velar trill (was: ~Yeshuewu)

Tue Jun 9 23:36:01 UTC 2009

At 9:05 PM +0000 6/9/09, Tom Zurinskas wrote:
>It does not seem like the uvula that is flapping
>or being made contact with by the tongue, its
>the soft tissue of the velum.  The uvula is too
>big and floppy and too far back.  I can trill my
>uvula and get a big gurgling sound.  Not quite
>right.  There are velar flaps, trills or
>fricatives in many languages.
>

There are indeed velar fricatives in many
languages (German, Yiddish, Russian, Scots
English for starters).  That's the standard [x]
of the IPA notation (assuming you're referring to
voiceless ones).

LH

>
>
>>  ---------------------- Information from the
>>mail header -----------------------
>>  Sender: American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>>  Poster: Herb Stahlke <hfwstahlke at GMAIL.COM>
>>  Subject: Re: velar trill (was: ~Yeshuewu)
>>
>>-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>>  Tom,
>>
>>  You misunderstand. The IPA does have symbols for alveolar trill
>>  (lower case r), alveolar tap (or flap if you prefer)(lower case r
>>  without ascender), uvular trill (small cap R), and even bilabial trill
>>  (small cap B). The American English /r/, by the way, a retroflexed
>>  central approximant, is an inverted lower case r. It lacks a symbol
>>  for velar trill for the very good reason that no velar trill has been
>>  reported in human language. The most thorough treatment of the sounds
>>  of language, the phonetic database at the UCLA Phonetics Lab, does not
>>  report such a sound, not because humans can't learn to produce it, as
>>  Mark has demostrated, but because human languages have so far not made
>>  use of it. The IPA is, among other things, a representation of the
>>  sounds human languages actually use.
>>
>>  Ease of articulation is one factor in language change, but it's far
>>  from the only one. If loss and development of sounds were simply a
>>  matter of ease of articulation, then we would have no explanation for
>>  the fact that languages not only lose but also develop some fairly
>>  difficult sounds, difficult in the sense that they are learned later
>>  than other sounds as children acquire the language as a native
>>  language.
>>
>>  Herb
>>
>>  On Tue, Jun 9, 2009 at 1:06 PM, Tom Zurinskas<truespel at hotmail.com> wrote:
>>  > ---------------------- Information from the
>>mail header -----------------------
>>  > Sender: American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>>  > Poster: Tom Zurinskas <truespel at HOTMAIL.COM>
>>  > Subject: Re: velar trill (was: ~Yeshuewu)
>>  >
>>-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>  >
>>  > If the iPA does not recognize these velar
>>trills or alveolar trills (Spanish r) it is
>>sorely lacking. They are real. They are the
>>most often made sounds outside of the English
>>foenubet (set of sounds) ref truespel book one.
>>  >
>>  > I'd say that all sounds are not equal in
>>difficulty. The harder ones have been dropped
>>from USA English, like the trilled r (which you
>>can still hear in Edison recordings, eg the
>>word great with a multi-trilled r ~grqaet). The
>>most difficult sounds would seem to be those
>>showing droppings, like ~th, ~t, ~h, ~r, ~au
>>(awe), ~l (widow wed wabbit). There would
>>appear to be more mouth-work in saying them, so
>>folks might want to work around them.
>>  >
>>  >
>>  > Tom Zurinskas, USA - CT20, TN3, NJ33, FL5+
>>  > see truespel.com
>>  >
>>  >
>>  >
>>  > ----------------------------------------
>>  >> Date: Tue, 9 Jun 2009 10:06:03 -0400
>>  >> From: thnidu at GMAIL.COM
>>  >> Subject: Re: velar trill (was: ~Yeshuewu)
>>  >> To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
>>  >>
>>  >> ---------------------- Information from the
>>mail header -----------------------
>>  >> Sender: American Dialect Society
>>  >> Poster: Mark Mandel
>>  >> Subject: Re: velar trill (was: ~Yeshuewu)
>>  >>
>>-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>  >>
>>  >> Herb:
>>  >>> There is no IPA symbol for the sound. Â Apparently IPA covers only
>>  >>> terrestrial languages.
>>  >>
>>  >> Randy:
>  > >>> Yes, for that you'd have to use the EPA (Extraterrestrial Paraphonetic
>>  >>> Alphabet), now under construction. Â It uses a quantum matrix of
>>  >>> decillions of symbolic representations of a wide variety of codable
>>  >>> media. Â A notable example is chemolfactory character set:
>>  >>>
>>  >>> http://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread281472/pg1
>>  >>>
>>  >>> " I'm imagining non-auditory languages. For example, one in which
>>  >>> creatures emit chemicals and they smell
>>each other. Imagine hundreds of thousands of
>>chemical building blocks in a language. Very
>>smelly."
>>  >>
>>  >>
>>  >> I used to say with assurance that no human language would use this
>>  >> phone (which I write phonetically as k with a tilde), at least
>>  >> lexically, because the physical effort was too great. But as it came
>>  >> with practice, I realized that that could be simply the same
>>  >> lectocentrism that brands velar and uvular trills, clicks, front
>>  >> rounded vowels, and any other phone that's not in own language as
>>  >> "hard".
>>  >>
>>  >> There are attested (in sf) olfactory languages. The citation I'm
>>  >> thinking of, though I can't recall the title or author, is at least 45
>>  >> years old and features two humans and an alien who is "cabin boy" of
>>  >> his ship. Since his actual name is literally unprintable, the author
>>  >> nicknames him "Tommy Loy", and ends the story with a very shaggy
>>  >> allusion.
>>  >>
>>  >> Klingon, however, was developedXXXXXXXX documented by a human
>>  >> linguist, Dr. Marc Okrand, and is representable in IPA.
>>  >>
>>  >> m a m
>>  >>
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