Weird Phonemes - pronouncing the world's rarest sounds
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- Опубліковано 30 кві 2024
- Human languages have some strange sounds. Can you pronounce the world's rarest ones? Join me for some language show-and-tell before we get back to more linguistic tales next year.
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The World Atlas of Language Structures chapter that I'm building on:
wals.info/chapter/19
~ CORRECTIONS ~
After saying "velar" in the pharyngeals section, you hear me make a sound that's actually a UVULAR fricative. - Thanks, Carl Bille!
Redditer languagejones states that my /!/ is wrong, as I pronounced it by doing what some San scholars call "flopping". Take this into account if you're trying to reproduce the sound.
I'm not sure how far off my pharyngeals were. Arabic speakers commented that they're not quite right. The linguistics gets complicated here, since some argue Arabic does not have "true" pharyngeals, in which case I could be doubly wrong! Best to do a bit more digging if you're trying to master either (1) the Arabic epiglottals or (2) a language with pharyngeals.
~ Overview (SPOILER FREE!) ~
I went looking for the oddest speech sounds. That's what happens when you give language nerds free time. I didn't have to go far, since WALS.info had a good start with its chapter on uncommon consonants. WALS is a resource many in this community are already familiar with, but I recommend it if you aren't.
So, what kinds of sounds tend NOT to occur in the world's languages? Which languages have them? Ooh, and although most of them are found in lesser known languages, which ones happen to be used in English? WATCH FOR ALL ANSWERS!
You can also read the WALS chapter for info and stats. But I've scrounged up even more, some of which are rarer than the consonant places/manners of articulation in their post.
~ CREDITS ~
Art, animation and narration by Josh from NativLang.
Some of the music, too.
Sources and full credits for images, sfx, fonts and music:
docs.google.com/document/d/18...
I sound like an idiot sitting in my room alone trying to make these noises
Do you really if you are alone?
Gewel ✔ if someone talks to them self in their room, but there’s no one there to hear them, do they still make a sound? A philosophical question indeed.
Gubah
Well it is midnight here, my brother is here trying to sleep and i am making weird noises....
Well, I'm sitting in my office. But that's okay - the people I work with already know I'm not 'right'.
Haven’t heard a foreigner say the “gb” sound right!! Great job!!
It's so hard!
I think I might be able to do it correct
Rodrigo Adrian Rodríguez Aedo it’s actually easy
@@danboekenoogen4957 Now I can do it
where're you from?
- tried to replicate sounds
- ends up spitting all over screen
LOL
Haha same😂😂🤣
🅱️
Me Too
I’m from Canary Islands and “El silbo” is a beautiful tradition, people used to communicate between the mountains with it and to warn their friends when the police were looking for them during Franco dictatorship. But it’s not a language, it’s a tool to communicate, usually when we use it we use spanish but in theory you could use it with any language you know. I encourage you all to visit La Gomera and take some classes it’s beautiful and really fun, and the only difficulty about it really is to learn how to whistle that loud then all you have to do it’s practice
I can't do or learn it at all
@Mara Same here. I have barely overcome my genetics, and learnt to whistle, at all 🫤.
@@PC_Simo I could never whistle as a child and at some point randomly found out how to do it. And not long after I started putting vibrato into it
Thank you for making me remember I can't whistle
@@6up5ohcopoutprocon You can. You just didn't learnt it.
Or you are handicaped and therefore that's stupid to whine about it. Like a legless person being bitter with people having legs.
4:17 Now I can finally learn how to talk to the villagers from Minecraft!
Now i don't need to build my house
tftm Now I liked your comment just bcz of Jin. I don't even play minecraft 😂
Or Squidward
Madam Joon's FancyNostrils lolol it’s brendan Urie now
No it is ae villagers are hamm
Many of these are normally-used sounds in the beatboxing community
That is actually a very good point, because when doing what those people do, they are using parts of their mouths and throat that would not normally be used in language. If you listen to the best proponents of beatboxing, they are absolutely brilliant, and you can't tell the difference between what they are doing and an electronic synthesizer.
risvegliato exactly!! The art form and the community that developed around it is, in my point of view, a celebration and innovation of the many many phonemes and sounds that lie OUTSIDE of commonly-used (in the western world anyways)language but not outside of the human being’s ability to create and express. There is so much dialogue and research that still has yet to be done bridging beatboxing with speech and communication sciences
I would look up “we speak music”, currently a 5-episode mini series which focuses documentary-style on Reeps One’s journey throughout the world to see how beatboxing can be used, studied, and incorporated into beneficial endeavors, such as beatbox-centric speech disability therapy. Reeps one is one such example of one of the best and original beatboxers on the scene, that has also contributed very much to what the scene currently is now
Funniest comment on this video.
Wow this is actually fascinating
Chompsky: Noooo you can't just destroy the theory of Universal Grammar with one language
Everett: Haha pirahã go t̪͡ʙ̥
This was all about phonology, though. Not a lick o grammar in the vdo.
t̪͡ʙ̥
(tB[•
Chomsky
@@abbynievs2488 t̪͡b̥
2:08
It’s 1 in the morning, the entire house is asleep, and you just got me to say *”oaah”* alone in my room
use an earphone or headphone, problem solved
@@BenefitCounterbench i diagnose you with stupid
Benefit Counterbench bruh
@@potpourri565 exactly
this fucking sent me
I was pronouncing them and my family thought I was going crazy
/s̰̬͡ǀ˩˥ːːːːː/
Me too... my dog just utterly lost confidence in my sanity! :D
My father just stared at me for awhile then shrugged a little, but like the other day, it was awkward
Astronomy487 I found Astronomy on UA-cam again!
Astronomy487 Hey man. Jumps is a cool song.
I was literally so confused and then started dying when he was trying to pronounce the Arabic ح
I still can't recognize the difference between ه and ح
@@artursanti3276 In the way they pronounced or in the way they sound?
The letter ه is pronounced just like the English one, as the H in hat.
The letter ح Has no English (or any language) equivalent, I'm still trying to find a way to explain how to pronounce it.
we have the same כ and ח
As a native arabic speaker, I recognized that he was actually pronouncing the /ح/ sound only when he said that he was talking about the arabic language.
His /ح/ is not so accurate although well-explained.
@@theblackdeath4398 The Arabic letter is the same as the original pronunciation of the letter ח in Hebrew. As stated in the video, it's sound is found in Afro-Asiastic languages like Hebrew, Hausa and Somali.
When he said θ, I felt that
Me thoo
i'm not an english native speaker so I still don't know how to pronounce it even though i speak fluent english😂
@@zygote9529 Many English variants do not use it, so it doesn't really matter. The important aspect is communication.
@@zygote9529 Bite your tongue and say s, or z for voiced ð.
Zmsmmosjnwmsunwmsifnslspwnekaiwnsc
2:03 I am an arabic speaking person and find it amazing that people actually have difficulties creating the ح sound
Same! Especially when living in a non arab environment. I find it funny how they pronounce all three the same
i'm not arab, but also don't understand how people fing this sound hard. It's like Darth Vader's breath actaully
same sound in German is "ch"
@@postironiac Mostly (to me at least) I have no idea if I'm doing it right I could be doing it correctly making an epiglottal or just a really weird glottal for all I know!
@@Alex-tu5vu No that's "ç" like the "h" in "hue" and "huge" not a pharyngeal.
Has anyone else seen an online post that says:
English can be tough but it can be understood through tough thorough thought, though
No, but having "but" and "though" is redundant and you wouldn't see that sentence in English.
but....though works fine i dont understand what you're talking about?
It's not required but it is not incorrect.
No, I hear it all the time. "I really wanted to eat an ice cream... But I couldn't though :(". Maybe it's a British thing.
That actually doesn't make English any harder at all, really. All you have to do is just remember the words and how they're pronounced, don't analyze, just memorize, it's not a complex concept; It's not like every single word in a language has to have some sort of logic to its phonology. I swear, it's like people just enjoy stringing things together to somehow make them seem super complicated and difficult.
So people actually do speak like the creatures in Rock Bottom.
I can't, ʘ̃, understand, ʘ̃, your accent, ʘ̃, ʘ̃!
@@stemm09 I hope that's the symbol used for that noise.
That's a little different.
i cant ʙ understand ʙ your accent ʙ
Would you *ʘ̃* mind *ʘ̃ ʘ̃* putting me down *ʘ̃:* ?
I speak the arabic tongue so I came here for that exact arabic sound you mentioned. The letter that describes it would be written like that: حـ or ح.. Arabic phonemes are unique ,indeed and you might as well know that the english 'th' with its two sounds is there in arabic, too. The english 'th' is two different letters actually: ث and ذ. If you want to pronounce 'thin' it's ث and if you're pronouncing 'then' it's ذ.
knowing arabic sounds alone is a major win linguistically. helps to speak a lot of other languages .
@@LonDanDoc true 💯
I learned how to read and write the Arabic alphabet a few years ago, it definitely helps a lot since it has some of the trickiest sounds, like the 'ayin. Now I'm learning Chinese, which by comparison it's much easier; the hardest Chinese sounds to me were "q" (like the ch in "cheat" said between your teeth with more airflow), and its distinction with "j" (the same but with less air)
@@LonDanDoc Except for vowels. Arabic has only 3, 6 if you count long vowels.
Learning Arabic and it taught me so much about being aware of sounds I make in English that I didn't realize were 2 different sounds...th and th.
My family is from Lesotho, and we use the khoisan click noises for the letter q. Amazing that you fit our languages into this video!
Where’s that American “r” sound
*rrrerrr*
It exists in Hindi too, but as an entirely separate "r". 'ड़', this sounds very vlose to American 'r'. We have both r's in our language.
Vowel R isn't that rare. It's just that most languages and accents don't use it without the trill. I'm surprised that Spanish speakers don't seem to have trouble with it since they only have the semi-vowel version, but I guess it's not a big deal.
It's exists in some accents of Brazilian Portuguese
There's a similar rhotic consonant in Mandarin.
@@Markworth Dunno, maybe because it is thought since young age 🤔
Timestamps
0:52 Dog of wisdom
4:17 Minecraft villagers
5:20 Ugandan knuckles
5:08 MLG Hitmarker
No we don't have those sounds in any of the Ugandan languages. Quit watching brain damaging filth.
he wasn't talking about uganda. he was talking about the ancient ugandan knuckles meme. it doesn't actually come from uganda.
Bro the MLG hitmarker is too real. 😂😂
Martial Kintu r/woooosh
Hababa hababadegaga
Describing the bizzare sounds
0:53 the dog of wisdom
1:11 motor starting up
1:39 a wet sneeze
2:01 you’re breathing in someone’s ear
2:08 you’re gargling a small amount of water
2:52 you’re a bird
3:16 hissing cat, car revving up
3:53 you have a cold/are squidward
4:08 a normal minecraft villager
4:12 a happy minecraft villager
4:14 an angry minecraft villager
5:09 a disapproving lip smack
5:15 an even more disapproving lip smack
5:17 the sound you make following the phrase “if you know what i mean 😏”
5:20 horses clopping
There we go hope that was a good explanation
I meant the dog of wisdom that...
@@Freun yeah
We need a deeper dive on Xhosa. I find it fascinating hearing it.
I had a teacher in my Freshman year of college who did teaching work in Lesotho and she actually spoke with clicking sounds as she was giving us a sampling of some of the names of young men and women she worked with as well as some words they commonly used there. She had us try to repeat some words with clicks in them, and nobody could really do it quite as well as she could (and rightfully so, as she actually knew the language and we didn't). Still, it was pretty crazy to hear her speaking a languages with clicks in it rolling off the tongue at the same rate of fluency as her English.
She could likely have been speaking Xhosa
LycanDeMorte Trevor Noah’s first language is Xhosa. He very occasionally says a phrase in it.
@@margueritejohnson6407 I know, I'm from SA 😂
LycanDeMorte
Same
@@alexanderbruwer9363 Sesotho also absorbed clicks.
0:52 The Dog of Wisdom
Nicholas Yeary hapa kataka. hapapa pa. haaaa
I got that reference
Wow thank you. The quality of my brain cell integration has been degraded and I am amused
Hardline American I knew someone would think of that!
That is a very good wisdom.
In Ethiopia there is a language called Amharic, and I don't know if the sounds are that rare but we use a rolled r and ቀ, ጠ, ጨ, ጰ and ጸ which are usually hard for new learners to pronounce.
Trust me it's not just the consonants, people tend to have a hard time telling the first and sixth form vowels apart
@@zyaicob Really ? I didn't know
In Scotland we roll our rs too!
I cannot say the names Karl and Carol with any differentiation. They're one and the same. I'm yet to meet someone who isn't Scottish imitate a Scottish accent well.... x
They’re just Ejective consonants. [k’], [t’], [tʃʼ] [pʼ] [tsʼ].
They’re not all that rare. They occur in around 20% of languages around the planet.
Extremely common in languages indigenous to South America, Central America, Mexico, the American southwest, the American Pacific Northwest, the American west, all three families native to the caucuses, and a lot of languages apart of Afro-Asiatic.
Russians: *ыЫы*
Belarusians: *ЫЫЭМ*
this is what we, russians, are proud of 😎
ЙЖЫ
-
-
-
(Простите меня все русские за Ы после Ж)
I learn russian and I still don't have a clue how to say ы correct
First pronounce a schwa [ə] like the 'a' in "About" or as the 'e' in "Taken" or the 'u' in "Supply" and gradually raise ur tongue until its close to the upper palate or pronounce a [i] 'ee' as in Speed and bring ur tongue back, and then saying simple words like ты, вы, мы, был etc or to simplify it choose a consonant and pronounce it around it like ым, мым, мы etc
йалторна
New Minecraft player: "Oh wow, people! Hello!"
Minecraft villager: 4:17
New Minecraft player: "..."
Powahful GamePlayer LMFAOOOOOOO
The creaky one fits it better.
Ah yes, the sound of Minecraft Villager
/ŋ̥ɑ̰̃˥˩ː/
@@MTMguy ya
@@aloysiuskurnia7643 hɹ̃˥˩
The last syllable of my true name can only be pronounced correctly if the head is severed, screwed onto the back of a dragster and revved up to 8000 rpm.
Can you tell me
Hmm... Cream bun... I see why people would have a heard time pronouncing such a confusing name
substitute teachers must have a tough time
aeeeeeeeeaaaaeAAAAAAAAAAAEEEEEE
Sounds beautiful
4:06 Imagine going somewhere on a vacation and people start speaking minecraft villager language lmao!
4:19 this is literally a villager noise
"kissing,clicking,sputtering",sounds like the bubblegum language in adventure time
ralf 67453 Oh my gosh, I’m not the only one who noticed!!!
Brendan Berney Lol
Brendan Berney And we are proud to be nerds
Brendan Berney There's a lot worse that fits that title better.
I thought the same
Did anyone else try to make these sounds while watching?
I did and I'm at work :S hope nobody was looking
not to be rude or judgemental, but you shouldn't be watching videos at work
Steve Johnson does mapping lol
me too!
Of course! Isn't that what these videos are for?
don’t forget the welsh “ll” pronounces as a sort of hissing
@Gnomicality They wrote the digraph for /ɬ/, not the phoneme /ǁ/.
Why are they written as ll when they are pronounced closer to an s noise
That’s literally such a common sound
An aspirated L is not a hissing sound. "Llanelli" it is quite different but may closer to the English "sh"
@@galinor7 i listened to the pronuncation and you're correct!
i've been binging all your vids in quarantine as i learn danish (and also just have a love of linguistics), i love u
I have 2 uncles who can communicate through whistling
Joel Valdes Jr. Are them Gomeros ?
I read it as fisting instead of whistling...
@@beepboopily6285 welp
maruxa cabaleiro saco this comment had me in tears lmfao
I can communicate with my brother using whistles
We should raise a fund to send NativLang to different places around the world to study languages and make kick-ass UA-cam videos for us
Nah. Leave it to the professionals.
Will Tannery Would donate.
Do it.
@Reginna Francois So would I 💰.
@@reginnna I would also
Me: Random Clicking
That one African guy who speaks that language: Wondering why I want to go to North Korea to sell tacos from burger king to Kim Jong Un.
@Nexandr Nice one 😆👍🏻.
That’s linguistically insensitive
@@matcha.addict4139 what's that
@@matcha.addict4139 Relax man, take if from a South African, this was funny.
@@hlonelaqothelo4076 honestly, found it funny too😂😂😂
That was fun! I respect you for chasing these down and trying them out
4:18 So that's what the Minecraft villagers are saying! :P
4:19 tho
They're saying something like
/æ̰̃æ̰̃æ̥̃/.
Maksymilian Król any idea what that means?
Donovan Fulton Long time passed since I commented :o
Redhotsmasher Lol, it is hillarious
"You won't really need much practice though because english has them"
Too bad I'm not a native english speaker and my language doesn't have them. It's the most challenging sound in english to me
Try pronouncing "s" with the tip of your tongue between your teeth, that should get you θ (the sound pronounced in "think"; if that word sounds different from "sink", you're probably saying it right).
As for ð which is pronounced in the definite article "the", try pronouncing "z" with the tip of your tongue between your teeth and you will likely pronounce "the" the way it's usually pronounced - /ðə/.
To recap as succinctly as possible:
θ = "s" with the tongue between the teeth
ð = "z" with the tongue between the teeth
English isn't my first language, but when I came across this explanation, I mastered θ & ð INSTANTLY. Hope it helps some of you guys as well.
@@jirinaji As a native speaker of English, this comment fascinates me. I tried taking your advice, even though I know how to make the th sound, but I couldn't produce the th sound this way. I think this is probably because A) I probably pronounce the s differently than you and B) I don't think of the th as similar to an s. I am not knocking this method, if it helps you pronounce the th then by all means I encourage you to use it, but I thought I should share my own perspective on it as both a) a native speaker and b) somebody who struggled with this sound as a kid. While I didn't have any major speech impediments growing up, the th sound was tricky, and I mastered it slightly later than most native speakers do. I believe I was 10 or so when I could pronounce it, while most people get it down much earlier.
For me, the unvoiced th is a lot closer to an f, and the voiced th is a lot closer to a d. That's why in certain English accents you hear words like "fink" instead of "think", and "dis" instead of "this". As a kid when I had trouble with this sound, I would say "birfday" instead of "birthday", and "duh" instead of "the".
For me, making the unvoiced th is very similar to making the f, only instead of using your bottom lip, you use the tip of your tongue while your bottom lip is slightly forward. It's as if your mouth is moving to make the f sound and your tongue hits your teeth instead. The tongue does not go too far between the teeth, only the tip brushes against the top teeth, while the bottom teeth/lip are open and slightly protruded (if I try and close the bottom teeth or move them closer the sound almost becomes impossible). If you practice, try holding pitch on a long fffffffffff.... sound and switching back and forth between ffff and th. If your mouth is in the right position, the two sounds are extremely easy and almost seamless to switch back and forth between.
The voiced th sound is very similar and it can be made in the exact same position as the unvoiced th, but in regular practice, the position of the tongue is a bit in between the unvoiced th and the regular 'd' sound. That is, words like "this", "that", etc, have a little bit of a "tap" to them. You're not just vibrating the th, you're tapping slightly against the teeth, part of the tip hits the back of the teeth while the folds of the tongue are between the teeth; in fact, there's a little bit of tongue rounding going on in this gesture.
It seems the real secret to produce this sound is leaving enough space between the lips/teeth for the vibration to happen and getting the tip of the tongue just right to the point where it's simultaneously in between the teeth and slightly back against the teeth.
@@NoiseOverMusic Thanks for the feedback! What you described is surely a valid method of learning to produce the "th" sounds. For me just as for you, θ and ð sound a lot like f and d. I know full well that ð is often pronounced close to d as you pointed out. In fact, it took me many years to even notice that ð is an actual English sound distinct from d :D
When it comes to the production of "th" sounds, however, I'd say s and z aren't more different from them than f and d. I wonder what sounds you produced when following the instructions in my post if not θ and ð. Maybe I'm pronouncing these sounds differently than most native speakers. You could make sort of a θ sound even with half your tongue sticking out of your mouth and while it would sound noticeably different from the standard θ, you could still pronounce "thin" so that it would be distinguishable from "fin", "sin", "tin", "din", you name it. What I'm getting at is the difference between a phoneme and an allophone.
As you mentioned speech impediments, there is also an impediment related to the production of "s". Many small kids have trouble pronouncing this sound, producing θ instead (perhaps not the way you say it, but still). I even know 13-year-olds who say θ instead of s. That's the situation where I come from at least -
Czechia where we speak Czech. There are probably some people in your country who have a similar problem. It affects the pronunciation of "z", and even of other sounds like "n", but with s and z it's most noticeable. Czechs call this impediment "stepping on one's tongue" meaning that one's teeth are coming in contact with one's tongue when they shouldn't. In Czech, θ and ð are no valid sounds, they are just mispronounced s and z.
It's one of the most hated sounds in the world, at least from my experience in getting feedback from non-English speakers who are learning English. I can completely understand why it's so difficult to make. Most languages do not have their speakers force their tongue anywhere in between their teeth. Plenty have sounds that require the tongue to touch the back part of the teeth, but in between? No.
Same
idk why im subscribed before i even knew about this channel but this is fascinating
Thank you for making language fun. I experienced a severe trauma 2011 and before that I loved learning new languages. But after my trauma all my skills were gone, it was like I had stored everything in a storage that had been buried under quicksand and every little piece had to be pulled put just to be sucked down under again as soon as I wanted to look at it. I still have troubles storing new memories (it´s a good thing I learned english at a young age) and have completelt had to accept that I wont remember anything I learn, but I can still have fun trying to learn. Your videos help me having fun with languages - even though I won´t remember even 10% of what it´s about after I´m finished. Much love and appreciation from sweden.
I was wondering how much could I rely on your accents, but your "pirahã" pronunciation was really accurate, the ã is usually not well done by foreigners.
I had a double-take on this comment. For a second I thought you meant you WERE a Pirahã. There are only a few hundred of them, and I don't think many have UA-cam lol.
Which I allways think It's weird, since you Just have to use your nose for It
The nasal isn't very rare. Any Portuguese or French speaker can pronounce it with relative ease.
I’ve heard that my native Swedish, of all things, has a virtually unique sound in what we would call “sje-ljudet”, but Wikipedia tells me is spelled ɧ and described as a “voiceless postalveolo-velar fricative”. It’s marvellous fun to hear non-Swedish-speakers attempt to reproduce it.
That's right. It's virtually unique to Swedish. When I learned the language, it was by far the hardest sound. (Although the tje-ljudet and rd/rt were also hard.)
I've studied Swedish and what impresses me is how variable that phoneme is, dialectally speaking. Sure, in ✨rikssvenska✨ it's /ɧ/, but I've heard it pronounced /ʃ/ in dialects from near the Norwegian border (makes sense, Norwegians use that sound for cognates), /xʷ/, /ʍ/, and even plain /x/, which I believe is a Skåne ism, but I could be wrong
Ãn añ
@@Jujuworld0714 😂😂😂
Fascinating! Love the silhouette animation. Decades ago, of all the French teachers and professors I had, only one would explain to me how to position my tongue, lips, and air as specific just as you’ve done. To this day native speakers compliment my pronunciation.
I can't believe he didn't do "ř"
ř
When i saw the explanation of how you pronounce it when i went to Czech Republic 3 years ago I literally thought it was impossible for me to do it
but how?
4:16 minecraft villagers?
hhaaaa... (yes)
LoL
LMAO
hɹ̃˥˩
More like illagers.
4:19 Ah... The good ol' Waluigi phoneme...
That’s a Minecraft villager sound
@@rasmusdamkjr5270 not even close
hahahaha I love the way you animate. 1:40 had me dying of laughter with how you said "I see why this sound is rare" haha
These videos are so interesting - I've been watching through a lot of them since I found them about 20 minutes ago. The very well done captions are much appreciated! :)
Thank you for sharing your 2016 with me! Let's end the year making odd sounds. If you invented a language, would it have even odder phonemes? Dibs on any good ones.
I call labiodental plosives!
NativLang two words: pharyngeal plosive
Where are the linguolabial consonants?
It's not a conlang, but Archi has an ejective labiovelar lateral affricate (k͡ʟ̝̊ʷʼ). And if that doesn't break the IPA, I've always wanted to try out things like rounded linguo-labial lateral fricatives or the apico-uvular click.
What percentage of the world's languages have breathy voiced consonants? I've yet to meet anyone outside South Asia who can pronounce any of them.
"another rare sound found all over the world"
My Alexa just crashed
Thanks
😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂
Fun fact: in Sicilian (an Italian dialect) the sound at 5:14 combined with tilting your head slightly up, is used to say "no"
Wow we do exactly the same in Egypt ..
I get better at producing these sounds every time I rewatch this video. Kind of satisfying to hear the huge progress after not even coming close to making any of them sound correctly the first time(s) (btw my native language, German, has almost none of them either).
I came here for czech Ř. A very cool sound, I think.
You don't have to speak about Ř, everybody knows it's winner. :-D
@@Pidalin its the same as Rz / ż in polish?
@@sometator It was historically the same, but in Polish (except some dialects) this sound has completely degraded into an ordinary Ž sound.
@@sometator In Polish it sounds like R and Ž combinated or something like that, in Czech it's one short and strong sound. So RZ sounds as Ř when little kid can't pronounce that.
Yep, disappointed to not see it on the list, considering only one 10million nation speaks it. :D
When you can pronounce *θ,* but you can't pronounce *ð* :(
Wait how
@@TheJopeToons When your vocal cords have snapped.
Just voice your θ and it will be a ð
I can pronounce both of them, even though there are not used in my language.
basically just do θ but add voice.
These videos- it's always fun to find the vast array of sounds I didn't know I could make
Fascinating work. Thks a bunch.
you have to try to explain ㄲ ㅃ ㄸ ㅆ. I can never explain it to my friends...
최세훈 whats there to explain ㅇㅁㅇ
加油我支持你
glottal stop, then the sounds are said
최세훈 it helps for me to think of it like Spanish lol. ㄲ like que, since we wouldn’t pronounce it with a hard K sound, just as ㄲ isn’t ㅋ
IPA doesn't help at all, because they just use some weird diacritic for a feature I've never heard of
You could as well mention the Welsh voiceless alveolar lateral fricative [ɬ] that is typologically rare amongst european languages.
Caleb Sousa Do you have a video in which a person makes that sound? Since it's practically impossible for a non-welsh speaker like me to know how it is pronounced, I wanna know how it sounds.
+Brandon Karstark Basically you form an "L" sound with your tongue, but instead of blowing over your tongue, you blow around it. Here's a video about it ua-cam.com/video/hQBGOb7iQZ0/v-deo.html
Righ Geal Brigado.
Somebody learned how to use a dictionary
Lewis Williams And it probably wasn't you, because you still don't know the difference between the meaning of a word (which is what we see in the dictionary) and the spelling (which was what I asked about), ☺.
Wonderful, more of this please.
4:19 Villager soundin'-
Also, we're really used to the clicking even as just simple English speakers, as we tic a lot by making lots of sounds with our mouth. Usually beatboxing comes along.
I was wondering: could you do a collab with Langfocus in the future? You both have videos about both languages in general (like this one) and languages in particular, but you tend to be make more of the first while Langfocus makes more of the second.
The main reason I ask this is because on both channels I see a LOT of requests about languages or language traits in one comment section that's covered on the other channel. It's not just you two who would benefit from exchanging subscribers, but it's especially the subscribers that would benefit from it since now they stop asking about Romanian here or Hungarian on langfocus.
Your styles are vastly different, but I think you can make it work. Take, for example, a video on proto-indo-european. You guys talk about the spread, the sounds, the anything, and Paul talks about how the language actually worked (as far as we know) and how it connects certain languages to vastly different ones within the indo-european language group (like how 'stan' connects the Persian 'stan' (= land) to the german Stadt (= city) and the English stand and the Japanese stando (oraoraoraoraoraora)).
I think it's the perfect topic since it's both a language family (Paul's cup of tea) and has huge historical linguistic implications (your cup of tea).
Maybe have a guest apperance of Xidnaf. He needs to redeem his old PIE videos and he needs a drive to get back in making videos. Even Hank Green encouraged him lately on Twitter.
PrimaPunchy I don't know really if you meant that Japanese was an Indo-European language but if you did, well it isn't, besides "stando" seems like an English loanword because in Japanese it's a big no-no to have two consonants or more in a row, even worse if it's at the beginning of the word, so it doesn't look native Japanese at all
It was a jojo's bizarre adventure's joke. It's one of the most famous manga. It comes indeed from English.
PrimaPunchy All of these suggestions sound awesome.
PrimaPunchy Especially bringing Xidnaf back.
PrimaPunchy lol then I'm way off with the references :P is that a joke making fun of the Proto Indo European theory?? (Like putting it off by bringing non IE languages to the comparison table to descredit it) because I know more than 4 people who don't believe in it being a real family
The creaky nasal cracked me up. Omg. That language would be hilarious to listen to.
So would you
Owned
All the nasals made my sinuses hurt just thinking about them 🤭
As a french it was easier to make the sound “gb” than the dental fricatives very interesting video through. I subscribed
I remember when we were kids, we'd drive out West to Utah every year or two for vacation, and when we passed through Ship Rock, New Mexico, we stopped at a McDonald's or something and heard some local native americans in conversation, and whatever language it was made abundant use of the 'clicks'. That WHOLE summer, my brother just went around pronouncing miscellaneous words with random clicks. He was great at being an annoying 10 year old. :) But I remember the impact it had on me, knowing there were potentially 'countless' sounds we could make as humans, and that they each were imbued with 'meaning', that they weren't just 'decorative' I guess.
I came to linguistics via music transcription, and the abundance of overlap in concepts is incredibly useful.
(I just discovered your channel today but I'm loving it, BTW!) :)
If you can't whistle, can you not speak the whistle language at all?
If you can use your fingers as "reeds", then maybe? Or maybe due to isolation and localized evolution, the ability to whistle is just inherent? Interesting question.
If you are born and raised there, you will be able to pick up the whistle as naturally as you or I learn English's vowel and consonant sounds from the people around us as children.
GoldenKingStudio
Maybe, but I've tried to be able to whistle since I was a kid, and could never really do it.
Rezzy Yeah, but you trying since being a child is not the same thing as actually learning something as a child.
Your trying is just your own effort without much external influence. The people speaking whistle language would be immersed in whistles around them since they were born.
I'd say the Czech "ř" sound is quite unique
This video makes me remember my university phonology class. So many times the class just devolved into a cacophony of unintelligible sounds as every individual student tried say each random phoneme that showed up in our text book.
Eeeeeh :D I grew up in a village called Gbeduuri (Mampruli language) in Ghana, it's really nice to see that phoneme mentioned. ... I also went to school in Cote D'Ivoire, double shout-out time.
Wow you are so talented to be able to pronounce all those sounds! Awesome video, and it's also very helpful to me.
1:23 The pronouciation of the "ã" is freaking delightful for my brazilian ears, congrats m8
Not to mention my Yoruba ears.
❤️ I'd like to hear a word or phrase of each. I really enjoyed the visuals. I could follow along, & remembered making these sounds when younger.
I didn't know your mum is so good at pronouncing the breathy æ sound, congrats!
Interesting that some of these odd sounds are not used in (say) English but English speakers use them "outside" language, e.g. the "tsk, tsk" to signify disapproval.
OMG I just realized how tsk is pronounced. I always thought people actually said tsk and it made no sense to me. The sounds tsk however doesn't at all sound like how it's spelled
@@lucaslucas191202 Omg I remember you from our mother. You know I know you know. What a thing
@@vagabaassassina3461
Oh wtf. Is Derek the guy that was seen with you as in seen? I don't think our mother remembers
Heh, we use it too! Only it's spelled as cık.
@@lucaslucas191202 Yeah. Just like when the dog jumped
No mention of the Czech Řř?
"In Czech it is used to denote [r̝], a raised alveolar non-sonorant trill. Its manner of articulation is similar to other alveolar trills but the tongue is raised; it is partially fricative. It is usually voiced, [r̝], but it also has a voiceless allophone [r̝̊] occurring in the vicinity of voiceless consonants or at the end of a word." (according to wiki, I am no linguist, I just know that foreigners struggle with it so bad... and even some natives).
Is it like Mandarin Chinese [r]? Like [ri] for "sun/ day" & [re] "hot" & [ren] "man"...?
@@Jumpoable I do not know Chinese that well, but I doubt it.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voiced_dental,_alveolar_and_postalveolar_trills#Voiced_alveolar_fricative_trill
@@NetAndyCz no thanks, i'm fine with that.
2:22 THANK YOU SO MUCH!! IM STUDYING ARABIC AND I COULD TELL THE TWO 'H' APART BUT NOT HOW TO PRONOUNCE THEM. I GUESSED ARABIC JUST BEFORE YOU MENTIONED IT AND IM SO HAPPY!!
Its ح
The sound “ང” in Tibetan is very interesting... it is pronounced nga and you make it by closing the back of your through and letting air through as you push air from the back of your nasal cavity
you mean ŋ̊
Like “ñ”?
It's just a velar nasal (the English "ng" sound), so not rare at all.
just wait until you have heard about welsh. i kind of like it because it's interesting. try looking it up on wikipedia.
This one [ ǚ ] is interesting. It is used in romanized chinese.
Haha. Its just the French u, spoken with a down-then-up tone
>:)
it looks like a face
@@arvinroidoatienza7082 Yeah it's just the French *U*. BTW I study Mandarin Chinese
my dyslexic ass thought you said roman cheese
Randomly came across this video, and learned something new! I love how you explain how to make the sounds, it's fun to play along haha
i love these little animations :3
Wow, I was always fascinated by the south african click languages and couldn't comprehend how humans can produce such sounds, but with your explanation I feel like I get it for the first time
Czech ř is lacking. It sounds like tongue thrilled r and ž (like j in french journal) at the same time.
Yeah, it something difficult even for polish/rusdian speakers.
@@daniel5730 Mandarin Chinese has it too.
@@Jumpoable That's not [r̝] (aka the ř sound in Czech), that's [ʐ] (the Mandarin r)
Agree with this, I've heard Czech people admit it's a difficult sound 😂
5:26 that upside down k "A velar click" is judged to be impossible
I can do it, but just apical
a "back-released velar click" is possible, and is even a phoneme in an African language or two, and also uses the same symbol
@@yodamaster445 that’s completely different
how do you pronounce it? also, what are you doing here?
It's not impossible. It just doesn't occur in any language.
Greek is quite easy to pronounce for a native English speaker, except for χ and γ (the sounds you mention are found in Arabic). We also have the θ and δ from English, which some foreigners find difficult.
Your videos are always intriguing. I can't wait to see more in 2017!
Yeah, me too. Can't wait to 2017!
Who else is watching this while sick, and becoming really bothered by the mere idea of trying to make these sounds right now?
Me
Me
oh I see, you just made me make weird sounds alone in the night for 6 minutes straight.
Thank you so much for not dismantling "gb"!
This is one of the best channel I've discovered in 2016!
5:40 WTF "Della Morte" means "Of the Death" in Italian ahahah That's one hell of a cool surname
Ruben yes it is!
Same in Spanish but it is "de la muerte"
de la mort in french
da morte in portuguese
*James of the Death*
4:37 I just found out that an Asteroid and it's moon are named after some stuff in the Khoisan group of languages (both in the Jul'hoansi language), and that it reminded me of this video.
A specific click is used in most of the Balkans(at least here in Bulgaria for sure) to denote a clear and descisive "no". It's not even part of the language strictly speaking, but it's wierd how we can make so many sounds and some languages decide just not to use most of them.
My tribe, a part of the Salish language group, has sounds like kw, ł (essentially a lisped s), a size click sound, and many different glottal sounds and stops. It’s very different from English, and has plenty of sounds I’ve never heard of. Learning it has been an adventure but really fun!
Many indigenous languages have those sounds
@@matcha.addict4139 what?
Exclamation mark, X O B I L E.
I wonder how many gets that reference.
I went to a Casino in South Africa and that was the guy's name
valcarni1 Was he the card dealer? Man, they totally just put him there to confuse you.
masterimbecile !xobile
anythingnew Wod del ehll are you doing?! You're waseding de food!!
*PLEASE DO NOT YELL IN THE CASINO*
I know this is kind of a weird thing to thank someone for, but thank you for your videos because they have convinced me that I don’t like linguistics and I won’t try for a degree in it.
Possibly the greatest opening 5 seconds of any video ever
Your channel is delightfully accurate, indeed I studied the word "sieso" in my ethnolinguistics class back in South America.
2:20 I was going to say Swiss German, but yeah Arabic works too.. #nolinguisticloveforSwissGerman
Awww, underrepresented!
Which dialect of Swiss has /ħ/? I've never heard of anything like that before.
+Mʌlt Net I think Hebrew has it too not sure about the modern one tho
Soldier: 76 Ancient Hebrew made a distinction between uvular, pharyngeal, and glottal fricatives, but in modern the Hebrew the uvular and pharyngeals merged.
Mʌlt Net Yeah it was subject of mockery in the late 20th century, about the Israelis when they speak in Arabic they replace ħ (and sometimes k) with x.
My Hebrew name has a yud and a chet in it, and it drives English speakers crazy. On the other hand, I have never been able to master the Spanish double R sound "rr". My tongue doesn't roll like that.
We sang a song in choir in university called "Kpanlongo", whose name referred to a dance. When the dance was mentioned in its lyrics, it was transcribed as "palogo". I always suspected that the "kp" was actually a k͡p sound, and that the "n"s in the title actually just indicated nasality.
are you kidding?
@@alyanahzoe no I’m not! If you search the web for “kpanlongo choir music”, I’m sure you’ll find what I’m talking about.
NativLang: rarest sounds Czech: Hold my beeř 😉
Exactly. Good one. 👌🏻👍🏻