{"id":9243,"date":"2015-01-29T10:05:45","date_gmt":"2015-01-29T18:05:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.speechbuddy.com\/blog\/?p=9243"},"modified":"2015-02-18T09:35:41","modified_gmt":"2015-02-18T17:35:41","slug":"strange-sounds-around-world-explained","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.speechbuddy.com\/blog\/language-development\/language-building-skills\/strange-sounds-around-world-explained\/","title":{"rendered":"Strange Sounds Around the World \u2014 Explained!"},"content":{"rendered":"

Geek-Out Alert! This post is where the geeks glove come off, as they say. I am about to becoming an unapologetic, unabashed geek about one of my all time favorite topics: the crazy sounds of the world\u2019s languages<\/strong>. As you might imagine the clinical founder of Speech Buddies<\/a>, a revolutionary, evidence-based tool set for treating speech sound disorders, has\u00a0a\u00a0deep\u00a0interest in phonetics. Phonetics is the branch of the social science of linguistics that studies how sounds are produced, where the tongue is placed, how it moves during speech and how the air flow is shaped. I will come out right now and admit that on down time, when my kids are asleep and I finally have an hour to myself, I will actually listen to clips of speakers of some of the world\u2019s most fascinating and (let\u2019s call them crazy) languages. I wanted to share some of these exquisite examples of the human sound production system and perhaps to spark an interest in you for yet another wonder of nature.<\/p>\n

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I should say up front that to fully appreciate the diversity and wonder of the sounds of the world\u2019s languages, it is really helpful to have some background in phonetics. This background need not be formal, or in the form of a course, but it should be rigorous and scientific. The Wikipedia page on phonetics<\/a> is a good initial reference point, although I will attempt to summarize things for you here. I am going to focus on consonants today since they are so much more diverse in the world\u2019s languages.<\/p>\n

What Makes a Consonant<\/h2>\n

\"Introduction<\/a>Each consonant speech sound can be said to have three main properties that make up its output: voicing<\/strong> (is the sound voiced or voiceless?), place of articulation<\/strong> (within the oral cavity), and manner of articulation<\/strong> (what type of sound it is). Let\u2019s use the English \/d\/ sound as in \u201cdog\u201d. We call this a voiced alveolar stop<\/em>.<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. It is voiced<\/em><\/strong> because when the sound is produced, the speaker vibrates his or her vocal cords. You can feel this vibration clearly if you touch your own throat as you speak the \/s\/ sound. By contrast, you won\u2019t feel a vibration if you sat the \/t\/ sound.<\/li>\n
  2. It is called alveolar<\/em><\/strong> because the tongue needs to be placed on what\u2019s called the alveolar ridge. The alveolar ridge is on the gums right where your gums meet your upper front teeth. Say \/d\/ again and you will feel this placement.<\/li>\n
  3. And finally, \/d\/ is called a stop<\/em><\/strong> sound because the flow of air coming out of the lungs must be momentarily stopped. Say \/ada\/ slowly and you\u2019ll hear (and feel) this stoppage of the air on the \/d\/ sound.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Using this voicing\/place of articulation\/manner of articulation rubric, we can describe the sounds of the languages of the world\u00a0\u2014\u00a0for the most part! It does\u00a0get a little more complicated than this at times. The International Phonetic Alphabet<\/a> (IPA) describes all of these sounds according to this rubric and is meant to illustrate exactly how a sound should be produced without the confusion of spelling or the need to learn, say, the Arabic or Japanese writing systems. Don\u2019t expect to understand the IPA right away. However, if you scroll down on the linked Wikipedia page above, each sound has an associated page and an audio clip showing you what it sounds like. Pretty cool, eh?<\/p>\n

    American English Pronunciation<\/h2>\n

    So why not start our exploration of these sounds with our own American English? If any readers out there are native speakers of language other than American English, you will know that our \/th\/ (as in \u201cthe\u201d and \u201cthink\u201d) and \/r\/ sounds are particularly challenging to master. In fact, these are two of the latest-developing speech sounds in American English. Linguists have long understood that, for the most part,<\/p>\n

    the sounds that are acquired latest in a child\u2019s development are the sounds that are the most phonetically complex.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

    There are some effects of how frequently a sound is used in a language. For example, the \/v\/ sound is typically acquired in French children before that of English-speaking children, because \/v\/ is so common in the language. But, in general, the more complex a sound it is, the harder it is to learn, either as a child or as an adult. Only a small percentage of the world\u2019s languages have this American English \/r\/ sound. Mandarin Chinese has this sound, also some widely spoken languages of southern India, such as Tamil, Kannada and Malayalam. Oh, and don\u2019t forget Enindhilyagwa<\/a> and Pitjantjatjara<\/a>! As for \/th\/, listed on the International Phonetic Alphabet as the voiced \/\u00f0\/ (as in \u201cthe\u201d) and the voiceless \/\u019f\/ (as in \u201cthink\u201d), Arabic, Greek, Welsh, Swahili and European dialects of Spanish contain these sounds, but very few others do. This contrasts with the \/b\/ sound, which is nearly universal in the world\u2019s languages. So, first off, let\u2019s thump our chests and be proud of two weird and fantastic sounds in our very own American English!<\/p>\n

    The Most Diverse Consonant Sounds<\/h2>\n

    But to get really unusual, we should travel to the Caucasus mountains of southern Russia, the Republic of Georgia, and Azerbaijan. This region is the second-densest language area in the world \u2013 after the island of New Guinea \u2013 with a mind-boggling diversity. The Caucasian languages actually comprise three separate, totally distinct language families: South Caucasian, Northwest Caucasian and Northeast Caucasian. Less than fifty miles might separate people whose languages are as different as English and Thai, or Hebrew and Korean. You may have heard of only a handful of these languages: Georgian (South Caucasian), Circassian or Adyghe (Northwest Caucasian) and Chechen (Northeast Caucasian) and they don\u2019t have that many speakers, compared to other major world languages. But, boy do these languages have consonants. One language, Ubykh \u2014 now\u00a0extinct after\u00a0its last known speaker died in exile in Turkey in 1992, has<\/p>\n

    84 different consonants and only 2 vowels!<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

    Here\u2019s a Wikipedia page on the sound system of Ubykh<\/a>, which illustrates the almost ridiculous diversity in sounds. And each of these 84 consonants is considered phonemic, in that substituting one consonant for another, but keeping all the other sounds in the word, will change the meaning of that word. For example, \/pa\/, \/ba\/ and \/p\u2019a\/ could all be three totally different words. Here\u2019s an audio clip of Ubykh.<\/p>\n