Sounds That You Can/Can't Pronounce Easily

[Torco]

I also can't pronounce /D/

What?

Like every American English speaker my /D/s are always /T/s....

[T@], [TIs], [Tiz], [T{t], [TEn], [ToUz], [Ter\]...???

xD

I, for one, can't tell the difference between a bunch of vowels, and I can't succesfully articulate λ, cause I don't know what it sounds like and what's the difference with a regular l

[Rory]

I think I'm a little late to the party, but for the record: without an uvula, the only sound you 100% cannot produce is the uvular trill. This is because you don't have a uvula to bounce around. Other sounds, like stops, nasals, fricatives, and approximants are all quite pronounceable.

[Ser]

Languages that have /X/ often have [R\_0] (a voiceless uvular trill) as an allophone of it though, so that may be what Io is referring to.

[Io]

Rory, like I've already said I can articulate some form of a /X/ by collecting some saliva back at the throat and straining myself significantly, it produces a rasp it probably sounds /X/ but it's different from the /X/ I used to be able to say before I was butchered, because it's more of a rasp created with the back of the tongue/throat than a vibrating uvula.

[Ser]

Rory, like I've already said I can articulate some form of a /X/ by collecting some saliva back at the throat and straining myself significantly, it produces a rasp it probably sounds /X/ but it's different from the /X/ I used to be able to say before I was butchered, because it's more of a rasp created with the back of the tongue/throat than a vibrating uvula.

Then Rory is right and you're talking exactly about the uvular trill. A proper [X] isn't supposed to sound rasp.

[Culden]

I have a hard time with ejectives, implosives, trills, and glottal stops in word initial position. Otherwise I think I'm fine.

[----]

I have a hard time not pronouncing glottal stops at the beginning of words, that are vowel initial.

[Io]

Er, how's a "proper [X]" supposed to sound then? On wiki the samples have a rasp.

[Karutoshika]

//braggin mode:on
Hm... I can pronounce pretty much perfectly everything from english, japanese, russian (native), ukrainian, spanish. (tho most phonology of these langs are similar)
Also to some degree sounds from vietnamese and korean including nasalised vovels and aspirated/unaspirated consonants...

Tho when it comes to actually properly speak I can't do it for some reason But pronouncing sounds separately or like wiki does "ka-aka" and such I do perfectly

//braggin mode:off

[Yng]

//braggin mode:on
Hm... I can pronounce pretty much perfectly everything from english, japanese, russian (native), ukrainian, spanish. (tho most phonology of these langs are similar)
Also to some degree sounds from vietnamese and korean including nasalised vovels and aspirated/unaspirated consonants...

Tho when it comes to actually properly speak I can't do it for some reason But pronouncing sounds separately or like wiki does "ka-aka" and such I do perfectly

//braggin mode:off

a winner is you indeed

[Drydic]

I also can't pronounce /D/

What?

Like every American English speaker my /D/s are always /T/s....

Viktor quit making shit up and passing it off as fact.

[vampireshark]

I also can't pronounce /D/

What?

Like every American English speaker my /D/s are always /T/s....

Viktor quit making shit up and passing it off as fact.

Precisely. I speak a form of English from the US, and, guess what? I pronounce /ð/ just fine.


Anyways, off the top of my head, I have difficulty with the pharyngeals and pharyngealization, producing a clean palatal plosive without some affrication, and palatalization/velarization distinctions.

[Travis B.]

Like every American English speaker my /D/s are always /T/s....

Viktor quit making shit up and passing it off as fact.

Seconded.

[Travis B.]

I for one do often devoice* my /ð/, when it is not assimilated to a nasal, generally when it is not intervocalic, very often when it is stopped, and especially when it is final** or adjacent to a fortis obstruent (and very frequently even when it is in any cluster with another obstruent***)... but that is not the same as merging it with /θ/. It still phonologically behaves quite differently from /θ/ at least in my dialect, and in most North American English varieties that I have heard. Saying that North American English dialects in general merge /ð/ and /θ/ is one of those "I fail linguistics forever" type of statements, even if some of them may devoice /ð/ at times or even generally.

* Devoice does not mean "merge with its fortis counterpart" when applied to a lenis obstruent; lenis and fortis obstruents can still contrast when voiceless even without aspiration or the like being present.
** Final lenis fricatives and affricates do however merge with their fortis counterparts in less GA-influenced forms of my dialect, however, except with regard to preceding vowel length and, for affricates, preglottalization being unaffected.
*** Clusters of successive obstruents typically, but not invariably, devoice in my dialect regardless of the obstruents they are.

[Travis B.]

Okay, now I just wait for the above to be chalked up as one of "Travis's weird dialect of English" posts...

[----]

I can't really think of any situations where my /ð/ devoices.

[finlay]

Okay, now I just wait for the above to be chalked up as one of "Travis's weird dialect of English" posts...

I don't think that. But I do think you may be overcomplicating the issue sometimes, or using too many long words, you loquacious sesquipedalian you.

[Lyhoko Leaci]

I can't really think of any situations where my /ð/ devoices.

Mine only devoices when I'm whispering. Other than that, I can't think of anything.

Huh, I don't even remember the last time I whispered, aside from messing around right now...

[finlay]

I can't really think of any situations where my /ð/ devoices.

Mine only devoices when I'm whispering. Other than that, I can't think of anything.

Huh, I don't even remember the last time I whispered, aside from messing around right now...

Whispering is actually complicated as it's a different larynx configuration from true voicelessness. Whisper "vision" followed by "fission" and you might get a hint of what I'm talking about.

[Travis B.]

For me it's that I in my everyday speech have rather restricted conditions under which any obstruents can be voiced at all. Basically, only lenis obstruents and stops (but not affricates) can ever be voiced, and even then, of those, voicing can only start in a realized lenis fricative not preceded by an obstruent, and can only be sustained in lenis fricatives, including realized lenis fricative geminates, particularly [vː], and stops between non-obstruents, and even there it is optional, especially for stops.

Hence any obstruent adjacent to another obstruent, unless a lenis fricative geminate is formed, or finally is automatically voiceless, as is any prevocalic plosive (or stopped phonemic fricative) not preceded by a vowel (which may be in another word, and then it very frequently is still voiceless), any final obstruent (unless the next vowel starts with a vowel, and then it very frequently is still voiceless), and any affricate in any position.

(I also typically in everyday speech have fortition of final lenis fricatives and affricates and often /d/ in addition, except for it not affecting vowels or preglottalization.)

My careful speech is not quite as restrictive here, in that it allows onset stops that are voiced without requiring a preceding vowel and voiced lenis fricatives and stops in clusters, but even then I tend to default to the same patterns as in my everyday speech.

[Ser]

Er, how's a "proper [X]" supposed to sound then?

Here's a recording for both [X] and [R\_0]:

http://ifile.it/0jowv9q/Voiceless_uvula ... _trill.wav

On wiki the samples have a rasp.

Indeed, the guy who made the recording at Wikipedia pronounced a [R\_0], not a [X]. I guess it's just a side-effect of the fact that linguists find it acceptable to transcribe [R\_0] as "[X]", since it's such a common allophone of languages with /X/, just like dorso-salivo-velar trills for languages with /x/ (pronounced using saliva as the active articulator between the tongue and the velum).

[finlay]

Tomato, tomato. I tend to pronounce the trilled/raspy version (and I also tend to do uvular instead of velar, if it matters – after all, I don't really speak a language which actively has the sound. I'm also just as likely to say words like 'loch' or 'Bach' as [lɔh] or [bah]). My phonetics teacher admitted openly to us that he had days when he couldn't pronounce [ʁ] and days when he couldn't pronounce [ʀ], because the other one would accidentally spill out.

[Herr Dunkel]

I actually can barely make [h] :/

[Jipí]

And I would like a recording of Malay words that differ only in final /h/

[Ser]

And I would like a recording of Malay words that differ only in final /h/

What allophone do they use in final position for /h/? If it's [h], I could give you authentic Salvadoran Spanish recordings (e.g. ["ama] 'he loves', ["amah] 'you love (tú-conjugation)', [a"ma] 'love!', [a"mah] 'you love (vos-conjugation)').