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Edgar here, and welcome to Artifexian.
Here you will learn everything you ever wanted to know about worldbuilding...and then some.
In the last video we looked at the first element that goes into forming consonants: place of
articulation.
In this video, let's look at manner of articulation.
Place of articulation tells us where the obstruction to the airflow is occurring.
Manner of articulation, listed on the side here, will tell us how much of the airflow
is being obstructed.
It's a roughly top down kinda thing here, with total obstruction near the top and minimal
obstruction near the bottom.
In order we have:
1.
Nasal stops.
Instead of simply stopping the airflow we can re-route it through the nasal cavity.
This produces sounds like, [m] as in mouth and [n] as in nose.
It's worth noting that nasal consonants are nearly universal in human language.
Only languages around puget sound – Quileute, Lushootseed and Makah truly lack nasal consonants.
2.
Plosives.
Plosives, also known as stops, stop the airflow entirely.
The pressure is built up behind the articulators and eventually released in a small explosion
of air.
English has 6 plosive consonants: [p], [b], [t], [d], [k] and [g] as in pan, ban, town,
dog, king and garden.
3.
Fricative.
There are a lot of fricatives.
Here the airflow is obstructed almost entirely producing a turbulent, hissing sound.
In English we have no less than 10 fricative sounds: [f], [v], [θ], [ð], [s], [z], [ʃ],
[ʒ], [x] and [h] as in fish, van, thought, this, so, zoo, shine, vision, loch and home.
4.
Approximant.
Here the airflow is impeded only slightly.
The hissing sound indicative of fricatives is no longer present here but the sound is
altered to a degree.
In english we have three approximants: [ɹ] as in run, [j] as in yes and [w] as in water.
Interestingly the english “w” sound does not appear on this section of the IPA.
Why?
Because it's co-articulated.
So it belongs in this section, which we'll discuss in the near future.
The tl;dr here is that the english “w” sound occurs in two places at once; it's a
velar approximant but at the same time it's labialized.
Hence co-articulated.
Further interesting side note is that, theoretically we can labialise any sound with a superscript
“w” after the relevant IPA symbol.
So [p], [b], [t], and [d], for example, would become [pw], [bw], [tw], and [dw].
5.
Tap or flap.
There are only three taps or flaps in the IPA – none of which occur in standard english.
The most familiar example of a tap or flap would be the north american realization of
word “latter”.
“Latter” - here the “t” sound is replaced by an alveolar flap.
What's happening here is that one articulator is thrown against another is a single gesture.
Hence tap or flap.
6.
Trill.
Here an articulator is held in place and the air blown through the vocal tract causes it
to vibrate back and forth.
The IPA has three contrastive trills: [R] as in the french “rendez vous”, [B] as
in the Nias word for lower jaw “simbi” and of course the rolled r, which my stick
figure friend will again demonstrate...
And finally...
7.
Laterals.
So, laterals are liquidy “l” type sounds.
Produced when the tongue creates an obstruction in the middle of the mouth and re-routes the
air out the sides of the mouth.
Notice laterals come in three forms: Lateral Fricatives, Lateral Approximants and Lateral
Flaps.
We have only one lateral sound in English: [l] as in laugh.
That said, we can't talk about the laterals without mentioning the voiceless lateral fricative
found in Icelandic, Welsh and Navajo amongst others: [ɬ].
As in the welsh pronoun “Llall” -- which is just the coolest sounding word.
So to summarize.
Here is the IPA consonant chart.
The columns represent place of articulation; where the obstruction is occurring.
And the rows represent manner of articulation; how much of the airflow is being obstructed.
Next up, voicing.
Stay tuned!
Good morning, Interweb.
I hope you all enjoyed this video.
Now, to break things up a little, the next video will be a collaboration between myself
and Eric Lange of 30secfantasy.com.
Over at 30secfantasy.com Eric posts up a new original short story everyday.
A personal favorite of mine is “Peanut”, links in the doobly-doo.
Check it out, it's awesome and it'll give you a flavor of what to expect in the upcoming
collaboration.
As always, thank you all so much for watching.
...Edgar out!