#glottoblogging

[glottist]

Phoneme Of The Week #1: The Voiced Labiodental Nasal

/ɱ/

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Per Phoible, this sound occurs phonemically in 18 languages. This sound is very similar to the bilabial nasal, /m/, but instead of two lips touching, the upper teeth touch the bottom lip.

/ɱ/ is overwhelmingly an allophone to its fronter sibling /m/ when positioned before other labiodental consonants, such as /f/ and /v/. English speakers might find this sound to be in "symphony", "circumvent", "harmful". This sound on Wikipedia

This sound on Phoible

Glottist's notes: When I first saw this symbol in the beginnings of my interest in phonetics, I interpreted it as a velar bilabial nasal, as that hook on the bottom of our beloved labiodental nasal is borrowed from symbol for the velar nasal. While the labiovelar nasal occurs in 92 languages, co-articulation was at the time hard for me to even fathom.

[glottist]

Phoneme Of The Week #2: The Dental Approximant

/ð̞/

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Per the combined inventories of Phoible and Wikipedia for this sound, the dental approximant occurs in roughly 14 languages- 8 from Wikipedia, 6 from Phoible. - combined list here

/ð̞/ is an approximant that, along with its fricative version(s), is often called interdental rather than dental, because instead of being produced simply with the tongue touching the back upper teeth, the tongue is positioned between the upper and lower teeth. No language is known to contrast /ð̞/ and its fricative sister /ð/, the latter of which English speakers recognize as the sound in father, the, this, bother.

This sound on Wikipedia

This sound on Phoible

Glottist's notes: I definitely didn't forget to post this week's phoneme... at least Sunday is easy to remember in the future! This sound is kept in the same article as its fricative version, the voiced dental non-sibilant fricative. The approximant uses the ̞ symbol, while the fricative does not. Honestly, no matter how many times I listen to and make this sound, it still sounds and feels lateral. And then when I go to the actual dental lateral approximant... nope, it's not lateral.

[glottist]

I have mastered nearly every place of articulation. Next I will focus on pharyngeals/epiglottals, after that will be the retroflexes and then the uvulars.