Related Research Articles
In phonology, an allophone is one of multiple possible spoken sounds – or phones – used to pronounce a single phoneme in a particular language. For example, in English, the voiceless plosive and the aspirated form are allophones for the phoneme, while these two are considered to be different phonemes in some languages such as Central Thai. Similarly, in Spanish, and are allophones for the phoneme, while these two are considered to be different phonemes in English.
Breathy voice is a phonation in which the vocal folds vibrate, as they do in normal (modal) voicing, but are adjusted to let more air escape which produces a sighing-like sound. A simple breathy phonation,, can sometimes be heard as an allophone of English between vowels, such as in the word behind, for some speakers.
In phonology and linguistics, a phoneme is a set of phones that can distinguish one word from another in a particular language.
TaaTAH, also known as ǃXóõKOH, is a Tuu language notable for its large number of phonemes, perhaps the largest in the world. It is also notable for having perhaps the heaviest functional load of click consonants, with one count finding that 82% of basic vocabulary items started with a click. Most speakers live in Botswana, but a few hundred live in Namibia. The people call themselves ǃXoon or ʼNǀohan, depending on the dialect they speak. The Tuu languages are one of the three traditional language families that make up the Khoisan languages. In 2011, there were around 2,500 speakers of Taa.
Voice or voicing is a term used in phonetics and phonology to characterize speech sounds. Speech sounds can be described as either voiceless or voiced.
In linguistics, vowel length is the perceived length of a vowel sound: the corresponding physical measurement is duration. In some languages vowel length is an important phonemic factor, meaning vowel length can change the meaning of the word, for example in Arabic, Estonian, Finnish, Fijian, Japanese, Kannada, Kyrgyz, Latin, Malayalam, Old English, Scottish Gaelic, Tamil and Vietnamese.
The Mixe–Zoque languages are a language family whose living members are spoken in and around the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, Mexico. The Mexican government recognizes three distinct Mixe–Zoquean languages as official: Mixe or ayook with 188,000 speakers, Zoque or o'de püt with 88,000 speakers, and the Popoluca languages of which some are Mixean and some Zoquean with 69,000 speakers. However, the internal diversity in each of these groups is great. Ethnologue counts 17 different languages, and the current classification of Mixe–Zoquean languages by Wichmann (1995) counts 12 languages and 11 dialects. Extinct languages classified as Mixe–Zoquean include Tapachultec, formerly spoken in Tapachula, along the southeast coast of Chiapas.
The Mixe languages are languages of the Mixean branch of the Mixe–Zoquean language family indigenous to southern Mexico. According to a 1995 classification, there are seven of them. The four that are spoken in Oaxaca are commonly called Mixe while their two relatives spoken in Veracruz are commonly called "Popoluca", but sometimes also Mixe. This article is about the Oaxaca Mixe languages, which their speakers call Ayöök, Ayuujk, Ayüük or Ayuhk.
Sayula Popoluca, also called Sayultec, is a Mixe language spoken by around 5,000 indigenous people in and around the town of Sayula de Alemán in the southern part of the state of Veracruz, Mexico. Almost all published research on the language has been the work of Lawrence E. Clark of the Summer Institute of Linguistics. More recent studies of Sayula Popoluca have been conducted by Dennis Holt (lexico-semantics) and Richard A. Rhodes, but few of their findings have been published.
Texistepec, commonly called either Texistepec Popoluca or Texistepec Zoque, is a Mixe–Zoquean language of the Zoquean branch spoken by a hundred indigenous Popoluca people in and around the town of Texistepec in Southern Veracruz, Mexico.
Unlike many languages, Icelandic has only very minor dialectal differences in sounds. The language has both monophthongs and diphthongs, and many consonants can be voiced or unvoiced.
Yanesha', also called Amuesha or Amoesha is a language spoken by the Amuesha people of Peru in central and eastern Pasco Region.
Hindustani is the lingua franca of northern India and Pakistan, and through its two standardized registers, Hindi and Urdu, a co-official language of India and co-official and national language of Pakistan respectively. Phonological differences between the two standards are minimal.
Irántxe /iˈɻɑːntʃeɪ/, also known as Mỹky (Münkü) or still as Irántxe-Münkü, is an indigenous language spoken by the Irántxe and Mỹky peoples in the state of Mato Grosso in Brazil. Recent descriptions of the language analyze it as a language isolate, in that it "bears no similarity with other language families". Monserrat (2010) is a well-reviewed grammar of the language.
Movima is a language that is spoken by about 1,400 of the Movima, a group of Native Americans that resides in the Llanos de Moxos region of the Bolivian Amazon, in northeastern Bolivia. It is considered a language isolate, as it has not been proven to be related to any other language.
Jalapa Mazatec is a Mazatecan language. An estimate from 1990 suggested it was spoken by 15,000 people, one-third of whom are monolingual, in 13 villages in the vicinity of the town of San Felipe Jalapa de Díaz in the Tuxtepec District of the Mexican state of Oaxaca. A 2016 study, published in 2019, estimated the Mazatec dialects to have 220,000 speakers. Egland (1978) found 73% intelligibility with Huautla, the prestige variety of Mazatec. Literacy in Jalapa is taught alongside Spanish in local schools.
The Hodï language, also known as Yuwana (Yoana), Waruwaru, or Chikano (Chicano), is a small unclassified language spoken by the Hodï people of Venezuela. Very little is known of it; its several hundred speakers are monolingual hunter-gatherers. The people call themselves Jojodö or Wįlǫ̈, and their language Jojodö tjįwęnę. The two communities with the most speakers are San José de Kayamá and Caño Iguana, with several hundred speakers total.
Totozoquean is a proposed language family of Mesoamerica, originally consisting of two well-established genetic groupings, Totonacan and Mixe–Zoque. The erstwhile isolate Chitimacha was later proposed to be a member. The closest relatives of Totozoquean may be the Huavean languages.
Stieng is the language of the Stieng people of southern Vietnam and adjacent areas of Cambodia, and possibly Laos. Along with Chrau and Mnong, Stieng is classified as a language of the South Bahnaric grouping of the Mon–Khmer languages within the Austroasiatic language family. In the Austroasiatic scheme, the Bahnaric languages are often cited as being most closely related to the Khmer language.
The creaky-voiced glottal approximant is a consonant sound in some languages. In the IPA, it is transcribed as ⟨ʔ̞⟩, ⟨ʔ̰⟩, or ⟨ʔ̬⟩. It involves tension in the glottis and diminution of airflow, compared to surrounding vowels, but not full occlusion.
References
- Schoenhals, Alvin & Louise Schoenhals, 1965, Vocabulario Mixe de Totontepec, Serie de Vocabularios Indigénas "Mariano Silva y Aceves" Num. 14. SIL, Mexico, D.F. Available online
- Wichman, Søren, 1995, The Relationship among the Mixe–Zoquean Languages of Mexico. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press.
