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Debuccalization
Debuccalization or deoralization is a sound change or alternation in which an oral consonant loses its original place of articulation and moves it to the glottis (, , or ). The pronunciation of a consonant as is sometimes called aspiration, but in phonetics, aspiration is the burst of air accompanying a stop. The word comes from Latin , meaning "cheek" or "mouth". Debuccalization is usually seen as a subtype of lenition, which is often defined as a sound change involving the weakening of a consonant by progressive shifts in pronunciation. As with other forms of lenition, debuccalization may be synchronic or diachronic (i.e. it may involve alternations within a language depending on context or sound changes across time). Debuccalization processes occur in many different types of environments such as the following: * word-initially, as in Kannada * word-finally, as in Burmese * intervocalically, as in a number of English varieties (e.g. ''litter'' ), or in Tuscan ('' ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lenition
In linguistics, lenition is a sound change that alters consonants, making them "weaker" in some way. The word ''lenition'' itself means "softening" or "weakening" (from Latin 'weak'). Lenition can happen both synchronically (within a language at a particular point in time) and diachronically (as a language changes over time). Lenition can involve such changes as voicing a voiceless consonant, causing a consonant to relax occlusion, to lose its place of articulation (a phenomenon called '' debuccalization'', which turns a consonant into a glottal consonant like or ), or even causing a consonant to disappear entirely. An example of synchronic lenition is found in most varieties of American English, in the form of tapping: the of a word like ''wait'' is pronounced as the more sonorous in the related form ''waiting'' . Some varieties of Spanish show debuccalization of to at the end of a syllable, so that a word like "we are" is pronounced . An example of diachronic l ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sound Change
In historical linguistics, a sound change is a change in the pronunciation of a language. A sound change can involve the replacement of one speech sound (or, more generally, one phonetic feature value) by a different one (called phonetic change) or a more general change to the speech sounds that exist (''phonological change''), such as the merger of two sounds or the creation of a new sound. A sound change can eliminate the affected sound, or a new sound can be added. Sound changes can be environmentally conditioned if the change occurs in only some sound environments, and not others. The term "sound change" refers to diachronic changes, which occur in a language's sound system. On the other hand, " alternation" refers to changes that happen synchronically (within the language of an individual speaker, depending on the neighbouring sounds) and do not change the language's underlying system (for example, the ''-s'' in the English plural can be pronounced differently depend ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lebanese Arabic
Lebanese Arabic ( ; autonym: ), or simply Lebanese ( ; autonym: ), is a Varieties of Arabic, variety of Levantine Arabic, indigenous to and primarily Languages of Lebanon, spoken in Lebanon, with significant linguistic influences borrowed from other Middle Eastern and European languages. Due to multilingualism and pervasive diglossia among Lebanese people (a majority of the Lebanese people are bilingual or trilingual), it is not uncommon for Lebanese people to code-switch between or mix Lebanese Arabic, French language, French, and English language, English in their daily speech. It is also spoken among the Lebanese diaspora. Lebanese Arabic is a descendant of the Old Arabic, Arabic dialects introduced to the Levant and other Arabic dialects that were already spoken in other parts of the Levant in the 7th century AD, which gradually supplanted various indigenous Northwest Semitic languages to become the regional lingua franca. As a result of this prolonged process of language s ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Syllabic Nasal
A syllabic consonant or vocalic consonant is a consonant that forms the nucleus of a syllable on its own, like the ''m'', ''n'' and ''l'' in some pronunciations of the English words ''rhythm'', ''button'' and ''awful'', respectively. To represent it, the understroke diacritic in the International Phonetic Alphabet is used, . It may be instead represented by an overstroke, if the symbol that it modifies has a descender, such as in . Syllabic consonants in most languages are sonorants, such as nasals and liquids. Very few have syllabic obstruents (i.e., stops, fricatives, and affricates) in normal words, but English has syllabic fricatives in paralinguistic words like ''shh!'' and ''zzz''. Examples Germanic languages In many varieties of High and Low German, pronouncing syllabic consonants may be considered a shibboleth. In High German and Tweants (a Low Saxon dialect spoken in the Netherlands; more Low Saxon dialects have the syllabic consonant), all word-final syllable ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
German Language
German (, ) is a West Germanic language in the Indo-European language family, mainly spoken in Western Europe, Western and Central Europe. It is the majority and Official language, official (or co-official) language in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, and Liechtenstein. It is also an official language of Luxembourg, German-speaking Community of Belgium, Belgium and the Italian autonomous province of South Tyrol, as well as a recognized national language in Namibia. There are also notable German-speaking communities in other parts of Europe, including: Poland (Upper Silesia), the Czech Republic (North Bohemia), Denmark (South Jutland County, North Schleswig), Slovakia (Krahule), Germans of Romania, Romania, Hungary (Sopron), and France (European Collectivity of Alsace, Alsace). Overseas, sizeable communities of German-speakers are found in the Americas. German is one of the global language system, major languages of the world, with nearly 80 million native speakers and over 130 mi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
T-glottalization
In English phonology, ''t''-glottalization or ''t''-glottalling is a sound change in certain English dialects and accents, particularly in the United Kingdom, that causes the phoneme to be pronounced as the glottal stop in certain positions. It is never universal, especially in careful speech, and it most often alternates with other allophones of such as , , (before a nasal), (before a lateral), or . As a sound change, it is a subtype of debuccalization. The pronunciation that it results in is called glottalization. Apparently, glottal reinforcement, which is quite common in English, is a stage preceding full replacement of the stop, and indeed, reinforcement and replacement can be in free variation. History The earliest mentions of the process are in Scotland during the 19th century, when Henry Sweet commented on the phenomenon. Peter Trudgill has argued that it began in Norfolk, based on studies of rural dialects of those born in the 1870s. The Survey of English Di ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Liquid Consonant
In linguistics, a liquid consonant or simply liquid is any of a class of consonants that consists of rhotics and voiced lateral approximants, which are also sometimes described as "R-like sounds" and "L-like sounds". The word ''liquid'' seems to be a calque of the Ancient Greek word (; ), initially used by grammarian Dionysius Thrax to describe Greek sonorants. Liquid consonants are more prone to be part of consonant clusters and of the syllable nucleus. Their third formants are generally non-predictable based on the first two formants. Another important feature is their complex articulation, which makes them a hard consonant class to study with precision and the last consonants to be produced by children during their phonological development. They are also more likely to undergo certain types of phonological changes such as assimilation, dissimilation and metathesis. Most languages have at least one liquid in their phonemic inventory. English has two, and . His ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cockney
Cockney is a dialect of the English language, mainly spoken in London and its environs, particularly by Londoners with working-class and lower middle class roots. The term ''Cockney'' is also used as a demonym for a person from the East End, or, traditionally, born within earshot of Bow Bells. Estuary English is an intermediate accent between Cockney and Received Pronunciation, also widely spoken in and around London, as well as in wider South Eastern England. In multicultural areas of London, the Cockney dialect is, to an extent, being replaced by Multicultural London English—a new form of speech with significant Cockney influence. Words and phrases Etymology of ''Cockney'' The earliest recorded use of the term is 1362 in passus VI of William Langland's ''Piers Plowman'', where it is used to mean "a small, misshapen Egg as food, egg", from Middle English ''coken'' + ''ey'' ("a rooster, cock's egg"). Concurrently, the List of mythological places, mythical land of luxury Co ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Nasal Release
In phonetics, a nasal release is the release of a stop consonant into a nasal. Such sounds are transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet with superscript nasal letters, for example as in English ''catnip'' . In English words such as ''sudden'' in which historically the tongue made separate contacts with the alveolar ridge for the and , , many speakers today make only one contact. That is, the is released directly into the : . Although this is a minor phonetic detail in English (in fact, it is commonly transcribed as having no audible release: , ), nasal release is more important in some other languages. Prestopped nasals In some languages, such consonants may occur before vowels and are called '' prestopped nasals''. Prestopped nasals and prenasalized stops occur when the oral cavity is closed and the nasal cavity is opened by lowering the velum, but the timing of both events does not coincide. A prenasalized stop starts out with a lowered velum that raises during ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Syllabic Consonant
A syllabic consonant or vocalic consonant is a consonant that forms the nucleus of a syllable on its own, like the ''m'', ''n'' and ''l'' in some pronunciations of the English words ''rhythm'', ''button'' and ''awful'', respectively. To represent it, the understroke diacritic in the International Phonetic Alphabet is used, . It may be instead represented by an overstroke, if the symbol that it modifies has a descender, such as in . Syllabic consonants in most languages are sonorants, such as nasals and liquids. Very few have syllabic obstruents (i.e., stops, fricatives, and affricates) in normal words, but English has syllabic fricatives in paralinguistic words like ''shh!'' and ''zzz''. Examples Germanic languages In many varieties of High and Low German, pronouncing syllabic consonants may be considered a shibboleth. In High German and Tweants (a Low Saxon dialect spoken in the Netherlands; more Low Saxon dialects have the syllabic consonant), all word-final syllab ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
American English
American English, sometimes called United States English or U.S. English, is the set of variety (linguistics), varieties of the English language native to the United States. English is the Languages of the United States, most widely spoken language in the United States and, since 2025, the official language of the United States. It is also an official language in 32 of the 50 U.S. states and the ''de facto'' common language used in government, education, and commerce in all 50 states, the District of Columbia, and in all territories except Puerto Rico. Since the late 20th century, American English has become the most influential form of English worldwide. Varieties of American English include many patterns of pronunciation, vocabulary, grammar, and particularly spelling that are unified nationwide but distinct from other forms of English around the world. Any North American English, American or Canadian accent perceived as lacking noticeably local, ethnic, or cultural markedness ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
