I think this might be a first for this site. Yes, we have a lot of intelligent talk over here about a variety of different subjects, but I don't think anyone has ever tried to legitimately teach a course here, or at least offer the kind of material that would be used in such a thing.
But you've interpreted the title correctly if you guessed that I plan to give a crash course in basic linguistics here.
What Is Linguistics?
Linguistics is not just the learning of many languages, although many linguists do end up polyglots. Linguistics is the scientific study of language and all the processes behind it, and it can be a very broad subject. Most of what I'm going to put in this thread consists of fundimentals that one starts with when first venturing into linguistics. We won't be talking about things like Optimality Theory or Transformationalist Minimalism or anything hardcore-theoretical like that; more like how to analyse and describe any language. The five areas I'll focus on are:
- Phonetics (properties of speech sounds). More specifically, I'll be focussing on articulatory phonetics, which pertains to the production of speech sounds within the vocal tract.
- Phonology (how speech sounds pattern).
- Morphology (word formation).
- Syntax (sentence formation).
- Typology (cross-linguistic language tendencies).
Of course, if you were to go deeper, not only would you see subdivisions in these (such as auditory phonetics, acoustic phonetics, generative phonology, generative grammar vs. functionalist grammar, etc.) but there are also other areas of linguistics.
- Sociolinguistics (the interaction between language and culture)
- Psycholinguistics (the interaction between language and other cognitive processes)
- Semantics (I think you can figure this one out)
- Pragmatics (language in usage)
- Discourse (the structuring of language beyond the level of the sentence, this and pragmatics often go together)
- Applied Linguistics (how to put the theory into practice; this would include things like principles of translation, principles of literacy, application of phonetics and phonology for speech-pathological purposes, application of auditory phonetics for audiology and hearing, etc. For Christians this also includes things like hermeneutics - the science of interpretation - which ties in very closely to things like semantics, pragmatics, and even sociolinguistics)
- Historical and Comparative Linguistics (I think you can figure this one out as well; a lot of the basic analytical methods are actually rooted in phonology, since it is regular sound correspondences that tip one off to common parentage of two words from separate languages. I think this is my favourite part of linguistics overall!)
I'll start with phonetics, but I need to scrounge up some sound files before I do. You can't really talk about individual sounds without having sound files to link them to!
Phonetics
Phonetics is, as I said, the study of the properties of speech sounds. Basically, you study the final product, looking at the different speech sounds individually to discern how they are produced, and when not done just for curiosity, it is done with the purpose of eventually being able to mimic the sounds. That's what articulatory phonetics in particular is good for, and that's what will be included here.
First, let's lay down some groundwork.
The International Phonetic Alphabet
This is what linguists use to write words down, even when there's no written form of the language. It's been in development for well over a century now, having first been proposed back in 1887 and having had several changes made to it since. I'm going to have to use the nocode tag a lot in the phonetics section as well, because in IPA, phonetic transcriptions are written using square brackets. All 26 letters of the Roman alphabet are in it, although they don't all sound like they would in English. The ones that sound exactly the same in every scenario are [b], [d], [f], [g], [h], [l], [m], [n], [s], [v], [w], and [z]. Ones that sound like English in certain contexts are [k], [p], and [t], ones that sound close to English are [a], [o], and [u], and ones that sound nothing at all like their English spelling counterparts are [c], [e], [i], [j], [q], [r], [x], and [y].
Just to get your feet wet, here's a standard IPA chart. If you don't understand everything, don't worry; this will all be revealed in time.
Consonants: places of articulation, and the structure of the vocal tract
This is one of a few things I'm going to add that isn't straight from memory (the history of the IPA is another such thing) - it's a vertical cross-section of the vocal tract. I can't draw worth crap, so here it is.
These days, when first explaining places of articulation, phonetics profs have a strong tendency to start with the lips and go down the tract. This is evident on standard IPA charts as well. While classifying places of articulation can sometimes get incredibly precise to the point of being nitpicky, there's a more basic set of classifications that phoneticians will use in most cases:
Bilabial - using both lips to produce the sound.
Labiodental - upper teeth against lower lip to produce sound.
Linguolabial - tongue-tip against upper lip to produce sound.
Dental - tongue tip between the teeth
Alveolar - you know that big bump behind your teeth, centred in your mouth? That's the alveolar ridge.
Postalveolar - behind the alveolar ridge. There are three subtypes of these:
- Palato-Alveolar; the body of the tongue is right behind the alveolar ridge
- Alveolo-Palatal; the body of the tongue approaches the alveolar ridge and the back of the tongue is up against or close to the hard palate; the tongue tip is lowered somewhat
- Retroflex - same place as palato-alveolar, but with the tongue curled back further
Palatal - back of the tongue against or related to the hard palate
Velar - back of the tongue against or related to the soft palate (velum)
Uvular - back of the tongue against or related to the uvula (the punching bag thingy in the back of your throat)
Pharyngeal - in the throat between the uvula and the vocal folds; these are the only sounds that use the root of the tongue.
- Includes epiglottals, which are made with a flap just above the vocal folds.
Glottal - no usage of the tongue at all, completely relating to the vocal folds.
So you ask, "what about nasal sounds?" Those are included in manners of articulation.
- Plosives (oral stops) mean a complete stop is made to the airflow, and the sound is made when that stop is released. Unreleased plosives occur utterance-finally fairly commonly.
- Fricatives are made when the airflow is restricted to the point of friction, causing noise.
- Affricates are a combination of a plosive and a fricative, where a quick plosive followed by a fricative release results in a single sound. Note: these aren't to be confused with aspirated plosives. More on those later.
- Nasals (nasal stops) mean that the airflow is stopped in the mouth but the velum is raised, allowing air to freely pass through the nose. Pharyngeal and glottal nasals are impossible.
- Approximants form when the airstream is restricted, but not to the point of creating friction. The approximants near the back of the mouth more or less always have an equivalent vowel.
- Flaps require rapid contact from and release from a particular protruding surface and as such cannot be produced in certain places of articulation; palatal, velar, purely pharyngeal (that is, with no epiglottis), and glottal flaps are impossible.
- Trills are basically extended sequences of flaps. Rather than just quick contact, the tongue is held close enough to the point of contact that the airstream causes the tongue to make rapid on-off contact with the surface. Again, in certain contexts they are impossible, and trying to do it will merely result in a fricative or an approximant.
There are extensions of these basic manners as well.
- When a sound is lateral, it means that the airstream goes around the sides of the tongue. Fricatives, affricates, approximants, and flaps can be lateral.
- Sibilants (or stridents, or grooved fricatives) are formed when the air is pushed towards the sharp edge of the teeth via a groove in the tongue, resulting in an extra noticeable layer of noise. Only alveolar and post-alveolar sounds can be strident, and stridence is only noticeable in fricatives and affricates. It should be noted, too, that the sibilant/non-sibilant difference never means sound contrast. I'll talk more about that when I get to phonology.
Airstream mechanics - voicing and "non-pulmonic" consonants
The last basic is voicing. Ever hear a [s] and a [z] and think "Hey, these are really similar! But how are the different?" The answer is voicing. Now the most basic types of voicing are voiced and voiceless - either the vocal folds are shut when the sound is made (voiceless) or they are vibrating (voiced). But the bigger picture is actually more complicated than that, since the vocal folds don't have bipolar function, with voicing ranging from breathy voice, which has almost no vibration of the vocal folds, to creaky voice, in which a stiffening of the cartilage in the larynx causes an almost complete blockage. I won't go into too great a detail here, as that would be beyond the scope of a basic linguistics class.
There is also aspiration, which is considered part of voicing. This happens when the glottis opens briefly after (or sometimes before) a plosive, causing an extra bit of air to be released. English has aspiration. I'll talk more about that when I get to phonology.
What has been brought up so far is the range of pulmonic consonants, where the source of the final airstream is the lungs. Sure, the air almost always comes from the lungs, but sometimes the airstream is held up en route and therefore the final airstream source is either partially or fully from elsewhere. These are the "non-pulmonic sounds."
The most common kind of non-pulmonic sound is called an ejective. These are formed when the glottis shuts before a plosive then opens during its release, causing the air to rush out and producing a "heavy-hitting" variation of a plosive, affricate, or in rarer cases even a fricative. These are always voiceless, and limited to plosives, affricates, and fricatives. Rather than having a pulmonic airstream, these are said to have a glottalic airstream because the glottis is the final source of the air. Ejectives are widespread in terms of languages in which they are spoken, but few major languages have them and they are noticeably absent from European languages, if you don't count the Caucasus.
Implosives are always stops, and they're what I was referring to when I said "partially from elsewhere." They have an ingressive glottalic airstream - meaning that air rushes inward at the opening of the glottis rather than outward - caused by the larynx being lowered during production as the glottis is closed, but there is also an egressive pulmonic airstream. The odd combination results for something of a gulping sound, and they are regularly voiced. While they do occur in languages elsewhere (a particularly noteworthy case of this is Sindhi, a major language of southern Pakistan), they are most commonly found in sub-Saharan Africa.
And then there are clicks, which have a lingual airstream. This is what I mean when I say the air almost always initially comes from the lungs. They don't with clicks. Instead, the tongue blocks off the flow at the soft palate and the sound comes from the release of a vacuum created after the articulator is released along with the tongue on the velum. These are generally somewhat loud, although dental clicks aren't; languages that use these in everyday meaningful speech are exclusive to Africa and almost exclusive to the southern quarter of the continent; there was one attested language in Australia with clicks, but it is a) a created register and b) extinct. Clicks can be heard outside of the realm of actual words in our culture, as dental and alveolar lateral clicks are used to call animals, and dental clicks are used to show pity or disapproval (this was eventually written down as tsk-tsk).
Secondary articulations and double articulations
Occasionally you'll get times when there is a secondary element to an articulation. The sound [w] (spelt with the same letter in English and a number of other languages) is probably the most common example of this, as it has a primary velar articulation with a secondary labial articulation - the lips are rounded. French has a similar sound phonetically, with a primary palatal articulation and a secondary labial articulation, denoted by the symbol [ɥ]. These are both examples of "labialisation." There's actually a more common secondary articulation than this (although labialisation is quite common) and that is palatalisation; this is also the name of a very widespread phonological assimilation process. (More on that later.) East Slavic languages (Russian/Ukrainian/Belarusian/Rusyn) are ready examples of this.
But then you have situations where two places of articulation are hit by exactly the same manner at more or less exactly the same time. This is double articulation, where the articulations are equally audible and equally important. Most of these are either plosives or nasals, and the process is most common in West Africa. I cringe at people pronouncing NHL hockey player Kyle Okposo's last name. :p In English our usual tendency is to treat it as two separate consonants, but given how the co-articulated version sounds, I've heard more commentators treat the velar half of that labial-velar stop like it didn't even exist! Examples of languages that have this in their very names are the Liberian language Kpelle and the Nigerian language Igbo.
There is a hard-to-classify double-articulated fricative in Swedish, called the "sje-sound" in Swedish grammar literature and [ɧ] in the IPA.
Naming conventions for consonants
When writing the technical names for consonants (which you will have to do sometimes if you specialise in phonetics or phonology), the convention is generally voicing-place-manner. Sub-manners like "lateral" or "ejective" come between main place and main manner. The same is true of secondary articulations. Like this:
[k] is a voiceless velar plosive. [kʰ] is a voiceless aspirated velar plosive. [l] is a voiced alveolar lateral fricative. [ɫ] is a voiced velarised alveolar lateral fricative. [k͡p] is a voiceless labial-velar plosive, while [kʷ] is a voiceless labialised velar plosive.
Vowels
Vowels are generally voiced sounds produced with next to no tension, in the back half of the vocal tract. All languages have 'em.
There are three features that divide base segmental vowels up in a phonetic sense - tongue height, frontness/backness, and roundedness. The convention for these is obviously different, too. For example, [ɑ] is a low back unrounded vowel, while [y] is the high front rounded vowel, which is found in languages like French and Finnish.
There are two naming conventions for height, though. One can either use high, near-high, high-mid, mid, low-mid, near-low, and low, or close, near-close, close-mid, mid, open-mid, near-open, and open. The IPA prefers the latter in academia, but the former is good for starters or if you want to keep things simpler.
Post 4
And now comes the fun part - the sounds themselves! (I couldn't find a consistent sound chart for all of them - you'll have to search the individual sounds on Wikipedia, because most if not all have a sound file with them.)
Plosives
All languages have plosives. Clean voiceless plosives are the most common, although many of these can also be aspirated.
[p] - voiceless bilabial plosive. Occurs in a large percentage of languages. The English citation form is actually the aspirated [pʰ] but [p] does exist in certain environments (more about this in phonology); [pʰ] and [p] are considered different sounds in many Indo-Aryan languages, the Chinese languages, and Scottish Gaelic, among others. However, Standard Arabic lacks the sound, as do many regional Arabic dialects.
[t̼] - voiceless linguolabial plosive. Incredibly rare; only attested in disordered speech until it was discovered being used contrastively in a group of languages of Vanuatu. (Yes, I looked this one up.)
[t] - voiceless alveolar plosive. Citation form is aspirated in English. Almost every language has it, with Hawaiian being among the very few exceptions. As with [p] and also [k], the aspirated and non-aspirated variants are contrasted in Indo-Aryan languages, the Chinese languages, and Scottish Gaelic, among others. Can vary somewhat in placement, from dental to post-alveolar.
[t͡p] - voiceless labial-alveolar plosive. VERY rare; only decisively attested in one specific language in Papua New Guinea.
[ʈ] - voiceless retroflex plosive. Found primarily contrastively in Asia and the Pacific, especially in South Asia and Australia. Also occurs in Swedish and Norwegian.
[c] - voiceless palatal plosive. Exists in English as a variant of [k] happening before [i] and [e]. Considered a different sound in Hungarian and Albanian among others.
[k] - voiceless velar plosive. Citation form is aspirated in English. VERY common, almost as much so as [t] and more than [p]. Tahitian is a rare counter-example.
[k͡p] - voiceless labial-velar plosive. Fairly rare, occurring mainly in West and Central West Africa. NHL player Kyle Okposo has this sound in his last name, or at least in the original pronunciation thereof - his father is from Nigeria. Also occurs in the language name Kpelle.
[q] - voiceless uvular plosive. Occurs in a number of non-Indo-European languages, which are many but dispersed. Several Turkic languages, Inuktitut, a large number of Salishan languages (if not all of them), all Wakashan languages, many Northeast and Northwest Caucasian languages, some dialects of Arabic and Hebrew (indeed, it's posited that Biblical Hebrew had this sound), and several other indigenous languages of North America have this sound. Iranic languages have it as well, under influence from Arabic.
[q͡ʡ] - voiceless uvular-epiglottal plosive. Supposedly occurs in Somali; could actually just be a clean uvular plosive [q].
[ʡ] - voiceless epiglottal plosive. Quite rare. Occurs in Haida and Archi, and some linguists believe it occurs in Nuu-Chah-Nulth.
[ʔ] - glottal stop. Better understood as an absence of sound. Almost every word in human language that is perceived as beginning in a vowel rather actually begins with a glottal stop phonetically when at the beginning of an utterance. Many languages use this word-medially or finally as a contrastive sound. Believe it or not, English is among these. "Uh-oh" is transcribed [ʔʌʔɔw] phonetically in Western American/Canadian English.
Voiced plosives are less common than their voiceless counterparts, but still common.
[b] - voiced bilabial plosive. Occurs in numerous languages, including English.
[d̼] - voiced linguolabial plosive. Incredibly rare. Had to look this up, too. Attested in Vanuatu, and the Kakojo dialect of Bijago. And disordered speech.
[d] - voiced alveolar plosive. Occurs in numerous languages, including English. Can vary somewhat in placement, from dental to post-alveolar. Is the only voiced stop to occur in Finnish, as a variant of [t] in certain environments.
[ɖ] - voiced retroflex plosive. Occurs in languages of India, as well as in Swedish and Norwegian.
[ɟ] - voiced palatal plosive. Occurs primarily in Eastern Europe as a contrastive sound, most notably in Hungarian, Albanian, Czech, Slovak, and Latvian.
[g] - voiced velar plosive. Common, but the least frequent of the "common six plosives" ([p, t, k, b, d, g]).
[ɡ͡b] - voiced labial-velar plosive. Rare, primarily found in West and Central West Africa, as in the language names Igbo and Gbe.
[ɢ] - voiced uvular plosive. Quite rare. Attested in Mongolian, some dialects of Arabic (non-contrastive), and Canadian indigenous language Kwak'wala, among some others.
Fricatives
Very few languages lack fricatives phonetically, although some language families lack them contrastively. More on that in phonology.
[ɸ] - voiceless bilabial fricative. Not particularly common in contrast, although African language Ewe has it. But as a variant of other sounds it is surprisingly common, and occurs in Spanish and Japanese in this manner, among others.
[f] - voiceless labiodental fricative. Fairly common. Occurs in most Indo-European languages, including English, French, Italian, German, etc.
[̼θ] - voiceless linguolabial fricative. VERY rare. Only attested in Vanuatu.
[θ] - voiceless interdental fricative. Fairly rare. Occurs contrastively in English, Icelandic, Castillian Spanish, Albanian, Greek, and Bashkort, among others.
[s] - voiceless alveolar (grooved) fricative. Most common fricative. Most languages said to not have this sound are in the Pacific, and include Hawaiian and Maori.
[ɬ] - voiceless alveolar lateral fricative. Found primarily in North America, the Caucasus, and southern Africa, also attested contrastively in Welsh and some languages of East and Southeast Asia.
[ʃ] - voiceless palato-alveolar (grooved) fricative. Quite common. Most Indo-European and Turkic languages, and many indigenous languages of the Americas, have this sound.
[ʂ] - voiceless retroflex (grooved) fricative. Not super-common, but not exactly rare, either. Occurs in languages of India, North Germanic languages, Chinese languages, Polish, and the East Slavic languages (Russian/Ukrainian/Belarusian/Rusyn).
[ꞎ] - voiced retroflex lateral fricative. Attested only in Toda, a Dravidian language of southern India.
[ɕ] - voiceless alveolo-palatal (grooved) fricative. A bit less common. Occurs contrastively in Polish, Russian, Chinese languages, and some languages of the Caucasus; also attested in Japanese as a variant of [s].
[ç] - voiceless palatal fricative. Rare in contrast. Does, however, occur semi-frequently as a variant of another sound, even in certain English dialects (as a variant of [h]). German, Greek, Dutch, and Finnish among other such languages.
[ʎ̥˔] - voiceless palatal lateral fricative. Attested only in a couple of Afro-Asiatic languages of Central Africa.
[x] - voiceless velar fricative. Quite common. A number of Indo-European languages have this in dialectal inventory; Spanish, Russian, and Mandarin are three particularly major languages that have this sound. Old English had this sound.
[ɧ] - voiceless postalveolo-velar fricative. This one is rare and also somewhat controversial. It is only clearly attested in Swedish as the "sje-sound" which is written "sj." Officially it is considered a co-articulation of [ʃ] and [x], but this is still a point of argument amongst those who study Swedish phonetics and phonology. Supposedly also occurs in the Kölsch dialect in western Germany.
[ʟ̝̊] - voiceless velar lateral fricative. Attested in some Chimbu-Wahgi branch of the Trans New Guinea family, and also in Northeast Caucasian language Archi.
[χ] - voiceless uvular fricative. A rather harsh sound, not quite as common. Fairly common in indigenous languages of western North America, the Caucasus, the Middle East, and several dialects of German.
[ħ] - voiceless pharyngeal fricative. Fairly rare. Occurs mainly in Semitic languages and languages of the Caucasus, also in some Interior Salish languages.
[h] - voiceless glottal fricative. Occurs in a large variety of languages, English included.
And of course, your voiced fricatives as well:
[β] - voiced bilabial fricative. Is attested as a contrastive sound (most notably in Ewe) but occurs much more frequently as a variant of another sound, as in Spanish, Japanese, and Korean, among others.
[v] - voiced labiodental fricative. Occurs contrastively primarily in Europe, the Middle East, and Siberia, but is attested elsewhere. (I call this the "hard v.")
[ð̼] - voiced linguolabial fricative. VERY rare, attested only in Vanuatu.
[ð] - voiced interdental fricative. Fairly rare. Attested contrastively in English, Icelandic, Arabic, Bashkort, Welsh, and a number of indigenous North American languages. Also a variant in Greek, Spanish, and some dialects of Hebrew.
[z] - voiced alveolar (grooved) fricative. MUCH less common than its voiceless counterpart. Mainly found contrastively in Europe, Africa, and the Middle East.
[ɮ] - voiced alveolar lateral fricative. Quite rare; attested contrastively in Northwest Caucasian languages, Zulu, Xhosa, and a small number of other scattered languages from diverse families.
[ʒ] - voiced palato-alveolar (grooved) fricative). Not particularly common. Found contrastively in many Slavic languages, French, Portuguese, many Na-Dene languages, and various Turkic and Uralic languages. English has it as a variant of [s] or [z].
[ʐ] - voiced retroflex (grooved) fricative. Kinda rare. Occurs in Russian, Polish, Vietnamese, and Mandarin, among others.
[ʑ] - voiced alveolo-palatal (grooved) fricative. Very rare. Occurs in Chinese languages, Polish, Sorbian, and some Northwest Caucasian languages contrastively. Also occurs in some languages as a variant, such as Russian, Portuguese, and Catalan.
[ʝ] - voiced palatal fricative. Incredibly rare in contrast with other sounds - only attested contrastively in Scottish Gaelic and some Berber languages of Saharan Africa. A number of others have this as a variant.
[ɣ] - voiced velar fricative. Surprisingly common. Occurs contrastively in a number of Caucasian languages and languages of the Americas (especially North), and also in Scottish and Irish Gaelic, Arabic, and certain dialects of Hebrew, among others.
[ʟ̝] - voiced velar lateral fricative. Attested in some Chimbu-Wahgi branch of the Trans New Guinea family, and also in Northeast Caucasian language Archi.
[ʁ] - voiced uvular fricative. Occurs mainly in Europe, the Middle East, and North America; in Europe it is often referred to as the "guttural r" which is used in French, Portuguese, German, many dialects of Dutch, and Danish - in this regard it is also used in Hebrew and Inuktitut. It occurs in Turkic and various Caucasian languages contrastively as well.
[ʕ] - voiced pharyngeal fricative/approximant. Hard to tell in most cases whether there is friction or not since it is so close to the glottis and has no trilling feature. Fairly rare. Occurs contrastively in Arabic, Interior Salish and Wakashan languages (North America), and Caucasian languages. Is the consonantal equivalent of [ɑ].
[ɦ] - voiced (most often breathy-voiced) glottal fricative. Exists in numerous languages, but seldom contrasting with the voiceless [h].
Affricates
These are usually written with digraphs (that is, two symbols) connected by a ligature.
[p͡ɸ] - voiceless bilabial affricate. VERY rare. Unattested in contrast, and most of the languages in which it is attested - mainly on a dialectal level - are West Germanic (English, German, Dutch)
[̪p͡f] - voiceless labiodental affricate. VERY rare. Most of the languages it is attested in at all are West Germanic (German, Lëtzebuergesch, Bavarian) and it apparently also exists contrastively in Tsonga, one of the official languages of South Africa.
[t͡θ] - voiceless interdental affricate. Quite rare. Exists in a small number of indigenous North American languages - some Coast Salish languages have this sound, as do a few Na-Dene languages of the Northwest Territories in Canada.
[t͡s] - voiceless alveolar affricate. Very common, although non-contrastive in English. Best-known in contrast from German, Italian, Slavic languages, and Chinese languages; also exists in a number of indigenous languages of the Americas, the Caucasus, and southern Africa.
[t͡ɬ] - voiceless alveolar lateral affricate. Somewhat rare. Attested primarily in North American indigenous languages (especially in the west) and southern Africa, but also occurs in Icelandic, and Mexican Spanish (through borrowings from Nahuatl).
[t͡ʃ] - voiceless palato-alveolar affricate. Quite common - this is the English "ch" sound. Fairly widespread. Might actually be more widespread an affricate than [t͡s], which is typologically unusual.
[ʈ͡ʂ] - voiceless retroflex affricate. Rarer. Attested mainly in pockets of languages - Slavic languages (primary West and East Slavic), Northwest Caucasian languages, and Chinese languages.
[t͡ɕ] - voiceless alveolo-palatal affricate. Very rare in contrast (Chinese languages, Polish, and Serbo-Croatian, for example) but more common as a variant (Russian, Korean, even certain dialects of English).
[c͡ç] - voiceless palatal affricate. Very rare. Languages that use it often have the plosive [c] as a free variant of it. Some Samic languages of Northern Europe have this attested as contrastive, as does Hungarian.
[c͡ʎ̥˔] - voiceless palatal lateral affricate. Only a couple African languages have this sound contrastively.
[k͡x] - voiceless velar affricate. Quite rare. Most commonly seen in contrast in Southern Africa - Tswana for example.
[k͡ʟ̝̊] - voiceless velar lateral affricate. VERY rare. Attested contrastively in Archi and the Laghuu language of Vietnam.
[q͡χ] - voiceless uvular affricate. Very rare. Mainly found contrastively in the Caucasus and in the Pacific Northwest. I call this the "death rattle" sound. :p
[ʡħ] - voiceless pharyngeal-epiglottal affricate. Apparently attested in Haida, a language of British Columbia and Alaska. Otherwise unattested.
[ʔ͡h] - glottal affricate. Never occurs contrastively. Attested as a variant in Queen's English (aka Received Pronunciation) and certain dialects of Chinese languages.
And the voiced ones.
[b͡β] - voiced bilabial affricate. Unattested in contrast and very rare otherwise. Some British dialects and this one specific African language have it attested as a variant.
[b̪͡v] - voiced labiodental affricate. Very few languages have this attested in contrast, and these are primarily in southern Africa. Occurs in some West Germanic languages as a variant.
[d͡ð] - voiced interdental affricate. VERY rare and only attested as a variant in languages where dental variations of the alveolar plosive [d] or certain dental sound combinations occur.
[d͡z] - voiced alveolar affricate. Not the most common of sounds, but more common than most voiced affricates. Occurs regularly in languages of Eastern Europe - Slavic languages either have it contrastively (most South Slavic languages) or as a variant (East and West Slavic languages); also attested in Albanian, Caucasian languages, Hungarian, Italian, Armenian, and a few Chinese languages and dialects.
[d͡ɮ] - voiced alveolar lateral affricate. VERY rare, and not known to occur contrastively. Attested in Xhosa and Séliš (aka Kalispel-Flathead).
[d͡ʒ] - voiced palato-alveolar affricate. The most common voiced affricate, occurring in a wide range of locations.
[ɖ͡ʐ] - voiced retroflex affricate. Rare. Seen mainly in Slavic languages and languages of China.
[d͡ʑ] - voiced alveolo-palatal affricate. Rare, and usually seen as a variant. Contrastive in some Chinese languages, Polish, and Serbo-Croatian.
[ɟ͡ʝ] - voiced palatal affricate. VERY rare. Hungarian and Samic languages have it in free variation with the plosive [ɟ]. Some dialects of Albanian have it as well.
[ɡ͡ɣ] - voiced velar affricate. VERY rare and unattested contrastively.
[ɡ͡ʟ̝] - voiced velar lateral affricate. Attested contrastively only in Laghuu in Vietnam, and Hiw in Vanuatu.
[ɢ͡ʁ] - voiced uvular affricate. Unattested but considered possible.
[ʡ͡ʕ] - voiced pharyngeal-epiglottal affricate. Unattested but considered possible. How, I really don't know. I blame Eric.
Nasals
Nasals are typically voiced.
[m] - voiced bilabial nasal. Incredibly common, with very few languages (among them the ironically named Mohawk - in its own language it is Kanien’kéha; Rotokas also lacks it) not having it.
[ɱ] - voiced labiodental nasal. Almost nonexistent contrastively, but any language with both [m], and [f] and/or [v], WILL have this as a variant. Very hard to tell apart from [m] to my ears!
[n̼] - voiced linguolabial nasal. You guessed it. VANUATU!
[n] - voiced alveolar nasal. Incredibly common, with very few languages (among them Samoan and Rotokas) lacking it.
[n͡m] - voiced labial-alveolar nasal. VERY rare; only attested in one language of Papua New Guinea.
[ɳ] - voiced retroflex nasal. For the most part, limited to India, Australia, and Scandinavia. Vietnamese also has it as a variant.
[ɲ] - voiced palatal nasal. Surprisingly common, especially in Europe. A number of languages have this contrastively (most Romance languages, Hungarian, Czech, Slovak, most South Slavic languages, Irish Gaelic, Albanian) while others (including English) have this as a variant.
[ŋ] - voiced velar nasal. Not hugely common but not super-rare, either. Occurs frequently as a variant of [n] before velar plosives/fricatives/affricates. In languages where it occurs contrastively it is sometimes consigned to the part of a syllable after the vowel (as in languages like English; this is more common amongst Indo-European languages with the sound) but sometimes not (certain African languages, Samoyedic languages, some Caucasian languages, Chinese languages, several languages of the Philippines).
[ŋ͡m] - voiced labial-velar nasal. Rare, and primarily occurs in West and Central West Africa.
[ɴ] - voiced uvular nasal. Rarer, and usually occurs as a variant of [n] or [ŋ] preceding another uvular. Attested as contrastive in some Eskaleut languages (Inuktitut, Kalaallisut) and one language of Papua New Guinea.
(remember, anything beyond uvular is impossible for a nasal)
Voiceless nasals are usually variants, but not always. On rare occasion, they are contrastive. The Hmong-Mien language family is known for its voiceless nasals - heck, there's one even in the name of the family!
[m̥] - voiceless bilabial nasal. Occurs contrastively in the Hmong-Mien family, Burmese, Yupik, Shixing, Kildin Sami, and Mazatecan languages, and a few others.
[n̥] - voiceless alveolar nasal. Occurs contrastively in the Hmong-Mien family, Burmese, Yupik, Shixing, Kildin Sami, and Mazatecan languages, and a few others.
[ɳ̊] - voiceless retroflex nasal. Only occurs contrastively in one language of New Caledonia.
[ɲ̊] - voiceless palatal nasal. Occurs contrastively in the Hmong language, Burmese, Shixing, and the Mazatecan languages.
[ŋ̊] - voiceless velar nasal. Occurs contrastively in Burmese, Yupik, and Shixing, and Mazatecan languages.
Approximants
There are five approximants that are actually known to contrast with or at least differ from their fricative counterparts:
[ʋ] - voiced labiodental approximant. The "soft V" found in Dutch, North Germanic languages, Finnish, Czech, Slovak, and some South Slavic languages. Not particularly common outside of Europe, but it does occur.
[ɹ] - voiced alveolar/postalveolar approximant. Your stereotypical "English R," fairly rare and tends to be dialectal and a variant in the languages it does occur in. Primarily occurs in Indo-European languages, but is also attested in Burmese, Vietnamese, and Igbo. Is considered a vowel in some dialects of Mandarin.
[ɻ] - voiced retroflex approximant. Quite rare, mainly occurs in India and Australia, but is also attested in southern South America, and dialectally in certain Germanic languages, including English.
[j] - voiced palatal approximant. One of the two most common approximants, occuring in a wide number of languages; is the consonantal equivalent of [i]. (Written with "y" in English) Sometimes takes on noise and becomes [ʝ], but this is a variant.
[ɰ] - voiced velar approximant. Very rare contrastively, primarily occurring as a variant of [k], [g], or [ɣ]. The consonantal equivalent of [ɯ]. Turkish did have this, but has since lost it.
And then there're these gems:
[l] - voiced alveolar lateral approximant. VERY common. Often has a velarised variant; occasionally this [lˠ] is contrastive with [l] (Albanian, for example)
[ɭ] - voiced retroflex lateral approximant. Rare. Attested primarlily in Dravidian and North Germanic languages, also in Australia, and in Korean and Khanty.
[ʎ] - voiced palatal lateral approximant. Not really common, not really rare. A large number of Indo-European languages (of Europe, anyway) have this sound, as do Basque and Hungarian. Outside of Europe, the best examples are in Quechua, Aymara, and more neutral American and Canadian dialects of English.
[ɥ] - voiced labialised palatal approximant. VERY rare contrastively, occurring in Abkhaz and Iaai. (Not sure if there are others.) However, it is more common as a variant, with languages with the vowel [y] and [w] usually having it as a variant of [w] (such as some Chinese languages, Korean, and Shixing); occurs in French as a variant of [y].
[ʟ] - voiced velar lateral approximant. Acoustically almost indistinguishable from the velarised alveolar; the one that is simply velar is much rarer and attested only in the Pacific, and in Scots.
[w] - voiced labio-velar approximant. One of the two most common approximants, occurring in a wide variety of languages. Is the consonantal equivalent of [u].
[ʟ̠] - voiced uvular lateral approximant. Unattested contrastively but apparently possible, and tentatively attested as a variant in certain American Englishes. How, I don't know.
Contrastive voiceless approximants are generally very rare, as they tend to mainly occur as variants of their voiced counterparts following voiced plosives or affricates. The following-listed are only ones that are attested as contrastive.
[ʋ̥] - voiceless labiodental approximant. Attested contrastively only amongst English-speaking South Africans of Indian extraction.
[l̥] - voiceless alveolar lateral approximant. Usually a variant of [l], only attested contrastively in Shixing, Tibetan, and Moksha.
[ɭ̊] - voiceless retroflex lateral approximant. Attested contrastively only in the Iaai language of New Caledonia and the Dravidian language Toda.
[j̊] - voiceless palatal approximant. Attested contrastively in some Samic languages, Moksha, and Jalapa Mazatec (possibly other Mazatecan languages as well).
[ʎ̥] - voiceless palatal lateral approximant. Attested contrastively only in Shixing.
[ʍ] - voiceless labio-velar approximant. Attested contrastively in a number of English dialects (including Southern American English; these dialects preserve an audible contrast between the words "whine" and "wine," of which this is the one in "whine" ) and Hupa; Old English had this sound; many languages have this take on noise and become [xʷ] instead.
Flaps
As with approximants and nasals, these are usually voiced.
[ⱱ̟] - voiced bilabial flap. VERY rare - attested primarily in scattered African languages - and not yet proven to be contrastive in any language, rather being a variant of...
[ⱱ] - voiced labiodental flap. Quite rare - attested in scattered African languages, mainly in Central Africa.
[ɾ] - voiced coronal flap. Don't worry about the term "coronal" for now - I'll expand on that when I do phonology. The typical place of articulation for this alveolar, but it can also be post-alveolar or dental, and these never contrast. Anyway, these are somewhat common as an "r-sound" in language, as in Spanish, Turkish, and Arabic, and also as a variant in Russian. It does occasionally occur as a variant of [t] and [d] as well, as in North American Englishes, Estuary English, and Danish. There's even a nasalised variant of this - [ɾ̃] - that occurs in several North American Englishes as a merger of [n] and [t]. (It isn't as common in Canada.)
[ɺ] - voiced coronal lateral flap. VERY rare, the only major language with this sound is Japanese; occurs as a postalveolar in one particular dialect of Norwegian.
[ɽ] - voiced retroflex flap. As with most retroflex sounds, this is most common to North Germanic, and languages of India and Australia, but in the cases of the North Germanic languages it occurs as a variant of laterals.
[ɭ̆] - voiced retroflex lateral flap. Very rare; occurs primarily in South and Southeast Asia, the most notable contrastive example being Pashto.
[ʟ̆] - voiced velar lateral tap. Only attested in two languages of Papua New Guinea, and not contrastively; why it is able to be a tap on the soft palate is because air can still pass around the edges of the tongue, but the time of contact is still very short.
[ɢ̆] - voiced uvular flap. Very rare and never occurs in contrast. German, Dutch, and Limburgish are attested to have it.
[ʡ̮] - voiced epiglottal flap. Only attested in one language - Dahalo - and even there it isn't contrastive.
Voiceless flaps do occur, but only as variants. They've never been attested in contrast.
Trills
[ʙ] - voiced bilabial trill. Like mimicking a horse, except with voicing! :p Occurs in diverse languages on most continents, but is quite rare.
[r] - voiced coronal trill. Usually alveolar, and very common as an "r-sound."
[ɽ͡r] - voiced retroflex trill. VERY rare - attested contrastively only in three languages and tenuously in some dialects of Dutch.
[ʀ] - voiced uvular trill. Never contrasts with the fricative [ʁ], and is found as the "guttural R" of languages like French, Portuguese, German, some dialects of Dutch, and Hebrew, among others; Most of the languages in question are Indo-European.
[ʢ] - voiced epiglottal trill. Basically a growl; only attested as a speech sound in the Aghul language of Dagestan, Russia, and in some dialects of Arabic.
Voiceless trills are relatively rare in contrast. Only those attested in contrast are shown.
[r̥] - voiceless coronal trill. This does occur in contrast in some languages, such as Icelandic, Moksha, and Welsh.
[ʜ] - voiceless epiglottal trill. Patterns like a fricative; still quite rare, being attested in languages like Chechen, Dahalo, Haida, and some dialects of Arabic.
Ejectives
Ejectives come in three subtypes. There are ejective plosives, ejective affricates, and ejective fricatives. These are always voiceless. All are fairly rare, but ejective plosives and affricates are more common than ejective fricatives.
Ejective plosives
If a language has ejectives, it WILL have ejective plosives.
[p'] - bilabial ejective plosive. Found in scattered languages, but particularly common in the Americas, southern Africa, the Cape Horn area, and the Caucasus (including even Armenian, which is an Indo-European language, quite possibly the only one to have contrastive ejectives).
[t'] - alveolar/dental ejective plosive. While these are written with the same symbol in most cases, the Dahalo language of Kenya has both. Otherwise, in much the same way as the bilabial, these are particularly common in the Americas, southern Africa, the Cape Horn area, and the Caucasus.
[ʈʼ] - retroflex ejective plosive. VERY rare, supposedly occurs in Gwich'in, a Na-Dene language primarily spoken in northwestern Canada and western Alaska.
[cʼ] - palatal ejective plosive. Very rare, occurring mainly in North American indigenous languages, like Haida for example; also attested in isolated languages in southern Africa and the Caucasus, and in Hausa, a major trade language of central west Africa.
[k'] - velar ejective plosive. Found in scattered languages, but particularly common in the Americas, southern Africa, the Cape Horn area, and the Caucasus. Labialised versions of this are common in the Caucasus and western North America.
[q'] - uvular ejective plosive. Limited mainly to the Caucasus and western North America; labialised versions of this occur in Northwest Caucasian, Salishan, Wakashan, and some Na-Dene languages. Palatalised versions occur in Abkhaz and occurred in now-extinct Ubykh, which also had pharyngealised and labialised-pharyngealised versions as well!
[ʡʼ] - epiglottal ejective plosive. VERY rare, only attested in Dargwa, a Northeast Caucasian language.
Ejective affricates
[t͡sʼ] - alveolar ejective affricate. Primarily attested in languages of the Caucasus and the Pacific Northwest.
[t͡ɬ'] - alveolar lateral ejective affricate. I LOVE this sound. As with the above, it is primarily attested in languages of the Caucasus and the Pacific Northwest.
[t͡ʃʼ] - palato-alveolar ejective affricate. Primarily attested in languages of the Caucasus and the Pacific Northwest.
[ʈ͡ʂʼ] - retroflex ejective affricate. Very rare. Attested in Adyghe, a Northwest Caucasian language. Proposed for Avar and Yokutsan languages.
[c͡ʎ̝̥ʼ] - palatal lateral ejective affricate. VERY rare. Attested in Dahalo, and an African language isolate called Hadza.
[k͡xʼ] - velar ejective affricate. Fairly rare. Occurs mainly in southern Africa, esp. Zulu and Xhosa, but also attested in Haida and Hadza.
[k͡ʟ̝̊ʼ] - velar lateral ejective affricate. VERY rare, only occurring contrastively in Archi, a Northeast Caucasian language, and in that language having plain and labialised forms thereof. Occurs in some southern African languages as a variant of [k͡xʼ].
[q͡χʼ] - uvular lateral ejective affricate. The ultimate throat-killer. :p Occurs as a variant of [q'] in Northeast Caucasian and also Salishan languages. It's actually easy to go from one to the other because of the force of an ejective causing vibration of the uvula and therefore some noise.
Ejective fricatives - these are all VERY rare.
[fʼ] - labiodental ejective fricative. Attested in Kabardian, a Northwest Caucasian language. Proposed for Yapese.
[θʼ] - dental ejective fricative. Attested in South Arabian languages (esp. Mehri) and also in Yapese.
[sʼ] - alveolar ejective fricative. Mostly found in scattered North American indigenous languages; attested dialectally in Adyghe and Hausa.
[ɬ’] - alveolar lateral ejective fricative. Found in most Northwest Caucasian languages (not Abkhaz, though, which actually doesn't have ejective fricatives); also attested in Tlingit.
[ʃʼ] - palato-alveolar ejective fricative. Attested in Adyghe and the Keresan languages.
[ʂʼ] - retroflex ejective affricate. Attested in the Keresan languages.
[x’] - velar ejective affricate. Attested in Tlingit.
[χ’] - uvular ejective affricate. Attested in Tlingit, and supposedly Georgian as a variant.
Implosives
Implosives only have one form - they pattern in the same way as plosives. Implosives are more commonly voiced. They occur most frequently in Sub-Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia, but also happen in the Sindhi language and the Saraiki dialect of Punjabi, in Pakistan.
[ɓ] - voiced bilabial implosive. Occurs in a number of African and Southeast Asian languages, and also in Sindhi and Saraiki. Apparently attested in Southern American English at the beginning of words. (Not sure I buy that. ) Notable languages with it include Vietnamese, Khmer, and Hausa. Also attested in some Mayan languages of Guatemala.
[ɗ] - voiced alveolar implosive. Occurs in a number of African and Southeast Asian languages, and also in Sindhi and Saraiki. Notable languages with it include Vietnamese, Khmer, and Hausa.
[ᶑ] - voiced retroflex implosive. Much rarer; attested in Ngadha, a language of Indonesia, and Oromo, a major vernacular language of Ethiopia.
[ʄ] - voiced palatal implosive. Not as common as some implosives, and not attested in Southeast Asia, being mainly used in Africa. Does appear in Sindhi and Saraiki, however.
[ɠ] - voiced velar implosive. Occurs primarily in Africa, but also occurs in Sindhi and Saraiki.
[ʛ] - voiced uvular implosive. Occurs in actual language in a very odd place; the Mam language of Guatemala. Apparently no other language has it, which is odd in the sense that it is outside the regular occurrence zones of implosives. Used by many other languages, though, as a way to mimic gulping sounds!
There are voiceless implosives attested; those few languages confirmed using them in contrast are mostly in Africa.
[ɓ̥] - voiceless bilabial implosive. Attested contrastively in Serer-Sine, a Senegalese language, and in the Owere dialect of Igbo in Nigeria.
[ɗ̥] - voiceless alveolar implosive. Attested contrastively in Serer-Sine and in the Owere dialect of Igbo.
[ʄ̊] - voiceless palatal implosive. Attested contrastively only in Serer-Sine.
[ʛ̥] - voicless uvular implosive. Attested in Kaqchikel and Q’anjob’al, both Mayan languages spoken in Guatemala. These are also the only languages on the books that are claimed to have a voiceless implosive without having the voiced counterpart.
Clicks
Only one language outside of southern Africa has ever been attested having clicks, and that language (in Australia) is now extinct; clicks have numerous contrastive forms, but only the baseline forms are shown here.
[ʘ] - bilabial click. Not a kissing sound, rather a lip-smacking sound done with non-puckered lips. Attested in the Tuu and Kxa languages of southern Africa.
[|] = dental click. Used as an actual speech sound in a number of southern African languages, including Zulu, Xhosa, and the languages formerly designated as "Khoisan." (This term fell out of use when it was determined that those languages didn't necessarily form a provably cohesive language family) Used paralinguistically in English to denote pity or disapproval, written "tsk-tsk."
[ǃ] = alveolar click. Occurs in a number of southern African languages, including Sesotho, which has no clicks in any other place of articulation, Xhosa, Zulu, and the languages formerly designated as "Khoisan."
[ǂ] = palatal click. Only occurs in languages formerly designated as "Khoisan."
[ǁ] = lateral click, formed by making the click on the side of the mouth rather than in the middle or across the whole mouth. Used in many southern African languages, including Xhosa (the name of which has the aspirated variant of this), Zulu, and the languages formerly designated as "Khoisan."
[ǃ˞] = retroflex click. Extremely rare, actually only being attested in the Central !Kung language of Namibia.
Vowels
Unlike consonants, which occur in more or less a specific spot in the mouth, vowels have a larger range and are often relative to the language. Still, there are specific formant frequency ranges that are set out for each vowel. You would never hear an [i] with the formants of an [ɑ], for example. Anyway.
Keep in mind as well, there are two different conventions for vowel height. Vowels can also be contrastively long and short, which they were in Latin and Old English, and remain in languages like Finnish, Japanese, Navajo, etc. It can be contrastively nasalised in languages like the Na-Dene languages of North America (Navajo, Tlingit, Apache, Dakelh, Tsilhqut'in, etc.), French, most dialects of Portuguese, Polish, etc. Furthermore, phonation can vary; some languages have contrastive creaky voice.
What are shown here are your basic segmental vowels.
Front Vowels
[i] - close/high front unrounded vowel. Among the most common vowel sounds - most languages have this sound in contrast. Can't actually think of a language off the top of my head that doesn't. It isn't always a "clean" [i], though; some dialects of English have a slight diphthong instead, [ɪj].
[y] - close/high front rounded vowel. Considerably less common than its unrounded counterpart. Occurs primarily in Europe and North/Central Asia. English is probably the only major Germanic language that doesn't have it cross-dialectally, and even some dialects of English (most stereotypically Scottish) have it. Major languages with this sound include French, German, Mandarin, Cantonese, Wu, Dutch, Turkish, Hungarian, and Finnish.
[ɪ] - near-close/near-high front unrounded vowel. Not as common as its close/high counterpart, but still occurs fairly widely, particularly in Europe and Africa. In English, this replaced the short [i] after vowel-shift, and prescriptive grammars still call it "short-I," but there is more than just length that is a factor here; other West Germanic languages follow suit in this regard.
[ʏ] - near-close/near-high front rounded vowel. Fairly rare. Almost all the languages that use it are Indo-European, as a short variant of [y], although it is also attested in Turkish and Hungarian. On top of this, the bulk of the languages from Indo-European that use it are either themselves Germanic (Dutch, Icelandic, Swedish, Faeroese, German, Limburgish, Norwegian) or have a historically heavy Germanic influence (French; one could possibly make this argument for non-Indo-European Hungarian as well).
[e] - Close-mid/high-mid front unrounded vowel. As with [i], this is sometimes not a "clean vowel" but a diphthong. Fairly common; occurring in some "5-vowel systems" and more or less all "7-vowel" and "9-vowel" systems. (I'll talk about that in phonology). Noteworthy examples of this being found clean are Cantonese, German, French, Hindi, Scottish English, and Arabic.
[ø] - Close-mid/high-mid front rounded vowel. A little less common, occurring primarily in Europe and Northern/Central Asia. Occurs in most Germanic languages and in French (why the crap isn't it in more standard English, then? ) and also occurs in Turkish, Wu, and Hungarian, among others.
[e̞] or [ɛ̝] - Mid front unrounded vowel. This sound occurs in languages that don't have a contrast between two mid-range front unrounded vowels, such as Spanish, Finnish, Japanese, Romanian, a number of Slavic languages, Hebrew, and Tagalog, among others.
[ø̞] or [œ̝] - Mid front rounded vowel. Fairly rare. Uralic languages with a front rounded vowel in the mid-range, like Finnish, Estonian, Võro, and Hungarian, have this sound, as does Turkish. In a number of Germanic languages, English included, it occurs dialectally, although in some cases this is argued.
[ɛ] - open-mid/low-mid front unrounded vowel. Fairly common. Occurs in some "5-vowel, ""7-vowel" and "9-vowel" systems, although in some of these, it is supplanted by [ə].
[œ] - open-mid/low-mid front rounded vowel. Rarer, and typically a variant of [ø]. The only language I can think of where these two actually contrast is French, which is a nightmare for me, because I have trouble telling the two apart even now after years of training!
[æ] - near-open/near-low front unrounded vowel. Fairly rare. In a number of languages that have it it only occurs in certain dialects. Some languages that consistently have it are English, Finnic languages (Finnish, Estonian, etc.), Northern Azeri, Farsi, and Tsilhqut'in (I can verify this on personal experience as I studied the language with two speakers in my undergrad). In Southern American English, it contrasts with [a].
[a] - open/low front unrounded vowel. Fairly common. Since most languages have only a single low-range vowel, this is either the default form of it, as in Spanish, Mandarin, Arabic etc., or a variant thereof. A number of "5-vowel," "7-vowel," and "9-vowel" systems have this, with this being the only one that is unpaired in those cases.
[ɶ] - open/low front rounded vowel. Extremely rare and only attested in a few Germanic languages as a variant. Probably because it would make you look like a contortionist trying to pronounce the thing while keeping your lips rounded!
Central vowels
With the exception of [ə], the mid-range of the central vowels is hard to find in contrast. This is because in usage, they seldom if ever contrast with their back counterparts.
[ɨ] - close/high central unrounded vowel. [ə] aside, this might be the most common central vowel attested in language, appearing contrastively in a large range of languages in various places around the world. Russian, Uzbek, Mongolian, Irish Gaelic, and Mandarin have the prototypical examples of this sound.
[ʉ] - close/high central rounded vowel. Typically a variant of [u]; dialectal in English, contrastive in Swedish and Norwegian, and in fact Swedish contrasts three high rounded vowels, a rarity in language.
[ɘ] - close-mid/high-mid central unrounded vowel. Rare in contrast, occurs dialectally to a degree in English, but only consistently in languages like Kazakh and Skolt Sami. Often freely variant with back vowel [ɤ].
[ɵ] - close-mid/high-mid central rounded vowel. Rare in contrast, occurring definitively in languages such as Cantonese, Mongolian, and Tajik but being conflated with other vowels in a number of other supposed attestations.
[ə] - mid central vowel. If a language reduces vowels, it will have this as a variant, and a LOT of languages reduce vowels! It is much less common contrastively, but still occurs fairly frequently; Northwestern and Northeastern Caucasian languages, indigenous languages of Western North America, Indo-Iranian languages (Hindi, Punjabi, Marathi, Kurdish), Armenian, Albanian, Palauan, and even French have this contrastively.
[ɚ] - rhotacised mid central vowel. This can also be written as a syllabified [ɹ]. Very rare in terms of number of languages that use it, but for number of speakers? Most North American Englishes (New England or certain New York or Southern sub-dialects notwithstanding) have this, as do some widely-spoken dialects of Mandarin.
[ɜ] - open-mid/low-mid central unrounded vowel. Rare in contrast, but surprisingly, Queen's English (RP) is one of the languages that does use it, replacing the sequence [ə] + [ɹ]. Minority languages like Paicî (New Caledonia) and Ladin (northern Italy) have it in contrast as well.
[ɞ] - open-mid/low-mid rounded vowel. Mainly occurs as a variant, occasionally occurring dialectally, and only occurring contrastively in one language, the Kashubian language of Poland.
[ɐ] - near-open/near-low central unrounded vowel. Surprisingly common as a variant; rarer in contrast, but is considered the "citation form" corresponding to the letter "a" in languages like Catalan, Cantonese, and the Baltic languages. A rounded equivalent does occur in one language, the Sabiny language of Uganda.
Back vowels
[ɯ] - close/high back unrounded vowel. While it never contrasts with [ɨ], the two are quite distinct nonetheless. Somewhat common, occurring in many Turkic and Mongolic languages, some Chinese languages, some languages of southeast Asia, Korean, and Scottish Gaelic.
[u] - close/high back rounded vowel. Very common, easily the most common rounded vowel in any world language. English doesn't have a clean [u] per se, with it instead being partly diphthongised. Some languages, like Japanese, Wu, Swedish, and Norwegian, have a form where the lips are rounded but don't stick out (called "compressed"), giving it a slightly different sound. But typically the rounding of this vowel results in protruded lips.
[ʊ] - near-close/near-high back rounded vowel. Fairly common either in five/seven/nine-vowel systems, a variant of [u] as in Russian or Québecois French, or as development from a historic short [u] as in English; does contrast in English (compare the words soot [sʊt] and suit [sut]). There is an unrounded vowel of this height and backness, but it occurs strictly as a variant or a dialectic sound.
[o] - close-mid/high-mid back rounded vowel. Quite common. Many English dialects don't have a clean [o]; languages that do include French, German, some dialects of English (Scottish English, Singlish, Indian English), and a number of others, many of whom have 7-vowel or 9-vowel systems. Wu Chinese has a "compressed" form of this vowel.
[ɤ] - close-mid/high-mid back unrounded vowel. Fairly rare. Languages that do have it include some languages of East and Southeast Asia, most notably Mandarin, Taiwanese, and Thai.
[o̞] - mid back rounded vowel. As with the front vowels, back vowels "go mid" when they don't distinguish multiple vowels in the mid-range. Finnic languages, Spanish, several Slavic languages, Japanese, Turkish, and Hebrew are among those that have this vowel.
[ɤ̞] - mid back unrounded vowel. Quite rare. Estonian, Võro, Danish, and Bulgarian have this sound attested, as do certain dialects of English (Norfolk and Cardiff supposedly) and Vietnamese.
[ɔ] - open-mid/low-mid rounded vowel. Common, and from what I've seen it's probably more common than [o]. This "open O" occurs in all 7-vowel and 9-vowel systems and in a fairly large number of 5-vowel systems. Its place in English is dialectally varied, but in R-retaining dialects it is generally the variant of [o] before [ɹ]. In R-drop dialects, "or" generally becomes a long [o], usually written [o:]
[ʌ] - open-mid/low-mid unrounded vowel. Not really that common. Occurs in a large number of English dialects (especially in North America), though, as the vowel in words like "butt" "shut" "fronting," etc. Also appears in Standard Korean, Tamil, and as a variant of [ə] in Salishan languages.
[ɑ] - open/low unrounded vowel. The only unrounded back vowel that is more common than its rounded counterpart, and the continuum between it and centralised [ä] gives us quite possibly the most common vowel sound area in language. Arguably all languages have a vowel somewhere in this formant range; the only other vowel that is in the same range of commonality is [i]. Languages contrasting three low vowels is almost unheard of, although apparently Skolt Sami does, contrasting this, [æ], and [ɐ].
[ɒ] - open/low rounded vowel. In contrast to its unrounded counterpart, this is very rare; it's usually dialectal or a variant of something else; an exception to this is its frequency in a large number of dialects of English (including my own, "Western Canadian"), and it is also attested in Farsi, Uzbek, Hungarian, the dialects of Western Desert in Australia, and Assamese. In most cases, the vowel-rounding is less pronounced than in other rounded vowels.
Welp, that's the end of the basics of phonetics.
But you've interpreted the title correctly if you guessed that I plan to give a crash course in basic linguistics here.
What Is Linguistics?
Linguistics is not just the learning of many languages, although many linguists do end up polyglots. Linguistics is the scientific study of language and all the processes behind it, and it can be a very broad subject. Most of what I'm going to put in this thread consists of fundimentals that one starts with when first venturing into linguistics. We won't be talking about things like Optimality Theory or Transformationalist Minimalism or anything hardcore-theoretical like that; more like how to analyse and describe any language. The five areas I'll focus on are:
- Phonetics (properties of speech sounds). More specifically, I'll be focussing on articulatory phonetics, which pertains to the production of speech sounds within the vocal tract.
- Phonology (how speech sounds pattern).
- Morphology (word formation).
- Syntax (sentence formation).
- Typology (cross-linguistic language tendencies).
Of course, if you were to go deeper, not only would you see subdivisions in these (such as auditory phonetics, acoustic phonetics, generative phonology, generative grammar vs. functionalist grammar, etc.) but there are also other areas of linguistics.
- Sociolinguistics (the interaction between language and culture)
- Psycholinguistics (the interaction between language and other cognitive processes)
- Semantics (I think you can figure this one out)
- Pragmatics (language in usage)
- Discourse (the structuring of language beyond the level of the sentence, this and pragmatics often go together)
- Applied Linguistics (how to put the theory into practice; this would include things like principles of translation, principles of literacy, application of phonetics and phonology for speech-pathological purposes, application of auditory phonetics for audiology and hearing, etc. For Christians this also includes things like hermeneutics - the science of interpretation - which ties in very closely to things like semantics, pragmatics, and even sociolinguistics)
- Historical and Comparative Linguistics (I think you can figure this one out as well; a lot of the basic analytical methods are actually rooted in phonology, since it is regular sound correspondences that tip one off to common parentage of two words from separate languages. I think this is my favourite part of linguistics overall!)
I'll start with phonetics, but I need to scrounge up some sound files before I do. You can't really talk about individual sounds without having sound files to link them to!
Phonetics
Phonetics is, as I said, the study of the properties of speech sounds. Basically, you study the final product, looking at the different speech sounds individually to discern how they are produced, and when not done just for curiosity, it is done with the purpose of eventually being able to mimic the sounds. That's what articulatory phonetics in particular is good for, and that's what will be included here.
First, let's lay down some groundwork.
The International Phonetic Alphabet
This is what linguists use to write words down, even when there's no written form of the language. It's been in development for well over a century now, having first been proposed back in 1887 and having had several changes made to it since. I'm going to have to use the nocode tag a lot in the phonetics section as well, because in IPA, phonetic transcriptions are written using square brackets. All 26 letters of the Roman alphabet are in it, although they don't all sound like they would in English. The ones that sound exactly the same in every scenario are [b], [d], [f], [g], [h], [l], [m], [n], [s], [v], [w], and [z]. Ones that sound like English in certain contexts are [k], [p], and [t], ones that sound close to English are [a], [o], and [u], and ones that sound nothing at all like their English spelling counterparts are [c], [e], [i], [j], [q], [r], [x], and [y].
Just to get your feet wet, here's a standard IPA chart. If you don't understand everything, don't worry; this will all be revealed in time.
Consonants: places of articulation, and the structure of the vocal tract
This is one of a few things I'm going to add that isn't straight from memory (the history of the IPA is another such thing) - it's a vertical cross-section of the vocal tract. I can't draw worth crap, so here it is.
These days, when first explaining places of articulation, phonetics profs have a strong tendency to start with the lips and go down the tract. This is evident on standard IPA charts as well. While classifying places of articulation can sometimes get incredibly precise to the point of being nitpicky, there's a more basic set of classifications that phoneticians will use in most cases:
Bilabial - using both lips to produce the sound.
Labiodental - upper teeth against lower lip to produce sound.
Linguolabial - tongue-tip against upper lip to produce sound.
Dental - tongue tip between the teeth
Alveolar - you know that big bump behind your teeth, centred in your mouth? That's the alveolar ridge.
Postalveolar - behind the alveolar ridge. There are three subtypes of these:
- Palato-Alveolar; the body of the tongue is right behind the alveolar ridge
- Alveolo-Palatal; the body of the tongue approaches the alveolar ridge and the back of the tongue is up against or close to the hard palate; the tongue tip is lowered somewhat
- Retroflex - same place as palato-alveolar, but with the tongue curled back further
Palatal - back of the tongue against or related to the hard palate
Velar - back of the tongue against or related to the soft palate (velum)
Uvular - back of the tongue against or related to the uvula (the punching bag thingy in the back of your throat)
Pharyngeal - in the throat between the uvula and the vocal folds; these are the only sounds that use the root of the tongue.
- Includes epiglottals, which are made with a flap just above the vocal folds.
Glottal - no usage of the tongue at all, completely relating to the vocal folds.
So you ask, "what about nasal sounds?" Those are included in manners of articulation.
- Plosives (oral stops) mean a complete stop is made to the airflow, and the sound is made when that stop is released. Unreleased plosives occur utterance-finally fairly commonly.
- Fricatives are made when the airflow is restricted to the point of friction, causing noise.
- Affricates are a combination of a plosive and a fricative, where a quick plosive followed by a fricative release results in a single sound. Note: these aren't to be confused with aspirated plosives. More on those later.
- Nasals (nasal stops) mean that the airflow is stopped in the mouth but the velum is raised, allowing air to freely pass through the nose. Pharyngeal and glottal nasals are impossible.
- Approximants form when the airstream is restricted, but not to the point of creating friction. The approximants near the back of the mouth more or less always have an equivalent vowel.
- Flaps require rapid contact from and release from a particular protruding surface and as such cannot be produced in certain places of articulation; palatal, velar, purely pharyngeal (that is, with no epiglottis), and glottal flaps are impossible.
- Trills are basically extended sequences of flaps. Rather than just quick contact, the tongue is held close enough to the point of contact that the airstream causes the tongue to make rapid on-off contact with the surface. Again, in certain contexts they are impossible, and trying to do it will merely result in a fricative or an approximant.
There are extensions of these basic manners as well.
- When a sound is lateral, it means that the airstream goes around the sides of the tongue. Fricatives, affricates, approximants, and flaps can be lateral.
- Sibilants (or stridents, or grooved fricatives) are formed when the air is pushed towards the sharp edge of the teeth via a groove in the tongue, resulting in an extra noticeable layer of noise. Only alveolar and post-alveolar sounds can be strident, and stridence is only noticeable in fricatives and affricates. It should be noted, too, that the sibilant/non-sibilant difference never means sound contrast. I'll talk more about that when I get to phonology.
Airstream mechanics - voicing and "non-pulmonic" consonants
The last basic is voicing. Ever hear a [s] and a [z] and think "Hey, these are really similar! But how are the different?" The answer is voicing. Now the most basic types of voicing are voiced and voiceless - either the vocal folds are shut when the sound is made (voiceless) or they are vibrating (voiced). But the bigger picture is actually more complicated than that, since the vocal folds don't have bipolar function, with voicing ranging from breathy voice, which has almost no vibration of the vocal folds, to creaky voice, in which a stiffening of the cartilage in the larynx causes an almost complete blockage. I won't go into too great a detail here, as that would be beyond the scope of a basic linguistics class.
There is also aspiration, which is considered part of voicing. This happens when the glottis opens briefly after (or sometimes before) a plosive, causing an extra bit of air to be released. English has aspiration. I'll talk more about that when I get to phonology.
What has been brought up so far is the range of pulmonic consonants, where the source of the final airstream is the lungs. Sure, the air almost always comes from the lungs, but sometimes the airstream is held up en route and therefore the final airstream source is either partially or fully from elsewhere. These are the "non-pulmonic sounds."
The most common kind of non-pulmonic sound is called an ejective. These are formed when the glottis shuts before a plosive then opens during its release, causing the air to rush out and producing a "heavy-hitting" variation of a plosive, affricate, or in rarer cases even a fricative. These are always voiceless, and limited to plosives, affricates, and fricatives. Rather than having a pulmonic airstream, these are said to have a glottalic airstream because the glottis is the final source of the air. Ejectives are widespread in terms of languages in which they are spoken, but few major languages have them and they are noticeably absent from European languages, if you don't count the Caucasus.
Implosives are always stops, and they're what I was referring to when I said "partially from elsewhere." They have an ingressive glottalic airstream - meaning that air rushes inward at the opening of the glottis rather than outward - caused by the larynx being lowered during production as the glottis is closed, but there is also an egressive pulmonic airstream. The odd combination results for something of a gulping sound, and they are regularly voiced. While they do occur in languages elsewhere (a particularly noteworthy case of this is Sindhi, a major language of southern Pakistan), they are most commonly found in sub-Saharan Africa.
And then there are clicks, which have a lingual airstream. This is what I mean when I say the air almost always initially comes from the lungs. They don't with clicks. Instead, the tongue blocks off the flow at the soft palate and the sound comes from the release of a vacuum created after the articulator is released along with the tongue on the velum. These are generally somewhat loud, although dental clicks aren't; languages that use these in everyday meaningful speech are exclusive to Africa and almost exclusive to the southern quarter of the continent; there was one attested language in Australia with clicks, but it is a) a created register and b) extinct. Clicks can be heard outside of the realm of actual words in our culture, as dental and alveolar lateral clicks are used to call animals, and dental clicks are used to show pity or disapproval (this was eventually written down as tsk-tsk).
Secondary articulations and double articulations
Occasionally you'll get times when there is a secondary element to an articulation. The sound [w] (spelt with the same letter in English and a number of other languages) is probably the most common example of this, as it has a primary velar articulation with a secondary labial articulation - the lips are rounded. French has a similar sound phonetically, with a primary palatal articulation and a secondary labial articulation, denoted by the symbol [ɥ]. These are both examples of "labialisation." There's actually a more common secondary articulation than this (although labialisation is quite common) and that is palatalisation; this is also the name of a very widespread phonological assimilation process. (More on that later.) East Slavic languages (Russian/Ukrainian/Belarusian/Rusyn) are ready examples of this.
But then you have situations where two places of articulation are hit by exactly the same manner at more or less exactly the same time. This is double articulation, where the articulations are equally audible and equally important. Most of these are either plosives or nasals, and the process is most common in West Africa. I cringe at people pronouncing NHL hockey player Kyle Okposo's last name. :p In English our usual tendency is to treat it as two separate consonants, but given how the co-articulated version sounds, I've heard more commentators treat the velar half of that labial-velar stop like it didn't even exist! Examples of languages that have this in their very names are the Liberian language Kpelle and the Nigerian language Igbo.
There is a hard-to-classify double-articulated fricative in Swedish, called the "sje-sound" in Swedish grammar literature and [ɧ] in the IPA.
Naming conventions for consonants
When writing the technical names for consonants (which you will have to do sometimes if you specialise in phonetics or phonology), the convention is generally voicing-place-manner. Sub-manners like "lateral" or "ejective" come between main place and main manner. The same is true of secondary articulations. Like this:
[k] is a voiceless velar plosive. [kʰ] is a voiceless aspirated velar plosive. [l] is a voiced alveolar lateral fricative. [ɫ] is a voiced velarised alveolar lateral fricative. [k͡p] is a voiceless labial-velar plosive, while [kʷ] is a voiceless labialised velar plosive.
Vowels
Vowels are generally voiced sounds produced with next to no tension, in the back half of the vocal tract. All languages have 'em.
There are three features that divide base segmental vowels up in a phonetic sense - tongue height, frontness/backness, and roundedness. The convention for these is obviously different, too. For example, [ɑ] is a low back unrounded vowel, while [y] is the high front rounded vowel, which is found in languages like French and Finnish.
There are two naming conventions for height, though. One can either use high, near-high, high-mid, mid, low-mid, near-low, and low, or close, near-close, close-mid, mid, open-mid, near-open, and open. The IPA prefers the latter in academia, but the former is good for starters or if you want to keep things simpler.
Post 4
And now comes the fun part - the sounds themselves! (I couldn't find a consistent sound chart for all of them - you'll have to search the individual sounds on Wikipedia, because most if not all have a sound file with them.)
Plosives
All languages have plosives. Clean voiceless plosives are the most common, although many of these can also be aspirated.
[p] - voiceless bilabial plosive. Occurs in a large percentage of languages. The English citation form is actually the aspirated [pʰ] but [p] does exist in certain environments (more about this in phonology); [pʰ] and [p] are considered different sounds in many Indo-Aryan languages, the Chinese languages, and Scottish Gaelic, among others. However, Standard Arabic lacks the sound, as do many regional Arabic dialects.
[t̼] - voiceless linguolabial plosive. Incredibly rare; only attested in disordered speech until it was discovered being used contrastively in a group of languages of Vanuatu. (Yes, I looked this one up.)
[t] - voiceless alveolar plosive. Citation form is aspirated in English. Almost every language has it, with Hawaiian being among the very few exceptions. As with [p] and also [k], the aspirated and non-aspirated variants are contrasted in Indo-Aryan languages, the Chinese languages, and Scottish Gaelic, among others. Can vary somewhat in placement, from dental to post-alveolar.
[t͡p] - voiceless labial-alveolar plosive. VERY rare; only decisively attested in one specific language in Papua New Guinea.
[ʈ] - voiceless retroflex plosive. Found primarily contrastively in Asia and the Pacific, especially in South Asia and Australia. Also occurs in Swedish and Norwegian.
[c] - voiceless palatal plosive. Exists in English as a variant of [k] happening before [i] and [e]. Considered a different sound in Hungarian and Albanian among others.
[k] - voiceless velar plosive. Citation form is aspirated in English. VERY common, almost as much so as [t] and more than [p]. Tahitian is a rare counter-example.
[k͡p] - voiceless labial-velar plosive. Fairly rare, occurring mainly in West and Central West Africa. NHL player Kyle Okposo has this sound in his last name, or at least in the original pronunciation thereof - his father is from Nigeria. Also occurs in the language name Kpelle.
[q] - voiceless uvular plosive. Occurs in a number of non-Indo-European languages, which are many but dispersed. Several Turkic languages, Inuktitut, a large number of Salishan languages (if not all of them), all Wakashan languages, many Northeast and Northwest Caucasian languages, some dialects of Arabic and Hebrew (indeed, it's posited that Biblical Hebrew had this sound), and several other indigenous languages of North America have this sound. Iranic languages have it as well, under influence from Arabic.
[q͡ʡ] - voiceless uvular-epiglottal plosive. Supposedly occurs in Somali; could actually just be a clean uvular plosive [q].
[ʡ] - voiceless epiglottal plosive. Quite rare. Occurs in Haida and Archi, and some linguists believe it occurs in Nuu-Chah-Nulth.
[ʔ] - glottal stop. Better understood as an absence of sound. Almost every word in human language that is perceived as beginning in a vowel rather actually begins with a glottal stop phonetically when at the beginning of an utterance. Many languages use this word-medially or finally as a contrastive sound. Believe it or not, English is among these. "Uh-oh" is transcribed [ʔʌʔɔw] phonetically in Western American/Canadian English.
Voiced plosives are less common than their voiceless counterparts, but still common.
[b] - voiced bilabial plosive. Occurs in numerous languages, including English.
[d̼] - voiced linguolabial plosive. Incredibly rare. Had to look this up, too. Attested in Vanuatu, and the Kakojo dialect of Bijago. And disordered speech.
[d] - voiced alveolar plosive. Occurs in numerous languages, including English. Can vary somewhat in placement, from dental to post-alveolar. Is the only voiced stop to occur in Finnish, as a variant of [t] in certain environments.
[ɖ] - voiced retroflex plosive. Occurs in languages of India, as well as in Swedish and Norwegian.
[ɟ] - voiced palatal plosive. Occurs primarily in Eastern Europe as a contrastive sound, most notably in Hungarian, Albanian, Czech, Slovak, and Latvian.
[g] - voiced velar plosive. Common, but the least frequent of the "common six plosives" ([p, t, k, b, d, g]).
[ɡ͡b] - voiced labial-velar plosive. Rare, primarily found in West and Central West Africa, as in the language names Igbo and Gbe.
[ɢ] - voiced uvular plosive. Quite rare. Attested in Mongolian, some dialects of Arabic (non-contrastive), and Canadian indigenous language Kwak'wala, among some others.
Fricatives
Very few languages lack fricatives phonetically, although some language families lack them contrastively. More on that in phonology.
[ɸ] - voiceless bilabial fricative. Not particularly common in contrast, although African language Ewe has it. But as a variant of other sounds it is surprisingly common, and occurs in Spanish and Japanese in this manner, among others.
[f] - voiceless labiodental fricative. Fairly common. Occurs in most Indo-European languages, including English, French, Italian, German, etc.
[̼θ] - voiceless linguolabial fricative. VERY rare. Only attested in Vanuatu.
[θ] - voiceless interdental fricative. Fairly rare. Occurs contrastively in English, Icelandic, Castillian Spanish, Albanian, Greek, and Bashkort, among others.
[s] - voiceless alveolar (grooved) fricative. Most common fricative. Most languages said to not have this sound are in the Pacific, and include Hawaiian and Maori.
[ɬ] - voiceless alveolar lateral fricative. Found primarily in North America, the Caucasus, and southern Africa, also attested contrastively in Welsh and some languages of East and Southeast Asia.
[ʃ] - voiceless palato-alveolar (grooved) fricative. Quite common. Most Indo-European and Turkic languages, and many indigenous languages of the Americas, have this sound.
[ʂ] - voiceless retroflex (grooved) fricative. Not super-common, but not exactly rare, either. Occurs in languages of India, North Germanic languages, Chinese languages, Polish, and the East Slavic languages (Russian/Ukrainian/Belarusian/Rusyn).
[ꞎ] - voiced retroflex lateral fricative. Attested only in Toda, a Dravidian language of southern India.
[ɕ] - voiceless alveolo-palatal (grooved) fricative. A bit less common. Occurs contrastively in Polish, Russian, Chinese languages, and some languages of the Caucasus; also attested in Japanese as a variant of [s].
[ç] - voiceless palatal fricative. Rare in contrast. Does, however, occur semi-frequently as a variant of another sound, even in certain English dialects (as a variant of [h]). German, Greek, Dutch, and Finnish among other such languages.
[ʎ̥˔] - voiceless palatal lateral fricative. Attested only in a couple of Afro-Asiatic languages of Central Africa.
[x] - voiceless velar fricative. Quite common. A number of Indo-European languages have this in dialectal inventory; Spanish, Russian, and Mandarin are three particularly major languages that have this sound. Old English had this sound.
[ɧ] - voiceless postalveolo-velar fricative. This one is rare and also somewhat controversial. It is only clearly attested in Swedish as the "sje-sound" which is written "sj." Officially it is considered a co-articulation of [ʃ] and [x], but this is still a point of argument amongst those who study Swedish phonetics and phonology. Supposedly also occurs in the Kölsch dialect in western Germany.
[ʟ̝̊] - voiceless velar lateral fricative. Attested in some Chimbu-Wahgi branch of the Trans New Guinea family, and also in Northeast Caucasian language Archi.
[χ] - voiceless uvular fricative. A rather harsh sound, not quite as common. Fairly common in indigenous languages of western North America, the Caucasus, the Middle East, and several dialects of German.
[ħ] - voiceless pharyngeal fricative. Fairly rare. Occurs mainly in Semitic languages and languages of the Caucasus, also in some Interior Salish languages.
[h] - voiceless glottal fricative. Occurs in a large variety of languages, English included.
And of course, your voiced fricatives as well:
[β] - voiced bilabial fricative. Is attested as a contrastive sound (most notably in Ewe) but occurs much more frequently as a variant of another sound, as in Spanish, Japanese, and Korean, among others.
[v] - voiced labiodental fricative. Occurs contrastively primarily in Europe, the Middle East, and Siberia, but is attested elsewhere. (I call this the "hard v.")
[ð̼] - voiced linguolabial fricative. VERY rare, attested only in Vanuatu.
[ð] - voiced interdental fricative. Fairly rare. Attested contrastively in English, Icelandic, Arabic, Bashkort, Welsh, and a number of indigenous North American languages. Also a variant in Greek, Spanish, and some dialects of Hebrew.
[z] - voiced alveolar (grooved) fricative. MUCH less common than its voiceless counterpart. Mainly found contrastively in Europe, Africa, and the Middle East.
[ɮ] - voiced alveolar lateral fricative. Quite rare; attested contrastively in Northwest Caucasian languages, Zulu, Xhosa, and a small number of other scattered languages from diverse families.
[ʒ] - voiced palato-alveolar (grooved) fricative). Not particularly common. Found contrastively in many Slavic languages, French, Portuguese, many Na-Dene languages, and various Turkic and Uralic languages. English has it as a variant of [s] or [z].
[ʐ] - voiced retroflex (grooved) fricative. Kinda rare. Occurs in Russian, Polish, Vietnamese, and Mandarin, among others.
[ʑ] - voiced alveolo-palatal (grooved) fricative. Very rare. Occurs in Chinese languages, Polish, Sorbian, and some Northwest Caucasian languages contrastively. Also occurs in some languages as a variant, such as Russian, Portuguese, and Catalan.
[ʝ] - voiced palatal fricative. Incredibly rare in contrast with other sounds - only attested contrastively in Scottish Gaelic and some Berber languages of Saharan Africa. A number of others have this as a variant.
[ɣ] - voiced velar fricative. Surprisingly common. Occurs contrastively in a number of Caucasian languages and languages of the Americas (especially North), and also in Scottish and Irish Gaelic, Arabic, and certain dialects of Hebrew, among others.
[ʟ̝] - voiced velar lateral fricative. Attested in some Chimbu-Wahgi branch of the Trans New Guinea family, and also in Northeast Caucasian language Archi.
[ʁ] - voiced uvular fricative. Occurs mainly in Europe, the Middle East, and North America; in Europe it is often referred to as the "guttural r" which is used in French, Portuguese, German, many dialects of Dutch, and Danish - in this regard it is also used in Hebrew and Inuktitut. It occurs in Turkic and various Caucasian languages contrastively as well.
[ʕ] - voiced pharyngeal fricative/approximant. Hard to tell in most cases whether there is friction or not since it is so close to the glottis and has no trilling feature. Fairly rare. Occurs contrastively in Arabic, Interior Salish and Wakashan languages (North America), and Caucasian languages. Is the consonantal equivalent of [ɑ].
[ɦ] - voiced (most often breathy-voiced) glottal fricative. Exists in numerous languages, but seldom contrasting with the voiceless [h].
Affricates
These are usually written with digraphs (that is, two symbols) connected by a ligature.
[p͡ɸ] - voiceless bilabial affricate. VERY rare. Unattested in contrast, and most of the languages in which it is attested - mainly on a dialectal level - are West Germanic (English, German, Dutch)
[̪p͡f] - voiceless labiodental affricate. VERY rare. Most of the languages it is attested in at all are West Germanic (German, Lëtzebuergesch, Bavarian) and it apparently also exists contrastively in Tsonga, one of the official languages of South Africa.
[t͡θ] - voiceless interdental affricate. Quite rare. Exists in a small number of indigenous North American languages - some Coast Salish languages have this sound, as do a few Na-Dene languages of the Northwest Territories in Canada.
[t͡s] - voiceless alveolar affricate. Very common, although non-contrastive in English. Best-known in contrast from German, Italian, Slavic languages, and Chinese languages; also exists in a number of indigenous languages of the Americas, the Caucasus, and southern Africa.
[t͡ɬ] - voiceless alveolar lateral affricate. Somewhat rare. Attested primarily in North American indigenous languages (especially in the west) and southern Africa, but also occurs in Icelandic, and Mexican Spanish (through borrowings from Nahuatl).
[t͡ʃ] - voiceless palato-alveolar affricate. Quite common - this is the English "ch" sound. Fairly widespread. Might actually be more widespread an affricate than [t͡s], which is typologically unusual.
[ʈ͡ʂ] - voiceless retroflex affricate. Rarer. Attested mainly in pockets of languages - Slavic languages (primary West and East Slavic), Northwest Caucasian languages, and Chinese languages.
[t͡ɕ] - voiceless alveolo-palatal affricate. Very rare in contrast (Chinese languages, Polish, and Serbo-Croatian, for example) but more common as a variant (Russian, Korean, even certain dialects of English).
[c͡ç] - voiceless palatal affricate. Very rare. Languages that use it often have the plosive [c] as a free variant of it. Some Samic languages of Northern Europe have this attested as contrastive, as does Hungarian.
[c͡ʎ̥˔] - voiceless palatal lateral affricate. Only a couple African languages have this sound contrastively.
[k͡x] - voiceless velar affricate. Quite rare. Most commonly seen in contrast in Southern Africa - Tswana for example.
[k͡ʟ̝̊] - voiceless velar lateral affricate. VERY rare. Attested contrastively in Archi and the Laghuu language of Vietnam.
[q͡χ] - voiceless uvular affricate. Very rare. Mainly found contrastively in the Caucasus and in the Pacific Northwest. I call this the "death rattle" sound. :p
[ʡħ] - voiceless pharyngeal-epiglottal affricate. Apparently attested in Haida, a language of British Columbia and Alaska. Otherwise unattested.
[ʔ͡h] - glottal affricate. Never occurs contrastively. Attested as a variant in Queen's English (aka Received Pronunciation) and certain dialects of Chinese languages.
And the voiced ones.
[b͡β] - voiced bilabial affricate. Unattested in contrast and very rare otherwise. Some British dialects and this one specific African language have it attested as a variant.
[b̪͡v] - voiced labiodental affricate. Very few languages have this attested in contrast, and these are primarily in southern Africa. Occurs in some West Germanic languages as a variant.
[d͡ð] - voiced interdental affricate. VERY rare and only attested as a variant in languages where dental variations of the alveolar plosive [d] or certain dental sound combinations occur.
[d͡z] - voiced alveolar affricate. Not the most common of sounds, but more common than most voiced affricates. Occurs regularly in languages of Eastern Europe - Slavic languages either have it contrastively (most South Slavic languages) or as a variant (East and West Slavic languages); also attested in Albanian, Caucasian languages, Hungarian, Italian, Armenian, and a few Chinese languages and dialects.
[d͡ɮ] - voiced alveolar lateral affricate. VERY rare, and not known to occur contrastively. Attested in Xhosa and Séliš (aka Kalispel-Flathead).
[d͡ʒ] - voiced palato-alveolar affricate. The most common voiced affricate, occurring in a wide range of locations.
[ɖ͡ʐ] - voiced retroflex affricate. Rare. Seen mainly in Slavic languages and languages of China.
[d͡ʑ] - voiced alveolo-palatal affricate. Rare, and usually seen as a variant. Contrastive in some Chinese languages, Polish, and Serbo-Croatian.
[ɟ͡ʝ] - voiced palatal affricate. VERY rare. Hungarian and Samic languages have it in free variation with the plosive [ɟ]. Some dialects of Albanian have it as well.
[ɡ͡ɣ] - voiced velar affricate. VERY rare and unattested contrastively.
[ɡ͡ʟ̝] - voiced velar lateral affricate. Attested contrastively only in Laghuu in Vietnam, and Hiw in Vanuatu.
[ɢ͡ʁ] - voiced uvular affricate. Unattested but considered possible.
[ʡ͡ʕ] - voiced pharyngeal-epiglottal affricate. Unattested but considered possible. How, I really don't know. I blame Eric.
Nasals
Nasals are typically voiced.
[m] - voiced bilabial nasal. Incredibly common, with very few languages (among them the ironically named Mohawk - in its own language it is Kanien’kéha; Rotokas also lacks it) not having it.
[ɱ] - voiced labiodental nasal. Almost nonexistent contrastively, but any language with both [m], and [f] and/or [v], WILL have this as a variant. Very hard to tell apart from [m] to my ears!
[n̼] - voiced linguolabial nasal. You guessed it. VANUATU!
[n] - voiced alveolar nasal. Incredibly common, with very few languages (among them Samoan and Rotokas) lacking it.
[n͡m] - voiced labial-alveolar nasal. VERY rare; only attested in one language of Papua New Guinea.
[ɳ] - voiced retroflex nasal. For the most part, limited to India, Australia, and Scandinavia. Vietnamese also has it as a variant.
[ɲ] - voiced palatal nasal. Surprisingly common, especially in Europe. A number of languages have this contrastively (most Romance languages, Hungarian, Czech, Slovak, most South Slavic languages, Irish Gaelic, Albanian) while others (including English) have this as a variant.
[ŋ] - voiced velar nasal. Not hugely common but not super-rare, either. Occurs frequently as a variant of [n] before velar plosives/fricatives/affricates. In languages where it occurs contrastively it is sometimes consigned to the part of a syllable after the vowel (as in languages like English; this is more common amongst Indo-European languages with the sound) but sometimes not (certain African languages, Samoyedic languages, some Caucasian languages, Chinese languages, several languages of the Philippines).
[ŋ͡m] - voiced labial-velar nasal. Rare, and primarily occurs in West and Central West Africa.
[ɴ] - voiced uvular nasal. Rarer, and usually occurs as a variant of [n] or [ŋ] preceding another uvular. Attested as contrastive in some Eskaleut languages (Inuktitut, Kalaallisut) and one language of Papua New Guinea.
(remember, anything beyond uvular is impossible for a nasal)
Voiceless nasals are usually variants, but not always. On rare occasion, they are contrastive. The Hmong-Mien language family is known for its voiceless nasals - heck, there's one even in the name of the family!
[m̥] - voiceless bilabial nasal. Occurs contrastively in the Hmong-Mien family, Burmese, Yupik, Shixing, Kildin Sami, and Mazatecan languages, and a few others.
[n̥] - voiceless alveolar nasal. Occurs contrastively in the Hmong-Mien family, Burmese, Yupik, Shixing, Kildin Sami, and Mazatecan languages, and a few others.
[ɳ̊] - voiceless retroflex nasal. Only occurs contrastively in one language of New Caledonia.
[ɲ̊] - voiceless palatal nasal. Occurs contrastively in the Hmong language, Burmese, Shixing, and the Mazatecan languages.
[ŋ̊] - voiceless velar nasal. Occurs contrastively in Burmese, Yupik, and Shixing, and Mazatecan languages.
Approximants
There are five approximants that are actually known to contrast with or at least differ from their fricative counterparts:
[ʋ] - voiced labiodental approximant. The "soft V" found in Dutch, North Germanic languages, Finnish, Czech, Slovak, and some South Slavic languages. Not particularly common outside of Europe, but it does occur.
[ɹ] - voiced alveolar/postalveolar approximant. Your stereotypical "English R," fairly rare and tends to be dialectal and a variant in the languages it does occur in. Primarily occurs in Indo-European languages, but is also attested in Burmese, Vietnamese, and Igbo. Is considered a vowel in some dialects of Mandarin.
[ɻ] - voiced retroflex approximant. Quite rare, mainly occurs in India and Australia, but is also attested in southern South America, and dialectally in certain Germanic languages, including English.
[j] - voiced palatal approximant. One of the two most common approximants, occuring in a wide number of languages; is the consonantal equivalent of [i]. (Written with "y" in English) Sometimes takes on noise and becomes [ʝ], but this is a variant.
[ɰ] - voiced velar approximant. Very rare contrastively, primarily occurring as a variant of [k], [g], or [ɣ]. The consonantal equivalent of [ɯ]. Turkish did have this, but has since lost it.
And then there're these gems:
[l] - voiced alveolar lateral approximant. VERY common. Often has a velarised variant; occasionally this [lˠ] is contrastive with [l] (Albanian, for example)
[ɭ] - voiced retroflex lateral approximant. Rare. Attested primarlily in Dravidian and North Germanic languages, also in Australia, and in Korean and Khanty.
[ʎ] - voiced palatal lateral approximant. Not really common, not really rare. A large number of Indo-European languages (of Europe, anyway) have this sound, as do Basque and Hungarian. Outside of Europe, the best examples are in Quechua, Aymara, and more neutral American and Canadian dialects of English.
[ɥ] - voiced labialised palatal approximant. VERY rare contrastively, occurring in Abkhaz and Iaai. (Not sure if there are others.) However, it is more common as a variant, with languages with the vowel [y] and [w] usually having it as a variant of [w] (such as some Chinese languages, Korean, and Shixing); occurs in French as a variant of [y].
[ʟ] - voiced velar lateral approximant. Acoustically almost indistinguishable from the velarised alveolar; the one that is simply velar is much rarer and attested only in the Pacific, and in Scots.
[w] - voiced labio-velar approximant. One of the two most common approximants, occurring in a wide variety of languages. Is the consonantal equivalent of [u].
[ʟ̠] - voiced uvular lateral approximant. Unattested contrastively but apparently possible, and tentatively attested as a variant in certain American Englishes. How, I don't know.
Contrastive voiceless approximants are generally very rare, as they tend to mainly occur as variants of their voiced counterparts following voiced plosives or affricates. The following-listed are only ones that are attested as contrastive.
[ʋ̥] - voiceless labiodental approximant. Attested contrastively only amongst English-speaking South Africans of Indian extraction.
[l̥] - voiceless alveolar lateral approximant. Usually a variant of [l], only attested contrastively in Shixing, Tibetan, and Moksha.
[ɭ̊] - voiceless retroflex lateral approximant. Attested contrastively only in the Iaai language of New Caledonia and the Dravidian language Toda.
[j̊] - voiceless palatal approximant. Attested contrastively in some Samic languages, Moksha, and Jalapa Mazatec (possibly other Mazatecan languages as well).
[ʎ̥] - voiceless palatal lateral approximant. Attested contrastively only in Shixing.
[ʍ] - voiceless labio-velar approximant. Attested contrastively in a number of English dialects (including Southern American English; these dialects preserve an audible contrast between the words "whine" and "wine," of which this is the one in "whine" ) and Hupa; Old English had this sound; many languages have this take on noise and become [xʷ] instead.
Flaps
As with approximants and nasals, these are usually voiced.
[ⱱ̟] - voiced bilabial flap. VERY rare - attested primarily in scattered African languages - and not yet proven to be contrastive in any language, rather being a variant of...
[ⱱ] - voiced labiodental flap. Quite rare - attested in scattered African languages, mainly in Central Africa.
[ɾ] - voiced coronal flap. Don't worry about the term "coronal" for now - I'll expand on that when I do phonology. The typical place of articulation for this alveolar, but it can also be post-alveolar or dental, and these never contrast. Anyway, these are somewhat common as an "r-sound" in language, as in Spanish, Turkish, and Arabic, and also as a variant in Russian. It does occasionally occur as a variant of [t] and [d] as well, as in North American Englishes, Estuary English, and Danish. There's even a nasalised variant of this - [ɾ̃] - that occurs in several North American Englishes as a merger of [n] and [t]. (It isn't as common in Canada.)
[ɺ] - voiced coronal lateral flap. VERY rare, the only major language with this sound is Japanese; occurs as a postalveolar in one particular dialect of Norwegian.
[ɽ] - voiced retroflex flap. As with most retroflex sounds, this is most common to North Germanic, and languages of India and Australia, but in the cases of the North Germanic languages it occurs as a variant of laterals.
[ɭ̆] - voiced retroflex lateral flap. Very rare; occurs primarily in South and Southeast Asia, the most notable contrastive example being Pashto.
[ʟ̆] - voiced velar lateral tap. Only attested in two languages of Papua New Guinea, and not contrastively; why it is able to be a tap on the soft palate is because air can still pass around the edges of the tongue, but the time of contact is still very short.
[ɢ̆] - voiced uvular flap. Very rare and never occurs in contrast. German, Dutch, and Limburgish are attested to have it.
[ʡ̮] - voiced epiglottal flap. Only attested in one language - Dahalo - and even there it isn't contrastive.
Voiceless flaps do occur, but only as variants. They've never been attested in contrast.
Trills
[ʙ] - voiced bilabial trill. Like mimicking a horse, except with voicing! :p Occurs in diverse languages on most continents, but is quite rare.
[r] - voiced coronal trill. Usually alveolar, and very common as an "r-sound."
[ɽ͡r] - voiced retroflex trill. VERY rare - attested contrastively only in three languages and tenuously in some dialects of Dutch.
[ʀ] - voiced uvular trill. Never contrasts with the fricative [ʁ], and is found as the "guttural R" of languages like French, Portuguese, German, some dialects of Dutch, and Hebrew, among others; Most of the languages in question are Indo-European.
[ʢ] - voiced epiglottal trill. Basically a growl; only attested as a speech sound in the Aghul language of Dagestan, Russia, and in some dialects of Arabic.
Voiceless trills are relatively rare in contrast. Only those attested in contrast are shown.
[r̥] - voiceless coronal trill. This does occur in contrast in some languages, such as Icelandic, Moksha, and Welsh.
[ʜ] - voiceless epiglottal trill. Patterns like a fricative; still quite rare, being attested in languages like Chechen, Dahalo, Haida, and some dialects of Arabic.
Ejectives
Ejectives come in three subtypes. There are ejective plosives, ejective affricates, and ejective fricatives. These are always voiceless. All are fairly rare, but ejective plosives and affricates are more common than ejective fricatives.
Ejective plosives
If a language has ejectives, it WILL have ejective plosives.
[p'] - bilabial ejective plosive. Found in scattered languages, but particularly common in the Americas, southern Africa, the Cape Horn area, and the Caucasus (including even Armenian, which is an Indo-European language, quite possibly the only one to have contrastive ejectives).
[t'] - alveolar/dental ejective plosive. While these are written with the same symbol in most cases, the Dahalo language of Kenya has both. Otherwise, in much the same way as the bilabial, these are particularly common in the Americas, southern Africa, the Cape Horn area, and the Caucasus.
[ʈʼ] - retroflex ejective plosive. VERY rare, supposedly occurs in Gwich'in, a Na-Dene language primarily spoken in northwestern Canada and western Alaska.
[cʼ] - palatal ejective plosive. Very rare, occurring mainly in North American indigenous languages, like Haida for example; also attested in isolated languages in southern Africa and the Caucasus, and in Hausa, a major trade language of central west Africa.
[k'] - velar ejective plosive. Found in scattered languages, but particularly common in the Americas, southern Africa, the Cape Horn area, and the Caucasus. Labialised versions of this are common in the Caucasus and western North America.
[q'] - uvular ejective plosive. Limited mainly to the Caucasus and western North America; labialised versions of this occur in Northwest Caucasian, Salishan, Wakashan, and some Na-Dene languages. Palatalised versions occur in Abkhaz and occurred in now-extinct Ubykh, which also had pharyngealised and labialised-pharyngealised versions as well!
[ʡʼ] - epiglottal ejective plosive. VERY rare, only attested in Dargwa, a Northeast Caucasian language.
Ejective affricates
[t͡sʼ] - alveolar ejective affricate. Primarily attested in languages of the Caucasus and the Pacific Northwest.
[t͡ɬ'] - alveolar lateral ejective affricate. I LOVE this sound. As with the above, it is primarily attested in languages of the Caucasus and the Pacific Northwest.
[t͡ʃʼ] - palato-alveolar ejective affricate. Primarily attested in languages of the Caucasus and the Pacific Northwest.
[ʈ͡ʂʼ] - retroflex ejective affricate. Very rare. Attested in Adyghe, a Northwest Caucasian language. Proposed for Avar and Yokutsan languages.
[c͡ʎ̝̥ʼ] - palatal lateral ejective affricate. VERY rare. Attested in Dahalo, and an African language isolate called Hadza.
[k͡xʼ] - velar ejective affricate. Fairly rare. Occurs mainly in southern Africa, esp. Zulu and Xhosa, but also attested in Haida and Hadza.
[k͡ʟ̝̊ʼ] - velar lateral ejective affricate. VERY rare, only occurring contrastively in Archi, a Northeast Caucasian language, and in that language having plain and labialised forms thereof. Occurs in some southern African languages as a variant of [k͡xʼ].
[q͡χʼ] - uvular lateral ejective affricate. The ultimate throat-killer. :p Occurs as a variant of [q'] in Northeast Caucasian and also Salishan languages. It's actually easy to go from one to the other because of the force of an ejective causing vibration of the uvula and therefore some noise.
Ejective fricatives - these are all VERY rare.
[fʼ] - labiodental ejective fricative. Attested in Kabardian, a Northwest Caucasian language. Proposed for Yapese.
[θʼ] - dental ejective fricative. Attested in South Arabian languages (esp. Mehri) and also in Yapese.
[sʼ] - alveolar ejective fricative. Mostly found in scattered North American indigenous languages; attested dialectally in Adyghe and Hausa.
[ɬ’] - alveolar lateral ejective fricative. Found in most Northwest Caucasian languages (not Abkhaz, though, which actually doesn't have ejective fricatives); also attested in Tlingit.
[ʃʼ] - palato-alveolar ejective fricative. Attested in Adyghe and the Keresan languages.
[ʂʼ] - retroflex ejective affricate. Attested in the Keresan languages.
[x’] - velar ejective affricate. Attested in Tlingit.
[χ’] - uvular ejective affricate. Attested in Tlingit, and supposedly Georgian as a variant.
Implosives
Implosives only have one form - they pattern in the same way as plosives. Implosives are more commonly voiced. They occur most frequently in Sub-Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia, but also happen in the Sindhi language and the Saraiki dialect of Punjabi, in Pakistan.
[ɓ] - voiced bilabial implosive. Occurs in a number of African and Southeast Asian languages, and also in Sindhi and Saraiki. Apparently attested in Southern American English at the beginning of words. (Not sure I buy that. ) Notable languages with it include Vietnamese, Khmer, and Hausa. Also attested in some Mayan languages of Guatemala.
[ɗ] - voiced alveolar implosive. Occurs in a number of African and Southeast Asian languages, and also in Sindhi and Saraiki. Notable languages with it include Vietnamese, Khmer, and Hausa.
[ᶑ] - voiced retroflex implosive. Much rarer; attested in Ngadha, a language of Indonesia, and Oromo, a major vernacular language of Ethiopia.
[ʄ] - voiced palatal implosive. Not as common as some implosives, and not attested in Southeast Asia, being mainly used in Africa. Does appear in Sindhi and Saraiki, however.
[ɠ] - voiced velar implosive. Occurs primarily in Africa, but also occurs in Sindhi and Saraiki.
[ʛ] - voiced uvular implosive. Occurs in actual language in a very odd place; the Mam language of Guatemala. Apparently no other language has it, which is odd in the sense that it is outside the regular occurrence zones of implosives. Used by many other languages, though, as a way to mimic gulping sounds!
There are voiceless implosives attested; those few languages confirmed using them in contrast are mostly in Africa.
[ɓ̥] - voiceless bilabial implosive. Attested contrastively in Serer-Sine, a Senegalese language, and in the Owere dialect of Igbo in Nigeria.
[ɗ̥] - voiceless alveolar implosive. Attested contrastively in Serer-Sine and in the Owere dialect of Igbo.
[ʄ̊] - voiceless palatal implosive. Attested contrastively only in Serer-Sine.
[ʛ̥] - voicless uvular implosive. Attested in Kaqchikel and Q’anjob’al, both Mayan languages spoken in Guatemala. These are also the only languages on the books that are claimed to have a voiceless implosive without having the voiced counterpart.
Clicks
Only one language outside of southern Africa has ever been attested having clicks, and that language (in Australia) is now extinct; clicks have numerous contrastive forms, but only the baseline forms are shown here.
[ʘ] - bilabial click. Not a kissing sound, rather a lip-smacking sound done with non-puckered lips. Attested in the Tuu and Kxa languages of southern Africa.
[|] = dental click. Used as an actual speech sound in a number of southern African languages, including Zulu, Xhosa, and the languages formerly designated as "Khoisan." (This term fell out of use when it was determined that those languages didn't necessarily form a provably cohesive language family) Used paralinguistically in English to denote pity or disapproval, written "tsk-tsk."
[ǃ] = alveolar click. Occurs in a number of southern African languages, including Sesotho, which has no clicks in any other place of articulation, Xhosa, Zulu, and the languages formerly designated as "Khoisan."
[ǂ] = palatal click. Only occurs in languages formerly designated as "Khoisan."
[ǁ] = lateral click, formed by making the click on the side of the mouth rather than in the middle or across the whole mouth. Used in many southern African languages, including Xhosa (the name of which has the aspirated variant of this), Zulu, and the languages formerly designated as "Khoisan."
[ǃ˞] = retroflex click. Extremely rare, actually only being attested in the Central !Kung language of Namibia.
Vowels
Unlike consonants, which occur in more or less a specific spot in the mouth, vowels have a larger range and are often relative to the language. Still, there are specific formant frequency ranges that are set out for each vowel. You would never hear an [i] with the formants of an [ɑ], for example. Anyway.
Keep in mind as well, there are two different conventions for vowel height. Vowels can also be contrastively long and short, which they were in Latin and Old English, and remain in languages like Finnish, Japanese, Navajo, etc. It can be contrastively nasalised in languages like the Na-Dene languages of North America (Navajo, Tlingit, Apache, Dakelh, Tsilhqut'in, etc.), French, most dialects of Portuguese, Polish, etc. Furthermore, phonation can vary; some languages have contrastive creaky voice.
What are shown here are your basic segmental vowels.
Front Vowels
[i] - close/high front unrounded vowel. Among the most common vowel sounds - most languages have this sound in contrast. Can't actually think of a language off the top of my head that doesn't. It isn't always a "clean" [i], though; some dialects of English have a slight diphthong instead, [ɪj].
[y] - close/high front rounded vowel. Considerably less common than its unrounded counterpart. Occurs primarily in Europe and North/Central Asia. English is probably the only major Germanic language that doesn't have it cross-dialectally, and even some dialects of English (most stereotypically Scottish) have it. Major languages with this sound include French, German, Mandarin, Cantonese, Wu, Dutch, Turkish, Hungarian, and Finnish.
[ɪ] - near-close/near-high front unrounded vowel. Not as common as its close/high counterpart, but still occurs fairly widely, particularly in Europe and Africa. In English, this replaced the short [i] after vowel-shift, and prescriptive grammars still call it "short-I," but there is more than just length that is a factor here; other West Germanic languages follow suit in this regard.
[ʏ] - near-close/near-high front rounded vowel. Fairly rare. Almost all the languages that use it are Indo-European, as a short variant of [y], although it is also attested in Turkish and Hungarian. On top of this, the bulk of the languages from Indo-European that use it are either themselves Germanic (Dutch, Icelandic, Swedish, Faeroese, German, Limburgish, Norwegian) or have a historically heavy Germanic influence (French; one could possibly make this argument for non-Indo-European Hungarian as well).
[e] - Close-mid/high-mid front unrounded vowel. As with [i], this is sometimes not a "clean vowel" but a diphthong. Fairly common; occurring in some "5-vowel systems" and more or less all "7-vowel" and "9-vowel" systems. (I'll talk about that in phonology). Noteworthy examples of this being found clean are Cantonese, German, French, Hindi, Scottish English, and Arabic.
[ø] - Close-mid/high-mid front rounded vowel. A little less common, occurring primarily in Europe and Northern/Central Asia. Occurs in most Germanic languages and in French (why the crap isn't it in more standard English, then? ) and also occurs in Turkish, Wu, and Hungarian, among others.
[e̞] or [ɛ̝] - Mid front unrounded vowel. This sound occurs in languages that don't have a contrast between two mid-range front unrounded vowels, such as Spanish, Finnish, Japanese, Romanian, a number of Slavic languages, Hebrew, and Tagalog, among others.
[ø̞] or [œ̝] - Mid front rounded vowel. Fairly rare. Uralic languages with a front rounded vowel in the mid-range, like Finnish, Estonian, Võro, and Hungarian, have this sound, as does Turkish. In a number of Germanic languages, English included, it occurs dialectally, although in some cases this is argued.
[ɛ] - open-mid/low-mid front unrounded vowel. Fairly common. Occurs in some "5-vowel, ""7-vowel" and "9-vowel" systems, although in some of these, it is supplanted by [ə].
[œ] - open-mid/low-mid front rounded vowel. Rarer, and typically a variant of [ø]. The only language I can think of where these two actually contrast is French, which is a nightmare for me, because I have trouble telling the two apart even now after years of training!
[æ] - near-open/near-low front unrounded vowel. Fairly rare. In a number of languages that have it it only occurs in certain dialects. Some languages that consistently have it are English, Finnic languages (Finnish, Estonian, etc.), Northern Azeri, Farsi, and Tsilhqut'in (I can verify this on personal experience as I studied the language with two speakers in my undergrad). In Southern American English, it contrasts with [a].
[a] - open/low front unrounded vowel. Fairly common. Since most languages have only a single low-range vowel, this is either the default form of it, as in Spanish, Mandarin, Arabic etc., or a variant thereof. A number of "5-vowel," "7-vowel," and "9-vowel" systems have this, with this being the only one that is unpaired in those cases.
[ɶ] - open/low front rounded vowel. Extremely rare and only attested in a few Germanic languages as a variant. Probably because it would make you look like a contortionist trying to pronounce the thing while keeping your lips rounded!
Central vowels
With the exception of [ə], the mid-range of the central vowels is hard to find in contrast. This is because in usage, they seldom if ever contrast with their back counterparts.
[ɨ] - close/high central unrounded vowel. [ə] aside, this might be the most common central vowel attested in language, appearing contrastively in a large range of languages in various places around the world. Russian, Uzbek, Mongolian, Irish Gaelic, and Mandarin have the prototypical examples of this sound.
[ʉ] - close/high central rounded vowel. Typically a variant of [u]; dialectal in English, contrastive in Swedish and Norwegian, and in fact Swedish contrasts three high rounded vowels, a rarity in language.
[ɘ] - close-mid/high-mid central unrounded vowel. Rare in contrast, occurs dialectally to a degree in English, but only consistently in languages like Kazakh and Skolt Sami. Often freely variant with back vowel [ɤ].
[ɵ] - close-mid/high-mid central rounded vowel. Rare in contrast, occurring definitively in languages such as Cantonese, Mongolian, and Tajik but being conflated with other vowels in a number of other supposed attestations.
[ə] - mid central vowel. If a language reduces vowels, it will have this as a variant, and a LOT of languages reduce vowels! It is much less common contrastively, but still occurs fairly frequently; Northwestern and Northeastern Caucasian languages, indigenous languages of Western North America, Indo-Iranian languages (Hindi, Punjabi, Marathi, Kurdish), Armenian, Albanian, Palauan, and even French have this contrastively.
[ɚ] - rhotacised mid central vowel. This can also be written as a syllabified [ɹ]. Very rare in terms of number of languages that use it, but for number of speakers? Most North American Englishes (New England or certain New York or Southern sub-dialects notwithstanding) have this, as do some widely-spoken dialects of Mandarin.
[ɜ] - open-mid/low-mid central unrounded vowel. Rare in contrast, but surprisingly, Queen's English (RP) is one of the languages that does use it, replacing the sequence [ə] + [ɹ]. Minority languages like Paicî (New Caledonia) and Ladin (northern Italy) have it in contrast as well.
[ɞ] - open-mid/low-mid rounded vowel. Mainly occurs as a variant, occasionally occurring dialectally, and only occurring contrastively in one language, the Kashubian language of Poland.
[ɐ] - near-open/near-low central unrounded vowel. Surprisingly common as a variant; rarer in contrast, but is considered the "citation form" corresponding to the letter "a" in languages like Catalan, Cantonese, and the Baltic languages. A rounded equivalent does occur in one language, the Sabiny language of Uganda.
Back vowels
[ɯ] - close/high back unrounded vowel. While it never contrasts with [ɨ], the two are quite distinct nonetheless. Somewhat common, occurring in many Turkic and Mongolic languages, some Chinese languages, some languages of southeast Asia, Korean, and Scottish Gaelic.
[u] - close/high back rounded vowel. Very common, easily the most common rounded vowel in any world language. English doesn't have a clean [u] per se, with it instead being partly diphthongised. Some languages, like Japanese, Wu, Swedish, and Norwegian, have a form where the lips are rounded but don't stick out (called "compressed"), giving it a slightly different sound. But typically the rounding of this vowel results in protruded lips.
[ʊ] - near-close/near-high back rounded vowel. Fairly common either in five/seven/nine-vowel systems, a variant of [u] as in Russian or Québecois French, or as development from a historic short [u] as in English; does contrast in English (compare the words soot [sʊt] and suit [sut]). There is an unrounded vowel of this height and backness, but it occurs strictly as a variant or a dialectic sound.
[o] - close-mid/high-mid back rounded vowel. Quite common. Many English dialects don't have a clean [o]; languages that do include French, German, some dialects of English (Scottish English, Singlish, Indian English), and a number of others, many of whom have 7-vowel or 9-vowel systems. Wu Chinese has a "compressed" form of this vowel.
[ɤ] - close-mid/high-mid back unrounded vowel. Fairly rare. Languages that do have it include some languages of East and Southeast Asia, most notably Mandarin, Taiwanese, and Thai.
[o̞] - mid back rounded vowel. As with the front vowels, back vowels "go mid" when they don't distinguish multiple vowels in the mid-range. Finnic languages, Spanish, several Slavic languages, Japanese, Turkish, and Hebrew are among those that have this vowel.
[ɤ̞] - mid back unrounded vowel. Quite rare. Estonian, Võro, Danish, and Bulgarian have this sound attested, as do certain dialects of English (Norfolk and Cardiff supposedly) and Vietnamese.
[ɔ] - open-mid/low-mid rounded vowel. Common, and from what I've seen it's probably more common than [o]. This "open O" occurs in all 7-vowel and 9-vowel systems and in a fairly large number of 5-vowel systems. Its place in English is dialectally varied, but in R-retaining dialects it is generally the variant of [o] before [ɹ]. In R-drop dialects, "or" generally becomes a long [o], usually written [o:]
[ʌ] - open-mid/low-mid unrounded vowel. Not really that common. Occurs in a large number of English dialects (especially in North America), though, as the vowel in words like "butt" "shut" "fronting," etc. Also appears in Standard Korean, Tamil, and as a variant of [ə] in Salishan languages.
[ɑ] - open/low unrounded vowel. The only unrounded back vowel that is more common than its rounded counterpart, and the continuum between it and centralised [ä] gives us quite possibly the most common vowel sound area in language. Arguably all languages have a vowel somewhere in this formant range; the only other vowel that is in the same range of commonality is [i]. Languages contrasting three low vowels is almost unheard of, although apparently Skolt Sami does, contrasting this, [æ], and [ɐ].
[ɒ] - open/low rounded vowel. In contrast to its unrounded counterpart, this is very rare; it's usually dialectal or a variant of something else; an exception to this is its frequency in a large number of dialects of English (including my own, "Western Canadian"), and it is also attested in Farsi, Uzbek, Hungarian, the dialects of Western Desert in Australia, and Assamese. In most cases, the vowel-rounding is less pronounced than in other rounded vowels.
Welp, that's the end of the basics of phonetics.
Spammers Beware! I will destroy you by the POWAH of the JARK SIDE! ALL SPAMMERS WILL BE EXTERMINATED ON SIGHT.
Spammers EXTERMINATED: 119
(06-11-2022, 10:13 PM)Kyng Wrote: I love how [Abacab] has a track with a section named "Lurker", when the album title itself looks like Lurker's attempt to spell "Abacus" or something .
My Items