![]() | This article is rated C-class on Wikipedia's
content assessment scale. It is of interest to the following WikiProjects: | |||||||||||||
|
Might be worth pointing out that the German "w" is labiodental and thus different from the English "w" - also, examples? ( 131.130.121.106 11:23, 20 September 2005 (UTC))
Monkbel has restored Belarusian Å, but without providing support. It only seems to be used in diphthongs, such as aÅ, eÅ, oÅ, and thus might be better characterized as a semivowel [u̯] than as an approximant [w]. kwami 11:09, 5 November 2005 (UTC)
It is [baʊ̯É] (Bauer). There is no [w] in German. A German native speaker has to learn to do it by saying a German-W [v] and making his mouth like U [uË]. 2003:D3:E722:8300:6DC7:6906:4891:C7D5 ( talk) 17:24, 29 January 2021 (UTC)
It says that the sound is the "voiced labiovelar (actually labialized velar) approximant". So shouldn't the article be moved to the "voiced labialized velar approximant" and have a redirect of this title ("Voiced labial-velar approximant") to it? I think having the correct term for the title is important.
Second, in the English pronunciation part of the graph I took the liberty to change the highighted (bolded) part to the "w" instead of the double "e"'s ("ee"). If this is incorrect please change it. Thank you. 98.27.171.83 ( talk) 14:53, 21 January 2008 (UTC)
The title of the article is "Voiced labial-velar approximant". What is the significance of "labial-velar" as opposed to "labio-velar"? For comparison, the article on /wh/ is entitled "Voiceless labio-velar approximant". IMHO, we should combine the adjectives consistently, whether as "labio-velar" or as "labialised velar" - oops!, "labialized velar". yoyo ( talk) 17:42, 8 May 2008 (UTC)
Too bad there are never given any more but one examples. Currently, we've got água. However I think it would be much better to denote the difference between Portuguese (Portugal) and Portuguese (Brazil). In Brazil, for instance, the common surname da Silva is pronounced [dÉˈsiwvÉ] OR (!) [dÉˈsiʊ̯vÉ] (don't ask, for me it sounds the same), whilst in Portugal, they'd pronounce it [dÉˈsiÉ«vÉ]. -andy 77.190.53.199 ( talk) 19:40, 10 April 2012 (UTC)
File:Voiced labio-velar approximant.ogg --> / EsB ( talk) 09:17, 15 June 2012 (UTC)
I'm a native English speaker and my pronunciation of w only seems to involve rounding the lips; my tongue doesn't move at all and I can even move it around whilst saying "wawawa" without any problem, so I'm having trouble seeing why this is categorised as labio-velar. Have I just been mispronouncing the sound all my life? I sincerely doubt it, especially since even after experimenting I don't see how raising the back of the tongue could improve the sound. But then why is this called labio-velar? -- 92.147.116.199 ( talk) 22:56, 6 May 2013 (UTC)
I've removed the instance of the occurrence of the labio-velar in the Ukrainian language as it simply does not occur (unless it is a speech impediment, which approximates pronouncing 'r' as a 'w' in the English language). The only form of 'v' in the Ukrainian languages is 'v'. Please present sources for having added the occurrence in the Ukrainian language other than old Galician dialect which occurred occasionally in some regions as the result of Polish and Ukrainians living cheek-by-jowl. WP:RS, not imagination, please. -- Iryna Harpy ( talk) 07:39, 5 May 2014 (UTC)
There is no mention of Finnish, which has a labio-velar approximant in the middle of words such as [ˈkiuwËÉ‘s], which is especially interesting and noteworthy because it's one of the few sounds not shown in Finnish spelling. In fact, it's even missing from the article on Finnish phonology. -- Espoo ( talk) 15:30, 16 May 2014 (UTC)
As a native speaker of this particular dialect I must say that I have never heard it being pronounced this way by a native from whichever province. If one would pronounce it this way in Belgium (Flanders) he would be taken for a francophone speaker (meaning there is a clear distinction between the french [w] and the flemish [β̞]) or perhaps a speaker from Suriname, since the native realization of the grapheme /w/ would indeed always be [w] in this dialect.
It is also not true that the [w] realization is considered as a standard pronunciation. If a news reader (in Flanders, as in many parts of the world I presume, they are considered to be the most refined speakers of the language and they adhere to a strict norm of standard Belgian Dutch) would pronounce the /w/ in words like welp,water,wassen or meeuwen he or she would be frowned upon at the least and her pronunciation would be considered extremely odd and non-native. The Belgian realization of this phoneme is exactly what this article states as its dialectal pronunciation and this is nationwide.
It is in fact the voiced bilabial approximant [β̞] that is used by any speaker I have met from West Flanders to Limburg (having resided in all of the 5 Dutch speaking provinces). It is the exact same sound as the Spanish /b/,/v/ in the non initial position, like in pavo for example. I will edit this in the article. If there are any objections, any person can annul my contribution. However, any native speaker from this area would tell you the same. Even if he weren't a linguist. Far too often have I seen that native speakers have psychologically accepted that a certain phoneme is pronounced a certain way on paper, not realizing it isn't. For example, in our schoolbooks the so called "right" pronunciation of this particular is noted as the labiodental approximant [ʋ] which is only native to the Netherlands and pretty far away from the flemish [β̞]. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 94.226.96.15 ( talk) 10:11, August 1, 2015
The result of the move request was: Moved per nom (sigh). I wish we had more input, but this is long overdue to close. While I'm reasonably familiar with the topic, the discussion drifted far away into technical matters. The IPA chart argument is persuasive enough, and since we keep our naming [mostly] consistent with IPA, there we go. No such user ( talk) 08:52, 22 July 2021 (UTC)
– [w], [Ê] and [É¥] appear under the proposed names on the IPA chart.â€
The articles about plosives were boldly moved from "stop" to "plosive" to make them in line with the IPA terminology last year (which I welcome and which was approved implicitly by others in this RM), yet the same user who moved the plosive articles reverted the proposed moves, saying "not coarticulated, but 2ary articulation".
Although some instances of the sounds discussed may indeed be more accurately described as labialized velar/palatal than as co-articulated from a purely phonetic point of view, we do not know if this is true in all languages reported to have these sounds. When an underdocumented language is reported to have e.g. /w/ in its inventory and that's all we have to go by, there's no way to tell if it's better described as labialized velar or velarized labial, and if our article on [w] is named one way, we have no choice but to include that information either in no article about a phonetic sound or in the one named "labialized velar", which is misleading to readers at best and misrepresentative of the source at worst. Naming our articles using broader categories allows us to represent reliable sources more flexibly and thus more accurately.
In fact that's what we already do in these articles about phonetic sounds. We might not know the exact specific phonetic configurations for each sound reported, but using the broad taxonomic categories employed by the IPA, we can stick to what's reported in our sources and provide finer language-specific details where available. This was also the motive for merging articles about " voiceless approximants", a category not all linguists accept, which made it impossible to classify some reports of sounds emphatically as either approximant or fricative.
Moreover, the IPA defines the value of each letter not by specific physical attributes but by broad categories informed by the distinctive feature theory ( IPA Handbook, pp. 37–8), and "[w] in one language might be revealed to be a velarized labial because it alternates with [b], yet be pronounced identically to [w] in another language that is revealed to be a labialized velar because it alternates with [g]" ( Zsiga 2020: 122).
†Except the IPA chart uses hyphens, not en dashes. The proposed names are consistent with the existing articles in Category:Labial–velar consonants etc. Also notice the inconsistency between the current names of the first article under discussion and the rest (hyphen vs. space). Nardog ( talk) 09:55, 24 May 2021 (UTC) —Relisting. Natg 19 ( talk) 01:53, 4 June 2021 (UTC)
Approximants, e.g. [Ê‹ j w l ɹ É»], and nasals, which by definition are non-obstruents, are usually voiced. When voiceless, however, without any variation in the configuration of the oral articulators, they can become fricative (and thus obstruents), e.g. [f ç Ê É¸ ɬ ɹ̥ Ê‚] and [mÌ¥ nÌ¥ ɲ̥ Å‹ÌŠ], respectively. This happens simply due to the increased airflow passing through the constriction created by these consonants – the increased airflow being caused by the greater opening (and thus lesser resistance to airflow) at the glottis.
One problem with classifying [h] as an approximant is that voiceless approximants are by definition inaudible. (Or by one definition, at least. Approximants used to be known as "frictionless continuants".) If there's no friction and no voicing, there's nothing to hear. Anything you can hear during a voiceless [h] must be some sort of weak friction, resulting from some sort of weak turbulence, which means that [h] is some sort of weak fricative — but still a fricative.
I will dismiss out of hand as simply wrong Ladefoged's reference to the second segment in [pr̥ei] pray, [tr̥ai] try or [kr̥ai] cry as a voiceless approximant. The second segment in question is a fricative (cf. Gimson 1989: 208), not an approximant.And O'Connor (1973: 61):
There are no voiceless frictionless continuants because this would imply silence; the voiceless counterpart of the frictionless continuant is the voiceless fricative.
Support These are articles about two different things but with a title for one of those things; logically, we should have a title that includes both of those things (not to mention the proposal is how the IPA calls it). That being said, I cannot admit to understand most of the discussion/rationale other than that (and the fact that voiceless approximants don't exist so we shouldn't have an article on them), so I would appreciate it if Nardog could explain it in a bit simpler terms. Zoozaz1 talk 13:00, 21 June 2021 (UTC)
![]() | This article is rated C-class on Wikipedia's
content assessment scale. It is of interest to the following WikiProjects: | |||||||||||||
|
Might be worth pointing out that the German "w" is labiodental and thus different from the English "w" - also, examples? ( 131.130.121.106 11:23, 20 September 2005 (UTC))
Monkbel has restored Belarusian Å, but without providing support. It only seems to be used in diphthongs, such as aÅ, eÅ, oÅ, and thus might be better characterized as a semivowel [u̯] than as an approximant [w]. kwami 11:09, 5 November 2005 (UTC)
It is [baʊ̯É] (Bauer). There is no [w] in German. A German native speaker has to learn to do it by saying a German-W [v] and making his mouth like U [uË]. 2003:D3:E722:8300:6DC7:6906:4891:C7D5 ( talk) 17:24, 29 January 2021 (UTC)
It says that the sound is the "voiced labiovelar (actually labialized velar) approximant". So shouldn't the article be moved to the "voiced labialized velar approximant" and have a redirect of this title ("Voiced labial-velar approximant") to it? I think having the correct term for the title is important.
Second, in the English pronunciation part of the graph I took the liberty to change the highighted (bolded) part to the "w" instead of the double "e"'s ("ee"). If this is incorrect please change it. Thank you. 98.27.171.83 ( talk) 14:53, 21 January 2008 (UTC)
The title of the article is "Voiced labial-velar approximant". What is the significance of "labial-velar" as opposed to "labio-velar"? For comparison, the article on /wh/ is entitled "Voiceless labio-velar approximant". IMHO, we should combine the adjectives consistently, whether as "labio-velar" or as "labialised velar" - oops!, "labialized velar". yoyo ( talk) 17:42, 8 May 2008 (UTC)
Too bad there are never given any more but one examples. Currently, we've got água. However I think it would be much better to denote the difference between Portuguese (Portugal) and Portuguese (Brazil). In Brazil, for instance, the common surname da Silva is pronounced [dÉˈsiwvÉ] OR (!) [dÉˈsiʊ̯vÉ] (don't ask, for me it sounds the same), whilst in Portugal, they'd pronounce it [dÉˈsiÉ«vÉ]. -andy 77.190.53.199 ( talk) 19:40, 10 April 2012 (UTC)
File:Voiced labio-velar approximant.ogg --> / EsB ( talk) 09:17, 15 June 2012 (UTC)
I'm a native English speaker and my pronunciation of w only seems to involve rounding the lips; my tongue doesn't move at all and I can even move it around whilst saying "wawawa" without any problem, so I'm having trouble seeing why this is categorised as labio-velar. Have I just been mispronouncing the sound all my life? I sincerely doubt it, especially since even after experimenting I don't see how raising the back of the tongue could improve the sound. But then why is this called labio-velar? -- 92.147.116.199 ( talk) 22:56, 6 May 2013 (UTC)
I've removed the instance of the occurrence of the labio-velar in the Ukrainian language as it simply does not occur (unless it is a speech impediment, which approximates pronouncing 'r' as a 'w' in the English language). The only form of 'v' in the Ukrainian languages is 'v'. Please present sources for having added the occurrence in the Ukrainian language other than old Galician dialect which occurred occasionally in some regions as the result of Polish and Ukrainians living cheek-by-jowl. WP:RS, not imagination, please. -- Iryna Harpy ( talk) 07:39, 5 May 2014 (UTC)
There is no mention of Finnish, which has a labio-velar approximant in the middle of words such as [ˈkiuwËÉ‘s], which is especially interesting and noteworthy because it's one of the few sounds not shown in Finnish spelling. In fact, it's even missing from the article on Finnish phonology. -- Espoo ( talk) 15:30, 16 May 2014 (UTC)
As a native speaker of this particular dialect I must say that I have never heard it being pronounced this way by a native from whichever province. If one would pronounce it this way in Belgium (Flanders) he would be taken for a francophone speaker (meaning there is a clear distinction between the french [w] and the flemish [β̞]) or perhaps a speaker from Suriname, since the native realization of the grapheme /w/ would indeed always be [w] in this dialect.
It is also not true that the [w] realization is considered as a standard pronunciation. If a news reader (in Flanders, as in many parts of the world I presume, they are considered to be the most refined speakers of the language and they adhere to a strict norm of standard Belgian Dutch) would pronounce the /w/ in words like welp,water,wassen or meeuwen he or she would be frowned upon at the least and her pronunciation would be considered extremely odd and non-native. The Belgian realization of this phoneme is exactly what this article states as its dialectal pronunciation and this is nationwide.
It is in fact the voiced bilabial approximant [β̞] that is used by any speaker I have met from West Flanders to Limburg (having resided in all of the 5 Dutch speaking provinces). It is the exact same sound as the Spanish /b/,/v/ in the non initial position, like in pavo for example. I will edit this in the article. If there are any objections, any person can annul my contribution. However, any native speaker from this area would tell you the same. Even if he weren't a linguist. Far too often have I seen that native speakers have psychologically accepted that a certain phoneme is pronounced a certain way on paper, not realizing it isn't. For example, in our schoolbooks the so called "right" pronunciation of this particular is noted as the labiodental approximant [ʋ] which is only native to the Netherlands and pretty far away from the flemish [β̞]. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 94.226.96.15 ( talk) 10:11, August 1, 2015
The result of the move request was: Moved per nom (sigh). I wish we had more input, but this is long overdue to close. While I'm reasonably familiar with the topic, the discussion drifted far away into technical matters. The IPA chart argument is persuasive enough, and since we keep our naming [mostly] consistent with IPA, there we go. No such user ( talk) 08:52, 22 July 2021 (UTC)
– [w], [Ê] and [É¥] appear under the proposed names on the IPA chart.â€
The articles about plosives were boldly moved from "stop" to "plosive" to make them in line with the IPA terminology last year (which I welcome and which was approved implicitly by others in this RM), yet the same user who moved the plosive articles reverted the proposed moves, saying "not coarticulated, but 2ary articulation".
Although some instances of the sounds discussed may indeed be more accurately described as labialized velar/palatal than as co-articulated from a purely phonetic point of view, we do not know if this is true in all languages reported to have these sounds. When an underdocumented language is reported to have e.g. /w/ in its inventory and that's all we have to go by, there's no way to tell if it's better described as labialized velar or velarized labial, and if our article on [w] is named one way, we have no choice but to include that information either in no article about a phonetic sound or in the one named "labialized velar", which is misleading to readers at best and misrepresentative of the source at worst. Naming our articles using broader categories allows us to represent reliable sources more flexibly and thus more accurately.
In fact that's what we already do in these articles about phonetic sounds. We might not know the exact specific phonetic configurations for each sound reported, but using the broad taxonomic categories employed by the IPA, we can stick to what's reported in our sources and provide finer language-specific details where available. This was also the motive for merging articles about " voiceless approximants", a category not all linguists accept, which made it impossible to classify some reports of sounds emphatically as either approximant or fricative.
Moreover, the IPA defines the value of each letter not by specific physical attributes but by broad categories informed by the distinctive feature theory ( IPA Handbook, pp. 37–8), and "[w] in one language might be revealed to be a velarized labial because it alternates with [b], yet be pronounced identically to [w] in another language that is revealed to be a labialized velar because it alternates with [g]" ( Zsiga 2020: 122).
†Except the IPA chart uses hyphens, not en dashes. The proposed names are consistent with the existing articles in Category:Labial–velar consonants etc. Also notice the inconsistency between the current names of the first article under discussion and the rest (hyphen vs. space). Nardog ( talk) 09:55, 24 May 2021 (UTC) —Relisting. Natg 19 ( talk) 01:53, 4 June 2021 (UTC)
Approximants, e.g. [Ê‹ j w l ɹ É»], and nasals, which by definition are non-obstruents, are usually voiced. When voiceless, however, without any variation in the configuration of the oral articulators, they can become fricative (and thus obstruents), e.g. [f ç Ê É¸ ɬ ɹ̥ Ê‚] and [mÌ¥ nÌ¥ ɲ̥ Å‹ÌŠ], respectively. This happens simply due to the increased airflow passing through the constriction created by these consonants – the increased airflow being caused by the greater opening (and thus lesser resistance to airflow) at the glottis.
One problem with classifying [h] as an approximant is that voiceless approximants are by definition inaudible. (Or by one definition, at least. Approximants used to be known as "frictionless continuants".) If there's no friction and no voicing, there's nothing to hear. Anything you can hear during a voiceless [h] must be some sort of weak friction, resulting from some sort of weak turbulence, which means that [h] is some sort of weak fricative — but still a fricative.
I will dismiss out of hand as simply wrong Ladefoged's reference to the second segment in [pr̥ei] pray, [tr̥ai] try or [kr̥ai] cry as a voiceless approximant. The second segment in question is a fricative (cf. Gimson 1989: 208), not an approximant.And O'Connor (1973: 61):
There are no voiceless frictionless continuants because this would imply silence; the voiceless counterpart of the frictionless continuant is the voiceless fricative.
Support These are articles about two different things but with a title for one of those things; logically, we should have a title that includes both of those things (not to mention the proposal is how the IPA calls it). That being said, I cannot admit to understand most of the discussion/rationale other than that (and the fact that voiceless approximants don't exist so we shouldn't have an article on them), so I would appreciate it if Nardog could explain it in a bit simpler terms. Zoozaz1 talk 13:00, 21 June 2021 (UTC)