Unanswered Questions
146 questions with no upvoted or accepted answers
18
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2
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1k
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Do dialects without the meet-meat merger neutralize the distinction in some contexts?
For many dialects of English (including my own) multiple historical lexical sets are merged into one "FLEECE" set (this diaphoneme can be represented with IPA /iː/).
I've read about the basics of the ...
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7
votes
0
answers
598
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How is Donald Duck's voice produced, if not by buccal speech?
The Disney character Donald Duck is well known for his nigh unintelligible voice, which was originated by actor Clarence Nash in the 1930s. I have always heard this manner of speaking described as ...
- 468
5
votes
1
answer
239
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Are voiced sounds considered "weaker" than voiceless ones? If so, why?
The motivation for asking this question was checking up on the Wikipedia page for Lentition, which says that it can involve "voicing a voiceless consonant", even though it's described as a ...
CommunityBot
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5
votes
0
answers
93
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How diachronically stable is release type?
Are there examples of languages completely shifting from (vocalic) release of all coda stops to, say, nasal release?
I imagine substrate effects could account for some of these cases (cf. unreleased ...
- 51
5
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0
answers
249
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Patterns of accent changes by non-native English speakers
I am looking for a list of 'accent changes', or pronunciation inaccuracies, non-native English speakers commonly make when speaking English words. The list would obviously be native language specific ...
- 59
5
votes
1
answer
537
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Gulf Arabic vowels allophones
No matter how much I browse, I cannot find any true researcher's really precise and accurate data on the issue. Actually, I cannot find any Gulf Arabic Phonology compendium, so any help will be ...
CommunityBot
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4
votes
0
answers
133
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The dark l sound followed by a vowel sound during linking
the dark L in English is at the end of a word such as "girl", "pencil" or when it is followed by a consonant sound such as "child".
I'm curious what is happening with the ...
- 395
4
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0
answers
94
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What's the name for using a letter to represent its name's sound?
It's often whimsical to substitute a single letter for a group of letters phonetically identical to the letter's name.
Such as rewriting "barbecue" as "bar-b-q", or the entirety of William Steig's ...
- 31.6k
4
votes
0
answers
122
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Determining how similar audio is to human speech
I was suggested to cross post this question of mine from Stack Overflow. Hopefully my question is within the bounds of this question board!
I am searching for a method of determining the similarity ...
CommunityBot
- 1
4
votes
1
answer
583
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Production and dialectology of Dutch /s/
I am trying to learn Dutch and I am struggling to produce the /s/ phoneme in the same way that some (most?) native speakers do. It seems that the usual pronunciation is such that it sounds closer to [...
CommunityBot
- 1
3
votes
0
answers
80
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Low vowel phonetic realization
It's commonly said that in a language with only a single low vowel, for most languages its most typical allophone will be a central [ä]. (I'm excluding languages that have predictable allophony that ...
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3
votes
0
answers
41
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Canonical flaps
Dear colleagues: I have a question about canonical flaps. The literature is not clear on whether a canonical flap has a burst or not. I have found in my data that many flaps do have a burst (sometimes ...
3
votes
0
answers
595
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the sound of "erre moscia" in Italian
In Italian we have the alveolar trill as a phoneme, but not all native speakers (me, for example) can do it: some people have what we call an "Erre Moscia" meaning we can't properly do the ...
- 31.6k
3
votes
0
answers
44
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Speed listening
I have just heard that there are people out there (mostly blind people) using screen readers at overspeed, achieving speech rates twice as high as usual, and even higher.
What I want to know is: Are ...
- 31.6k
3
votes
0
answers
123
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How did latin "de post" become Romanian "după"?
Wouldn't the expected result be: "dopă"? I understand that the short "e" was assimilated by the long "o" from the next word, and then /o/ -> /ə/, but why o -> u ?
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