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D_alex8

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headbang8 said:
One of the reasons this lesson was so funny was that the sounds were not completely unfamiliar, even if the students didn't use them in speech. The glottal stop seems to be a universal sex noise.

Think about it. If you moan (a protracted vowel sound) you sometimes stop the flow of air abruptly as tension and pleasure builds, and then release it with another moan, ususally at a lower pitch. Especially for women--it's a classic sign that she's reaching a climax, no?
I certainly agree that glottal stops are probably a hugely widespread sex-sound. As to whether they're universal, I can't say one way or the other. However, from my own experience of Arabic, I think that the voiceless pharyngeal fricative (a breathy "h" sound produced low in the throat) is a widespread "orgasmic phoneme" for similar reasons as you put forward for the glottal stop (and I am by no means suggesting that Semitic speakers have any shortage of glottal stops in addition). The voiceless pharyngeal fricative indeed also occurs in a number of words that immediately seem to take on a sexual dimension from the presence of this phoneme (especially when it is played up for effect): "istiraHa" (relaxation [not infrequently as a euphemism accompanied by a knowing wink!]), "Habibi" (darling), "maHbub" (lover), etc.

As a sudden, abrupt expulsion of air from the lungs passing over the pharynx in an unvoiced way, it is not difficult to imagine how easily this sound may come into play during moments of extreme breathiness during sex and at orgasm. But be sure that I mean this as a complement to the glottal stop, and not as an alternative.

I find "some British speakers of English who drop their "t" in speech"--that is, Cockneys--incredibly sexy. They sound really primal, animal, physical.
My overly-wordy description of this trait of many English speakers was not without reason; the substitution of a glottal stop for the letter "t" is present in a much wider array of British accents than simply Cockney, including (but by no means limited to) Estuary, Geordie and Mancunian.
 

yhtang

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headbang8 said:
As you may know, most Asian languages consist entirely of syllables that begin with a consonant and end with a vowel. A syllable which ends in a hard consonant, like the English word "stop", poses a problem. If you're a Japanese, who tries to be precise about everything, you'll pronounce it "su-to-pu"; if you're an impatient Cantonese, you'll just say "stoh".

They found it tough to wrap their tongues around these sounds, and even harder to hear them. hb8


Because some people find it tough to wrap their tongues around these sounds, do you think it would improve things if they can be encouraged to wrap their tongues around a cock first - and in a thrust, their epiglottis can be trained to close quite abruptly. (Bad joke, sorry. I'll now go stand in a corner)
 

headbang8

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alex8 said:
I think that the voiceless pharyngeal fricative (a breathy "h" sound produced low in the throat) is a widespread "orgasmic phoneme" for similar reasons as you put forward for the glottal stop.
Oh yeah. Oh yeaaah. Waaaayyy sexy.

In fact, I think the voiced pharyngeal fricative was Eartha Kitt's famous Catwoman purr, was it not? She had some Arabic ability, I recall, and did at least one song in Turkish. For the record, Eartha Kitt gets my 10% going.

alex8 said:
My overly-wordy description of this trait of many English speakers was not without reason; the substitution of a glottal stop for the letter "t" is present in a much wider array of British accents than simply Cockney, including (but by no means limited to) Estuary, Geordie and Mancunian.
Bingo. Alex8 takes crown as reigning LPSG Gay Language Detail Queen--and I mean that in a good way--a post vacant since the impeachment of the-artist-formerly-known-as-DMW for misconduct in office.

I suspect pronouncing your t's is a marker for social class in Great Britain, as much as a regional distinction--hence my inaccurate haste to cite Cockney. Think about the Scots dialect--the twee east-coast Edinburghers who always promounce their t's vs. the more rough-and tumble Glaswegians, famous for dropping them. Maggie Smith in The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie vs. Billy Connolly's famous line "I dinna knoo I'd ea'en tha'!"
 

novice_btm

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headbang8 said:
In fact, I think the voiced pharyngeal fricative was Eartha Kitt's famous Catwoman purr, was it not? She had some Arabic ability, I recall, and did at least one song in Turkish. For the record, Eartha Kitt gets my 10% going.
I forgot the Arabic songs she did, but the Turkish song was "Us,ka Dara"

headbang8 said:
Alex8 takes crown as reigning LPSG Prissy Gay Language Detail Queen...
OK, I almost spit coffee all over my laptop reading that.

Things unheard by non-native speakers... Russian friends always tell me that; pear, bear, beer, peered, and beard, all sound like the same exact word, and only know what they are by context.
 

headbang8

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novice_btm said:
Things unheard by non-native speakers... Russian friends always tell me that; pear, bear, beer, peered, and beard, all sound like the same exact word, and only know what they are by context.

I remember reading somewhere that other comparable languages have complex grammar that conveys meaning; e.g. inflections and strict word order. But English, which has reasonably loose grammar, makes up for it with more sounds and more words. So no wonder your Russian friends find it difficult. Russians, I'm told, don't distinguish between P/F or V/B, or at least default to pronouncing it in ways we don't often recognise.

The Japanese often look at their 46-character syllabary and assume that English, withits 26 letters, is less complex. But those 26 letters can make up about 120 syllables, with some genuine tongue twister sounds. Even with our crazy spelling system, many non-native speakers prefer to read English than to hear it. Though seeing a word written down helps, there are still diffetinces in pronunciation that we don't spell out explicitly--why is the "th" in something pronounced differently from in teething, for example?

A Japanese told me that the classic phrase that struck him as sounding very English is wooden things. "-ing", "th" and "w" are rather distinctive to English.

Since English is a mongrel language, it tends to contain more of the sounds and words of other languages, than they do of English. Though an English tongue is quite versatile, there are still sounds that stump many native English speakers--like the pharyngeal fricative Alex describes, the voiced version of which challenges us when it appears as a French "r".

I'm told that one of the hardest languages for English speakers to learn is Polish. First, it takes serious hard-ass grammar (nine cases for nouns!) and a highly refined sense of sound (the different "L" sounds in luck and peel are discernible to the Polish ear, and carry different meanings if put to work in a word)

Many thanks to Alex8 for raising this subject in a post--it fascinates me. And I apologise for the remark about the Detail Queen. Just yankin' yer chain.
 

D_alex8

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headbang8 said:
In fact, I think the voiced pharyngeal fricative was Eartha Kitt's famous Catwoman purr, was it not? She had some Arabic ability, I recall, and did at least one song in Turkish. For the record, Eartha Kitt gets my 10% going.

Do you think Eartha would take more of an interest if we threw both our 10-per-cents at her simultaneously? :rolleyes: I believe her famous purr was actually a voiced uvular fricative, corresponding to the Arabic letter ghayn (ﻍ), whereas the voiced pharyngeal fricative corresponds to the letter 'ayn (ﻉ), famously described in one Victorian textbook as somewhat akin to the sound made by baby camels... but more accurately as: "unique to Arabic; a constriction of the throat and an expulsion of the breath with the vocal cords vibrating".

See: http://web.uvic.ca/hrd/hist455/consonants/consonants_pres.htm

As novice has said, Eartha's famous Turkish song was Uşka Dara, which she has recorded in at least 4 different versions with varying degrees of Turkish content over the decades. While I certainly know of some Arabesque songs that she's done, such as the early 1980s disco hit Arabian Song, I'm not aware of any songs in Arabic that she's recorded.

Bingo. Alex8 takes crown as reigning LPSG Gay Language Detail Queen.

I wear my tiara with pride. I think. :biggrin1:

I suspect pronouncing your t's is a marker for social class in Great Britain, as much as a regional distinction.

Absolutely. I think there's also an issue of fashionability within British youth culture, and there are numerous examples of pop singers and actors (off the top of my head, Damon Albarn and Billie Piper) who replace their "t" with a glottal stop when performing, but not in private.
 

novice_btm

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headbang8 said:
...no wonder your Russian friends find it difficult. Russians, I'm told, don't distinguish between P/F or V/B, or at least default to pronouncing it in ways we don't often recognise.
Well, another thing the Russkies do is that, because they don't have articles, they'll say things like, "Give to me book." The P/F, V/B thing confuses me though, because they have all of those sounds, and they pretty identical to English. Now, H/G (???) and W/V, are different stories, and like other Slavic languages, as in your Polish example, there is both a hard L (L in lamp) and soft L (the second L, at the split second that it's shifting to the I's value in "million", as if LI or LY were combined in sound, as one letter). So, when a visiting professor asked me where "Goh-lyeh-vout" was, it took a repetition and a calculated substitution chart to figure out he wanted to visit Hollywood. ;) So, Russians say, Gamlyet (Hamlet), Gerkulyoz (Hercules), and Garrvarrd (Harvard), but KHelsinki (KH being a hard, aspirated sound), for some reason.

headbang8 said:
Even with our crazy spelling system, many non-native speakers prefer to read English than to hear it. Though seeing a word written down helps, there are still diffetinces in pronunciation that we don't spell out explicitly--why is the "th" in something pronounced differently from in teething, for example?
And that's actually the problem, our spelling system, that is. We USED to have both eth (ð) & thorn (Þ) for these two separate sounds. (To distinguish them... http://briem.ismennt.is/2/2.11/ )

headbang8 said:
I'm told that one of the hardest languages for English speakers to learn is Polish. First, it takes serious hard-ass grammar (nine cases for nouns!) and a highly refined sense of sound...
I have a couple friends that have studied it, but after studying Russian, so it didn't seem so bad. However, I actually had a Polish guy tell me that he loved studying Russian in school (mandatory, at the time), because of a cleaner and more logical grammar. (???, HIS words)

alex8 said:
As novice has said, Eartha's famous Turkish song was U?ka Dara, which she has recorded in at least 4 different versions with varying degrees of Turkish content over the decades. While I certainly know of some Arabesque songs that she's done, such as the early 1980s disco hit Arabian Song, I'm not aware of any songs in Arabic that she's recorded.
I think I read that in some note about her, which could well have exaggerated Arabesque into Arabic, and in which case, I don't mind standing corrected. :rolleyes: