Re: Jaars IPA Helper

>From: Ed Heil <edheil@...>
>Paul Bennett wrote:
>
> > Kinda useful, in a pinch, though the example voice sounds more to
> > me like voiced/supervoiced pairs rather than unvoiced/voiced!
>
>Remember that in English, our p/b, t/d, k/g pairs are really more
>distinguished by aspiration or lack thereof (at least in initial
>positions, which are what usually come to mind when you try to
>consider a phoneme in the abstract) than by voice, and that our
>"voiced" stops have very little voice to them compared to say, French
>voiced stops.
You're right, it is initial and initial only.  Voiceless stops in words
like, say, 'stop', 'speed', 'scare' are unaspirated.  So in explaining
phonemism in French and Spanish, or any other language that simply
determines voiced and voiceless, tell the learner to pronounce <t> as in
'stop', not 'top'.

Then you got languages that distinguish aspiration not voice...

>For this reason, Navajo stops, which do not actually have a
>voiced/unvoiced distinction but an aspirated/unaspirated distinction,
>are transcribed with the p/b t/d k/g pairs, and it works remarkably
>well (one just has to remember to aspirate medial/final p/t/ks as well
>as initial).
It works perfectly fine, because in languages where b/p mean
plain/unaspirated, it relates perfectly to closely related languages where
b/p means voiced/voiceless.  Case in point: Scots Gaelic vs. Irish Gaelic.
Also, Egyptian, the one-language branch of Afro-Asiatic, has aspirated and
non-aspirated where the Semitic languages have voiceless and voiced.

Other languages with all unvoiced stops:

Estonian (actually THREE classes of stops, all unvoiced)
  (also many Uralic languages)
Georgian (initial and final stops/affricates only
  normally you have voiceless-ejective/voiceless-aspirated/voiced)
Mandarin
Punjabi (only because voiced/voiceless became low tone/high tone)
Tibetan (but modern Tib. might not be so)
Burmese (voiced allophones, maybe)
Thai (again, possibly voiced allophones)
Quechua (this time, ejective/aspirated/plain, all unvoiced)

Any more I forgot?  Any wrong?

Danny
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