The word-nerd has entered his final form.

Nicely done gentlemen.

I was watching some videos on a youtube channel (link at the end of the post) with a speaker of Irish English and noticed that the "t" sounds at the end of his words, like "that" or "it" came out as "θ̱". It looks like it's not a phoneme that exists in Irish Gaelic, so I'm assuming it evolved on its own within Irish English. Is that a common sound change for voiceless alveolar stops?

The only other place I've noticed that phoneme (with my super limited experience) is as an allophone of "r̥" in Icelandic which is a relationship that makes more sense to me. Any insight or directions to look for the answer would be appreciated!

The above mentioned channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCtGoikgbxP4F3rgI9PldI9g/featured

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

https://www.fon.hum.uva.nl/archive/2021/2021-PhD-JoachimKokkelmans.pdf

This paper claims that the retracted alveolar sibilant (and the alv-pal. sibilant ɕ-type) is the only attested sibilant in languages with only one sibilant PoA, I have a question as to whether there are any precise counterexamples, or any such flaws in this methodology.

Furthermore, the terminology by which he calls things "retracted alveolar" is something I don't understand. Namely, his (as seen in the appendix of attested inventories) use of the retracted alveolar terminology to describe every kind of lateral fricative implies he may have a non-standard definition of "retracted alveolar" that he uses to consider many sibilants retracted alveolar (making no destinction between contrastive retr.alveolar sibilants as in basque and old romance languages) and single-sibilant-PoA "retracted alveolar." Or is this a definition of retracted that I simply am not experienced with and haven't seen before?

In English and many other languages, the voiceless alveolar sibilant /s/ makes harsh 'hissing' sound, which is usually a laminal dentalised sibilant or just alveolar. However, in Northern Spain (Castillian, Leonese and Basque), parts of Portugal and Modern Icelandic to name a few, there is a more retracted sibilant, which is apical, and makes more of a 'hushing' sound. In the Middle Ages, the retracted apical sibilant was more predominant than it is today, and certain linguists trace its origin all the way back to Proto-Indo-European.

Old and Middle High German orthography distinguishes 'hushing' /s/ (written as s) derived from Proto-Germanic /s/ and 'hissing' /s/ (written as z) derived from Proto-Germanic /t/ via the High German consonant shift. For example, OHG sagēn [ˈs̠aɡeːn] < P.G. *sagjaną vs wazzar [ˈwas.sar] < P.G. *watōr.

Modern Icelandic also has retracted [s̠] and there is a strong argument to be made that /s/ in Old Norse was also [s̠]. Since /z/ in Proto-Germanic was the voiced allophone of /s/, it may also be reasonable to assume that the value of ʀ in early Old Norse (something I posted about separately on this sub) was also a retracted sibilant i.e. [z̠] before merging with [r].

Thoughts?

An old man had four sons.

Naśinsuźa poź ümk ma sün.

[ˈnaːð̠̥ɪnˌzuð̠ɐ poð̠ yŋk ma syn]

He wanted his sons to learn a very important lesson for life.

Ö leśin śu yaź ümźak hüsinsar locar lönun.

[ø ˈleːð̠̥ɪn ð̠̥u jað̠ ˈyːmð̠ɐk ˈxyːˌʒinzɐr ˈloːt͡ʃɐr ˈløːnʊn]

So he decided to send each of them for a quest.

Śöcla sipinaś ö toś ü kiźamet.

[ˈð̠̥øːt͡ʃlɐ ˈʃiːˌpinɐð̠̥ ø toð̠̥ y kɪˈð̠aːmɛt]

Notes:

• [ð̠̥] is a voiceless alveolar non-sibilant fricative; [ð̠] is, of course, its voiced counterpart.
• In case anyone thinks there are typos, primary stress lengthens vowels and secondary stress does not.

Edit: Corrected <ynźak> to <ümźak>.

Been having trouble expressing an /s/ sound because of an acquired lisp when I tried to deaspirate my /s/ and express it apically at the alveolar ridge. Made it worse.

Now I'm back at a normal /s/ sound without effort but don't know what kind of articulation it is.

Is the apical alveolar sibilant ever expressed with the underside of the tongue touching the bottom teeth and the tip or blade touching the ridge? And also have been hearing a very aspirated /s/ in the area I work. I thought English /s/ is more glottalized like a Kyonggi Korean [ss] not aspirated like its [s].

Thanks.

Few languages distinguish both an apical and a laminal sibilant, or similar small differences. However, between languages the exact pronunciation of /s/ can differ quite a bit in a few aspects.

So I've been reading through how modern coronal fricatives /s/ and /θ/ in Spanish were both in an earlier variant /s/ but with different articulation. This kinda threw me into the rabbit hole of dorsal, alveo-dental, postalveolar etc. and apical and laminal articulation.

So I in theory completely understand what both of the articulations mean, but I don't really understand how each articulation sounds relative to each other and how laminal and apical fit in that.

So for example, Dutch is supposed to have an apical retracted s, similar to modern Greeks laminal retracted s, which then is also opposed to non retracted alveolar s in (GA and RP) English.

Retracted s from what I read is somewhat in between [s] and [ʃ]. In Greek I can clearly hear that, but for Dutch I hear much much less difference between it and English.

Does anyone maybe have a good video with all variants of [s] together with pronunciation or just a good (and clear) overview or such? That'd be very nice

I've seen the voiceless retroflex affricate transcribed in these two ways.

[t͡ʂ]

[ʈ͡ʂ]

Are these symbols interchangeable? Is there any difference between them? Or is [t͡ʂ] difficult to pronounce and your tongue is forced to make a [ʈ] sound when saying this 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.

In the IPA we see 2 kinds of “palatal” sibilants. The ɕ/ʑ pair and the “Postalveolar” ʃ/ʒ pair. Neither of them are truly pure Palatal sounds though. It seems that consonants like the pure palatal consonants [c][ɟ][ʎ][ɲ][ç][ʝ][j] contain no sibilant among them. There’s no purely sibilant equivalent to [ç][ʝ]. The non-sibilant equivalents to [ɕ][ʑ] are the pre-palatal [ç˖][ʝ˖].

So is there a purely palatal sibilant sound?

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?

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?

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.

Could someone explain to me, how to do numerology calculations if names are not english and they contain characters like š,č,ž,đ etc.?

I understand this fully and if you don't you are so dumb. I copy and paste and hope you read. But if you don't understand this then why are you so dumb. Read this and if you don't know why are you dumb?

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?

It's called the Iberic S since all the languages in the northern half of the Iberian peninsula use it in place of the "common" s. Basque and Mirandese even contrast between both. But magically it can't be found in the southern half of the peninsula.

Why is only limited to this small area, and, as far as I know is nowhere in the world to be found? Also, probably the s in modern greek is this one. Maybe spanish influence, as the vowels in both languages are pretty much the same?

http://vocaroo.com/i/s1eEq4KU5MlX

In other words, do I have a lisp? If so, in what way does it sound like I'm articulating it? This is a bit of a point of embarrassment for me and I'd like to try to correct it. I am a native Midwestern American English speaker, if it's relevant.

I know that in RP the letter <r> is usually an approximant, but I've read that after /θ/ it can be pronounced as /ɾ/ instead of /r/, so the word <three> would be /θɾiː/ instead of /θriː/. I was wondering how common that is.

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 got to wondering about this after reading a conversation on another sub about "tsunami" — person A said the "t" shouldn't be silent according to the original Japanese; person B thought that still basically sounded no different than "soonami" (unless you broke it up like tuh-soonami).

Person A is obviously correct, but unless I'm being very intentional, I agree that my brain has trouble making the distinction.

I suggested the following based on my initial thoughts, plus Wikipedia to fill in the gaps in my memory on some of the terminology:

>The problem, I think, is that we don't have a lot of words in English that start with that combination, and the sound of both letters are produced pretty similarly by the mouth. In fact, I'm pretty sure "t" is just the plosive form of the fricative "s." Plosives are letter sounds that require a break in the breath movement, while fricatives require a steady stream of air. Therefore "ts" would seem to require a stop to the airflow, immediately followed by a continuation of that same airflow. That's kind of impossible without turning it into another syllable, so in practice it's more a matter of attacking the first part of the sound to make the "t," and then carrying the flow of air through the "s." That's easier to do at the end of a word or syllable than at the beginning, so I think for English speakers the initial accent that should be produced by the "t" just sort of gets lost.
>
>​EDIT: Here we go — it's an affricate. A voiceless alveolar sibilant affricate, to get extremely specific.

But, I'm a completely unqualified schmuck trying to talk about a specialist subject matter. So, do any of you have any more insight? Corrections? (I'm particularly doubting the "'t' is a plosive 's'" thing. That doesn't seem right anymore.) Am I more or less in the right ballpark?

I feel like my explanation is somehow incomplete.

What led to using Z for a voiceless alveolar affricate /t͡s/ instead of a voiced alveolar sibilant /z/?

Aexinkkao is an agglutinative artlang I'm making for my as of yet unnamed conworld, spoken predominantly on the planet Aexi and its surrounding Nxira System. It is based primarily on Japanese, as well as the Uralic and Bantu languages.

Phonology

*Additionally, all consonants except /j/ and /ɰ/ may be geminated, and all plosives and affricates may be prenasalized.

Phonotactics

Aexinkkao has a (C)V syllable structure, with no word-initial geminates.

Some Aexinkkao consonants aren't allowed before /i/ or /ɯ/.

Banned before /i/:

• All plain non-palatal stops and taps
• All alveolar affricates and fricatives
• /h/
• /j/

Banned before /ɯ/:

• All plain non-palatal stops and taps
• All plain alveolar fricatives
• /h/
• /ɰ/

Aexinkkao has this weird nasal harmony system (I'm really proud of the way I evolved it, so if I have time, I'll definitely make a feature post about it):

• All root words may be +N or -N.
• Many suffixes have different forms for when they are attached to +N words versus when they are attached to -N words.
• Suffixes may be transparent to nasal harmony or be opaque, forcing either +N or -N harmony.
• In compounds, each root is treated as a separate word, so harmony doesn't spread between them.
• However, +N harmony can affect liaison, which also affects compounds. (Usually by prenasalizing a word-initial plosive or affricate, or occasionally by using an epenthetic nasal to break a hiatus)

Note that the vowels are not actually nasalized (anymore). The system only affects consonants (usually plosives and affricates, or occasionally epenthetic /h/ and semivowels).

Aexinkkao does not allow hiatus and relies on six strategies for removing it:

1. Diphthong Formation: Hiatus between /ɑ/ and a short /e/, /i/, /ɤ/, or /ɯ/ is removed by shifting the second vowel to /e̯/ (for front vo

EDIT: My phone autocorrected Tsushiman to Tsushima while I edited this post earlier to include /w/!!!!

Introduction

Here goes...

After a tough decision to change Tsushima from a Sinitic to an Austronesian conlang, and me weeping after deleting months of grammar work from my wiki, I present to you... the phonology of Tsushiman.

Just the phonology? How about the grammar, or even a basic lexicon?

While trying to work out the very basics of Proto-Tsushiman grammar (yes, just the very basics, and just the proto-language), I realized I've gotten myself stuck into a rut with trying to find a good phonology. The same happened with the original version of Tsushiman, and it halted my progress for a good while. Hence today I decided to complete the phonology of the modern language, disregarding the minutiae and simply going for aesthetics, so that these following days I can actually work on the grammar.

And here it is... the phonology

Syllable structure is (C)V(N), with (N) being either a nasal or the glottal stop. While most words are not monosyllabic, characters (hanzi / kanji / whatever) are, just like in Chinese.

Phonotactics

• /ɪ/ is pronounced [ɨ] when adjacent to [s], [z], [ts], or [dz]. It is pronounced [i] when the syllable it is in is spoken in isolation, never when actually in a sentence
• /ɤ/ CAN be pronounced [ɛ] when adjacent to any of the sibilant fricatives and affricates AND if the syllable it is in does not have a coda. /ɛɪ/ is always [ɛɪ] however.

1. Introduction

This essay mounts a limited critique of the artificial language Lojban and proposes novel solutions to some of Lojban's problems. Part I analyzes and evaluates Lojban. Part II lays the groundwork for a new logical language. My focus will be on phonology and morphology. This is an incomplete treatment of the subject that will form the basis of a future paper.

Lojban, introduced in 1997, is the most successful logical language ("loglang") to date. In addition to its logical features, Lojban also resembles an international auxiliary language ("auxlang") in some respects: it tries to be accessible to people of all cultures and language backgrounds, without bias.

Although other logical languages exist, notably Toaq, Lojban is by far the closest to realizing the ideal of a loglang with the global accessibility of an auxlang. Yet despite its many strengths, Lojban falls short of this goal. In Part II, I will show that it is possible for a language similar to Lojban to be closer to phonological universals and norms, closer to the phonology of the world's major languages, morphologically simpler, and more regular.

1.1 Note on special symbols

I will use Americanist Phonetic Notation throughout this essay. This choice is motivated by a need to distinguish affricates from homorganic stop-fricative clusters. The following five Americanist symbols will be used, with the IPA values on the right.

• ⟨y⟩ : /j/
• ⟨š⟩ : /ʃ/
• ⟨ž⟩ : /ʒ/
• ⟨č⟩ : /t͡ʃ/
• ⟨ǰ⟩ : /d͡ʒ/

I will also use a few symbols found in regular expressions:

• ⟨?⟩ : zero or one occurrence of the the preceding element (optional occurrence).
• ⟨*⟩ : Kleene star; zero or more occurrences of the preceding element
• ⟨+⟩ : Kleene plus; one or more occurrences of the preceding element [only in Part II)
• ⟨( )⟩ : used for grouping elements together
• ⟨|⟩ : choice between alternatives

1.2 Background

It is necessary to explain some key concepts before proceeding.

1.2.1 Design principles of Lojban

As a logical language, Lojban aims to be syntactically unambiguous. That is, every sentence must have a transparent, unique grammatical structure.

Furthermore, Lojban aims for audio-visual isomorphism (AVI), or a one-to-one correspondenc