LL-L "Phonology" 2005.12.16 (02) [E]

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16 December 2005 * Volume 02
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From: Ben J. Bloomgren <godsquad at cox.net>
Subject: LL-L "Phonology" 2005.12.15 (08) [E]

Ingmar,

does anyone know how to pronounce the so-called "funky" d, b, y in Pular?
Or, even better, does anyone know where to find soundfiles where one could
hear the difference between normal d, b y and their funky equivalents?

I don't know about the y, but I know about the d and the b. The other one is
the egressive sound. Go to everytongue.com. They have fulfulde there. Try to
suck air into your mouth when you pronounce the "funky" letters.
Ben

----------

From: Ingmar Roerdinkholder <ingmar.roerdinkholder at WORLDONLINE.NL>
Subject: LL-L "Phonology" 2005.12.15 (08) [E]

On jaraama (=Pular 'thank you' (or 'how are you'))!
I'll check those links you gave, but from your description below I can
already image how implosive b and d sound. But implose y appears a bit
harder to me.

About inhaling words, I thought that was particulary Scandinavian.
Somehow, it seems a sign of insecurity, especially among some older women,
in the Netherlands. But now you mention the inhaled "ja", I remember that
I heard it mostly from people from the North, in this case Groningen and
Friesland, and also but less so Drenthe.
I also read somewhere once that many Scandinavian whistle by sucking the
air in through their lips, instead of blowing it outside.
The funny thing is that this was the way I learnt whistle myself as a
child, only later I found out that all other children did it from inside
to outside. Maybe because of my Scandinavian first name?

Ingmar

>R. F. Hahn:
>
>Well, well, Ingmar!  It so happens that I was thinking about this very
>phenomenon earlier this very days, less within an African context (albeit
>with knowledge of it) than within a Southeast Asian context, for what you
>are talking about is also an areal feature in Southeastern Asia across
>language families, although it tends to be ignored in non-academic Western
>descriptions.
>
>Coincidence, or might you be a kahuna in the making?
>
>What you are talking about here is an implosive series of consonants.
>
><quote>
> Implosive consonants are plosives (rarely affricates) with a glottalic
>ingressive airstream mechanism. That is, the airsteam is controlled by
>moving the glottis downward, rather than by expelling air from the lungs
as
>in normal pulmonic consonants. Contrastive implosives are found in
>approximately 10%-15% of the world's languages.
></quote>
>(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Implosive_consonant)
>
>You get a similar sound (not exactly the same) if you "inhale" a word.
This
>is something some Americans consider "very European."  It irritates my
wife
>when I do it.  ("Stop it! It's too weird.")  I'm not sure if you hear it
>done in Dutch, but I guess you do.  In German and Low Saxon of German
(nice
>Lowlands safe, huh?), people often "inhale" _ja_ (yeah, yes) in agreement
>with someone else's statement.  (Nice Lowlands safe, huh?)  You can also
>hear people "inhale" monosyllabic words in expressions of surprise!  This
>phenomenon has been noted and described in Finnish where it tends to occur
>more in women's speech than in men's speech.
>
>Genuine implosive consonants are "kind of sucked in," but without audible
>inhaling.
>
>Implosives are distinctive phonemes in parts of Africa.  Besides Pular, I
>might mention the Kru varieties of Niger-Congo and several Central Sudanic
>languages, also Owerri Igbo (Nigeria, labio-velar <gb>, <kp>), also in
>Hausa.  In a much larger area, implosives are found as allophones (i.e.,
not
>contrastively), such as in many Bantu languages, including the well known
>members Swahili, Zulu and Xhosa, in which cases, however, this detail
tends
>to be omitted in textbooks.  In the Americas, there are remnants of what
may
>have been a continuum, now represented from Northern California via Quiche
>in Guatemala to several varieties of the Amazon Basin.  As I mentioned
>previously, it is a widespread feature, albeit apparently only on an
>allophonic level, throughout Southeastern Asia, especially in the
>realizations of syllable-final voiced labials (/m/, /b/) but often more
>extensively.  You can observe this in Vietnamese, Khmer, Thai and other
Dai
>languages, Lao, and the languages of Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines
>and Taiwan.  Interestingly, this feature is absent in Europe and
Australia.
>(I am not sure about Irian Jaya and Papua-New Guinea.)  In Southern Asia
>there seems the be the isolated case of Sindhi of Pakistan (with a series
of
>four voiced implosive phonemes).  There are languages that have voiceless
>implosive, a few even affricate implosives, but these are few and far
>between.
>
>It is difficult to hear implosives if you are not used to them, especially
>when you don't watch the speaker's lips.  Here are are few recordings:
>
>Sindhi:
>http://www.phonetik.uni-
muenchen.de/Lehre/Skripten/TRANS2/TRANS2Stunde2.html
>(halfway down the page, before "Clicks," which you can also listen to,
>including a Nama story)
>
>Owerri Igbo:
>http://hctv.humnet.ucla.edu/departments/linguistics/VowelsandConsonants/vo
wels/chapter12/igbo.html
>
>Hausa:
>http://www.humnet.ucla.edu/humnet/aflang/Hausa/Pronunciation/consonants.ht
ml

>Ingmar Roerdinkholder wrote:
>A question about a very Non-Lowlandic phonology, that of Pular, Peuhl,
>Pulaar, Fula, Fulfulde or whatever name is used for this African language:
>
>does anyone know how to pronounce the so-called "funky" d, b, y in Pular?
>Or, even better, does anyone know where to find soundfiles where one could
>hear the difference between normal d, b y and their funky equivalents?
>
>Maybe this isn't the right place for it but since we're also discussing
>Chinese, Japanese, Arabic, Hawai'ian etc etc, I guess it still may be.
>And I wouldn't know where else I could find this kind of info.
>
>Ingmar
>Regards,
>Reinhard/Ron

----------

From: Ingmar Roerdinkholder <ingmar.roerdinkholder at WORLDONLINE.NL>
Subject: LL-L "Phonology" 2005.12.15 (08) [E]

I visited the Hausa-link you gave me: very interesting, the implosive b and
d are just the way I imagined them to sound.
I'm pretty sure that this is the same way the implosives must be pronounced
in Pular.
The exact difference between 'normal' and 'funky' y stays a bit difficult
for me, though.
Ingmar

----------

From: R. F. Hahn <sassisch at yahoo.com>
Subject: Phonology

Ingmar:

> On jaraama (=Pular 'thank you' (or 'how are you'))!

Barka'alla.

On jaraama, Ingmar! Hiɗa e jam? Tana alla?

> The exact difference between 'normal' and 'funky' y stays a bit difficult
> for me, though.

For me too.  It shouldn't surprise us, though.  The labials are easier to 
distinguish.  They are clearly bilabial, and the labial closure is held a 
bit longer in the "funky" version.  In Southeast Asian languages I hear it 
particularly clearly in the cases of /m/ and /b/.  So voicing, too, is an 
important factor.  However, most other types of consonants occur 
implosively, apparently with the exception of retroflex ones.

> But now you mention the inhaled "ja", I remember that
> I heard it mostly from people from the North, in this case Groningen and
> Friesland, and also but less so Drenthe.

Hmmm ...  That's interesting.  Is it a case of Nordic "overflow," or is it 
an areal feature that spread as far as the Saxon-speaking parts of the 
Netherlands due to inter-Saxon communication?  Either way there may be a 
Saxon transmission link.  Do our British and Irish friends know of 
"sucked-in" words like (agreeing) "yea" or "yeah" (much in the sense of 
"uh-huh") in their countries?

Throughout Central and Eastern Asia, and also in parts of Southern Asia, 
people often inhale quite audibly when they get ready to respond to a 
difficult question, and this inhaling "ouverture" oftentimes carries over 
into the first word or two of their response, especially where these words 
are "lead-ins" like "well" or "let's see now" (e.g., Japanese _{Hissss} ... 
Ano ..._).  Sometimes this is used as a device for *pretending* that a 
question is difficult, hence good, which is a polite act.  I have observed 
highly-developed "inhaling culture" of this sort especially in Chinese, in 
Tibetan, in (Kalkha, Chakhar, Oirat and Kalmyk) Mongolian, in Kazakh and in 
Korean, to some degree in Japanese as well.  Can anyone think of something 
along these lines in the Lowlands area?

En ontuma!
Reinhard/Ron 

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