Re: Chinese Dialect Question

On 9 Oct 2003 at 22:51, Jonathan Andrew Beagley wrote:

> Ok, please excuse my extreme ignorance, but what does fortis mean? Also,
> what does a voiceless stop sound like? And, lastly, what do you mean by
> potato? I'm really sorry if my questions seem silly, but I've never had
> a class on linguistics (they don't seem to be interested in offering
> linguistics classes in my high school :-( ).
Okay. I don't know you, and I don't know your familiarity level, so
I'm going to baby-talk my way through this. My appologies if it's too
basic for you. IMO it's the sort of stuff you should learn in Grade
School English class, not in High School Linguistics, but I guess
that's not the way things are done these days.

Fortis and Lenis are extremely old terms (but not old-fashioned)
meaning approximately Voiceless and Voiced. There is more to it than
that, and you can delve into the realms of the incredibly technical
if you really want to. Unfortunately, I'm not fit to be your guide in
such realms.

Voiceless sounds in English include p, t, k, ch, f, h.

Voiced sounds in English include b, d, g, j, v, m, n, ng and most of
the other letters.

The "simple" definition of the difference between voiced and
voiceless is that in voiced sounds, the vocal chords are vibrating
while the mouth makes the shapes it makes and the person breathes
out, whereas in voiceless sounds, they are not.

Touch your throat when you say a voiced letter (e.g. "ba ga da ma").
You will be able to feel a vibration that is not there when you say a
voicelss letter (e.g. "pa ka ta ha"). Try alternating voiced and
voiceless letters (e.g. "ba pa ba pa ba pa"). All the vowels in
English are normally voiced. When you whisper, all the sounds you
make are voiceless.

Also, voiceless sounds in English are usually followed by a small
puff of nearly-silent air, before the vowel. Purists will tell you
that this makes the English voiceless sounds actually Aspirated, and
I would tend to agree, but it's largely an irrelevant distinction
unless a language has all three of Voiceless, Voiced and Aspirated
consonants.

To hear the difference between a true Voiceless sound and an
Aspirated sound, try saying the following pairs of words. The first
has an Aspirated stop, the second has a Voiceless stop (after the
"s").

kip / skip

top / stop

pat / spat

Hear the difference? Probably not, at first, but it's there. I
suspect that in different regional accents, the difference might be
greater or smaller.

That's about all I can think of to say on the subject for now. I hope
I was at least of some help to you.



Paul