Links: Xidnaf’s IPA video: • The IPA and the IPA Th... Language Overview: French (timed to the liaison part) • Language Overview: French Omniglot writing: omniglot.com/writing/
Isn’t the i in bird a schwa sound tho, or is it pronounced differently in some regions? I have always heard a schwa sound and always pronounced it like a schwa aka the uh sound like the a in alone, not the other sound without an official letter... I cannot read the IPA at all, and I usually learn new languages from vocab videos by listening to the sounds and pronunciation of each word and then imitating what I hear, and I never learn languages that are hard and that have odd sounds or odd scripts etc! Technically, this video went so fast, I couldn’t even hear most of those sounds well, the dialogue should have also been at a normal pace, not sped up like that (should have been a long video that’s over one hour long, given how much info was packed into it) and the pronunciation of each sound should have been repeated multiple times in a row! Honestly, I could never produce most of those sounds around 14:15 😂 and the ones that follow, and I don’t know what kind of language would use such sounds, I cannot make any of those sounds lol! And I still don’t understand how those Icelandic words are supposed to be pronounced, and I am learning Icelandic and Norse and many other pretty languages! I have the Icelandic subtitles on, and I know thousands of words in Icelandic, but I still could read the Icelandic sub that fast, and watching it at a 0.25 speed makes it really annoying, so I highly suggest remaking this video again, and taking the time / speaking slowly, and pronouncing each sound many times in a row, and only one sound at a time!
The "retroflex" consonant depends heavily on which language you're speaking, with only a minority being ones where the bottom of the tongue touches the roof of the mouth. Polish and Mandarinic languages all use the top of the tongue.
Well actually, some Slavic languages, such as Russian, have a doubled consonant inventory, divided into velarised and palatalised. In those cases, you really do need to distinguish between /ɫ/ and /l/ (technically, [lʲ], but still). My favourite example is how "ел" /jeɫ/ means "(he) ate", while "ель" /jel/ means "pine tree".
7:04 This feature was also in Vulgar Latin and is found sometimes in colloquial japanese also proto-slavic didnt have that until pretty late in its development, for most of the time slavic was a single language, ь and ъ were just regular short i and u.
3:30 these pronunciations are actually correct in Canada :) (though 'tune' may be pronounced as [t(j)ʉːn] or [tɪʊ̯n~tʏːn]) 7:04 english has extra-short vowels but only in checked unstressed syllables
I'm glad you pointed out that American English "book" isn't pronounced with [ʊ], however, I'm afraid I disagree on the exact quality. You transcribe it as [ø], and I as [ɘ], as it's fairly ambiguous to rounding and is between a Front and Central pronunciation. Also, uvular fricatives aren't trills. Other than these small things that bother me, this video was better than most I've seen on this topic.
just adding onto what you said with my own personal experience: [ɘ~ɤ] is how I (from the Bay Area, California, US) pronounce it. never does it front all the way to [ø], but also it never raises to [ʊ]. (i should say that "never" is probably in reality more like very rarely)
@@Aesclingua Yes, I agree. At 5:28, when he says the word "book", it sounds like an unusual pronunciation to me. Definitely not the way I say it. So maybe it's a peculiarity of his own pronunciation.
fantastic video. thank you for making it, seriously. helped me a lot in just understanding IPA because for some reason wikipedia is horrendously bad at explaining stuff but is where i was looking up some languages' phonology. i still don't get the pharyngeal diacritic but i will soon enough
The important thing to note is that it's a tap, not a trill as in the video. Here are some more examples, though these mostly aren't monosyllabic, but they do showcase the diversity of possible consonant combinations with r, as well as give an indication as to how many words with this feature there are in Serbian: Kvrga, krčma, prdeti, krdo, Grdelica, tvrd, smrdeti, grdan, brdo, vrdati, mrdati, sprdati, srditi, smrt, mršav, tršav, svršen, mršen, mrsan, Trst, Trstenik, kvrc, šmrc, šmrk, krpa, trpati, drpiti, trpeti, trpeza, crkva, crknuti, crći, čvrknuti, čvrga, trg, grlo, umrli, vrlo, brlog, posrnuti, srna, trn, krdža, prkno, frka, zbrka, grkljan, Brčko, brčkati, prčkati, krčkati, trčkati...
Good job. The only thing I’d disagree with is your definition of phonemic transcriptions. The units of sound people have in their minds are the result of learning to read alphabets. Kids are great at learning to talk and can do amazing phonetic virtuosity but are totally crap at learning to read. Ergo phonemes aren’t real. Instead phonemes are abstractions that linguists make to analyse sound systems. Oh and the other thing: there are lots and lots of accents of English in Britain. 😊
I don’t rly agree with that assessment… there is a noticeable disconnect between what native speakers think they say and what actually comes out of their mouths. A rather funny part of Intro to Linguistics in college was the professor exposing allophones in American English, followed by some of the less linguistically inclined students insisting they didn’t believe him. This disconnect does extend to illiterate communities as well- one thing I listened to, either in college or in a Simon Roper video, was a recording where the linguist (possibly Everett) tries to get the speaker to say a certain word, but the speaker keeps not saying it how the linguist wants, as this language (I think) has an allophone where /b/ -> [m] after a pause in speech, and this speaker kept saying stuff like “yeah, ____” and the linguist got frustrated 😂, so this can’t be blamed on our writing systems. As for kids’ spelling errors, I don’t rly see that as them having known all along about their allophones- rather, they have the phoneme in their head, but then when a teacher or parent naively advises them to “just sound it out”, they do that, and become aware of the allophone, which is why they would write, for example, “chrain” instead of “train”.
Does this maybe confuse the units of sound people have in their minds (which doesn't necessarily mean consciously!) with the way people tend to *label* sounds? The labelling of sounds it seems to me has much more to do with alphabets, but that's a general problem with labels in all contexts: you can only consciously label things with the labels you've got! Meaning that the labels people use aren't the most accurate, just the most available. For instance, a Northern English speaker might amusedly poke fun at a Southern English speaker who says /bɑːθ/ instead of the Northener's native /baθ/. "Eeh bah gum, there's no 'r' in 'bath' you soft Southern plum!" they might laugh. Since, to both the Southern and the Northern English speaker, an "r sound" in this context means the sound of the vowel /ɑː/, as indicated by the digraph "ar". Meanwhile a North American tourist nearby overhearing this conversation might be thinking: "Doubleyou tee eff, dude. There's no 'r' sound in either of their words! These limeys are crazy, bro!" Now, all three of these imaginary people understand (or rather we imagine they understand, since we're only imagining them, because... well you know what I mean) the different sounds in their languages. The language they use to _describe_ the phonemic differences (in this case talking about "r sounds") is a function of the written language they've been taught though.
hello. in my language (azeri) k g letters pronounced like palatal plosives, as IPA shows. But when i listen to their sounds, i think my plosives more in front of the palatum.They are very close to where post alveolar affricates are articulated. I think it might be because of dialect, but unfortunately i cant find any sidenotes emphasizing it. Palatalization of k g in azeri is main changes throughout the dialects, in some it even changes to affricates (similar to how english got its ch sound in native words). What do you say, it might be alveo-palatal or something? Honestly the palatal plosives in IPA sounds just kʲ gʲ to me not as cool as my plosives😪
and id like to add, we have very prescriptivist approach here, so their transcriptions might just be a single form ((dia)lect?)) of pronunciation, really.
As far as I can tell in my dialect of English the vowels pronounced approximantly as: KIT: /ɪ/ DRESS: /ɛ̈/ TRAP: /æ̝ə̯/ LOT/PALM: /ä/ FOOT: /ʊ̞̈/ (or maybe it could be better described as /ɵ̠/) STRUTː /ʌ̈/ FLEECE: /ɪi̯/ or /i/ (pronounced as /iə̯/ before /ɫ/) FACE: /ei̯/ (pronounced as /eə̯/ before /ɫ/) THOUGHT/CLOTH: /ɒ̜/ (pronounced as /ɔ/ before /ɫ/) GOAT: /ö̞u̯/ (pronounced as /oə̯/ before /ɫ/) GOOSE: /ʊ̞̈u̯/ (pronounced as /uə̯/ before /ɫ/) PRICE: /äi̞̯/ and /ɐ̝i̯/ (these two sounds are phonemically distinct) CHOICE: /oi̯/ MOUTH: /äu̯/ The r-colored vowels are as follows: NURSE: /ɚɹ/ NEAR: /iɚ̯ɹ/ SQUARE: /eɚ̯ɹ/ START: /ɑɹ/ NORTH/FORCE: /o̞ɹ/ CURE: /ɚɹ/ (in most words), /o̞ɹ/ (in some words), /uɚɹ/ (in very few words) Can you guess what region I'm from?
Good guess, but I wrote “colored” and not “coloured” I also don’t think any Irish English speakers have a diphthong in the TRAP set or the merger of the LOT and PALM sets. As far as I understand the previous two features are exclusively found in American/Canadian English.
You sure you wrote that mouth vowel correctly? I've never seen anyone have a forward glide in that vowel From the other vowels i'd guess you're from the North of the United States
Just looked it up and it seems they are just different symbols for the same sounds. Each symbol corresponds to an IPA symbol. It’s just writing IPA in a different script. If you want a superior sound system, check out canIPA.
at 03:03, i believe you're mistaken with this supposed 'allophone'. you are clearly articulating the (closing) diphthongs perfectly fine. there's a lot of outdated information about english pronunciation out there, and i'd reccomend this great video by dr Geoff Lindsay about this topic titled "Why these English phonetic symbols are all WRONG" [tʉ͡wn] tune [pʉ̞͡wɫ] pool [fo͡wn] phone *[ho͡wɫ] hole *you seem to have pronounced 'hole' like 'hull' [hʌɫ], but that seems more like a mistake. ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-gtnlGH055TA.html&ab_channel=DrGeoffLindsey
Now that I’ve watched that video, it actually seems like me and Dr. Lindsay agree on everything (where applicable- we’re still speaking different dialects), at least, we both think the standard transcription conventions in our respective countries are out of date
@@watchyourlanguage3870 i was talking more about how you are transcribing your speach as a non-closing diphthong- tho i'll admitt, i mistranscribed the start points of the diphthongs. my other point about the 'allophones' you describe still stands, because i can still very clearly hear the phonemic quality of those vowels remaining very consistent in both environments presented.
2:05 I'm pretty sure that aspiration, murmuring (of stops at least), palatalization, velarization, labialization, rhoticization, and pharyngealization are all not supresegmental features, the term supresegmantal is limited to length, stress/tone/pitch, and phonation quality/glottal state. 7:28 your use of the word note seems to imply that tonal languages use absolute pitch (when no language does), just using the term pitch or pitch contour would have been less confusing imo. 7:53 your description of and was misleading at best, they do not convey only the pitch of the previous syllable but a "downstep" or "upstep" in pitch, so [a.maꜜma.na] could represent something like [á.má.mà.nà] but [a.maꜛma.na] would represent [à.mà.má.ná]. 16:45 "this can only happen to sonorants" no, incorrect, chinese and many other languages use syllabic fricatives ( en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syllabic_consonant#Syllabic_fricatives )
The vowel in "book" is also not [ø] lol; [ø] is way more front than that. If anything you're saying [pɵk(ʰ)] (not [pʰɵk]!) The opposite goes for your [ʉ], which is way too front. Listen to how a Standard Southern British speaker says the traditional /uː/ vowel: That's [ʉw]. Your description of pitch accent and tone is also reversed: Pitch accent is a word-tone. Tone "proper" is syllable-tone, which is why many people consider pitch accent systems to just be another tone system. Dental consonants are also not necessarily interdental: Chinese /n d t tʰ/ and variations thereof are made with the tip of the tongue contacting the back of the (bottom, iirc) teeth rather than the blades of your incisors. Northern Mandarins also do not have retroflex consonants, but highly retracted postalveolar ones (native southern Mandarins do not have either), if your definition of retroflex requires the bottom of the tongue touching the palate. In fact, I've heard it said that even Indian languages do not have retroflexes, but highly retracted postalveolar ones. The most common plosives being /b p d t g k/ is also not necessarily accurate, as many languages allegedly with /p t k/ are more accurately characterized as having /pʰ tʰ kʰ/, with some (such as English) even distinguishing these sounds phonemically based on aspiration rather than voicing. The distinguishing feature of trills vs flaps (even though this isn't distinguished phonemically by any language as far as I'm aware) is that trills are articulated with the airflow from your lungs while flaps are articulated with the muscle itself. The left angle does not mean that a glottal stop comes out *instead*. It means that there is no (audible) release to the consonant. Otherwise languages can't contrast [p̚ t̚ k̚ ʔ], as many Chinese languages do some of them.
