Diastema

Discussion of natural languages, or language in general.
Post Reply
User avatar
ol bofosh
Smeric
Smeric
Posts: 1169
Joined: Tue Dec 06, 2011 5:30 pm
Location: tʰæ.ɹʷˠə.ˈgɜʉ̯.nɜ kʰæ.tə.ˈlɜʉ̯.nʲɜ spɛ̝ɪ̯n ˈjʏː.ɹəʔp

Diastema

Post by ol bofosh »

I have a large diastema (gap between top front two teeth) and realised that it must affect my dental and labiodental pronounciations. So for dental and labiodental fricatives the sound actually comes through the gap between my teeth.

It also almost makes dental nasals impossible (which isn't an issue since none of the languages I have to speek have them (as far as I know)).

So, for those without diastemas, where does the dental and labiodental fricative sounds come out?
It was about time I changed this.

TomHChappell
Avisaru
Avisaru
Posts: 807
Joined: Wed Dec 28, 2005 2:58 pm

Re: Diastema

Post by TomHChappell »

treegod wrote:I have a large diastema (gap between top front two teeth) and realised that it must affect my dental and labiodental pronounciations. So for dental and labiodental fricatives the sound actually comes through the gap between my teeth.

It also almost makes dental nasals impossible (which isn't an issue since none of the languages I have to speek have them (as far as I know)).

So, for those without diastemas, where does the dental and labiodental fricative sounds come out?
For apico-dental or interdental fricative sounds like thorn [θ] and eth [ð], for me the air comes out between the tongue's tip and the tips of the upper front teeth.

For me, for labiodental fricatives like [f] and [v], the air comes out between the lower lip and the tips of the upper front teeth.

You should know that the "dental" fricatives, as I pronounce them, have the part of the tongue at the front of the blade or just behind the tongue's apex, touching the apices of the upper front teeth (they are laminal-dental rather than apico-dental); and sometimes have the lower front teeth touching the underside of the tongue's blade (are sometimes interdental). By contrast the other dental sounds, as I pronounce them, have the tongue's apex touching the back of the upper front teeth (but I almost never have occasion to do so; for me, an apico-dental, as opposed to an alveolar, stop, doesn't sound different; and a laminar-dental stop just turns into a fricative whether I want it to or not).

The phones [n̪ ] (or in Z-SAMPA [n_d]), according to Wikipedia, occurs in Standard Arabic, Catalan, Dinka, Finnish, French, Greek, Malayalam, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Swedish, Tsez, Ukrainian, and Vietnamese. But in Catalan, Finnish, Modern Greek, and Spanish, they are allophones of /n/.

In Dinka and Russian the /n̪ / or /n_d/ phoneme contrasts with a very similar nasal; in Dinka with alveolar /n/, and in Russian with the palatalized alveolar nasal /nj/.

You can look up the individual languages' phonologies to see about the other languages on that list.

I can't tell a difference between the sound when I pronounce [n̪ ] as opposed to [n].

I used to have a gap between my two upper frontmost incisors; but I had a phrenectomy about age 18, and so I haven't had such a gap since the first time I tried to say a dental nasal. At that time I'd already experimented with linguo-labial sounds, but not with dental nasals nor dental stops.

Post Reply