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Re: Clicks & other oddities

From:Henrik Theiling <theiling@...>
Date:Friday, November 26, 2004, 15:36
Hi!

> On the subject of clicks, how exactly is =/ produced?
To cite a page about Zulu, which includes =\ ((alveolo) palatal click):
> To pronounce the dental click, c, press the tip of the tongue > against the front teeth, and then withdraw it sharply, at the same > time dropping the back of the tongue from the soft palate. This > sound may be compared with the sound you would make when sucking > something from your upper teeth, or the sound of sympathy when > someone says ts-ts. > > To pronounce the palatal click, q, press the tip of the tongue > against the front palate and then follow with the same procedure as > with c. This sound may be compared with the sound a person would > make when trying to imitate the sound of a cork being pulled from a > bottle. > > To pronounce the lateral click, x, place the tip of the tongue > against the hard palate as if you were going to produce the n > sound. Press one side of the tongue against the side of the > jaw. Then, without shifting the tip of the tongue from the hard > palate, withdraw the side sharply from the jaw. This sound differs > from the other two in that the release takes place at the side(s) of > the tongue and not at the front. This sound is sometimes made to > express regret or to spur on a horse.
Source: http://www.cyberserv.co.za/users/~jako/lang/zulpg.htm I still have problems doing them quickly, especially the palatal and lateral clicks and especially when secondary or even tertiary articulation comes into play. E.g. I cannot pronouce the lateral click well together with an ejective release of the velar closure, so I threw out that phoneme (to be precise, the whole series of ejectives) from Qthen|gai. To add to the above description, the palatal click seems to sound quite similar with different positions of the tip of the tongue. Ranges I tried are from alvealar to retroflex. I don't know whether there is a consistent pronounciation in Khoisan languages (and those that borrowed clicks). Further, the palatal click, I think, is the one that sounds most differently when rounded. Zhu|'hoansi (and probably others) seems to use it as a rounded allophonic variant before rounded vowels. It sounds extremely cool. ;-)
> The closest I can come to a click-type noise is a sort of flap of > the tongue striking the bottom of the mouth.
No, that sound is used by some people sometimes as in interjection showing good mood, I think. AFAIK, it does not seem to have an IPA symbol.
> I can also do a sort of ingressive uvular flap which sounds quite > click-like ...
Hmm, I don't know what that means. Can you give a more concise description of what you do? Bye, Henrik