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Murmured
Breathy voice (also called murmured voice, whispery voice, soughing and susurration) is a phonation in which the vocal folds vibrate, as they do in normal (modal) voicing, but are adjusted to let more air escape which produces a sighing-like sound. A simple breathy phonation, (not actually a fricative consonant, as a literal reading of the IPA chart would suggest), can sometimes be heard as an allophone of English between vowels, such as in the word ''behind'', for some speakers. In the context of the Indo-Aryan languages like Sanskrit and Hindi and comparative Indo-European studies, breathy consonants are often called ''voiced aspirated'', as in the Hindi and Sanskrit stops normally denoted ''bh, dh, ḍh, jh,'' and ''gh'' and the reconstructed Proto-Indo-European phonemes ''bʰ,dʰ,ǵʰ,gʰ,gʷʰ''. , as breathy voice is a different type of phonation from aspiration. However, breathy and aspirated stops are acoustically similar in that in both cases there is a delay in the ...
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Aspirated Consonant
In phonetics, aspiration is a strong burst of breath that accompanies either the release or, in the case of preaspiration, the closure of some obstruents. In English, aspirated consonants are allophones in complementary distribution with their unaspirated counterparts, but in some other languages, notably most South Asian languages and East Asian languages, the difference is contrastive. Transcription In the International Phonetic Alphabet The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) is an alphabetic system of phonetic notation based primarily on the Latin script. It was devised by the International Phonetic Association in the late 19th century as a standard written representation ... (IPA), aspirated consonants are written using the symbols for voiceless consonants followed by the aspiration modifier letter , a superscript form of the symbol for the voiceless glottal fricative . For instance, represents the voiceless bilabial stop, and represents the aspirat ...
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Xhosa Language
Xhosa ( , ), formerly spelled ''Xosa'' and also known by its local name ''isiXhosa'', is a Bantu language, indigenous to Southern Africa and one of the official languages of South Africa and Zimbabwe. Xhosa is spoken as a first language by approximately 8 million people and as a second language in South Africa, particularly in Eastern Cape, Western Cape, Northern Cape and Gauteng, and also in parts of Zimbabwe and Lesotho. It has perhaps the heaviest functional load of click consonants in a Bantu language (approximately tied with Yeyi), with one count finding that 10% of basic vocabulary items contained a click. Classification Xhosa is part of the branch of Nguni languages, which also include Zulu, Southern Ndebele and Northern Ndebele, called the Zunda languages. Zunda languages effectively form a dialect continuum of variously mutually intelligible varieties. Xhosa is, to a large extent, mutually intelligible with Zulu and with other Nguni languages to a lesser e ...
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Click Consonant
Click consonants, or clicks, are speech sounds that occur as consonants in many languages of Southern Africa and in three languages of East Africa. Examples familiar to English-speakers are the '' tut-tut'' (British spelling) or '' tsk! tsk!'' (American spelling) used to express disapproval or pity (IPA ), the '' tchick!'' used to spur on a horse (IPA ), and the '' clip-clop!'' sound children make with their tongue to imitate a horse trotting (IPA ). However, these paralinguistic sounds in English are not full click consonants, as they only involve the front of the tongue, without the release of the back of the tongue that is required for clicks to combine with vowels and form syllables. Anatomically, clicks are obstruents articulated with two closures (points of contact) in the mouth, one forward and one at the back. The enclosed pocket of air is rarefied by a sucking action of the tongue (in technical terminology, clicks have a lingual ingressive airstream mechanism). Th ...
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Hmong Language
Hmong or Mong ( ; Romanized Popular Alphabet, RPA: , Chữ Hmông Việt, CHV: ''Hmôngz'', Nyiakeng Puachue Hmong, Nyiakeng Puachue: , Pahawh: , ) is a dialect continuum of the West Hmongic branch of the Hmongic languages spoken by the Hmong people of Southwestern China, northern Vietnam, Thailand, and Laos. There are an estimated 4.5 million speakers of varieties that are largely mutually intelligible, including over 280,000 Hmong Americans as of 2013. Over half of all Hmong speakers speak the various dialects in China, where the Dananshan dialect forms the basis of the standard language. However, Hmong Daw and Mong Leng are widely known only in Laos and the United States; Dananshan is more widely known in the native region of Hmong. Varieties Mong Leng () and Hmong Daw () are part of a dialect cluster known in China as (), called the "Chuanqiandian ''cluster''" in English (or "Miao cluster" in other languages) since West Hmongic is also called . The variety spoken from Sichu ...
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Phonation
The term phonation has slightly different meanings depending on the subfield of phonetics. Among some phoneticians, ''phonation'' is the process by which the vocal folds produce certain sounds through quasi-periodic vibration. This is the definition used among those who study laryngeal anatomy and physiology and speech production in general. Phoneticians in other subfields, such as linguistic phonetics, call this process '' voicing'', and use the term ''phonation'' to refer to any oscillatory state of any part of the larynx that modifies the airstream, of which voicing is just one example. Voiceless and supra-glottal phonations are included under this definition. Voicing The phonatory process, or voicing, occurs when air is expelled from the lungs through the glottis, creating a pressure drop across the larynx. When this drop becomes sufficiently large, the vocal folds start to oscillate. The minimum pressure drop required to achieve phonation is called the phonation thres ...
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Voice Quality Symbols
Voice Quality Symbols (VoQS) are a set of phonetic symbols used to transcribe disordered speech for what in speech pathology is known as "voice quality". This phrase is usually synonymous with phonation in phonetics, but in speech pathology encompasses secondary articulation as well. VoQS symbols are normally combined with curly braces that span a section of speech, just as with prosody notation in the extended IPA (extIPA). In fact, they started off as part of extIPA before being split off. The symbols may be modified with a digit to convey relative degree of the quality. For example, is used for harsh voice, and indicates that the intervening speech is very harsh. indicates a lowered larynx. Thus, indicates that the intervening speech is less harsh with a lowered larynx. VoQS use mostly IPA or extended IPA diacritics on capital letters for the element being modified: V for 'voice'/articulation, L for 'larynx', and J for 'jaw'. Degree is marked 1 for slight, 2 for moder ...
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International Phonetic Alphabet
The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) is an alphabetic system of phonetic notation based primarily on the Latin script. It was devised by the International Phonetic Association in the late 19th century as a standard written representation for the sounds of speech. The IPA is used by linguists, lexicography, lexicographers, foreign language students and teachers, speech–language pathology, speech–language pathologists, singers, actors, constructed language creators, and translators. The IPA is designed to represent those qualities of speech that are part of lexical item, lexical (and, to a limited extent, prosodic) sounds in oral language: phone (phonetics), phones, Intonation (linguistics), intonation and the separation of syllables. To represent additional qualities of speechsuch as tooth wikt:gnash, gnashing, lisping, and sounds made with a cleft lip and cleft palate, cleft palatean extensions to the International Phonetic Alphabet, extended set of symbols may be used ...
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Varieties Of Chinese
There are hundreds of local Chinese language varieties forming a branch of the Sino-Tibetan languages, Sino-Tibetan language family, many of which are not Mutual intelligibility, mutually intelligible. Variation is particularly strong in the more mountainous southeast part of mainland China. The varieties are typically classified into several groups: Mandarin Chinese, Mandarin, Wu Chinese, Wu, Min Chinese, Min, Xiang Chinese, Xiang, Gan Chinese, Gan, Jin Chinese, Jin, Hakka Chinese, Hakka and Yue Chinese, Yue, though some varieties remain unclassified. These groups are neither clades nor individual languages defined by mutual intelligibility, but reflect common phonological developments from Middle Chinese. Chinese varieties have the greatest differences in their phonology, and to a lesser extent in vocabulary and syntax. Southern varieties tend to have fewer initial consonants than northern and central varieties, but more often preserve the Middle Chinese final consonants. All ...
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Gujarati Language
Gujarati ( ; , ) is an Indo-Aryan language native to the Indian state of Gujarat and spoken predominantly by the Gujarati people. Gujarati is descended from Old Western Rājasthāni, Old Gujarati (). In India, it is one of the 22 Languages with official status in India, scheduled languages of the Union. It is also the official language in the state of Gujarat, as well as an official language in the union territory of Dadra and Nagar Haveli and Daman and Diu. As of 2011, Gujarati is the List of languages by number of native speakers in India, 6th most widely spoken language in India by number of native speakers, spoken by 55.5 million speakers which amounts to about 4.5% of the total Indian population. It is the List of languages by number of native speakers, 26th most widely spoken language in the world by number of native speakers as of 2007.Mikael Parkvall, "Världens 100 största språk 2007" (The World's 100 Largest Languages in 2007), in ''Nationalencyklopedin''. Asteri ...
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Fricative Consonant
A fricative is a consonant produced by forcing air through a narrow channel made by placing two articulators close together. These may be the lower lip against the upper teeth, in the case of ; the back of the tongue against the soft palate in the case of German (the final consonant of '' Bach''); or the side of the tongue against the molars, in the case of Welsh (appearing twice in the name ''Llanelli''). This turbulent airflow is called frication. A particular subset of fricatives are the sibilants. When forming a sibilant, one still is forcing air through a narrow channel, but in addition, the tongue is curled lengthwise to direct the air over the edge of the teeth. English , , , and are examples of sibilants. The usage of two other terms is less standardized: "Spirant" is an older term for fricatives used by some American and European phoneticians and phonologists for non-sibilant fricatives. "Strident" could mean just "sibilant", but some authors include also labiod ...
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Proto-Indo-European Language
Proto-Indo-European (PIE) is the reconstructed common ancestor of the Indo-European language family. No direct record of Proto-Indo-European exists; its proposed features have been derived by linguistic reconstruction from documented Indo-European languages. Far more work has gone into reconstructing PIE than any other proto-language, and it is the best understood of all proto-languages of its age. The majority of linguistic work during the 19th century was devoted to the reconstruction of PIE and its daughter languages, and many of the modern techniques of linguistic reconstruction (such as the comparative method) were developed as a result. PIE is hypothesized to have been spoken as a single language from approximately 4500 BCE to 2500 BCE during the Late Neolithic to Early Bronze Age, though estimates vary by more than a thousand years. According to the prevailing Kurgan hypothesis, the original homeland of the Proto-Indo-Europeans may have been in the Pon ...
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Nguni Languages
The Nguni languages are a group of Bantu languages spoken in southern Africa (mainly South Africa, Zimbabwe and Eswatini) by the Nguni people. Nguni languages include Xhosa, Tsonga, Ndebele, and Swati. The appellation "Nguni" derives from their ancestor called Mnguni type. ''Ngoni'' (see below) is an older, or a shifted, variant. It is sometimes argued that the use of ''Nguni'' as a generic label suggests a historical monolithic unity of the people in question, where in fact the situation may have been more complex. The linguistic use of the label (referring to a subgrouping of Bantu) is relatively stable. From an English editorial perspective, the articles "a" and "an" are both used with "Nguni", but "a Nguni" is more frequent and more correct especially if "Nguni" is pronounced as it is suggested (). Classification Within a subset of Southern Bantu, the label "Nguni" is used both genetically (in the linguistic sense) and typologically (quite apart from any histor ...
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