Extra Notes and Corrections: 1) The tap R sound as an allophone of T only occurs in North American English as well as Australian/NZ English. 2) The allophones for D aren't true for all varieties of Spanish. Specifically, Caribbean Spanish, where the these sounds have weakened so much to the point that they have disappeared. For example, Coronado --> Coronao
Well, this is just a generalization so of course there will be differences amongst individuals, but this R sound is often perceived as a D sound to English native speakers. Although, you may come from a region that doesn't do this
@TheLingOtter I for one am highly amused that even after explaining why many people have a hard time hearing the allophones in their native language, you are getting people commenting nearly the same thing as they did on your B V G Spanish video, but about tap R in butter!
As a native spanish speaker, you video about b d and g sound are all correct. We simply don't realize we're using two phonemes for the same letter. I'm studying the English phonology, so I'm in the opposite situation
Since starting to learn Spanish I've realized how strange English pronunciation can be, especially concerning vowels. Also the extent to which we insert sounds that don't exist in the spelling of a word is extreme. For instance I was trying to explain to a relative that 'queso' isn't supposed to be pronounced as kaY-soW, since there is no 'Y' or 'W' in the word, but they didnt seem to get what I was saying.
@@edwardburroughs1489for that one, it does make sense for english kind of but idk where the "u" sound went if they dont speak english as main language then idk edit: actually i think it disappeared because its a bit hard (but not really) to say
I am a native spanih speaker from Colombia, and I can tell you you're totally right, I study linguistics and I teach English as a second language with IPA and other tools, All the sounds you're mention exist but only a native speaker can notice them when knows about, pronunciation rules, knowlede of his own language and of course studies a second language so their range of sounds are widened.
¿Es cierto que en el español de Colombia las oclusivas sonoras se pronuncian como oclusivas (no como aproximantes) no solo al principio de la frase o tras n y m (y l en el caso de d), sino que en cualquier conjunto de consonantes?
I started learning Spanish in elementary school, so I learned some of the differences automatically as a native speaker, but I could never figure out how some of them worked, especially the b/v sound. I would always pronounce the soft b sound like the English v sound (with the top teeth). I could never figure out how to sound like the native speakers in my area. That was until I saw the Wikipedia guide to Spanish phonology which pointed out the differences in allophones, which finally told me that the soft b sound was pronounced without the teeth. I wish they would tell you about the allophones in school, because it not only allows you to sound better but also helps in understanding native speakers. At also made me aware of all the allophones in English, which is something that I’ve seen a lot of non-native speakers (My area, West Portland, has a lot of Indian and Mexican immigrants) struggle with, and I think again that it would be easier if they were told about them directly, even though native speakers are unfamiliar with the rules.
Hey I don't know if you're looking for advice, but I thought I would let you know that we don't use masculine pronouns as the default. If you want to refer to an unknown person, you would use the gender neutral "they", "them", and "their". It's also in use for people who decide they don't prefer "he" or "she" for themselves. Hope this is useful to you!
I'm a native Turkish speaker, there is a subtle "sh" sound that comes after when we end a word with an "r" sound. Every single native friend I've explained this to, refused to believe this until made them really enunciate and this faint, whistly "sshhh" came out like I performed a magic trick! I couldn't hear it myself until a Turkish learning native English speaker pointed it out. There was a recent TikTok made by a linguist that explained this and people got hilariously angry about it. Both because they couldn't hear the difference and also because we have this bizarre national pride concerning our accents and how it is the most "clear and simple" one out of any others.
In the song "Kavaklar" I hear Sezen Aksu alternating /r/ and /sh/ at the end of "kavaklar", and using /sh/ for most other words ending with -r. (I just used this comment as an opportunity to listen to this song again 🙂)
OMG! Evet! This is so true. I've spent 8 months in Turkey recently and I hear that whistle-y r sound at the end of words everywhere, but no native Turkish speakers recognized it. I thought I was going insane!
@@nicolasinvernizzi6140, are you quite sure? I don't think so myself. I have never read anywhere about any Spanish dialect that DOESN'T substitute /b/, /d/ and /g/ with their approximant alternatives in allophones. I haven't noticed it myself either, even though I do be aware of these sounds. It's just that, because they're allophones, they don't help communication in any way, so our brain ignores them unless we get concious knowledge of said phones, so those native speakers who don't know anything about phonetics don't realise the difference and deny that there is more than one sound to the letters "b", "d", "g" and whatnot. This is bound to happen with any native speakers of any language in the world as well.
Mastering Spain Spanish is realizing "v" and "b" are the same letter phonetically. My favorite example of this is the spanish word "vocabulario" where v is pronounced as a stop consonant and b as more aproximant, contrary to other languages. Great video :)
This is the part that my brain was trying to recall while watching this. I've distinctly heard what I felt was a sort of distinction, but apparently it's situational, which is good to know! Like, both sounds *exist* , but they're allophonic variation, rather than phonemic variation, and my brain was picking up on the distinction because they're phonemic distinction in English.
I'm a native Spanish speaker but I'm from buenos aires, and I can state that in my dialect almost always both "d"s in the word "dedo" are pronounced like th in English. This also applies to the rest of the spanish allophones you mentioned, which makes the rioplatense accent really soft in consonants like: b, d, g, p, t, q, c (|k|), f, k, and v.
I'm from near Buenos Aires and this is true for me except for d, which I do pronounce with a stop if I was silent up to that point or the previous sound was also a stop consonant. I have a weird accent though, like sometimes might even say /v/ instead of /β/ and my r varies a lot, so I'm probably not the best example.
In casual Dominican Spanish many of these sounds literally become omitted so this doesn't sound weird to people around me when I tell them. "Dedo" becoming "Deo" is pretty obvious, but even "Sabe" becomes a weird "Sae" thing too 😅.
That's ok. Native speakers don't know shit about their languages. They know how to speak it, but have no idea about how it works. Plus, people are entitled and feel like a _gringo_ has ni business talking about other languages. This video was really interesting.
The native speakers who deny what you say are just ignorant. I taught phonology and phonetics at a university level, and the concept of allophony is not immediately apparent. As a second language Spanish speaker, my pronunciation is greatly improved by this awareness.
There are things that students know better than natives, just because the mind of students is not doing certain things automatically and have to be aware of them.
One of the big challenges of taking on a new language is learning the identity and "leeway" afforded to each phoneme as recognized by the language. This is why it's SO important with languages that have different scripts from your own to LEARN THOSE SCRIPTS as opposed to just romanizing everything. Some pronunciations for a letter/character in the target language may extend beyond the comfortable reaches of the romanized version, and the romanized version will also end up suggesting pronunciation alternatives that the target language does not recognize as belonging to the same phoneme.
This is so true!!! I feel like when people limit themselves to the Latin Alphabet, they are relying on their native language's phonemes too much. When you directly learn from the language's script, you aren't influenced as much by your native language's writing
The French is a great example of allophonic sounds. Simply put, it's /ʁ/ (like between vowels and at the beginning of a word) when voiced and /χ/ when devoiced (like right after t's, p's, k's or c's etc) but there can be so many variations and they'd still be analyzed as . Different sounds in reality, not in any French speaker's mind.
I always felt strange the fricative status of R sound in French. I think in large parts of France and Belgium this is more an approximant than a fricative, even though I hardly found sources pointing it. Also, and that's more proper to North and Belgium, I think its point of articulation is pre-velar more than uvular at the begining of a word. I say that because when I speak and heard other langages with uvular sounds, I doesn't... sound like in French. Same when looking to different IPA charts. Fricative uvular R from wikipedia sounds very harsh to me. And when I heard non-native whom being taught this sound, I seems very guttural. To me, devoiced version is a regional thing... But the one from Paris. I think it's also the caso in Alsace, Estearn part of the country near Germany. So in my idiolect, I'm pretty sure for the two firsts. Maybe I forgot cases. It's pre-velar and approximant at the beginning of a word. eg. "Ranger" Clearly an approximant between vowels. Also in final coda in fast speech. "arRêter", "parer" "robeRt but not in "paRtager" And only after a plosive (maybe fricative too) in consonant clusters it's the "normal" uvular fricative. "tRacteur" and "dRagée" ou "seringue" when schwa is elided so more like "s'Ringue". Same in "suz'rain" Are you a native French speaker too ? Or a proficient L2 speaker or a linguistics romance languages nerd ? I think accents in French are very less studied than other language despite being a major one. Spanish, German, Italian and English accents and dialects are far more analyzed in their phonetics I observed.
I think you meant to use [] instead of // ([] is for narrow transcription, i.e. transcribing what the actual sounds _are,_ and // is for broad transcription, i.e. transcribing what a native _thinks_ he's hearing)
@@xXJ4FARGAMERXx I know but I also know that the narrow transcription can feature various diacritics for precision and I don't know them so I preferred using the broad transcription to avoid any mistake instead. But you're right.
@@neuroleptik121 It IS an approximant in some cases (I'd say mostly between vowels, it can even be a short vowel or at the end of a word after a vowel) but it also depends on your dialect. Trills and taps may sound foreign to certain people, though there are French dialects that feature these sounds as their standards and thus, can be analyzed as yet another variation of (but these are rather rare sounds across France, imo). Native speaker. In my idiolect, the 'r' in "arrêter" varies between approximant (though, the exact sound varies from times to times) and fricative. It also varies because of the context. You too maybe, don't pronounce 'r' the same way due to emphasis or emotion. I agree, the lack of resource about accents (and even local dialects and regional languages) in France is a terrible thing. Maybe because of that "One language for one people" mentality. We never ratified the ECRML after all.
I'm a native Spanish speaker from Argentina, and you're totally right. Many people are really stubborn in their ignorance. The same thing happened to me when discussing the letters v and b sounding different in Spanish, which is WRONG. This difference doesn't exist in Spanish. It's a common misconception, and there are native Spanish speakers who force themselves to pronounce /b/ and /v/ like in English because they were told that it is correct. This is known as "ultracorrección" (hypercorrection).Moreover, as mentioned in another comment here, in Buenos Aires, we even pronounce a lot of consonants in this "softer" variation even at the beginning of words.
@@mx_moi1964It doesn't, as I explained above. Look it up. Maybe you won't believe me because it's a mistake that has been taught as the "right way." Some people will say it because they were told to in school or because they force themselves to (like radio announcers, etc.), ironically thinking it's the right way (hypercorrection), but it's wrong. Many people in Spain say, "Él la regaló un ramo de flores," for example (laísmo), which is an aberration. The fact that some people speak incorrectly doesn't change the way it is.
@@FontenlaAndres I said in CHILEAN Spanish. They pronounce V like in English. It might be wrong in all other varieties but it’s a fact in Chilean Spanish
@@mx_moi1964 Again... in English, /b/ and /v/ are two separate phonemes. This isn't true in Spanish, INCLUDING the Chilean variety. Maybe this will help you: 'In Spanish, [v] has no phonemic value. It can appear as an allophone of /b/ in some varieties. In Chile, a labiodental approximant [ʋ] or fricative [v] pronunciation of /b/ in spirantization contexts is quite widespread, regardless of the spelling as 'b' or 'v', e.g. cabeza [kaʋésa]. This is no more than a very local curiosity, as it's well said 'it has nothing to do with whether it's written with a b or a v'. Furthermore, in another source it mentions that in Chile, the sound [v] exists only as an allophone of /b/. This is further evidence that it is something minimal and not related to spelling. No one pronounces 'v' as in English just because of reading a letter 'v'. I hope that clarifies it.
@@FontenlaAndres wait a minute But I'm chilean and I do pronounce B and V differently I just so happened to be thinking about the pronunciation of the surname "Baquedano" some time ago, because it is of common use due to the metro station with the same name And then I realized that in Chile, for some reason they do seem to be pronounced differently
In my anecdotal experience, Spanish speakers from Spain are adamant that Spanish has a one-to-one mapping between written letters and sounds. Which is of course non-sensical, but it kind of makes sense when compared to its neighbouring languages that tend to be much more flexible (like Portuguese, french, or even English).
@@madjames1134Portuguese is indeed way more flexible on phonemes, we got a lot of cases where a letter is pronounced two different ways, or even 3, letters such as x, a, e, o, c, g, s, etc.
“Spanish speakers from Spain are adamant that Spanish has a one-to-one mapping between written letters and sounds.” How the heck would that even be _possible_ when there is _casa, queso,_ and _kilo_ all beginning with the identical _k_ sound? It’s ludicrous. It _is_ true that there is an almost perfect correspondence in *one direction,* from written form to pronunciation, so you can nearly always get the pronunciation from the written form-this video doesn’t really show exceptions to that if you view these allophones as following regular pronunciation rules, albeit unconscious ones for native speakers of Spanish-but a one-way correspondence is _not_ a one-to-one match. Sheesh.
1:31 one comment: [t] is often an allophone of d. if you record yourself saying "stuck" and remove the s in an editor, it will probably sound more like "duck" than "tuck". similarly [p] is an allophone of b and [k] is an allophone of g. removing the s from "spy" makes "buy" instead of "pie", and removing the s from "scum" makes "gum" instead of "come". this can make "disgust" sound like "discussed", "disburse" like "disperse", and "disdain" like "distain" (obscure word). some people even choose to represent the p t k after s as /sb sd sg/ jnstead of /sp st sk/, so "spaced" is /sbejsd/.
Oh god this explainsthe characteristic of how some german people speak english so well. (The ones having strong and sharp sounding accents) They don't really use those allophones and that is why it sounds so harsh and not harmonic. It's very noticable but i wasn't able to pin it down to that before
I think the reason voiceless stops sound voiced in clusters like that is because we also differentiate with aspiration, so a voiceless [p] sounds more like /b/ than /p/ which is usually [pʰ]. I don't think there's actual voicing assimilation there
@@scurly0792 yeah so "disgust" and "discussed" are the same, or almost the same in some accents, but they both have a different consonant than in "discolour", since "discolour" has an aspirated k.
to add to my comment which said english doesn't only distinguish b from p by voicedness, it doesn't rely only on aspiration either. for most english speakers, "crabby" has a voiced [b] while "happy" has a voiceless but unaspirated [p]. i think the best terms are "fortis" for p and "lenis" for b, although i don't entirely know what they mean. i distinguish "append" and "upend" with aspiration.
I'm a non-native Spanish speaker, but have spent half of my life speaking Spanish. This is actually something that I was taught in my Spanish classes, although it was kinda just glossed over. It's kinda funny seeing the responses natives have, but I mean English speakers would probably do the same given many of their allophones
This was super interesting, thank you! Linguistic concepts are often really overwhelming to me but your content is pretty much always digestible for even newbies to the subject like me.
This has to be the most interesting language video I've seen, ever. Even though I'm spanish and I've always been really good at catching the little details in the pronunciation and sound of other languages and even my own (Like, stuff even my parents didn't realise about their own language), but even after watching this I can only barely notice the difference between the two Ds and with a lot of effort, It's so subtle that even though everyone always says I have flawless pronunciation in both english and spanish I'm paranoidly doubting every word I say, so keep it up, your videos are great xD
I'm glad I got recommended this video. It expresses the little details that I noticed in Spanish and English a pesar de no saber cómo se llamaba tal cosa. You've just earned a new subscriber! I hope to learn more about linguistics through your videos!
On my first day attempting to speak Spanish after years now of "Duolingo" in an actual Spanish speaking country (Mexico), I had my ...local resident native speaking guide... correct my pronunciation of "Nada" in "de nada" verbally to "de natha" in just the manner you have described. I was puzzled at the time but your info here has confirmed his "native speaker" advice to me. The guide was clearly a local, long-time resident without any formal training in language. The guide may even have been of only modest formal education like high-school. This was in Botellas, Mexico across the Rio Grande from Big Bend National Park.
@@icanogar No expert here, but definitely not the last which is a spelling difference. In my native English dialect that is straight up T sound the 'h' is superfluous. I'm not sufficiently skilled/knowledgeable to distinguish between the first two in your list. But my general life knowledge suggests that one will not necessarily find an exact equivalent to every Spanish sound in English. One can at best only approximate.
@@MaxedWayOut I can chime in since I'm not a native English or Spanish speaker and I was taught the difference. The th in "that" is voiced, and in "thumb" it's breathy. If you put your hand on your throat as you say these words, you'll feel a vibration for the th in "that" and none in "thumb". As for the Spanish word nada, what I hear is the voiced th, which is the th in "that".
Persian had one that confused me at first. They use their own version of the Arabic alphabet. Officially the letter غ (ghain) is a uvular “γ” while ق (qaf) is “q” (like a K but pronounced back on the soft palate). In reality, ق gets pronounced just like غ much of the time, but many Persian speakers insisted that they were the same. Some who were a bit more linguistically aware said, “actually yeah, in this or that city they always pronounce ق like ق, but we soften it between vowels.”
Just wanted to hop in as a native Spanish speaker and say you are mostly correct and it's sad to see so many people bashing you just cause they think speaking a language makes them linguistic eminences when they are two clearly distinct things. That being said, obviously Spanish has a ton of regional variations, being the third most spoken language in the world and the biggest one by geographical extension if you only count native speakers, so maybe some of these people may genuinely have accents which don't follow these specific rules. Now I'm no expert, but I think I can confidently say that regarding the G sound you're probably right, but I'm not so sure about the other two. For example, just my two cents, but regarding my native northern Argentinian accent, I can confirm that the D sound is almost always soft regardless of word position, but it's not "enforced", as in using the strong D sound wouldn't stand out as weird and it is sometimes used when deliberately stressing a word, and I would also say that the B sound is also voiced softly quite regularly even as the first letter of the word. Of course, northern argentinian has a tendency to soften sounds, as well as having a reputation for "slurring" and omitting sounds (for example, we use the composite past tense instead of the simple one and with all the 'ado' endings there is a tendency to omit the 'D' sound e.g. mirado to mirao, enviado to enviao not unlike southern Spaniard accents, and even the auxiliary 'haber' is frequently shortened in various ways depending on conjugation).
This was such an amazing video. It was super concise and informative. I really like the natural speed you talked at as well. Not only this, you gave so much factual reasoning and the responses to the TikTok comments were incredible.
I'm from New Zealand and Maori is an official language here, a native Polynesian language. One of the consonants in Maori is "wh", like in words such as "whakarongo" or "whanau" which phonetically makes the sound /ɸ/. This sound is similar to an /f/ in English, but your lips do not touch your teeth. Imagine the sound you make when you were learning to whistle, that pfffftttth sound your lips make. Japanese also has this sound such as in Mt Fuji. Many people don't realise this sound is different from /f/, and I have gotten into too many arguments with people saying its just spelled as wh because its not English. Funny thing is, Māori language did not have a written form until English colonials arrived and romanised it. And those some settlers recognised that /ɸ/ was a different sound from /f/. I think the reason for that is in the 1800s, the English pronounced "wh" differently than modern speakers, closer to an /f/ than a /w/ where the "h" is silent. Point is, this video helps me understand this so much better now, linguistics is so fascinating.
Great video! (I'm new here but the algorithm knows I like this stuff.) My most memorable run-in with allophones was when a Finnish friend, whose name is Kaisa, said English people kept saying it as "Khaisa". The aspiration (or not) of the K is not important in English, but to her Finnish ears, this was a barbaric mangling!
Awesome video! As a linguistics enthusiast (I intend on majoring in it when I grow up) I take notice of grammatical and phonetical patterns relatively easily. So when I learned Spanish I really wanted to put into words these patterns with the D and B sounds but I didn't have the sufficient understanding of the concept of allophones, and now that I know the correct terms it makes more sense💪🏻
As a native spanish speaker from Colombia, I had never noticed the 2 "d"s in "dedo" were different, pretty crazy if you think about it Really good video! Keep it up!
This video is so true that you didn't even notice that the 't' in 'stop' isn't a 't' either. It's actually a 'd' sound. Dr Geoff Lindsey also here on RU-vid has a video with more examples, like how 'screen' with the initial 's' sound edited out sounds like 'green'.
@@Win090949 I don't think it's quite the same, we just don't recognize the difference in English. The initial B in beach is pretty standard, but the P in speech is a bit stronger. Notice the rigidity of your lips when saying speech compared to beach... and if you drop the s from (s)peech, it DOES sound like beach, but the pronunciation is slightly more forceful. Beach feels more like the air is naturally popping out as my lips peel apart (very relaxed), while (s)peech requires slightly more muscle control. English doesn't differentiate these two pronunciations apart, but other languages do.
@@inf0phreakThe title I think is confusing you a bit, since the point of it is that the sound of /p/ followed by /s/ and /b/ at the beginning of a word can be the same, but this is because /b/ in this environment can be devoiced to [p].
@@zammich3649 the b in beach and the p in speech, while they might not be the same in some accents, are very similar. it's much harder to distinguish them after s, since the main thing that makes a b different from an unaspirated p (when the distinction exists) is that b has voicing before the release of the sound, but you can't easily do that right after s. aspiration, on the other hand, is completely possible after s and can be easily distinguished. think "discover" vs "discolour".
This is kind of crazy to me. I'm a native Spanish speaker and I just can't get the difference between the /d/ and /ð/ in deðo, no matter how hard I try. The only way I can notice there's a difference is when I try really hard to vocalize the decond /d/ while pronouncing 'dedo', making sure I pronounce both /d/ with the same sound makes the word 'dedo' sound off to me. So I get there's got to be some difference. But when I was a child learning basic english in the school it was always obvious to me that the /tt/ in 'butter' sounded a lot more like an /r/. And has also been obvios that some natives english speakers confuse those /t/ /r/ sounds a lot when speaking in spanish. It remembers me of a time when I tried to vocalize really consiouslly every letter while I spoke spanish because I saw a video tutorial of a locutor stressing the importance of correct vocalization in his work, and people around got confused and asked me to repeat myself often.
What he doesn't say is that Spanish hard /d/ doesn't really sound like English d. Spanish hard /d/ is dental, the tongue goes behind your upper teeth. The Spanish soft d is indeed interdental but not quite like English th either. Spanish interdental d is an approximant while English th is a fricative. So, recapitulating, both sounds are actually quite similar for an untrained ear.
To hear the difference, hear how dedo is said in Brazilian Portuguese and then compare it with Spanish. You’ll notice right off that bat that the second D is softer in Spanish
This is so cool to me because as someone who can't speak Spanish the difference is so obvious. But something like [t] and [tʰ] I can't differentiate at all.
@@40watt53 listen to someone with a foreign accent speaking English, in some cases, they may pronounce the aspirated t sound as unaspirated, it is immediately noticeable that it sounds off. the opposite is true in Spanish, when English speakers aspirate the t, k, or p while speaking it sounds really off. For example listen to how a native speaker pronounces "taco" versus an average American ordering "tʰakʰos" at a restaurant.
I loved your video, no comment, immediate fan and subscriber!!! This also will help me.improve my English pronunciation as well since it's a second language for me. Saludos desde México!
Seems like the same thing happens with Japanese speakers having trouble with telling [ l ] and [ ɾ ] apart. Also, here in Brazil, the letter R can represent many different sounds depending on dialect without changing meaning. In the end of syllables. Some dialects use the tap like in Spanish, some use the usual american approximant, and some use the fricatives [x], [χ], or [h] including their voiced versions. In informal speech it is can even be dropped entirely.
This is awesome! as a native Spanish speaker, Iv'e never noticed the difference of the "D" allophones. It's true that learning a second language makes you more aware of subtleties that their native speakers don't even know they're doing. Thank you for making me realize something that I've always known, but didn't know I knew.
This is incredible, stop and top in English surprised me! Also thank you for helping me understand why learning Spanish and Duolingo be confusing me! 😂
Yes! I was thinking the same thing. I often feel as if I'm simplifying concepts way too much to fit the TikTok format when the topic really should be a 10 minute video
I absolutely love this video and the easy explanation in it, I had a BIG PROBLEM in Arabic with the phonemes /h/ and /x/ because my native language (Romanian) doesn't distinguish them and most Romanians would think you are messing with them or making stuff up if you told them there are two ways the "h" letter can be pronounced. If I hadn't studied the IPA and kept a close mind I would have probably acted the exact same. It's really interesting how our brains perceive allophones as the same sound. After learning about it I purposefully pronounced "h" as /x/ in situations where it shouldn't be to see if Romanians notice anything and nope they don't, they even do that themselves accidentally sometimes
Wow, this is a really nice edited video with an interesting topic I like. It is surprising to see that you don't post much RU-vid videos. I wish you posted more
Thank you for the kind words! I've mostly been on TikTok, but I'm planning to focus more on RU-vid now as I enjoy it more, so I'll definitely be putting out more videos soon
this very fascinating. I already know Spanish but just focusing how sound works, must be because I'm interested in the science behind sounds like how trumpets, drums, voices and other noisy "things" sound the way they are. (Love these videos =)
Otter...right on! Can you believe some folks comments are about language? They are blinded by print! I have a background in linguistics and enjoy your presentation. ENHORABUENA ; )
I'm not a native speaker, but I would say I'm a heritage learner since half my family is Puerto Rican. You're the first person I've seen to actually point this out and I see it with a lot of non-native speakers and I've always wondered how they didn't notice that.
great video!! so cool ;> allophones are really fascinating haha, i think they can also often arise in languages with phonemes that are only voice or only unvoiced. before i was even interested in linguistics properly, i recall paying a lot of attention to how the voiceless velar fricative /x/ becomes voiced in certain word combinations - for an example ive heard here and there.. "bez chleba" ("without bread") can be pronounced /bɛs 'xlɛbä/ but often i heard people pronounce the 'z' in 'bez' "as written", so as the voiced /z/, which makes the /x/ voiced as well - /bɛz 'ɣlɛbä/. i thought that was really cool!! it was like.. wow.. a sound ive never heard before, so neat.. and there are probably many more examples like these
awesome video. I'm still unable to hear the difference on a lot of the things mentioned, but I love the explanations, especially the fricatives at 6:08, the stop consonants at 5:52, the pratt stuff, and the aspirated consonants. some parts helped explain things I've seen in other videos, but the main benefit is just acting as a rosetta stone for the hieroglyphics that is linguistics wikipedia. would you want to do a series just explaining the basics of linguistics for novices? I would love that. like, I still have trouble believing that the 't' in butter is the same sound as paro or caro. I'm a native english speaker, informal c1+ in spanish through life experience, then recently started on german, and took some baby steps in japanese, mainly just hiragana and katakana. I got absolutely crushed by hindi duolingo though. the differences in aspirated consonants that you mentioned stumped me straight out of the gate, although it's nice to have a name for the problem at least. I recently discovered linguist/language learner youtube, which has created a lot more questions than answers, which again, cheers for the video. just the idea of allophones is gold. or what about a video just on r's? two r variants between english and spanish was understandable, but german added, what two? and then I heard the japanese r described as '5 parts r, 4 parts l, and 1 part d' (or something similar). is that something that would be visible in the pratt analysis? I'm not on tiktok so I don't know you from there, but this quality of content would be awesome on here. would love to see you post more!
As a native speaker from Chile you are right it jus doesn't sound right when you use the exact same sound of the letters in those contexts, love your content!
Amazing and sorry that people made some hate comments to your original tik tok video. Not knowing or not understanding is no excuse for judgemental entitled ignorance. Your explanations are excellent
3:36 As a Brit I actually only have 2 allophones of /t/ here, as I pronounce butter as [bʌtʰə] instead of [bʌɾɚ]. As for the infamous debuccalisation of /t/ in between vowels, I personally only do that at the end of words so I say bottle of water as [bɒtɬ.əv.wo̞ː.tʰə] but the cat sat on the mat as [ðə.kʰaʔ.saʔ.ɒn.ðə.mɒʔ] in quick speech.
there’s a sort of gradient in a language, from not having a sound and struggling to say it, not having a sound but being able to say it, having a sound but it not making a phonemic distinction, and having a sound and it making a phonemic distinction. part of phonemic distinction is your brain learning that there’s a distinction and assigning a sound to one bucket or the other. especially if you haven’t heard a sound much, even if you can say it, you might have a hard time distinguishing them, but that’s also part of the process of sounds splitting. initially it’s a non-phonemic variation, but over time becomes phonemic.
You are right about the different d's in dedo. I am a fluent trilingual, sw., da., en.. And semifluent in a number of others. I have worked on many languages, and have discovered rules for softening consonants in most European languages, although they are only written down as rules in languages like Finnish Hungarian and Turkish.
As a linguistics aficionado who loves learning new languages I first encountered allophones when studying Korean and the example to explain them I often encountered was the Spanish dedo/dado. (Spanish is one of my two mother languages). Since I used to be an actor and studied classical singing, I underwent a lot of phonetics and vocal training back in my day so I started analyzing myself saying dedo/dado and completely melted my brain.
I am Irish and speak my own native language as well as English, French, Italian and Spanish. What you describe was immediately apparent to me when I began learning Spanish. I wonder if it was so obvious because of the fact that in the Irish language we have lenition. One of the most common is when we use the past tense. The first consonant of the verb is lenited. An example would be the verb 'bí'. This, in English, is 'to be', and happens to be pronounced just like 'be' in English. In the past tense 'bí' becomes 'bhí', with the 'h' used to signal that the preceding consonant is lenited. Then it is pronounced like 'vee', or in certain circumstances more like 'wee'. I've always believe that it is probably this aspect of Irish that made it relatively easy for me to both hear and pronounce this lenited 'b' in Spanish. It might also be, in part, to the fact that I learnt French as my first Romance language in school, and from there I learnt Italian before then learning Spanish. There are so many similarities between Italian and Spanish, so to speak more like natives do you really need to get the subtle differences between the two languages. Great explanation.
Omg, I've been interested in understanding why it's so hard when transitioning from reading to listening comprehension for a while now. This video explains it all! The allophones make it much harder to understand a word in speech 🤯 Your videos are really great, pls keep it going 💪 Btw, I hope that you would make a/some videos about the topic Speech Perception, I'm still tryin to figure out how our brain process auditory information and apply it to learning languages 🤔
You are, indeed, correct. As a Spaniard, my parents didn't know this until I pointed it out to them. They could've sworn it was always the same sound, but nope.
Hello dear Otter, some dialects/accents have stronger or subtle allophones depending on their location, i.e. Caribbean, Andalucian and Canarian Spanish usually drop the 2nd D in Dedo as you mentioned but some other accents may have an aspirated D sound as in the english Th, while Castillian Spanish usually goes for the stronger D sound in both syllables. While subtle, its still present in some if not most accents, hence why some spanish speaking people may not even notice the allophone
That depends on the dialect you speak. Northern and central Portuguese dialects have the same allophonic rule as Spanish. Brazilian Portuguese seems to only use the stops as far as I can tell
Confidence in improper usage is something i forgive. Language is so personal that one cannot begrudge the impression that being corrected is an attack. It's almost like religion. One must gage the receptiveness of the corrected. That said: there's no reason they should've come after your masterfully clarifying video like that.
Your channel is amazing and it’s a pleasure to watch your videos. I discovered your channel on Tik Tok with the video about Texan German. Just follow and you make a great content 🔥
I've never thought about this, but that's very interesting. I'm native Norwegian with a pretty much fully american English accent, and I've wondered a bit how other people aren't able to pick up on it either ... IDK I'm build different or someth-. I am equally confident in both languages however, infact most of my thinking is English, probably due to those topics naturally often being in English situations. also learning spanish rn ... I've never been overthinking the word "dedo" (finger) this much in my life hoollyyyy Nice vid btw :)
i'm a Spaniard, and the very little accent I have in English is that sometimes i say /β/ rather than /b/ and /v/ when in between vowels and in unstressed syllables, and i think especially around voiced consonants. like, I might just say leβel and ruβer instead of level and rubber, for instance.
in spanish b and v are different allophones of the same phoneme and could replace eachother on the alphabet but its kept distinct for etimological reasons, which i find quite neat
The points raised in this video about the actual sound differences and the perceived lack of sound differences in native speakers is EXACTLY WHY you should seek out people who are fluent or near fluent in a target language ...and know something about linguistics.... and who speak your own language natively as instructors. Native speakers.....literally do not hear the differences but they do exist. Actually... people trained in linguistics who speak the target language natively will know exactly and immediately that there are sound differences. Learn from people who speak your own native language natively and who are accomplished speakers of the target language. They will have insights into the struggles of learning the target language from the perspective of someone who speaks their native language. Also, some people......not all but some..... appear to view anyone other than a native speaker of their language as encroaching on their "culture" (it is a ridiculous concept because we're talking about linguistics and language learning...not stealing land etc but whatever...people can be silly) The problem is that native speakers of any language have rarely studied the linguistics of their own native language and they simply know how to speak via a process of mimicing what those around them have done while they learned the language as children. ie. they know something "sounds right" but have not the slightest grasp of what is going on from a linguistic point of view. I can almost guarantee that the native spanish speakers who were posting those negative comments THINK they are speaking english as a native english speaker but there is a high possibility that they are not. They are forming the words using their own languages pronunciation as a model......thus they are making lots of common errors but don't realize it because it "sounds right" to them. tl;dr find an instructor who speaks your own language natively and who is accomplished in the target language for INSTRUCTION. Interacting and speak with native speakers to refine and perfect your listening comprehension and pronunciation of the target language. It is important to specifically listen carefully to their pronunciation and watch their mouth movements so that you can do the same.
VOWELS that are allophonic in English are one of first barriers to learning to Korean; they make a bunch of other distinctions in vowel sounds that can so sound incremental and to an English native speaker that they barely register. Also btw, living in China I noticed the W and V sounds were allophonic in Mandarin, since they don't actually have a "v." People just swap back and forth between the two pronunciations, and even my literal (Chinese) language professor didn't notice or hear it when I pointed it out!
I’ve been encountering a similar thing while learning russian, primarily with ш and щ. I have asked multiple native speakers to pronounce them for me, and they always sound the same to me, but I’ve read that native Russian speakers are able to pick up the difference between them, and can make it easier to distinguish foreign speakers. ш is typically anglicized as “sh” while щ is “shch”
You are completely right and I had never thought about it. In Spanish we have this myth that our writing system is one to one phonetically so people don't realize there are subtle sound changes everywhere. Btw great pronunciation, are you native? because you sounded native.
interestingly some dialects of German are kinda somewhat similar, though rather than B, D, and G leniting it's actually rather Standard German's B, D, and G that have fortified, the opposite of leniting, as these weaker pronunciations actually stem back to Proto Germanic, which had a very similar allophonic system as modern Spanish (no relation) but in Upper German dialects specifically, which between those and central German dialects formed the compromise dialect Standard German, they hardened into voiced plosives. Coincidentally this occurred while the original voiced stops (mainly from geminates and word initially) were devoicing and the original unvoiced plosives were leniting into fricatives and affricates themselves, i.e. the High German consonant shift. It's mainly central German dialects that retain some of these weaker pronunciations, and they exhibit less of the High German consonant shift, which makes sense when you realise that shift was what motivated the hardening of soft consonants. If VppV becomes VpfV, then VbbV can become VppV, and VvV can become VbV i.e. aber but in Pa Dutch (a central German dialect related to Palatine German) awwer Apfel but Appel (often spelt Abbel due to the distinction between B and P being lost later) etc. The W is the same sorta bilabial approximant in Pa Dutch that such B's often make in Spanish, though in Pa Dutch they occur as well initially and in certain consonant clusters
oh wow, i didn't notice you were a native! that's probably for the difference in dialect (and your good english too ofc), i'm used to saying /deˈθiɾ/ and other variations from Spain instead of the american ones.
ooooh ooh ooh ooh ooh! it gets better Go look up Dr. Geoff Lindsey's videos -- he's got one that points out that that unaspirated plosive is actually *voiced* (he demonstrates!), so like "Speech" cut down sounds like not "Peach" but "Beach". Also -- as someone who's studied over fifty languages, so I can pick up on a few more distinctions than the average English speaker, though I'm always thrilled to learn new ones like your info here -- my ears have been telling me for a long time that the way Spanish pronounces certain sounds is more fricative than plosive, so I've been kinda adopting that to some degree... but I thought it was specific to a dialect (I'm aware that some Spanish uses TH for... was it S? I forget), *and* I hadn't picked up on underlying placement rules, just that it certainly didn't sound like I would expect the written letter to sound. So thank you for bringing out this distinction! I'll have to listen more closely to Spanish used in native sources and see if I can pick it out.
I've been out of touch with my dialect but I remember that in limenian spanish we don't have much of the allophones for D G and B. Althought with the later inmigration it might have changed. I am able to say many syllables in a row with D just like the first examples in your video also with B and G. When I first heard about allophones I was so confused and only after hearing other people from other countries I understood what the allophone was.
I'm a native English speaker who speaks Spanish fluently. I remember when I learned these distinctions, my Spanish was absolutely destroyed for weeks because of thinking what word to use next, I had to think how do I pronounce this d. It was worth it because now I sound a lot better, but it was a struggle to get there.
Yeaaah, I'm mexican. I would have never realized these were two different sounds until you pointed it out. But now that I think, they definitely are different. In fact you would sound like a foreigner if you didnt pronounce it like that.
