zompist bboard

On the Kaltenise page of the Almeopedia there's a three-letter placename I'm having trouble deciphering. The first letter is an s-with-hachek, and the second is a turned-m. Fine so far. I'd pronounce those as a "sh" sound and an unrounded "u". But what's the third symbol? I don't recognise it from the IPA.

I think it's a dental click (X-SAMPA [k|\)]).

Wikipedia wrote:Prior to 1989, [ʇ] was an accepted IPA representation of the voiceless velar dental click.

Wikipedia is wrong-- it's not (or wasn't) velar but dental or alveolar.

zompist wrote:Wikipedia is wrong-- it's not (or wasn't) velar but dental or alveolar.

It said dental click, I think it meant that it is coarticulated with [k]... and as I understand it, all clicks have coarticulations of some sort, so I'm assuming Wikipedia was actually right. I could, of course, be wrong though.

In the [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Click_consonant#Transcription]article[/url] about clicks, WikiPedia wrote:..., and when the accompaniment is a simple [k], it will sometimes be omitted as well.

Which basically means that /ʇ/ = /ǀ/ = /k͡ǀ/ = dental click with velar coarticulation.

-Klaivas- wrote:

zompist wrote:Wikipedia is wrong-- it's not (or wasn't) velar but dental or alveolar.

It said dental click, I think it meant that it is coarticulated with [k]... and as I understand it, all clicks have coarticulations of some sort, so I'm assuming Wikipedia was actually right. I could, of course, be wrong though.

In the [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Click_consonant#Transcription]article[/url] about clicks, WikiPedia wrote:..., and when the accompaniment is a simple [k], it will sometimes be omitted as well.

Which basically means that /ʇ/ = /ǀ/ = /k͡ǀ/ = dental click with velar coarticulation.

It's not really a "coarticulation"; it's a secondary closure that is essential to the pronunciation of clicks. Since it is almost always velar, it is usually unmarked.

Thanks for the answer. Interesting that it's a word-final click, Wikipedia says that no natural languages have them.

That's true--we've no documentation of any language that has syllable final clicks; that's not to say it can't happen, though. Our actual knowledge of click genesis is poor, and the sample of languages that have clicks are also so few (the languages that do also use them quite particularly; one of the biggest click languages uses them only in roots), that any gross observation can't really be said without admitting some gaps in data.