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Languages w/o Voice Being a Distinction? | ||
Tags: Phonetics | Pronunciation | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| Yurk Triglot Newbie United States Joined 5734 days ago 29 posts - 37 votes Speaks: English*, Russian, Azerbaijani Studies: Modern Hebrew, Sign Language, Korean, Spanish, Indonesian, Irish Studies: French | Message 1 of 20 15 February 2011 at 3:48am | IP Logged | ||
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Are there any languages in which voice isn't a distinctive property? That is to say, where a voiced sound vs a
voiceless one doesn't really make any difference. I don't know how, exactly, that would work, but I imagine it would simply have all voiced consonants, as I can't imagine a language with all voiceless phonemes. If anyone does know a language like this, would you please be so kind as to also include some resources, or redirect me to where I'd be able to find some to learn this language? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| palfrey Senior Member Canada Joined 5277 days ago 81 posts - 180 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: German, French | Message 2 of 20 15 February 2011 at 4:28am | IP Logged | ||
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Mandarin Chinese might come close. It looks like most of the consonants are unvoiced. The distinction between some consonant pairs, such as p vs. p', t vs t', k vs. k', is not whether the consonant is voiced, but whether or not it is aspirated (i.e., followed by a puff of air). Maybe these articles will help:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_Chinese_phonology http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mandarin_dialects#Phonology But I'm not very familiar with Chinese. Perhaps someone more knowledgeable could comment. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Yurk Triglot Newbie United States Joined 5734 days ago 29 posts - 37 votes Speaks: English*, Russian, Azerbaijani Studies: Modern Hebrew, Sign Language, Korean, Spanish, Indonesian, Irish Studies: French | Message 3 of 20 15 February 2011 at 6:26am | IP Logged | ||
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Mandarin does seem to come close indeed! The only thing keeping it away that I can see is the [ʂ]-[ʐ]... but it does
say that's sometimes pronounced as an approximant, so I'm not sure. I'd be interested in hearing from others! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 6015 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 4 of 20 15 February 2011 at 11:31am | IP Logged | ||
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Scottish Gaelic has (I believe) no phonemic distinction between voiced and unvoiced.
Stops are naturally unvoiced, so B/P D/T G/C are distinguished by aspiration only. S is always unvoiced. There are various N and L sounds, and M, which are always voiced. R is devoiced in some dialects, but is generally voiced. B,P,D,T,G,C tend to borrow voicing when placed adjacent to a naturally voiced consonant. Most beginners books claim that CH and GH/DH differ only in voicing (but they don't describe it in those terms), but as I understand it there are other differences in articulation. I'm now waiting for this book to come out, to give me a better understanding of the sound system. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| CS Groupie United States Joined 5132 days ago 49 posts - 74 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Icelandic, Latin, French | Message 5 of 20 15 February 2011 at 3:09pm | IP Logged | ||
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Tocharian had voiceless non-nasal plosive phonemes which could perhaps have had voiced allophones. It did have
voiced nasals, but they did not contrast with voiceless ones. The sound system is described at the Tocharian online website particularly in Lesson 1. Is the voiced/unvoiced distinction phonemic in Finnish? in Estonian? (The reason I ask is that I was trying to understand the Wikipedia articles on their phonologies. I've never studied those languages.) Edited by CS on 15 February 2011 at 3:50pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Yurk Triglot Newbie United States Joined 5734 days ago 29 posts - 37 votes Speaks: English*, Russian, Azerbaijani Studies: Modern Hebrew, Sign Language, Korean, Spanish, Indonesian, Irish Studies: French | Message 6 of 20 15 February 2011 at 3:52pm | IP Logged | ||
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As for Scottish Gaelic, Wiki says it has [f]-[v], [x]-[ɣ], and [ç]-[ʝ]. You say GH/DH is differentiated by other factors...
like palatalization right? But what about "f" and "mh/bh" or "ch" and the gh/dh pair? And yeah, the article on Finnish and Estonian is really not all that clear. Not sure what a half-voiced consonant refers to. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:IPA_for_Estonian _and_Finnish And I see you've added a website for Tocharian, CS! And with lessons on it too. Thank you, I'll have to look into that today Edited by Yurk on 15 February 2011 at 4:30pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 6015 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 7 of 20 15 February 2011 at 5:07pm | IP Logged | ||
I was saying that CH isn't simply unvoiced GH/DH. I may be wrong. At least in some of the dialects, MH and BH aren't labiodental, but F is. There is certainly a tendency for teachers to pronounce MB/BH as English V in classes, but they rarely speak that way out of class. It's actual quite infuriating that a fair number of Gaelic teachers will actively change their way of speaking when they enter the classroom based on what it says in some inaccurate school-book or other, and will dismiss the way they themselves speak as "just dialect". 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 6015 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 8 of 20 15 February 2011 at 5:12pm | IP Logged | ||
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Anyway, whether or not Gaelic has a phonemic distinction between voiced and voiceless in certain sounds, Gaelic still gives us a good model of how a theoretical language without that distinction would work (assuming our theoretical language is not tonal): Gaelic shows us that the question of voice is not all or nothing.
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