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Lateral Consonant
A lateral is a consonant in which the airstream proceeds along one or both of the sides of the tongue, but it is blocked by the tongue from going through the middle of the mouth. An example of a lateral consonant is the English ''L'', as in ''Larry''. Lateral consonants contrast with central consonants, in which the airstream flows through the center of the mouth. For the most common laterals, the tip of the tongue makes contact with the upper teeth (see dental consonant) or the upper gum (see alveolar consonant), but there are many other possible places for laterals to be made. The most common laterals are approximants and belong to the class of liquids, but lateral fricatives and affricates are also common in some parts of the world. Some languages, such as the Iwaidja and Ilgar languages of Australia, have lateral flaps, and others, such as the Xhosa and Zulu languages of Africa, have lateral clicks. When pronouncing the labiodental fricatives , the lip blocks th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Palatogram
Palatography is a technique used to identify which parts of the mouth are used when making different sounds. This technique is often used by linguists doing field work on little-known natural languages. A record made through palatography is called a ''palatogram''. It involves painting a coloring agent, such as a dye or a mixture of charcoal and olive oil on the tongue or the palate, roof of a person's mouth and having that person pronounce a specific sound. A photograph is then made of the mouth roof and tongue in order to determine how the sound was articulated. The technique can also be performed electronically (electropalatography) using a tool called a pseudo-palate, which consists of a retainer (orthodontics), retainer-like plate lined with electrodes that is placed on the roof of the mouth while the speaker pronounces a sound. See also * Articulatory phonetics References External links www.linguistics.ucla.edu Static Palatographywww.linguistics.ucla.edu "Preserving t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Africa
Africa is the world's second-largest and second-most populous continent after Asia. At about 30.3 million km2 (11.7 million square miles) including adjacent islands, it covers 20% of Earth's land area and 6% of its total surface area.Sayre, April Pulley (1999), ''Africa'', Twenty-First Century Books. . With nearly billion people as of , it accounts for about of the world's human population. Demographics of Africa, Africa's population is the youngest among all the continents; the median age in 2012 was 19.7, when the worldwide median age was 30.4. Based on 2024 projections, Africa's population will exceed 3.8 billion people by 2100. Africa is the least wealthy inhabited continent per capita and second-least wealthy by total wealth, ahead of Oceania. Scholars have attributed this to different factors including Geography of Africa, geography, Climate of Africa, climate, corruption, Scramble for Africa, colonialism, the Cold War, and neocolonialism. Despite this lo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gheg Albanian
Gheg or Geg (Gheg Albanian: ''gegnisht'', Standard ) is one of the two major varieties of Albanian, the other being Tosk. The geographic dividing line between the two varieties is the Shkumbin River, which winds its way through central Albania. Gheg is spoken in northern and central Albania, Kosovo, northwestern North Macedonia, southeastern Montenegro and southern Serbia by the Albanian dialectal subgroup known as Ghegs.Joseph 2003, When Languages Collide: Perspectives on Language Conflict, Language Competition, and Language Coexistence, p. 266: "Northeastern Geg" Gheg does not have any official status as a written language in any country. Publications in Kosovo and North Macedonia are in Standard Albanian, which is based on Tosk. However, some authors continue to write in Gheg. History Before World War II, there had been no official attempt to enforce a unified Albanian literary language; both literary Gheg and literary Tosk were used. The communist regime in Albania i ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Albanian Language
Albanian (Endonym and exonym, endonym: , , or ) is an Indo-European languages, Indo-European language and the only surviving representative of the Albanoid, Albanoid branch, which belongs to the Paleo-Balkan languages, Paleo-Balkan group. It is the native language of the Albanian people. Standard Albanian is the official language of Albania and Kosovo, and a co-official language in North Macedonia and Montenegro, where it is the primary language of significant Albanian minority communities. Albanian is recognized as a minority language in Italy, Croatia, Romania, and Serbia. It is also spoken in Greece and by the Albanian diaspora, which is generally concentrated in the Americas, Europe and Oceania. Albanian is estimated to have as many as 7.5 million native speakers. Albanian and other Paleo-Balkan languages had their formative core in the Balkans after the Indo-European migrations in the region. Albanian in antiquity is often thought to have been an Illyrian language for ob ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Velarized Alveolar Lateral Approximant
The voiced dental, alveolar, and postalveolar lateral approximants are a type of consonantal sound used in many spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents dental, alveolar, and postalveolar lateral approximants is , and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is l. As a sonorant, lateral approximants are nearly always voiced. Voiceless lateral approximants, are common in Sino-Tibetan languages, but uncommon elsewhere. In such cases, voicing typically starts about halfway through the hold of the consonant. No language is known to contrast such a sound with a voiceless alveolar lateral fricative . In a number of languages, including most varieties of English, the phoneme becomes velarized (" dark ''l''") in certain contexts. By contrast, the non-velarized form is the "clear ''l''" (also known as: "light ''l''"), which occurs before and between vowels in certain English standards. Some languages have only clear ''l''. Others may not have a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Allophone
In phonology, an allophone (; from the Greek , , 'other' and , , 'voice, sound') is one of multiple possible spoken soundsor '' phones''used to pronounce a single phoneme in a particular language. For example, in English, the voiceless plosive (as in ''stop'' ) and the aspirated form (as in ''top'' ) are allophones for the phoneme , while these two are considered to be different phonemes in some languages such as Central Thai. Similarly, in Spanish, (as in ''dolor'' ) and (as in ''nada'' ) are allophones for the phoneme , while these two are considered to be different phonemes in English (as in the difference between ''dare'' and ''there''). The specific allophone selected in a given situation is often predictable from the phonetic context, with such allophones being called positional variants, but some allophones occur in free variation. Replacing a sound by another allophone of the same phoneme usually does not change the meaning of a word, but the result may sound ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Laryngeal Consonants
Laryngeal consonants (a term often used interchangeably with guttural consonants) are consonants with their primary articulation in the general region of the larynx. The laryngeal consonants comprise the pharyngeal consonants (including the epiglottals), the glottal consonants, and for some languages uvular consonants. The term ''laryngeal'' is often taken to be synonymous with ''glottal'', but the larynx consists of more than just the glottis (vocal folds): it also includes the epiglottis and aryepiglottic folds. In a broad sense, therefore, laryngeal articulations include the radical consonants, which involve the root of the tongue. The diversity of sounds produced in the larynx is the subject of ongoing research, and the terminology is evolving. The term ''laryngeal consonant'' is also used for laryngealized consonants articulated in the upper vocal tract, such as Arabic 'emphatics' and Korean 'tense' consonants. See also *Laryngeal theory (in Proto-Indo-European ph ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lateral Nasal Click
The lateral nasal click is a click consonant found primarily among the languages of southern Africa. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet for a nasal lateral click with a velar consonant, velar rear articulation is or , commonly abbreviated to , or ; a symbol abandoned by the IPA but still preferred by some linguists is or , abbreviated , or . For a click with a uvular consonant, uvular rear articulation, the equivalents are and . Sometimes the accompanying letter comes after the click letter, e.g. or ; this may be a simple orthographic choice, or it may imply a difference in the relative timing of the releases. Features Features of the lateral nasal click: Occurrence Lateral nasal clicks are found primarily in the various Khoisan language families of southern Africa and in some neighboring Bantu languages. Glottalized lateral nasal click All Khoisan languages, and a few Bantu languages, have glottalized nasal clicks. These are formed by closing ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Nzema Language
Nzema, also known as Nzima or Appolo, is a Central Tano language spoken by the Nzema people of southwestern Ghana and southeastern Ivory Coast. It is partially intelligible with Jwira-Pepesa and is closely related to Baoulé. Being a Bia language, Nzema is one of the many Akan languages, and it has had considerable influence from other Akan language Akan (), or Twi-Fante, is the most populous language of Ghana, and the principal native language of the Akan people, spoken over much of the southern half of Ghana. About 80% of Ghana's population speak Akan as a first or second language, and ...s, especially Twi and Fante. There are notable towns in Nzemaland such as Bonyere, Nkroful, Half Assini, Axim, Eikwe, Baku, Atuabo, Beyin, Essiama and Anokyi. Phonology Consonants Vowels Of Nzema's ten vowels, eight may be nasalized: /ĩ/, /ɪ̃/, /ɛ̃/, /ɐ̃/, /ã/, /ũ/, /ʊ̃/ and /ɔ̃/. Writing system References External links Nzema language dic ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Nasal Consonant
In phonetics, a nasal, also called a nasal occlusive or nasal stop in contrast with an oral stop or nasalized consonant, is an occlusive consonant produced with a lowered velum, allowing air to escape freely through the nose. The vast majority of consonants are oral consonants. Examples of nasals in English are , and , in words such as ''nose'', ''bring'' and ''mouth''. Nasal occlusives are nearly universal in human languages. There are also other kinds of nasal consonants in some languages. Definition Nearly all nasal consonants are nasal occlusives, in which air escapes through the nose but not through the mouth, as it is blocked (occluded) by the lips or tongue. The oral cavity still acts as a resonance chamber for the sound. Rarely, non-occlusive consonants may be nasalized. Most nasals are voiced, and in fact, the nasal sounds and are among the most common sounds cross-linguistically. Voiceless nasals occur in a few languages such as Burmese, Welsh, Icelan ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lateral Release (phonetics)
In phonetics, a lateral release is the release of a plosive consonant into a lateral consonant. Such sounds are transcribed in the IPA with a superscript , for example as in English ''spotless'' . In Old English words such as ''middle''/''middel'' in which, historically, the tongue made separate contacts with the alveolar ridge for the and , , many speakers today make only one tongue contact. That is, the is laterally released directly into the : . While this is a minor phonetic detail in English (in fact, it is commonly transcribed as having no audible release: , ), it may be more important in other languages. In most languages (as in English), laterally-released plosives are straightforwardly analyzed as biphonemic clusters whose second element is . In the Hmong language, however, it is sometimes claimed that laterally-released consonants are unitary phonemes. According to Peter Ladefoged and Ian Maddieson, the choice between one or another analysis is purely based on phonol ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
