Blowing a raspberry

Last updated
A man blowing a raspberry
Buccal interdental trill
ↀ͡r̪͆
ↀ
Voiceless labiolingual trill
r̼̊
ʙ̺̊
IPA number 122 + 407 + 402A
Audio sample
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Encoding
Entity (decimal)r​̼​̥
Unicode (hex)U+0072 U+033C U+0325

A raspberry or razz, also known as a Bronx cheer, is a mouth noise similar to a fart that is used to signify derision. It is also used as a voice exercise for singers and actors, where it may be called a raspberry trill or tongue trill. [1] It is made by placing the tongue between the lips and blowing, so that it trills against the lower lip, and as a catcall in public arenas is sometimes made into the palm or back of the hand to amplify the volume. In Russia it is commonly accompanied by rolling the eyes. [2]

Contents

Blowing a raspberry is common to many countries around the world, including European and European-settled countries and Iran. [3] In anglophone countries is associated with catcalling opposing sports teams, and with children. It is not used in any human language as a building block of words, apart from jocular exceptions such as the name of the comic-book character Joe Btfsplk. However, the vaguely similar bilabial trill (essentially blowing a raspberry with one's lips) is a regular consonant sound in a few dozen languages scattered around the world.

Spike Jones and His City Slickers used a "birdaphone" to create this sound on their recording of "Der Fuehrer's Face", repeatedly lambasting Adolf Hitler with: "We'll Heil! (Bronx cheer) Heil! (Bronx cheer) Right in Der Fuehrer's Face!" [4] [5]

In the terminology of phonetics, the raspberry has been described as a (pulmonic) labiolingual trill, [6] transcribed [r̼] or [r̼̊] (depending on voicing) in the International Phonetic Alphabet; [a] and as a buccal interdental trill, transcribed [ↀ͡r̪͆] in the Extensions to the International Phonetic Alphabet, which also suggests that ↀ may be used as an abbreviation if a speaker frequently uses the sound. [7]

Name

The nomenclature varies by country. In most anglophone countries, it is known as a raspberry, which is attested from at least 1890, [8] and which in the United States had been shortened to razz by 1919. [9] The term originates in rhyming slang, where "raspberry tart" means "fart". [10] In the United States it has also been called a Bronx cheer since at least the early 1920s. [11] [12]

In Italian it is known by the Neapolitan word pernacchia, in Spanish as pedorreta or trompetilla.

There is no particular word for it in Russian. [2]

See also

References

  1. ↑
  2. 1 2 Самохина И. А. Комбинированные приёмы трансляции культурно-исторических реалий в художественном тексте // Иностранные языки: лингвистические и методологические аспекты. — Тверь: ТвГУ, 2014. — № 25. — С. 271—273.
  3. ↑ لغتنامه دهخدا مدخل شیشکی
  4. ↑ Hinkley, David (March 3, 2004). "Scorn and disdain: Spike Jones giffs Hitler der old birdaphone, 1942". New York Daily News . Archived from the original on April 8, 2009.
  5. ↑ Gilliland, John (April 14, 1972). "Pop Chronicles 1940s Program #5". UNT Digital Library.
  6. ↑ Odden, David (2005). Introducing Phonology (1st ed.). New York: Cambridge University Press. p. 130. ISBN   978-0-511-10970-6.
  7. ↑ Ball, Martin J.; Howard, Sara J.; Miller, Kirk (2018). "Revisions to the extIPA chart". Journal of the International Phonetic Association. 48 (2): 155–164. doi:10.1017/S0025100317000147. S2CID   151863976.
  8. ↑ "raspberry" . Oxford English Dictionary (Online ed.). Oxford University Press.(Subscription or participating institution membership required.)
  9. ↑ "razz" . Oxford English Dictionary (Online ed.). Oxford University Press.(Subscription or participating institution membership required.)
  10. ↑ Holder, Robert W. Dictionary of Euphemisms. Oxford University Press. p. 318. ISBN   978-0199235179.
  11. ↑ Runyon, Damon (19 Oct 1921). "All Chicago backs up its footballers". San Francisco Examiner. Universal Syndicate. p. 19. Retrieved 18 Jun 2019. ....the East will grin and give Western football the jolly old Bronx cheer.
  12. ↑ Farrell, Henry L. (30 Nov 1922). "Wills looks like boob in Johnson bout". San Antonio Evening News. United Press. p. 8. Retrieved 18 Jun 2019. While the crowd was giving vent to the 'Bronx cheer' and hurling garlands of raspberries from the gallery....
  1. ↑ By analogy of the bridge above diacritic ⟨◌͆⟩ used for dentolabials in extIPA, labiolinguals (with the tongue against the lower lip) may be transcribed ad hoc with the seagull above diacritic ⟨◌᫥⟩, to distinguish them from linguolabials (with the tongue against the upper lip). The labiolingual trills can therefore be transcribed as [r᫥] and [r̥᫥].
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