So, zis iz eet! Our show about those two hissy consonants, /s/ and /z/. Phil and Eric chat their way through a discussion of sibilance, and spend a lot of time talking about so-called-gay-speech, and other aspects of what may be perceived as the continuum of masculinity/femininity in speakers, regardless of gender, sexual orientation or affectional preferences. Show Notes: Voiced/ Voiceless Apical/Laminal Alveolar Fricative (sibilant) Formation Either tongue tip up or down, narrowing behind the ...
May 25, 2010•1 hr 38 min
Goodness! It's our lucky thirteenth episode, and Phil and Eric tackle the /ʊ/ vowel and the lexical set foot. We talk about symbols used to represent it in phonetic notation, spellings of the sound, the history of the sound, splits and mergers in various accents of English, and interesting "goodies" about the sound represented by upsilon . Show Notes: Description “short oo” near-close near-back rounded vowel Formation Do it like this: [slide between /u/ and schwa?] Handbook of the IPA ...
May 10, 2010•1 hr 20 min
What the...??? Is it an episode dedicated to all thing dubya? Why yes: in this wepisode, we, Phiw and Ewic, wallow in what is well-know to be one the the most wonderful consonants in English, nay, in the world. We tackle such topics as Voiced Approximants and Voiceless Fricatives, especially labio-velar ones. Unfortunately, due to technical difficulties, Eric's recording stopped half-way through, and so we had to re-record the end of the show. This proved to be a good thing, we believe, making t...
May 03, 2010•1 hr 4 min
Ooooo! It's the goosonomia episoode! Yes, in the eleventh instalment of Glossonomia, Phil and Eric talk for a very long time (1:36) about the [u] vowel. In it, we talk about the evolution of the /u/ sound, and how historical /u/ turned into /aʊ/(as in "house"), while historical /oː/ turned into /u/ (as in "room"). We also discuss: • goose fronting, especially in California, but also in South Africa • yod, and its use in /ju/ and /jʊ/ • yod dropping after coronals, as in "...
Apr 17, 2010•1 hr 36 min
This is our "Fava" episode: great with a nice Chianti (you can leave the liver out, Dr. Lecter...) Hosts Phil Thompson and Eric Armstrong talk their way through the sounds /f/ and /v/ in this episode. As it is our first episode dealing with fricative sounds, we spend quite a while talking through their nature. Show Notes [Don't have any time to go through the show this week and edit the show notes. These are the things Phil and I collected before we began recording; it's a bit messy, b...
Apr 05, 2010•1 hr 14 min
Word! Shut. Up. This week, Phil and Eric explore the mid-central vowel space, including [ɘ, ɵ, ə, ɜ, ɞ, ɐ] and even discuss the (completely theoretical at this point) new symbol [a]. Yes, we do explore the strut and nurse lexical sets, too. Show Notes: Phonemes are “the idea of a sound”, the building blocks we have in our minds that help us construct words. One can say they are the smallest segment of sound employed to form meaningful contrasts between words. Phones, on the other hand, is the ph...
Mar 28, 2010•1 hr 25 min
Seeing how his daughter, Maja, was studying Spanish and knew a lot more about seseo/ceceo/distinción than we did, Phil chose to interview her for a short briefing on the ins and outs of the “th” sound ipa [θ] in Spanish....
Mar 22, 2010•16 min
Think about this: hosts Phil Thompson and Eric Armstrong are delving into the sounds represented by the spelling “th” this week. In the course of it, they’ll chat about how the sound is rare in the world’s languages, how it’s formed in various varieties of English around the world, and its use in Spanish. Show Notes: The show starts with an Audio Comment from Erik Singer re barred i and they guys’ response. "th" sounds In the world's languages, they are fairly rare. 40 languages appear...
Mar 22, 2010•1 hr 19 min
It’s the “Schwapisode” this week! Hosts Phil Thompson and Eric Armstrong get right into the middle of things (or at least, into the middle of the vowel space) to talk about the mid-central vowel, the most popular vowel in the English language. Show Notes: Schwa, the term: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schwa#The_term " The word schwa is from the Hebrew word shva (שְׁוָא shewa’, /ʃəˈwa/, modern pronunciation: shva /ʃva/), which designates the Hebrew niqqud vowel sign shva,” “that in modern Heb...
Mar 15, 2010•51 min
Episode 6 sees Eric and Phil dissecting the final pair of stop/plosive sounds in English: /k/ and /ɡ/. As always, we work our way around the task of describing the sounds, their history, and usage in the course of about an hour and 10 minutes. Show Notes: Correction: Phil referred to "Findlay" as derived from Finn's Lea, but it turns out that it's from Gaelic, and that means Fionnlagh – "fair warrior." Bradley would have been a much better example: Brad=broad and Lea=meadow. ...
Mar 08, 2010•1 hr 11 min
Eric Armstrong and Phil Thompson whistle a happy tune: this week, we’re exploring the vowel sound found at the end of words like "happy." Show Notes: • for some this is perceived as being an /i/ sound, for others an /ɪ/ sound, and for many (especially around where I live) a sound that is neither of those. What's going on here? • FORMATION: Weak Close-ish Front-ish Unrounded Vowel • SPELLING: Group A "y" (itchy, angry, silly etc.), "ie" (sortie, boogie, movie), "...
Feb 24, 2010•41 min
We’re digging into /t/ and /d/ on Glossonomia this week. Hosts Phil Thompson and Eric Armstrong discuss how we make this cognate pair of consonants, voiceless and voiced alveolar stop/plosives . Today’s Topics include: • the concept of Lenition (softening), in particular, the terms Fortis vs. Lenis . • Voice Onset Time (VOT): when does the voicing begin? Normally, /t/ in English is aspirated at the beginning of stressed syllables. In English, initial /d/ in stressed syllables is, essentially voi...
Feb 22, 2010•1 hr 6 min
This is it. Hosts Phil Thompson and Eric Armstrong chat about the phoneme /ɪ/ and the lexical set ‘kit’. On the way, they discuss the history of the vowel, compare it to the /i/ ‘fleece’ vowel, and /ə/ ‘schwa,’ delve into accent variations of ‘kit’, pin/pen in the American South, and the traditional usage of the terms “dialect” and “acccent” in North American theatre. Phil, at one point says that “language is a dialect with a navy.” He was, of course, referring to the famous Yiddish quote from M...
Feb 15, 2010•23 min
In this episode, we talk about the stop plosive consonant pair [p] and [b], also known as bilabial plosives , “exploding” consonants made with both lips. In the course of our chat, we talk about twinned or “geminate” consonants, vowels vs. consonants, “the river of speech,” voice onset time (VOT) , aspiration , and other topics!...
Feb 09, 2010•33 min
In this episode of Glossonomia, Phil and Eric introduce the new podcast and talk through the “ee” vowel (IPA [i]), found in the lexical set word fleece. We cover the history of the sound and its spellings, how the symbol appears in the IPA, and variations commonly heard. The vowel is also known as “Cardinal 1”, hence the picture of the lip-position from Daniel Jones . You can hear Jones speak the vowel himself on the site of the Phonetics Group of the Universiteit Utrecht. [This episode was our ...
Feb 06, 2010•34 min
