Youtube! Edgar here. And welcome to Artifexian. Here you will learn everything you ever wanted
to know about worldbuilding...and then some!
In previous videos we've looked at place of articulation and manner of articulation. Now,
let's look at the third, and final, consonant feature: voicing.
To explain hold your throat and say fan, except hold the f sound – ffffffan. Hopefully you
shouldn't feel much going on in your throat. Fffffan.
Repeat this process, except this time say the word van. Again hold the v sound – vvvvvan.
Feel that? You should be feel a buzzing or vibration in your throat.
See, “F” and “V” are a pair of consonants that are identical except for the buzzing
that goes with V.
We say that “F” is unvoiced or voiceless and “V” is voiced. Unvoiced meaning the
vocal are inactive during sound production and voiced means the vocal chords are active
- hence the buzzing.
In a lot of languages, english included, consonants tend to show up in voiced and unvoiced pairs.
Like [p] and [b], [t] and [d], [s] and [z], and so on.
Notice the IPA chart has cells and many of these cells are occupied by two symbols. These
are the voiced and unvoiced pairings. Like for example [f] and [v] from earlier. Any
symbol on the left will be voiceless and those on the right are voiced.
This left/right convention holds even if there is only one symbol in the cell, like in the
nasals for example.
As an aside, nasals are interesting! Notice that not only are they unpaired, they are
all voiced as well.
Within reason, we can un-voice any sound in the IPA by adding this diacritic mark. Icelandic
features unvoiced nasal stops as in “hnífur” the icelandic word for knife.
Iaai spoken by about 5000 speakers on Ouvea Island, New Caledonia features no less than
6 voiceless nasal stops. Here they are but I'm not even gonna attempt to pronounce them.
Anyways, all things considered, we should now be able to read the IPA, at least when
it comes to consonants.
So let's take this symbol. Its on the right so it's voiced. It's place of articulation
is alveolar and its manner of articulation is lateral fricative.
So, this sounds technical name is a “voiced alveolar lateral fricative”. Fyi the naming
convention is always voicing, followed by place of articulation, then manner of articulation.
Now granted this is some seriously cumbersome language right here. But it does give us all
the info we need to produce the sound.
Let's logic it out. Voiced means that during sound production the vocal chords are engaged.
Alveolar means the blade of the tongue needs to obstruct the airflow at the alveolar ridge
– that boney ridge just behind the upper teeth.
Lateral means its a l type sound and fricative means the airflow should be turbulent, producing
a distinctive hissing sound.
Mix up all the ingredients and it'll sound something like this: [ɮ]
Got it!? Cool.
Now, as much as possible, the IPA tries to harmonizes with the latin alphabet. So, for
the most part, if you see a symbol that looks like an “L”, it'll be a sort of “L”
type sound. Just as a symbol that looks like a “N”, say, will be some sort of modification
on your standard english “N” sound.
In any case, voicing, although a very simple concept to grasp, extends way beyond a simple
voiced/voiceless duality.
In addition to the standard method of voicing, we can execute sounds with a breathy voice
[a] or with a creaky voice [a]. You know that californian, vocal fry type sound! Vocal fry.
Added to all this there's this thing called, voice onset time.
This is defined as the length of time that passes between the release of a stop consonant
and the onset of voicing. There are three distinctions here.
1. Negative voice-onset time: where the vocal chord vibration happens before the plosive
release. 2. Zero voice onset time: where the vocal
chord vibration occurs with the plosive release. 3. Positive voice-onset time: where the vocal
chord vibration begins after the the plosive release.
Examples would be [g] [k] and [kh]
This is important especially when you consider aspiration aka positive voice-onset time.
Denoted with that little superscript h there.
Now, take the english words “spot” and “pot”. We think of the two “P” sounds
as being the same but they aren't. This “P” sound is aspirated [ph] i.e accompanied by
a puff of air. And this one isn't, [p].
English makes no distinction here but many languages, like Hindi for example, do indeed
distinguish between voiceless, voiced and aspirated consonants.
Finally, do your pal Edgar a favor and whisper these two words for me. Sounds like pan and
ban, right? But, why? The only difference between [p] and [b] is voicing and when whispering
all voicing is eliminated. So, what gives? How are we still hearing two distinctly different
words?
The terms fortis and lenis, latin for strong and weak, refer to the energy used in producing
consonants. The [p] in “pan” is a fortis consonant and is produced with more energy
than the [b] in “ban”, a lenis consonant.
So, in the absence of voicing, it is this fortis-lenis contrast that enables us to differentiate
between “pan” and “ban”. “Pan” “ban” – “pan” “ban”.
So there you have it, every thing you ever wanted to know about voicing...and then some!
Good morning, Interweb. So I just wanted to sign off by giving a huge
shout out to the fine folks over on the conlang subreddit.
They've been really helpful in supplying their expertise and knowledge and without them these
videos would not be possible.
And that is not hyperbole; that's a fact.
If you, dear viewer, are in any way interested in the constructing of fictional languages,
I strongly recommened checking the conlang sub reddit out. Links in the doobly doo.
As always click the links on screen, or in the description, for more artifexian content.
Like, and if you think I earn hit the subscribe button.
Thank you all so much for watching.
Edgar...out!