff), but he’s making them all as labiodental instead of labial consonants (so with his bottom lip curled inside to his upper teeth instead of with both lips pressed together).

Does anyone know if this is a normal development, or something that might turn into a problem later? I don’t want to over-medicalise my child, but since we’re doing trilingual parenting I’m also keen to fix speech issues early on.

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've read that concerning the aspirated voiceless stops /pʰ, tʰ, kʰ/, the change may have been first something like /pɸ, tθ, kx/ (which is common among people not used to aspiration, e.g. I've heard in a video someone speaking Sanskrit and using /kx/ for /kʰ/), and then finally /ɸ, θ, x/. To me, it's logical. But what about the voiced stops? often the change (lenition) occurs when they are post-vocalic (e.g. Spanish, Occitan, Gothic, and the 'Begadkefat' phenomenon in Aramaic, Hebrew and possibly Phoenician), but it is not the case in Greek. Would it be possible that /b, d, g/ were actually aspirated like [bʱ, dʱ, gʱ] in Ancient Greek? (I'm thinking about PIE *dʱ eventually becoming Latin /f/, so probably following something *ð > *θ > *ɸ in Proto-Italic).

It seems so fundamentally basic that I’m surprised I can’t find it...

Edit: The question I'm asking without asking it is there an "L" in any language that involves the tip of the tongue to the upper lip?

I teach English for a TV program in Japan and I had an existential crisis today when I was told that I was mispronouncing 'thanks' because I pronounced 'th' voiced. I looked up the IPA pronunciation and lo and behold it is listed as unvoiced basically everywhere. I'm a 27 year old male from the US- Portland, OR area, in case that has anything to do with it. I tried to Google it and see if anyone else had the same experience and I couldn't find much. Is it really that uncommon of a thing in the US? Is there anyone else here that pronounces 'thanks' with a voiced dental fricative?

I found a pronunciation website online and to my ears the first 2 or 3 examples are clearly unvoiced but I feel like there are voiced examples towards the bottom end? Am I crazy?

https://forvo.com/word/thanks/#en_usa

I've seen some languages that contains these phonemes and they contrast with their "actual" voiceless counterparts. Navajo for example.

Hey there my question was how could we represent the voiced velar fricative in Hungarian?

I'm a bit confused about the following:

" The Proto-Germanic voiced dental fricative [ð], which was an allophone of /d/ in certain positions, became a plosive [d] in all positions throughout the West Germanic languages. Thus, it affected High German, Low German, Dutch, Frisian and Old English alike. It did not spread to Old Norse, which retained the original fricative. Because of its much wider spread, it must have occurred very early, during Northwest Germanic times, perhaps around the 2nd century.

English has partially reversed this shift through the change /dər/ > /ðər/, for example in father, mother, gather and together."

Given how no other Germanic languages have reversed this trend (the Danish "soft D" is an approximant, not an actual fricative) why did English regain the voiced dental fricative?

Can someone explain this sentence? Edit: The sentence is correct. I was assuming it is English but I might be wrong. The directions for the assignemnt state to change the statement into rule notation. And name the process in question for each case. Im getting confused because it says to "between" which implies 2 letters/sounds but then it lists 3.

UPDATE: It was a typo. FIXED: A schwa is inserted between a voiced stop and a word final voiced fricative.

Thank you for all the help. I read through all your comments. It helped me to gain some examples. I appriciate it.

[ð] itself is a rather uncommon phoneme in the world, being only present in a few Germanic and Semitic languages plus a number of isolates. In English, I can't even think of any adjectives nor verbs that begin with [ð], and yet, all of the words that do begin with or contain [ð], are among the most commonly used in English: This, they, that, there, the, etc. etc.

Why is this? How did this become? Is there a reason for this pattern? Or is it purely coincidental? Why are all the [ð] words only pronouns and articles?

ADDENDUM: It exists in a few more European languages than just the aforementioned.

In words like father and mother, even if I replace the latter sound with the former, I don't hear any difference. So what's happening here?

In what instances are the Polish letters “h” and “ch” pronounced as ɣ?

I am in the process of creating a phonology for my engelang. But even after reading the relevant Wikipedia articles, I am still having a hard time getting a handle on the voiced palato-alveolar fricative (ʒ), the voiced retroflex fricative (ʐ), and the voiced alveolo-palatal fricative (ʑ), so I thought I’d pick your lovely brains.

• If you are like me and do not use retroflex consonants or palatal fricatives in your day-to-day life, what was your process for learning to pronounce them and know you were pronouncing them?
• How are /ʒ/, /ʐ/, and /ʑ/ realized in your conlangs?
• Is /j/ ever realized as [ʒ], [ʐ], or [ʑ] in any of your conlangs?
• How surprised would you be if you discovered a natlang in which /j/, /ʒ/, /ʐ/, and /ʑ/ are realized as they are in your conlangs?

Thank you for letting me post on your lovely subreddit!

Edit: Oops! When I asked about the pronunciation of “palatal” fricatives in my first question, I had in mind what the IPA chart refers to as alveolo-palatal fricatives (i.e. /ɕ ʑ/). Sorry about the confusion!

I keep wanting to pronounce it like the hebrew ח [χ] cause I know some hebrew. Can someone tell me exactly how I do it in my mouth? I'm trying but it keeps either sounding like a h with more air or I just slip into the hebrew sound ח

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.

It's basically the g sound but when you say it you lower your tongue a bit so it doesn't touch the roof of your mouth to allow air flow.

For instance, the beginning of the words "think" and "that" look the same but sounds different. Wouldn't it have made more sense to create another digram like 'dh'?

Granted this is from 1934 so one obviously has to read it in its historical context, but I thought this was amusing and thought you'd all appreciate it too.

Daniel Stephen Jones, 1934, "somɑːlɪ ħ ənd ʕ" Le maître phonétique. 45: 8-7

>ðə vɪzɪt əv ə neɪtɪv əv səmɑːlɪlænd, Haji Farah, tʊ ðə fonɛtɪks læbrətrɪ æt University College geɪv ən ɔpətjunɪtɪ fər ɪgzæmɪnɪŋ ə fju fiˑtʃəz əv ðə ʕ sɑʊnd wɪtʃ ɪz ən aʊtstændɪŋ foʊnim əv ðə spiˑtʃ əv ðæt kʌntrɪ.

>ðə sɪmɪlærɪtɪ əv ɪts tæmbə tə wɔt ðə sʌbdʒɪkt kɔːld ðə "kæml sɔŋ" ʃʊd bɪ sɪgnɪfɪkənt tə ðə njuː skuːl əv baɪolɪŋgwɪsts, hʊ ətɛmpt tə treɪs, ɔfn wɪð mʌtʃ koʊdʒənsɪ, ðɪ ɔrɪdʒɪn əv mɛnɪ spiˑtʃ saʊndz tʊ ə nɔn-hjʊmən sɔəs. ɪt ɪz kjuˑrjəs ðæt ðə oʊvəlæp bɪtwiˑn ðə ʕ-kʌntrɪz ənd ðə kæml-kʌntrɪz ʃʊd bɪ sou ɪkstɛnsɪv. hɛr Schwidetsky maɪt bɪ ɪntrɪstɪd ɪn ðɪs.

I'm not sure to what extent this is a serious suggestion by Jones or if he's just making fun of whoever Herr Schwidetsky and his colleagues are. (I'm not quite sure who that refers to... maybe he meant Frau Schwidetzky?)

Rule 4, phonemic inventories don't come from people imitating animals.

P.S. who knew that "biolinguist" was attested this early?!

EDIT: Author was Stephen Jones, not Daniel Jones. (No relation).

New to this sub. :)

So I studied Spanish for years in the classroom. I am trying to make sure I'm familiar again with it for job-related stuff.

I'm a big IPA-nerd and language nerd in general. I want my Spanish to be as non-anglicized sounding as possible.

I remember years ago learning about how the vocalic stops of the b, d, and g sounds become fricatives β, ð, and ɣ (slightly weakening) when they are in between two vowels or after consonants (barring instances after L, M and N and at the start of a word).

But I started looking at wiktionary (because I love learning the etymological roots of Spanish words and their English cognates)... and I strangely noticed that a lot of the IPA pronunciations there just have like *'dedo* for dedo (finger)... not *'deðo*, which it has in parentheses implying it's outdated.

Has the changing to fricatives become archaic or outdated? I saw that written somewhere. I forget where.

Are there certain Spanish-speaking countries that do not change their plosives/stops into fricatives between vowels and certain ones that do? Thanks for your help!

In Spanish:

>d > d / {l, n} ___

e.g.:

• /sol.'da.do/ [sol.'da.ðo] ‘soldier’
• /an.'dar/ [an.daɾ] ‘to go’

but:

>d > ð / {r, V} ___

e.g.:

• /per.'don/ [per.'ðon] ‘pardon’
• /'mje.do/ ['mje.ðo] ‘fear’

And in Old Norse (inline code for plos., bold for fric.):

(I made a meticulous list of PIE words and their Icelandic reflexes a few years ago for a paper to demonstrate it, but I can’t seem to find it now.)

I’m really not sure how to explain these alterations and their motivations in a formal way. Instinctively I figure it has to do with the extent and duration of contact between articulators, or with sonority levels, but I don’t really know how to state it ‘neatly’.

Mine is ɸ̬̞̼ (voiceless bilabial fricative + voiced + lowered + dental)

It appears the voiced version almost entirely appears in select core English words like those I listed above, with few exceptions like "bathe".

Are there for example, any English nouns that start with the voiced consonant?

And if I'm actually on to something, then why is this the case linguistically?

The Standard Chinese phonology has two alternative pronunciations for the Pinyin r:

• Voiced retroflex fricative
• Retroflex approximant

The Chinese teaching videos on youtube always pronounce r using the Voiced retroflex fricative. I was wondering why no one pronounces it as the Retroflex approximant?

Edit 1: The study Revisiting Mandarin ‘apical vowels’: An articulatory and acoustic study seems to point out that Retroflex approximant would be the correct pronunciation.

Edit 2: I asked several chinese and chinese speaking people at my local university, including some in the Chinese Language department and all agreed that the correct phoneme would be the Retroflex approximant, very similar to the english r.

What is the trick to distinguishing the fricative from the trill? I think I may have figured out how to do the uvular trill but the voiced uvular fricative is very elusive. Particularly, I'm trying to learn how to make the guttural 'r' sound in European Portuguese. My brother was trying to help me make it correctly but I seem to have the issue of producing the "hhhh" sound one makes when one is running and out of breath at the same time. I'm trying to just make the pure "r" sound.

Any insights, tricks, or stories would help! :P Thanks.

Mine is ɣ⁼

For instance, the beginning of the words "think" and "that" look the same but sounds different. Wouldn't it have made more sense to create another digram like 'dh'?