Talk:Voiceless uvular fricative

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Someone seems to have confused this sound with voiceless velar fricative as the German "ach"-sound. I removed the text since it is already mentioned in that article. Peter Isotalo 17:50, Apr 19, 2005 (UTC)

1 German example
2 My edit
3 Contradiction
4 Ordering by number of fricatives

[edit] German example

It was brought to my attention by a user on the German Wikipedia that voiceless velar fricative is not the standard pronunciation of Ach-Laut. She gave me this reference: [1]. It's not a reference on German phonology per se, rather an explanation of IPA symbols in German using mostly German examples, but it is complete enough to make mention of which German dialects pronounce Ach-Laut as velar and which as uvular (and standard German is used as the example for the voiceless uvular fricative). I know that in most articles on the English Wikipedia, this sound is identified as the velar fricative, but I don't think this is correct (both from the reference above and hearing Germans speak). I would like to change the German example back to what I originally added, but I am sure someone will change it back unless a consensus is reached here. Therefore, if you have a good reference from outside of Wikipedia that Ach-Laut really is pronounced as a voiceless velar fricative in standard German, please add it here.

What may be the case (and I don't know this for sure) is that [x] has come to be the standard broad transcription of Ach-Laut not because it the more common pronunciation, but because of convention (as far as I can tell, [x] is for some reason more commonly used than [χ] in broad transcriptions of any language, unless there is a phonemic distinction between the sounds in the language). I am aware that UPSID lists German as having voiceless velar fricative rather than voiceless uvular fricative, but I'm not sure what to make of this as I don't believe this database lists allophones, and in any case if my guess about broad transcriptions is correct, then I would be skeptical about this anyway unless there were a better explanation. Unfortunately, everything I have been able to find about UPSID is second-hand, and I don't know how exactly the data should be interpreted. Perhaps we would be so lucky as to have a UCLA linguistics professor as a fellow Wikipedian? CyborgTosser (Only half the battle) 00:20, 5 May 2005 (UTC)

No I just confused the velar and uvular sounds and hence the mistaken edit. Sorry about that...

There's a quite extensive text on the use of this sound in German by now. I think, though, that this article is intended to be mainly focused on the phonetic aspects of the sound rather than phonemic discussions. I suggest moving the text on German to German pronunciation and perhaps moving that article to German phonology to adhere to standard of the Phonetics Project. Peter Isotalo 17:21, May 7, 2005 (UTC)

The text from the German example may become a good basis for the not yet existing article on the ach-Laut.

Though maybe it would be advantageous to have better examples there before we start to remove any of them. And notices are not bad per se, that tells in which (better known) languages the sound occurs.

--Ruhrjung 01:06, May 8, 2005 (UTC)

Hrrm. I wouldn't really consider an article like ach-Laut encyclopedic. At least not in English Wikipedia. It's basically just a layman's term for two of the realizations of the phoneme /x/ in German. As it seems somewhat superfluous to have seperate articles for non-specific sounds in seperate languages, it's best to mention it in German phonology instead. I've brought this up in ich-Laut as well.

As for the examples, it's bound to get messy sooner or later. If we were to mention every language in which this sound occured with phonemic info, the article would get very redundant and too big very quickly. I would much rather prefer that only a few examples of languages (with links to phonology sections or seperate phonology articles) and in how many of the UPSID languages the sound actually occurs. Refering to "better known" languages is also not a good idea if you want to avoid systematic bias. Linguistically, the prestige of a certain language is of no interest; all languages deserve to be treated equally.

Peter Isotalo 09:48, May 8, 2005 (UTC)

I would recommend against listing how many of the UPSID languages a sound occurs in. There is the comment I made above about UPSID not listing allophones, and more importantly, that UPSID is missing many of the most commonly spoken languages. So listing how many UPSID languages a sound occurs in is less info about the sound than it is info about UPSID. As far as the "better known" languages, for sounds that do occur in well-known languages (or more precisely in languages that have a large number of speakers), these languages do provide a good reference for illustrative purposes because they increase the chance that a visitor to the English Wikipedia will have some idea what is being mentioned. I envision someone reading the example and saying "Oh, so that's what that sound is called" or "that's how that sound is classified". That's why when I started putting up examples, I gave English a priveledged place on the list. That said, I agree that having a few examples from a wide variety of languages is better than having many examples from only the well-known languages, which will unfortunately fall into only a handful of language families. However, having a large number of examples and a wide variety of languages is not necessarily a bad thing. It probably means we should rethink the organization though. Just having an unorganized list of languages could get messy. I just don't think it needs to be worried about until we actually do have that many examples. CyborgTosser (Only half the battle) 04:16, 9 May 2005 (UTC)

Hm, didn't think of the problem with only allophones listed for the UPSID-languages. I'll step back on that idea, then. But it would be good if we really tried to avoid just listing the most spoken or most prestigous languages, and tried to rather pick one or two examples from different langauge families, no matter the amount of speakers.

I am, however, not at all keen into making this a general repository for phonemic comments. To mention that "This sound is an allophone of phoneme /X/ in language Y" is certainly ok, but going on by listing the other allophones of phoneme /X/, that might have nothing at all to do with the sound that the article is about, is merely confusing. This article is as I can see it purely phonetic, and mixing in phonemic analysis will just blur the distinction. And if there's a bunch of phonetically irrelevant allophones listed for one language, then others will do it sooner or later and we'll get messy articles.

Maybe we should bring this up in Wikipedia:WikiProject Phonetics to get some kind of consensus policy going. Any thoughts on that?

Peter Isotalo 06:55, May 9, 2005 (UTC)

When there are other and better examples from wellknown languages, then it may be time to get rid of this example. Since we are not writing an online encyclopedia for linguists it may have some importance whether the readers have heard, or maybe even been taught, one of the languages we exemplify with.

And who says we have to mention every language with phonemic info?

Given the obvious complications connected with the definition of phonology and its standing vis-a-vis phonetics, I would also tend to advice against article titles of the formula "X language phonology", pronunciation is certainly a better known and understood term.

--Ruhrjung 13:00, May 10, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] My edit

I can't believe Arabic and Hebrew weren't mentioned! I added them.

[χ] is quite rare in German. It is the (only!) realization of /x/ in the Alemannic and Tyrolean dialects; but outside these I (native speaker from Austria) have never heard it, except perhaps somewhere on German TV. The reference says it is used (implied: somewhere in Germany) as a third allophone of /x/: [ç] ("ich-Laut") behind close front vowels, [x] ("ach-Laut") behind most others, [χ] behind [ɔ] (giving doch [dɔχ] as an example). This third allophone does not exist elsewhere. I get "postvelar" at best (my "uch-Laut" sounds Russian). Before I read this I wouldn't have dreamt of considering [χ] Standard German at all!!!

(In general the reference is rather Germany-centric. For example, in Austria even radio & TV newsreaders wouldn't dream of aspirating any consonant, and they only started saying [z] a few years ago, forgetting it most of the time, forgetting to voice it most of the rest of the time, adding a vowel in front of it most of the rest of that time, and putting it where it doesn't belong, mispronounced or not, much of the remaining time. Standard German is a pluricentric language.)

I also added the spelling for German and Spanish so that laypeople find out what we're talking about.

Should I add "some dialects of Dutch"? It's not standard (see Dutch language), but I've heard Belgians use it for (at least word-initial) g.

David Marjanović | david.marjanovic_at_gmx.at | 23:15 CEST | 2006/4/4

Sorry: not all dialects of Arabic seem to have [χ].

David Marjanović | david.marjanovic_at_gmx.at | 22:52 CEST | 2006/4/8

[edit] Contradiction

It says here that Hebrew uses a voiceless uvular fricative, but in Hebrew language it says that it uses a velar fricative. This is a contradiction.--Mo-Al 00:17, 9 June 2006 (UTC)

Not necessarily. It's quite likely that it uses both. --Ptcamn 00:44, 9 June 2006 (UTC)

In no varieties of modern Hebrew are both phonemic. --Mo-Al 02:51, 9 June 2006 (UTC)

They don't have to be phonemic. It's possible that the sound may be phonetically realised as either velar or uvular depending upon context; I'm no Hebrew expert, but perhaps the two allophones are in such equal distribution that it would oversimplify the phonetic reality to pick one over the other. See Georgian language for another example of this confusion; even now, Georgian linguists are not in agreement as to whether the back fricatives of Georgian are fundamentally velar or uvular. Thefamouseccles 00:26, 11 June 2006 (UTC)

Well, I have never heard [x] used; besides, there is no mention of it in the section on Hebrew in the IPA manual. I think the problem is that people are confusing traditional and modern Hebrew pronounciation.--Mo-Al 08:34, 11 June 2006 (UTC)

There is no contradiction. In Hebrew there are two separate letters, "chaf" and "hhet". "Chaf" is a uvular fricative in all pronunciations. "Hhet" is a velar fricative in Mizrahi pronunciation (which is probably the most historically correct), and a uvular fricative in all other pronunciations, both Sephardi and Ashkenazi. Arabic too has both sounds. It is therefore fine to cite Hebrew as an example of a language with a uvular fricative, whether or not you believe that there is a velar fricative as well. So please remove the contradiction mark. --Sir Myles na Gopaleen (the da) 12:54, 13 June 2006 (UTC)

No. Khaf has two allophones in complementing distribution: [k] and [x] ("kh", see Dagesh#Dagesh Kal). Het generally should sound like [ħ] (and so do the Mizrahi Jews, and Arabs pronounce it), while Ashkenazi Jews, and "Jew Israeli Jews" pronounce it [x]. Nothing uvular, and you've got everything upside down.

The comparison to Arabic is done a lot during research, but it should be done properly. Arabic ذ and ز both became Zayin, in Hebrew (Biblical), but noone would say that hebrew has [ð]. Why? Because the letter merged, and both are Hebrew Zain, pronouncd [z]. Same goes to Arabic ح and خ that are pronounced [ħ] and [x] in Arabic, respectively, but merged in Hebrew (BIBLICAL!) to Het, which is pronounced [ħ].

Arabic ث became Shin in Hebrew. So what? No [θ] in Hebrew. ظ,‎ ص and ض all became Tsade in Hebrew. SO WHAT? HEBREW DOESN'T HAVE [zˁ], [sˁ] or [dˁ] (or [z'], [s'], and [d'])

And again: Nothing uvular. conio.h • talk 09:55, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

Every speaker of Modern Israeli Hebrew I've ever heard has had a uvular fricative, not a velar one, and the Hebrew phonology article is also in agreement about this. The Speech Accent Archive also has the uvular fricative (along with pharyngeals); my guess would be their chart is from the IPA's 1999 Handbook ([2]). If there's any contradiction at all, I'd say it's in the Hebrew language article, rather than this one. --Red Newt 04:41, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

I have changed the Hebrew language article - it is obviousely a misconception (and it states in the IPA handbook that Hebrew uses an uvular fricative). Mo-Al 17:07, 27 July 2006 (UTC)

OK. Why, then, are there no Hebrew examples in the article now? Hebrew has more speakers than most of the listed languages together; we should not sweep it under the carpet. David Marjanović 22:02, 24 June 2007 (UTC)