—

Excerpt from Lingthusiasm episode ‘Climbing sonority mountain from A to P’

Listen to the episode, read the full transcript, or check out more links about phonetics and phonology

Lingthusiasm Episode 71: Various vocal fold vibes

Partway down your throat are two flaps of muscle. When you breathe normally, you pull the flaps away to the sides, and air comes out silently. But if you stretch the flaps across the opening of your throat while pushing air up through, you can make them vibrate in the breeze and produce all sorts of sounds – sort of like the mucousy reed of a giant meat clarinet. (You’re welcome.)

In this episode, your hosts Lauren Gawne and Gretchen McCulloch get enthusiastic about the vocal folds! They’re often called vocal cords, but as they’re attached along the long side rather than just the two ends like a guitar string, we’re using the more precise “folds” (just be thankful they’re not called “vocal flaps”!) We talk about the many cool types of vibrations you can make with your vocal folds: pushing out an extra puff of air (aspiration), turning off your vocal folds while still talking (whisper), making them high and tight (falsetto), low and airy (breathy voice), and low and crackly (creaky voice, aka vocal fry). We also talk about the ways that various languages draw on different configurations of these vibrations to distinguish between words (such as “sip” and “zip”; Thai, Tai, and Dai; and more) or for stylistic effect (such as newscaster voice).

Click here for a link to this episode in your podcast player of choice or read the transcript here.

Announcements:

We’ve teamed up with linguist/artist Lucy Maddox to create a fun, minimalist version of the classic International Phonetic Alphabet chart, which you can see here (plus more info about how we put together the design). It looks really cool, and it’s also a practical reference tool that you can carry around with you in a convenient multi-purpose format: lens cloths!

We’re going to place ONE (1) massive order for aesthetic IPA chart lens cloths on October 6, 2022. If you want one, be a patron at the Lingthusiast tier or higher on October 5th, 2022, timezone: anywhere in the world. If you’re already a patron at that tier, then you’re set! (That’s the tier where you also get bonus episodes and the Discord access, we’ve never run a special offer at this tier before but we think this time it’ll be worth it!).

In this month’s bonus episode we get enthusiastic about a forgotten gem of a linguistics paper about a rabbit! We talk about how Linguistics Twitter got excited about tracking down this paper based on a vague rumour, Labov’s history of coming up with unique ways to record language in more natural environments, and useful takeaways about how to talk with children.

Join us on Patreon now to get access to this and 60+ other bonus episodes, including an upcoming episode where we interview the artist and linguist Lucy Maddox about the process of designing our new IPA chart. You’ll also get access to the Lingthusiasm Discord server where you can chat with other language nerds, as well your exclusive IPA chart lense cloth!

Here are the links mentioned in this episode:

• Laryngeoscope examples (warning: kinda gross videos of what the vocal folds look like from the inside!) - Glottal opera and more straightforward video
• Electroglottography (EGG)
  
• Phonetics - Constants: Crash Course Linguistics #8 (animated meat clarinet!)
• Language Log post on Nationality, Gender and Pitch
• Lingthusiasm Episode ‘A Fun-Filled Fricative Field Trip’
• The Two Ronnies - Four Candles skit
• Stops in Western Armenian
• Lingthusiasm Episode ‘When nothing means something’
• Wikipedia entry for Thai
• Examples of languages with multiple voicing contrasts
  
• All Things Linguistic post on stops in Korean
• Wikipedia entry for Sanskrit Consonants
• Wikipedia entry for Hindustani Phonology
• Wikipedia entry for Breathy Voice
• Wikipedia entry for Creaky Voice
• Omniglot entry for Jalapa Mazatec
• Wikipedia entry for Jalapa Mazatec Vowels

You can listen to this episode via Lingthusiasm.com, Soundcloud, RSS, Apple Podcasts/iTunes, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. You can also download an mp3 via the Soundcloud page for offline listening. To receive an email whenever a new episode drops, sign up for the Lingthusiasm mailing list.

You can help keep Lingthusiasm advertising-free by supporting our Patreon. Being a patron gives you access to bonus content, our Discord server, and other perks.

Lingthusiasm is on Facebook, Tumblr, Instagram, Pinterest, and Twitter.

Email us at contact [at] lingthusiasm [dot] com

Gretchen is on Twitter as @GretchenAMcC and blogs at All Things Linguistic.

Lauren is on Twitter as @superlinguo and blogs at Superlinguo.

Lingthusiasm is created by Gretchen McCulloch and Lauren Gawne. Our senior producer is Claire Gawne, our production editor is Sarah Dopierala, our production assistant is Martha Tsutsui Billins, and our production manager is Liz McCullough. Our music is ‘Ancient City’ by The Triangles.

This episode of Lingthusiasm is made available under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Share Alike license (CC 4.0 BY-NC-SA).

This is a transcript for Lingthusiasm Episode 64: Making speech visible with spectrograms. It’s been lightly edited for readability. Listen to the episode here or wherever you get your podcasts. Links to studies mentioned and further reading can be found on the Episode 64 show notes page.

[Music]

Gretchen: Welcome to Lingthusiasm, a podcast that’s enthusiastic about linguistics! I’m Gretchen McCulloch.

Lauren: I’m Lauren Gawne. Today, we’re getting enthusiastic about ways of seeing sound waves. But first, LingComm grants are running again in 2022. These are small grants designed to help people start new projects to communicate linguistics to broader audiences.

Gretchen: This year we have one $500.00 grant and ten $100.00 start-up grants. We’ll add additional grants if we end up with more patrons by the time the grant applications close. We started the LingComm grants because a small amount of seed money would’ve made a huge difference to us when we were starting out, and we wanted to help there be more interesting linguistics communication in the world.

Lauren: Information is on the LingComm website. That’s “comm” with two Ms. We’ll put the link on our shownotes. The grants close at the end of March 2022.

Gretchen: Also, our most recent bonus episode was an interview chat about linguistics fiction we’re reading, our favourite linguistics terminology, and what’s ahead for Lingthusiasm in 2022. You can listen to that and many, many more bonus episodes by becoming a patron at patreon.com/lingthusiasm.

[Music]

Gretchen: Learning about sounds in an intro linguistics class is kind of weird because we’re already generally really good at processing sounds. We’re doing it right now. One of the things that you end up having to figure out how to do is how to unlearn some of that automatic processing that you’ve been doing since you were a tiny kid and re-learn how to process it in a more awkward way so that you can actually look at what’s going on there and not this very sophisticated object that your brain has made it into, which is language.

Lauren: Framing it as a process of un-learning is a really nice way of putting it. I know some profs teach phonetics using sign language phonetics and hand shapes first because, for non-signers, there’s less for them to un-learn. But when it comes to learning speech sounds, if you’ve grown up with a spoken language, it really is hard to actually pay attention to what you’re so used to attending to.

Gretchen: It’s often hard to believe. Like, what do you mean these two things that I think of as the same T sound are actually different T sounds? They seem the same to me. I’m used to thinking of them as the same. It’s necessary for my understanding of this language that I’m very fluent in that I treat them the same way but trying to figure out and unpack what’s actually different about them is this long process that you encounter in introduction to linguistics.

Keep reading

Lingthusiasm Episode 50: Climbing the sonority mountain from A to P

“Blick” is not a word of English. But it sounds like it could be, if someone told you a meaning for it. “Bnick” contains English sounds, but somehow it doesn’t feel very likely as an English word. “Lbick” and “Nbick” seem even less likely. What’s going on? 

In this episode, your hosts Lauren Gawne and Gretchen McCulloch get enthusiastic about the underlying pattern behind how sounds fit together in various languages, what linguists call sonority. We can place sounds in a line – or along the steps up a mountain – according to how sonorous they are, and this lets us compare and contrast how languages put together their syllables. We also talk about the incredibly weird case of S.

Click here for a link to this episode in your podcast player of choice or read the transcript here

Announcements

We’re coming up on Lingthusiasm’s fourth anniversary! In celebration, we’re asking you to help people who would totally enjoy listening to fun conversations about linguistics, they just don’t realize it exists yet! Most people still find podcasts through word of mouth, and we’ve seen a significant bump in listens each November when we ask you to help share the show, so we know this works. If you tag us @lingthusiasm on social media in your recommendation post, we will like/retweet/reshare/thank you as appropriate, or if you send a recommendation to a specific person, we won’t know about it but you can still feel a warm glow of satisfaction at helping out (and feel free to still tell us about it on social media if you’d like to be thanked!). Trying to think of what to say? One option is to pick a particular episode that you liked and share a link to that.

Also, Crash Course Linguistics videos are coming out every Friday! Subscribe on YouTube, or sign up for Mutual Intelligibility email newsletters to get an email when each video comes out, along with exercises to practice the concepts and links for further reading. 

This month’s bonus episode is a behind the scenes look at the creation of Crash Course Linguistics! We’re joined by Jessi Grieser, the third member of our linguistics content team behind the scripts of Crash Course Linguistics. We talk about how we structured the syllabus of Crash Course Linguistics, how Gavagai came to be a recurring character in the series, finding our delightful host Taylor Behnke, and what it’s like working with the awesome teams at Complexly and Thought Cafe. Get all the details and access to 44 other bonus episodes by becoming a Patron!

Here are the links mentioned in this episode:

• Lingthusiasm Episode 6: All the sounds in all the languages - the International Phonetic Alphabet
• Lingthusiasm Episode 17: Vowel Gymnastics
  
• Lingthusiasm Episode 35: Putting sounds into syllables is like putting toppings on a burger 
• Oxford Bibliographies Sonority
• Sonority sequencing principle Wikipedia entry
• Blick vs. bnick
• Sonorants and obstruents
• Why we sing fa la la la la
• Nuxalk language Wikipedia entry

You can listen to this episode via Lingthusiasm.com, Soundcloud, RSS, Apple Podcasts/iTunes, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. You can also download an mp3 via the Soundcloud page for offline listening.

To receive an email whenever a new episode drops, sign up for the Lingthusiasm mailing list.

You can help keep Lingthusiasm ad-free, get access to bonus content, and more perks by supporting us on Patreon.

Lingthusiasm is on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and Tumblr. Email us at contact [at] lingthusiasm [dot] com

Gretchen is on Twitter as @GretchenAMcC and blogs at All Things Linguistic.

Lauren is on Twitter as @superlinguo and blogs at Superlinguo.

Lingthusiasm is created by Gretchen McCulloch and Lauren Gawne. Our senior producer is Claire Gawne, our production editor is Sarah Dopierala, our production manager is Liz McCullough, and our music is ‘Ancient City’ by The Triangles.

This episode of Lingthusiasm is made available under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Share Alike license (CC 4.0 BY-NC-SA).

This is a transcript for Lingthusiasm Episode 35: Putting sounds into syllables is like putting toppings on a burger. It’s been lightly edited for readability. Listen to the episode here or wherever you get your podcasts. Links to studies mentioned and further reading can be found on the Episode 35 show notes page.

[Music]

Gretchen: Welcome to Lingthusiasm, a podcast that’s enthusiastic about linguistics! I’m Gretchen McCulloch.

Lauren: And I’m Lauren Gawne. Today, we’re getting enthusiastic about syllables! But first, Gretchen’s book is out now. If you haven’t bought it yet, you should buy a copy!

Gretchen: Yes! It’s very exciting to finally have other people being able to read the book and talk to me about memes, and emoji, and punctuation, and all of the internet linguistics things that I’ve been thinking about for three years. We are doing a very special Q&A episode for the book. This episode goes up on August 15th. You have until August 15, so you have some number of hours until it is no longer August 15th in any time zone. You can check ahead to Hawaii and maybe gain a few hours that way to send in your questions about things to do with internet linguistics, the book-writing process – and then we’ll do a very special behind-the-scenes bonus episode about that.

Lauren: I’m looking forward to everyone else’s questions. I have a bunch of questions about how the book-writing process went. I’m looking forward to that Patreon bonus episode. Also on the Patreon we have a new $15+ tier. Several people have been asking for a way to support us even more than the $5 a month for bonus episodes. At our $15 Ling-phabet tier you will receive your very own symbol of the International Phonetic Alphabet, which you can get through either a super scientific quiz or just merely saying that you have a favourite.

Gretchen: Then, we will add your name and symbol of choice to our Lingthusiasm Supporter Wall of Fame on our website. We’re happy to put your name or any other name within reason. If you want to give this as a gift to somebody, that’s also a thing you can do. And if you join this new level before August 15th – this is the same time zone thing that you’re running into right now – you can also get a signed book plate, which is a custom Because Internet sticker that you can stick into your copy of Because Internet, which I will sign for you and I’ll put your name or whatever name you want. You can stick it inside your book and then you have a signed copy of Because Internet. If you join that very soon, you can get that as well.

Lauren: Of course, even if you don’t listen to this episode within the first 24 hours of it going up, you can still buy Gretchen’s book from all good and bad booksellers – preferably good ones. You can also support us on the Patreon.

Gretchen: Yes. There are some other ways to get an actual, physical copy of the book signed, but this is probably the easiest one. Hopefully, you have a chance to do that.

[Music]

Lauren: Gretchen, I am going to test you. Everyone can play along. I’m gonna give you some pairs of words and I want you to tell me whether they sound like English words.

Gretchen: Okay. Sounds good.

Lauren: They’re made up – some of them. The first one is “blick” and “bnick.”

Gretchen: “Blick” sounds like a pretty reasonable English word. I don’t know what it means yet, but it could mean something. “Bnick” – I’m not so sure.

Lauren: I actually even have trouble saying it. I feel like I’m saying “buh-nick” – “buh” … “nick” all at once.

Gretchen: /bnɪk/ – B-N-I-C-K. Not something I’d expect English to turn into a word – no.

Lauren: No. The B and the N together don’t really work that well. What about the word “copter” versus the word “pter”?

Gretchen: Yeah, “copter,” I mean, is an existing English word – could continue to be an existing English word. Seems legit to me. “Pter” – yeah, the P-T thing, again, not really doing it for me.

Lauren: Because that’s the – like when you say “pterodactyl,” I know that it’s P-T, but I can never say that P.

Gretchen: Or like the Greek “Ptolemy” is just /taləmi/. It’s not /ptaləmi/ even though that’s how they said it back in the day.

Lauren: In fact, “helicopter” is from Greek “heliko-pter” – “spinning” and “flying” are the two roots there.

Gretchen: It really seems like it should be from “heli” and “copter,” but it’s “heliko-pter.”

Lauren: Which is not how my English brain can divide that word up.

Gretchen: No. No. It really isn’t. But the Greeks are really happy to have /pt/.

Keep reading

Lingthusiasm Episode 35: Putting sounds into syllables is like putting toppings on a burger 

Sometimes a syllable is jam-packed with sounds, like the single-syllable word “strengths”. Other times, a syllable is as simple as a single vowel or consonant+vowel, like the two syllables in “a-ha!” It’s kind of like a burger: you might pack your burger with tons of toppings, or go as simple as a patty by itself on a plate, but certain combinations are more likely than others. For example, an open-face burger, with only the bottom half of the bun, is less weird than a burger with only the top half. 

In this episode of Lingthusiasm, your hosts Lauren Gawne and Gretchen McCulloch get enthusiastic about syllables. Why aren’t there any English words that begin with “ng”, even though Vietnamese is perfectly happy to have them? Why do Spanish speakers pronounce the English word “Sprite” more like “Esprite”? Why did English speakers re-analyze Greek helico-pter into heli-copter? Plus more about how different languages prefer different things in their syllable-burgers and what happens when these preferences collide. 

Click here for a link to this episode in your podcast player of choice or read the transcript here

Announcements: 

This month’s bonus episode is about metaphors! Support Lingthusiasm on Patreon to gain access to the metaphors episode and 29 previous bonus episodes. 

Today is the final day for two things related to Because Internet, Gretchen’s book about internet linguistics (which is out now and you can get it!). 
1. Send us your questions about Because Internet, internet language, or the process of writing a book for a special bonus behind the scenes Q&A episode about the book! 
2. Join our new “ling-phabet” tier on Patreon by August 15th in any timezone (you may get a few hours into August 16th if you’re lucky!) and get a signed Because Internet bookplate sticker with your name on it in the mail! 

Here are the links mentioned in this episode:

• Syllable (Wikipedia)
  
• Syllable initial velar nasal (ng) (Superlinguo)
  
• Why Spanish speakers say ‘esprite‘ or ‘escuela‘ (All Things Linguistic)
  
• Language: Speed vs Density (The Rosetta Project)
  
• Mele Kalikimaka! (Language Log)
• Helicopter etymology (Etymonline)
• Scheveningen (Wikipedia)
• Video intro to syllables (via All Things Linguistic)

You can listen to this episode via Lingthusiasm.com, Soundcloud, RSS, Apple Podcasts/iTunes, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. You can also download an mp3 via the Soundcloud page for offline listening.

To receive an email whenever a new episode drops, sign up for the Lingthusiasm mailing list.

You can help keep Lingthusiasm ad-free, get access to bonus content, and more perks by supporting us on Patreon.

Lingthusiasm is on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and Tumblr. Email us at contact [at] lingthusiasm [dot] com

Gretchen is on Twitter as @GretchenAMcC and blogs at All Things Linguistic.

Lauren is on Twitter as @superlinguo and blogs at Superlinguo.

Lingthusiasm is created by Gretchen McCulloch and Lauren Gawne. Our senior producer is Claire Gawne, our production editor is Sarah Dopierala, our editorial manager is Emily Gref, and our music is ‘Ancient City’ by The Triangles.

This episode of Lingthusiasm is made available under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Share Alike license (CC 4.0 BY-NC-SA).

This is a transcript for Lingthusiasm Episode 12: Sounds you can’t hear - Babies, accents, and phonemes. It’s been lightly edited for readability. Listen to the episode here or wherever you get your podcasts. Links to studies mentioned and further reading can be found on the Episode 12 shownotes page.

[Music]

Gretchen: Welcome to Lingthusiasm, the podcast that’s enthusiastic about linguistics. I’m Gretchen McCulloch.

Lauren: And I’m Lauren Gawne, and today we’ll be talking about sounds that you can’t hear.

Gretchen: Phonemes!

Lauren: But first, so much exciting news: interview and live show!

Gretchen: So we reached our Patreon goal to start airing interviews on Lingthusiasm, and we are really excited to bring you an interview next month.

Lauren: Yay! I’m so excited that we met this goal, thank you as always to all of our patrons who support the show directly and allow us to keep building and growing and bringing in new things, including interviews!

Gretchen: So I got to talk to Nicole Holliday, who is an awesome linguist, at the Institute this summer, it was a really fun conversation.

Lauren: I am sooo jealous, I cannot wait to listen.

Gretchen: And we’re going to bring that to you next month! It was really fun.

Lauren: The other exciting news is that I’m gonna be in Montreal in a couple of weeks. In fact, about the time that this show goes out, for a conference and I just – I think I know someone who lives in Montreal?

Gretchen: I don’t know, who’s that, Lauren?

Lauren: Oh, it’s you! You live in Montreal!

Gretchen: Oh hey, it’s me!

Lauren: So this is completely unexpected and a delightful coincidence, and we thought we can’t pass up the opportunity while we’re in the same place to not do some kind of live show.

Gretchen: Surprise last-minute live show in Montreal, late September, it’s going to be at the Argo Bookshop on St. Catherine Street, it’s gonna be at 8 p.m. on Saturday the 23rd of September.

Lauren: So stay tuned to our social media for all the details, the opportunity to register for the event, and if you’re in Montreal, we look forward to seeing you there!

Gretchen: And there’ll be some sort of snacks! We haven’t figured out what kind of snacks there’s gonna be or what kind of drinks there’s gonna be, but there will be some sort of refreshments. So, come for the refreshments, stay for the linguistics!

Lauren: And I’m gonna need heaps of space in my suitcase to bring back all the maple products, so I will bring Australian-themed confectionery. If you see me there and you’ve listened to this episode, tell me and I will give you Australian-themed chocolate.

Gretchen: Hey Lauren, I’ve listened to this episode! You should give me some Tim Tams!

Lauren: Maybe.

Gretchen: And also, this month’s Patreon bonus episode – I almost forgot in the excitement about all the other new stuff that’s coming up – is about linguistics research: what kinds we’d like to see more of, how to do some of your own, and all the ways to find out stuff when your friends ask you about linguistics.

Lauren: You can find a link to our Patreon in the show notes and links to all of our bonus episodes as well.

Gretchen: And go to Lingthusiasm.com or @Lingthusiasm on Twitter or Facebook for details about the live show. 

[Music] 

Gretchen: So, what do we mean by sounds you can’t hear? This idea that language influences our perception is a really popular one in pop linguistics, and the idea of there’s these words that you can’t totally understand, there’s untranslatable words – Danish has this word for a sense of cosiness that we just can’t understand in English – this type of concept is really popular in pop linguistics, but it generally shows up at the word level. So you get these lists of words that are like, oh, this is this feeling, or this is this social relationship that exists in this language that you just can’t understand in English, and yet the list of untranslatable words often include English translations right beside them, which I’ve always found kind of ironic because, “Oh, you can’t translate this except for this translation that you can see here.”

Lauren: There are some lovely examples of this, though. I think it’s worth acknowledging that they show really interesting cultural foci, so we’ll put some links to the World in Words podcast, they have a couple of great episodes on untranslatable words across cultures that are really lovely, and their whole show is generally lovely stories about language anyway, so we’ll pop that in the show notes. But you’re right, it’s often this, “We can’t translate it in exactly one word,” not that they’re completely untranslatable.

Keep reading

Lingthusiasm Episode 12: Sounds you can’t hear - Babies, accents, and phonemes   

Why does it always sound slightly off when someone tries to imitate your accent? Why do tiny children learning your second language already sound better than you, even though you’ve been learning it longer than they’ve been alive? What does it mean for there to be sounds you can’t hear?

In Episode 12 of Lingthusiasm, your hosts Lauren Gawne and Gretchen McCulloch explore the fundamental linguistic insight at the heart of all these questions: the phoneme. We also talk about how to bore babies (for science!), how sounds appear and disappear in a language, and how to retain our sense of wonder when the /t/ you hear doesn’t match up with the /t/ I hear. 

Click here for a link to this episode in your podcast player of choice or read the transcript here

Announcements:

LIVESHOW: Exciting news! We held our first liveshow on Saturday, September 23rd in Montreal, at Argo Bookshop. It was great to meet so many lingthusiasts at this sold out show. We’re looking forward to bringing the liveshow experience to more people, once we hit our Patreon goal.

This month’s Patreon bonus was about linguistic research, and how to do it when you don’t have a university or a research budget, as nominated and voted on by our patrons. You can get access to it and previous bonuses about language games, hypercorrection, swearing, teaching yourself linguistics, and explaining linguistics to employers by supporting Lingthusiasm on Patreon.  

Here are the links mentioned in this episode and more about phonemes:

• Infants hear sounds their parents don’t
  
• High Amplitude Sucking and other infant research methods
• Untranslatable words on the World in Words podcast
  
• Which languages have distinction between /b/ & /p/, and /s/ & /z/ (WALS)
  
• Chinese/Canadian English children (All Things Linguistic)
  
• Chinese/Canadian English children (McGill)
  
• Korean/Dutch children
• Superman/Clark Kent analogy for phonemes
  
• Free tudoring and a moist owlet: the 5 /t/ sounds in English
• What early attempts to invent a reading machine taught us about speech sounds 
• Why “Baltimore” and “Voldemort” sound almost identical in Spanish
• Heatmap of the most common phonemes in languages of the world
• A sentence containing all the phonemes of the English language
• LING 101-style videos about phonemes: short, medium, long

You can listen to this episode via Lingthusiasm.com, Soundcloud, RSS, Apple Podcasts/iTunes, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. You can also download an mp3 via the Soundcloud page for offline listening.

To receive an email whenever a new episode drops, sign up for the Lingthusiasm mailing list.

You can help keep Lingthusiasm ad-free, get access to bonus content, and more perks by supporting us on Patreon.

Lingthusiasm is on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and Tumblr. Email us at contact [at] lingthusiasm [dot] com

Gretchen is on Twitter as @GretchenAMcC and blogs at All Things Linguistic.

Lauren is on Twitter as @superlinguo and blogs at Superlinguo.

Lingthusiasm is created by Gretchen McCulloch and Lauren Gawne. Our producer is Claire Gawne, and our music is ‘Ancient City’ by The Triangles.

This episode of Lingthusiasm is made available under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Share Alike license (CC 4.0 BY-NC-SA).