Consonant Pronunciation Tutorial • IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) Consonants

[@mep6302]

As a native Spanish speaker, I've used IPA since the first language I started learning (English). These symbols are really helpful to pronounce everything correctly. If people told me "this vowel/consonant sounds like this vowel/consonant in Spanish", it wouldn't be accurate and I'd still pronounce them incorrectly, with a thick accent. Thanks for this video

[@matthewheald8964]

I don't mean to be patronizing, but I teach English as a Second Language and I've seen a lot of my students struggle with English, so I just wanted to say that yours is very good. 😊

[@letsunnahgoforth]

You have such a good speaking and singing voice. You could be on the radio or voicing audiobooks or documentaries.

[@polyMATHY_Luke]

That’s very kind. I do have an audiobooks store at LukeRanieri.com

[@RobertRanieri]

Very clear

[@FrozenMermaid666]

I am learning multiple ancient languages, including Norse / Gothic / Latin and all other Germanic languages and their Middle + Old versions - I highly recommend learning the prettiest languages ever Norse / Icelandic / Dutch / Norwegian / Gothic / Faroese / Danish that are as pretty / refined / poetic as English and way too pretty not to know, and any of the other Germanic languages and the 6 modern Celtic languages and Galician / Latin / Gallo etc and Hungarian and Slovene, as these languages are so pretty!

[@matthewheald8964]

@@FrozenMermaid666 why are you here?

[@MenelmacarLG]

Thou hast done well here. Yea, a worthy moving picture.

[@polyMATHY_Luke]

Χάριτάς σοι

[@UnenlagiafraMaknoeja]

Brilliant video as usual! Clear, synthetic, and illustrated with great examples. One tiny nitpick: in European French the uvular trill /ʀ/ is all but gone. To most speakers, /ʀ/ sounds very old-timey, something you would only hear in songs from the 1940s, 50s and 60s (such as songs by Edith Piaf, Jacques Brel or George Brassens). Many people are actually unable to pronounce it and standard French rather uses the uvular fricative /ʁ/ (like in standard German). I sometimes use /ʀ/ but just for fun, because I like how it sounds ^^ (thanks for the cat purr tip by the way :D)

[@Mercure250]

When I explain /ʀ/ to French speakers, I usually say "C'est le R d'Édith Piaf" lol

[@wingedhussar1117]

I am a German native speaker and I mostly use the voiced uvular fricative /ʁ/. However, when I want to stress a word, sometimes a uvular trill slips out of my mouth, but this mostly happens when I get angry :D Like when I say "Raus hier!" (Get out!), "Ruhe, ich will schlafen!" (Shut up, I wanna sleep!)... However, I do not do this on purpose, this happens rather accidentally

[@quietcat]

The first time I heard that /ʀ/ (or noticed at least) was in a Portuguese late night show, the host had a German singer has a guest who sang/talked with that /ʀ/ sound. I was fascinated by it because it was new to me, and I went around trying to reproduce it. This was all before the Internet gave you access to the easy info on all manner of subjects. I eventually managed to figure out how to make that sound. I was so happy about that, still am. And yes, later on Edith Piaf also came into my sphere of knowledge. I have noticed that Stromae also has that /ʀ/. So I wonder if it still happens in Belgium.

[@XQQ-qm8ow]

Peux-être c'est quelque chose de régional (j'ai grandi en Picardie rurale) mais depuis mon enfance j'ai toujours prononcé le « r » en tant que /ʀ/ lorsqu'il est entouré par deux voyelles (comme « arrête »), et en tant que /ʁ/ lorsqu'il précède une consonne (comme « armoire ») ou termine un mot (comme « mort »). C'est avec votre commentaire que je viens de réaliser comment est-il rare de le prononcer de cette manière.

[@oceantree5000]

IPA is such a wonderful tool. I’d never have gotten Gaelic pronunciation in hand without it!

[@martinomasolo8833]

Modern Persian has the voiced uvular stop [ɢ] (it occurs mostly in Arabic loanwords where a ق qāf, or غ ghayn are present, but also some native words, like the word for frog, "qoorbaqeh")

[@vytah]

10:49 there's a nice video about denti-alveolar vs alveolar T's by Dogen, titled "The Japanese T isn't easy". Most Romance languages use denti-alveolar T's, English usually uses alveolar T's, but for example Irish English uses both, denti-alveolar for ⟨th⟩ and alveolar for ⟨t⟩.

[@TadeuszCantwell]

You might be interested to know "Irish English" is known as Hiberno English.

[@empyrionin]

No the Irish don't actually hibernate

[@johnreyes7305]

I can vouch for ALI. Not just good teachers, but great people as well. I've been doing Attic for a while and I have 0 complaints. The classes are fun, flexible and well thought out.

[@polyMATHY_Luke]

I’m delighted to hear that!

[@ancientlanguageinstitute]

Thanks John - so glad to hear that. Thrilled we get students like you studying with us!

[@zachchen9564]

In some Middle Chinese consonant reconstructions, there are a lot of retroflex sounds, like ʈ, ɖ, ɳ, tʂ, dʐ, ʂ, ʐ. In some reconstructions theres no retroflex consonants

[@corsaircaruso471]

Learned the IPA as a classical singer, and I’m so glad I did.

[@AstAMoore]

According to many phoneticians, the palatalized version/g/ in English actually _does_ occur in before /ē/, in the word _geese_ Some argue that a similar palatalization occurs for /k/ in words like _key_ or _keep_ (etc.).

[@polyMATHY_Luke]

Cool! Yeah that would be consistent with the fronting of /h/ as well

[@user-ze7sj4qy6q]

probably depends on the accent. i am pretty certain there are accents that do that and some that dont

[@deithlan]

In my accent of English, "key" and "keep" are pronounced [c͡çiˑ] and [c͡çiˑp̚] respectively :D Now, I am not a native English speaker, but my accent was form as a mix of all the accents I come accross every day, so I cannot pinpoint where they are used, but the fact that I pronounce them as such, and don’t in my native language, shows that some English speakers do do it!

[@Smitology]

I wonder if it also occurs to a lesser extent before the long a vowel (eg kale, game, etc)? In my dialect (in Australia) it doesn't really happen as our pronunciation uses a far lower vowel that begins the diphthong, but I know in RP and GA they use a high starting vowel, so maybe that creates a bit of palatisation?

[@eyeofthasky]

thats not palatalization, thats fronting. in phonology everything exists on a spectrum cuz your mouth is a real place, and u can move your tongue etc. to wherever u like, but we need to define at least roughly where or what something is happening. fronting is therefore a weaker predecessor of palatalization. like a mosquito bite is to an alligator bite. Luke's pronunciation of /c/ seemed much more like fronted /k/ too (microphone's fault?). if u compare Hungarian like in its endonym Magyar, you can clearly hear a difference. the thign about h, or much more common in pronouncing e.g. [hi̯ud͡ʒ] ~ [h̟jud͡ʒ] ~ [hʲud͡ʒ] ~ [çud͡ʒ] really is palatalization since the effect is involved enough.

[@jillvslangs]

I never noticed before, but now that you've pointed it out, I can't "unhear" the voiced "thank you" anymore hahaha thhhhhank you so much for these super helpful and informative explanatory videos about IPA

[@inconspicuous-nobody]

I've been committing ich-laut with only my front close vowel all my life and had no idea. And now I can't unhear it!

[@polyMATHY_Luke]

Haha yeah, I would do it only seldom, and I think it’s a habit I picked up from others after university. But now I’m more careful and don’t do it, or perhaps even less

[@shweshwa9202]

Considering you like and speak Italian, I think you should know that in Tuscan dialect and Tuscan accent we pronounce the intervocalic /p/ as bilabial fricative called “gorgia toscana”. So, “ape” bee it’s pronounced “aɸe”

[@ecila246]

this is absolutely fascinating, and is actually super helpful for me recognising different sounds in spanish, it will definitely be a tool I use in the future. I already unconsciously did the unaspirated p's and t's etc in spanish, but it's cool to see the reason behind why these consonants sounded softer to my ears than the english versions of these consonant sounds.

[@polyMATHY_Luke]

Great! I’m glad if it’s helpful

[@PodcastItaliano]

Great stuff, as always!

[@polyMATHY_Luke]

Thank you, my friend! 🇮🇹🇺🇸

[@reillybova]

Been looking forward to this video for ages!!!!! My IPA toolbox continues to grow 🥳. “ðæŋks” for putting together such amazing tutorial!

[@DankePrime]

I'm a native English speaker, and this video made me realize I pronounce most H's like /ç/. This news hit me like a bullet train, because I didn't even know there where multiple sounds for H

[@brianpfoss]

I am a happy customer of the Ancient Language Institute and I highly recommend! I took two Latin courses and loved it. The readings are engaging and the facilitators are knowledgeable and warm! Both classes were taught in Latin which was extra helpful practice. There was no judgment or correction though - it couldn’t be better!

[@polyMATHY_Luke]

Thanks for the comment, Brian! We’re all really happy to hear that.

[@Mercure250]

One sound you didn't describe which I really like is /ɬ/, the voiceless lateral alveolar fricative. It's found in Welsh, and also in Inuit languages, and also as part of the affricate /t͡ɬ/ in Nahuatl (the name of the language itself contains that affricate). It's certainly present in other languages as well, I just don't know them by heart. On the conlang side of things, it's notably present in Sindarin. It's basically like /l/, but with the sides of the tongue closer to the sides of the mouth, and voiceless, and I think it sounds very cool.

[@user-ze7sj4qy6q]

one of my fav sounds to use in conlangs or to find in nat langs. also used in navajo, zulu, etc, such a cool sound

[@thalianero1071]

Just make sure not to pronounce it as [ɬl]!

[@rayres1074]

Another thing you'll find very little information on is the labiodental approximant. We are so used of the fricative v that pronouncing that labiodental adequately is... extremely hard. Found in Dutch and, to a lesser extent, in German, it's often glossed aside since it's such a minor difference.

[@Mercure250]

@@rayres1074 Actually, some British people pronounce their "R" this way

[@tinzka]

@@Mercure250 Which region???

[@petarjovanovic1481]

This chart helped me a lot in learning Hebrew. Now, when I pronounce Hebrew, native Hebrew speakers think that I am one too. My uvular R helped a lot in sounding native. In my native language R should be a trill but due to my tongue tie I can't pronounce it as a trill 😅😅 but for Modern Hebrew it is perfect. Also, the vowel system in my language and Hebrew is the same. That helped as well. Only thing that I am having issues with is stress. 😅 The stress in Hebrew is on ultimate or penultimate syllable while in my native language it is never on those syllables. The biggest thing to get my brain around was a glotal stop. I understood that well but it turns out that native Hebrew speakers don't care much about that sound and generally don't pronounce it. Additionally, I went to a website called "seeing speech" where they have audio and video on how to pronounce the consonant and vowels in IPA chart.

[@clordtrundle]

whats your native language?

[@petarjovanovic1481]

@@clordtrundle Serbian Српски 🇷🇸🤗

[@user-ze7sj4qy6q]

yeah, because of influence from european languages many hebrew speakers dont or mostly dont pronunce aleph ayn or any of the pharyngealized consonands

[@petarjovanovic1481]

@@user-ze7sj4qy6q That is not exactly true. European influence on Hebrew is mostly in sentence structure. Many other Semitic languages have also lost those sounds. Two very relevant ones to mentioned are Samaritan Hebrew and varieties of Neo-Aramaic, which didn't have a contact with European languages but mostly with Arabic and have also lost combination of those different sounds, mostly Hey, Chet, Ayen, Qof...

[@clordtrundle]

@@user-ze7sj4qy6q i mean… ʔ isnt pharyngeal or really lost, just very often not pronounced in casual speech

[@Urdatorn]

Interesting fact: we have four of those Sanskrit retroflex consonants (ɳ,ʈ,ɖ, and ʂ) in Swedish! They all occur as the effect of r coming before the consonants n, t, d and s, as in ’horn’, ’ort’, ’ord’, ’fors’. The r, which is normally a trill, is not pronounced, but merely acts as an operator to retroflex the subsequent consonant. A random bridge between Scandinavia and India 😊

[@sharkeynoyz]

Oh, your “wh” pronunciation is so classy!

[@polyMATHY_Luke]

Thanks! It’s not native; I started doing it because I like it, and I use it for Shakespearean original pronunciation

[@haitike]

@@polyMATHY_Luke I thought it was because Jackson Crowford influence haha Thanks for the video, it was very helpful.

[@zyctc000]

Woohoo! Just after I finished the Vowels video.

[@polyMATHY_Luke]

Great timing

[@zyctc000]

@@polyMATHY_Luke Thank you very much. I came across your vowel video trying to learn French better. Yet in the process it actually helped me to understand English, which I’ve been speaking everyday for like 10 years, much better. It even helped me understand Mandarin(my mother tongue, kind of, since we all born with our dialects and learned Mandarin in school) better! I realized I actually have an accent in Mandarin caused by my dialect even though I’m Chinese for my entire life so far lol. Thanks again for these kind of meta language video!

[@weirdlanguageguy]

I first realized that the way I said thanks was a minority pronunciation when I looked the word up on wiktionary (at that time, the only transcription was /θæŋks/). Then, as there was very little information about the voiced pronunciation and no one else that I knew used it except for my siblings, I concluded that it was probably just a weird thing either from my family or from the west, where my family is from. So it was very exciting to learn that you have it too! On another note, I actually have uvular allophones of /k/ and /g/ when they come before /l/, because my l's are uvularized rather than velarized.

[@mmmmmmmmmmmmm]

Hey, me too on the uvulars!

[@weirdlanguageguy]

@@mmmmmmmmmmmmm its nice to see that I'm not alone!

[@user-ze7sj4qy6q]

i also pronounce thanks etc w voiced th. p sure that's pretty typical but maybe im wrong.

[@empyrionin]

I pronounce it unvoiced but due to time spent in the Southern US it goes more towards θæɛŋks. Definitely feel that ð would sound off. But I'm not a native.

[@chriflu]

Thanks for the great content! I now realize part of the reason why your pronunciation sounds so "native" in every language you speak including my kinda mother tongue, German ("kinda" because my mother tongue is Swiss German). When I studied the foreign languages that I speak (French, English, Italian, Latin), I had quite a good ear, so I am often complimented on my good accent, but I feel that if that intuitive approach had been complemented with your analytical approach, I could have done much better. While listening and trying to imitate the different sounds with my mouth, I also realized one thing that had already struck me when first learning foreign languages: It is less difficult to learn sounds that don't exist at all in one's own language than to learn to differentiate between phonemes that are allophones in one's own native language. Ironically, this even applies to the "ach-Laut" and the "ich-Laut" in Standard German. While the rule is simple ("ch" after a, o, u is the ach-Laut, "ch" after i, e, ä, ö, ü is the ich-Laut), I think most German speakers are not even aware that they pronounce "ch" differently depending on the preceding vowel. And even if a German speaker uses neither, but always realizes "ch" as the uvular variant as a lot of Swiss and Tyrolean speakers do (influenced by our dialects), that's perceived as a different realization of "the same sound". The same goes for voiceless and voiced "s" when German speakers learn French. Even though or rather: because both phones exist in German as regional variants of the same phoneme, German native speakers often confuse them when speaking French - because for example to German ears "ruse" and "russe" sounds like the same word, once pronounced by someone from Hannover and once by someone from Munich. I find it fascinating that it seems to be easier to teach your mouth to make new sounds than to teach your brain to "unlearn" perceiving different sounds as one and the same phoneme, so to speak ...

[@AllenYangZzz]

28:00 reminds me an interesting fact about Hindi. They tend to use retroflex t/d instead of dental to transliterate those loan words from English. But we know the dentals sound nearer to English actually. Why they choose retroflex???

[@polyMATHY_Luke]

Well, the articulated position of English T/D is more alveolar than dental, and this difference must have led to the tradition in India if using retroflex consonants for English. Yet the effect for native Anglophones is a unique an odd thing to hear

[@pawel198812]

Speakers of Indian English will sometimes use dental t (or tʰ) for the θ and ð of other varieties of English. So a phrase like "Thor, the god of thunder" might sound like t̺ʰoːr d̺ə goɖ of t̺ʰɐɳɖər. This plosive pronunciation of the th-sound also occurs in Irish English and British varieties that were influenced by it (f.ex. Scouse). So pairs of words like thanks and tanks will sound similar but still distinct if you have the ear for it (which I do not)

[@highgroundproductions8590]

There's something interesting that I noticed. I am natively biliongual in English and Russian due to being an American with Russian immigrant parents. I've observed interesting differences between the consonants of English and Russian that, say, Wikipedia does not mention. Wikipedia does a great job with most aspects, but it says that the russian N (H) is [n], the same as the english or romance-language /n/. But in fact the russian N is pronounced with the tongue a lot "broader" and "flatter" than the english N. In the english n, only the tip of the tongue delicately touches the roof of the mouth, while in russian a broad area of the tongue pushes against the roof of the mouth, creating a more back of mouth or slavic sounding sound.

[@driksarkar6675]

I believe the terminology is that English n is apical alveolar, while Russian n is laminal alveolar. The difference between apical and laminal is (I think) the main difference between the letters ট and ত in Bengali (though they’re voiceless stops) or between s and z in Basque (though they’re sibilants.) Edit: I believe Russian’s n is also velarized (so it’s coarticulated velar-ly) and this is probably also (part of) what you’re noticing.

[@oceantree5000]

The Gaelic languages also have both Ns (and a third, counting the palatalized version, just like Russian н before a soft vowel). I love that diversity! The phonological richness of especially Scottish Gaelic (and also its close cousin, Ulster Irish) was a great jumping off point for that in Russian.

[@gabor6259]

Is the Russian /n/ somewhat similar to L sound?

[@highgroundproductions8590]

@@gabor6259 Yeah actually. The American style Dark L has the tongue in a similar position, more back in the mouth.

[@oyungogdfrust4136]

the russian n is i think postalveolar while the english n is alveolar.

[@eyeofthasky]

28:20 if we stay in europe, Swedish has retroflex sounds too. everytime a coronal stop comes after an /r/, the two fuse to a retroflex sound

[@jejtherusheddoodle23]

Now we need the third installment. *The IPA pronunciation for numbers.*

[@garychisholm2174]

Good golly. If you had been my music teacher I would have learned the Circle of 5ths and finished my minor. You can explain Anything!

[@culturecanvas777]

I think it's because he's a teacher and a student simultaneously. That makes him a far better teacher.

[@The_name105]

@@culturecanvas777 yeah.

[@polyMATHY_Luke]

Very kind of you

[@georgios_5342]

Very nicely done! I love it when practical videos on ancient Greek and Latin help us with modern languages as well, like this one

[@polyMATHY_Luke]

Thanks! I’m glad if it’s useful

[@NUSORCA]

After watching your videos on IPA consonants and vowels I can finally read ancient Chinese less painfully

[@conlangus9966]

Beautifully done, amazing resource for aspiring language-learners and Conlangers!

[@polyMATHY_Luke]

Thanks

[@kshitijvids]

thank you SO much for this🙏 you’re doing the lord’s work, appreciate this!

[@polyMATHY_Luke]

Thanks for watching!

[@XiRevsGD]

13:31 this sound appears in Emirati Arabic represented by ق (Qaaf)

[@vip9658]

the voiced q is used in yemen and sudan but some people pronounce it as g

[@polyMATHY_Luke]

Cool, I had a feeling

[@josephsaab7208]

@@polyMATHY_Luke I think also in Lebanese/levantine arabic it's pronounced different aswell

[@HiroMahtava]

the glottal stop is really important in the Formosan Languages

[@isaacbruner65]

This video helped me figure out how to pronounce the velar fricative, thanks. I'm familiar with the IPA but for some reason it took a long time for this sound to click for me. I think the way I was doing it before was more uvular.

[@Andunia]

I loved this video! Even thought i knew most of them already, now i learned even more. Thank you.

[@zyctc000]

7:42 I’m so grateful that we have both p and pʰ in standard Chinese. I learned b through English because Chinese doesn’t have b. Now when I’m learning French, I can really get the p like the French version of “les parents”.

[@oceantree5000]

What about “bàba,” “bái,” “bàozi,” particle “ba,” etc etc? What do you mean by “Chinese doesn’t have b”?

[@zyctc000]

@@oceantree5000 the pinyin writes it as a “b” but it is actually an unvoiced and unaspirated /p/. I know this because I have been using it to mimic English’s b, which is a real voiced and unaspirated (b). Only after I started to learn French, which has both aspirated p( poulet) and unaspirated p (parent) that I realized I was saying the English words wrong all those years. When I used to say a word like bed, I was not vibrating my vocal cord in the b part at all. So if your native language is English and trying to learn Mandarin, keep this in mind : you don’t vibrate your vocal cord when you met pinyin’s “b d g”, the vibration happens later with the vowel part. In short: Pinyins “b d g” are IPA’s /p/ /t/ /k/, while Pinyins “p t k” are IPA’s /pʰ/ /tʰ/ /kʰ/. English kind of has them too, consider the c in car vs scar. Can you feel the difference? P in Pay vs spade, t in tear vs stair. I hope you can spot the difference. Don’t be like me, I pronounced my English b d g wrongly for like 20 years. Listen closely to him at 8:45. The /pin/ he made is exactly like Mandarins 病(bin in Pinyin). Also a free pro tip: h in Pinyin is /x/ not /h/

[@Yusuketh443]

@@zyctc000 it doesnt sound like /x/

[@artugert]

@@zyctc000Mandarin does sometimes have voicing. To quote the Wikipedia page on Standard Chinese Phonology: “If a weak syllable begins with an unaspirated obstruent (/p, t, k, t͡s, t͡ʂ, t͡ɕ/), that consonant may become voiced ([b, d, ɡ, d͡z, d͡ʐ, d͡ʑ] respectively). For example, in 嘴巴 zuǐba ("mouth"), the second syllable is likely to begin with a [b] sound, rather than an unaspirated [p].”

[@matthewheald8964]

I didn't expect to improve my knowledge of Tengwar with this video; those books where one of the first things that really got me into linguistics, but I could never find any definitive outline for their pronunciation due to their wide use among the other tongues of Middle Earth. Again, not the knowledge I expected to glean, but hey, whatever works 🤣. Also, your explanation of "w" really helped me get the velar approximant down a little better; as a native English speaker, that was like the one sound I just could not make. Anyways, thank you (I say it with a voiceless "th") for another helpful and entertaining video!

[@pierreabbat6157]

I think it likely that /ɢ/ occurred in Aramaic. Some words are spelled with ק in one stage of the language but with ע in another. If a word is spelled variously with ק or ע, or is spelled with either and has a Hebrew cognate with a corresponding צ, or is spelled with either and has an Arabic cognate with a corresponding ض, then the Aramaic word has the /ɢ/ sound. For instance, earth is ארעא in both Daniel and the NT Peshitta, but has an alternate spelling ארקא, the Hebrew cognate is ארץ, and the Arabic cognate is رض. Other examples are מחמעא (sp?) (yeast), which occurs in the Pesach liturgy and is cognate with חמץ; and אעא (tree), whose Hebrew cognate עץ has an irregular aleph-ayin correspondence.

[@letusplay2296]

6:05 Interesting tidbit: the order of the Kana in Japanese is actually taken directly from the ordering of letters in Nagari scripts. This is why the 'S' row is actually out of place. It corresponds to the retroflex 's' in Sanskrit, each row of letters is supposed to move as the tongue moves through the mouth, hence 's' after 'k' and before 't'. The 'h' row is before the 'm' row because they all used to be bilabial plosives

[@tFighterPilot]

It's important to note the the glottal stop occurs in the beginning of every English word which starts with [a], [e] [o], [u] or [i]. (Apple, Inside, Offer, Etc...)

[@polyMATHY_Luke]

I mentioned that. But it’s not phonemic in English

[@tFighterPilot]

@@polyMATHY_Luke I think the difference between Year and Ear makes it phonemic

[@desmorgens3120]

I have bought a book titled "Handbook of the International Phonetic Association" (Cambridge University Press, 2007). I hope this book will help me to understand IPA better than before.

[@artugert]

Did it?

[@SolviKaaber]

As an Icelander I related very much to that comment on aspiration being a more common contrast than voiced / voiceless. Also a bit disappointed you didn’t mention the voiceless alveolar lateral fricative.

[@MensHominis]

Hey man, great video! One thing that bothers me is the fact that in German (my native language), voiced consonants get unvoiced in syllable-onset position. It might be like that in English, too, but I’m not sure, considering that y’all don’t have German _terminal devoicing_ either. So, my problem is as follows: if I unvoice a voiced consonant, this should basically become a normal voiceless consonant. Now, in German phonetics, we often replace the ‘voicedness’ dichotomy with the concept of _fortis/lenis_ plosives, but to me that sounds like a cop-out from phonology to keep our orthography systematic. :D In my ears (and I’m usually very finicky with consonants*) there really isn’t a serious difference between the [b̥] in German “bitte” and the [p] in Italian “porco” (apart from the lip form owed to the resp. vowel) - in fact I believe that my pronunciation of Italian has improved wonderfully since I’ve started (then unknowingly) to pronounce Italian voiceless consonants like the German un-voiced consonants I was subconsciously used to. *) Trust me, I’m a Lower-Saxon. :D We don’t speak as pure a standard German as people here want to believe, but all in all, we mainly butcher our vowels. :3

[@Mike25z]

Your content is wonderful. Your delivery is wonderful. Keep it up! This is an awesome channel

[@polyMATHY_Luke]

Thanks very much!

[@zyctc000]

4:42 I’m Chinese, we do that exactly sound to call cat for feeding even we don’t use it in our language. I always wonder if this is universal. Please leave a comment if you do this too! I want to see how many culture/language use this sound even when the language itself does not have this sound.

[@randomhkitem]

Im making a language for fun, so the video is very helpful in choosing constants.

[@wagnerjunior6524]

Could you make a video about double articulation ( doubly articulated consonants), please?

[@polyMATHY_Luke]

Great topic

[@sphenodon2016]

The eth vs theta/thorn use for thanks is super interesting! I'm from the Philadelphia suburbs, and I feel like I would never say "ðank you" with an eth at the beginning of a sentence, but I think I (at least sometimes) would say it in the middle of a sentence: "Oh my gosh, ðank you very much!" feels a bit more natural than using þank in that context. Also, it feels weirder to say "ðanks" than "ðank you," which doesn't seem to make much sense but that's my 2 cents

[@polyMATHY_Luke]

That’s awesome! Yeah it’s a peculiarity of my speech.

[@100mintmagic2]

07:27 Korean language has three contrasts of aspiration of /p/,/k/,/t/,/t͡ɕ/(unaspirated,weak,strong) and has voiced consonants of /b/,/g/,/d/,/d͡ʑ/.

[@kori228]

Korean technically doesn't distinguish all of them at the same time. The lax series is allophonically voiced intervocallically, so there's only a 3-way distinction without voicing. An alternative analysis posits the underlying form of the lax series to be the voiced form, which still is allophonically devoiced word-initially. Still only has a 3-way distinction.

[@eduardocarbonellbelando6865]

I really need to improve my pronunciation in the anciant greek lucian pronunciation because for χ I use the spanish j and also I’m unable to differenciate φ and β from f and v.

[@WhizzKid2012]

Lucian is Koine Greek. I think that you should use the reconstructed ancient pronunciation where χ is /k/ followed by a /h/

[@letsunnahgoforth]

I also have an aspirated uvular plosive q sound and also a sound similar to q but with a g in my conlang.

[@wyattscott4208]

You can hear the glottal plosive in words that start with a vowel too.

[@yeah5874]

Тнis was so much more in depth and scientific than I expected

[@jamescarrier8477]

How about a video on the NATO phonetic alphabet? It’s development and why it cuts through noise, how it could be improved (if it weren’t so entrenched), etc.

[@johnopalko5223]

I've never heard it referred to as the NATO phonetic alphabet. I've always heard it called the ICAO phonetic alphabet, probably because I mostly hang around with pilots.

[@polyMATHY_Luke]

Great suggestion. Yes, NATO invented it originally, and ICAO adopted it thereafter

[@johnopalko5223]

@@polyMATHY_Luke If you do a video on the NATO/ICAO alphabet, will you discuss the digits? To me, "niner" makes perfect sense and I can understand the reasoning behind "fow-er," but I really don't see the point of "tree" and "fife."

[@wingedhussar1117]

23:12 Quick correction: Most Germans have a uvular ach-Laut, not a velar one. Actually, the voiceless velar fricative does exist in German, but the misconception is that German only has a two-way-contrast between the ich-Laut and the ach-Laut. In fact, the "ch" phoneme has three allophones, not two. Germans tend to use a uvular fricative after low vowels (like "Bach") and a velar fricative after high vowels (like "Buch").

[@polyMATHY_Luke]

Hmm, I don’t agree that “most” Germans have a uvular ach-Laut, given my years of listening to and speaking German since high school, but I think I know what you’re referring to. German /h/ and /x/ are noticeably “stronger” than their equivalents in English and Modern Greek, for example, and I think it’s a matter of oral posture, or just a different manner of articulating essentially the same phones.

Dank you.

[@nọvẽŕïá-ōlï-kìlá]

I have a theory about 'ðæŋkz'. In English, there are obviously two sounds represented by TH. This is an allophone, and a lot of English speakers who don't know about linguistics don't realize that, and think that there is only one TH sound. Most likely, not realizing the difference lead to the slight alteration in accents from θ to ð in the occasional word. θæŋkz / ðæŋkz for your time.

[@MaoRatto]

No? ð and þ were allophones, but became phonemic due to loss of inflection. Also turned into function words...

[@WhizzKid2012]

Glad so see you like the ayn of Arabic.

[@gabriellawrence6598]

I loved the video and it was super helpful regarding some doubts I had on Sanskrit phonology, but I thought you were going to explain every single sound.

[@polyMATHY_Luke]

Thanks, I’m glad. As covering every sound is impractical, my goal was just to introduce the viewer to the terminology and symbols, and to arm him with the ability to go to Wikipedia and understand both.

[@artugert]

@@polyMATHY_LukeNot sure why it would be impractical. You already did half of them. It’s just a matter of doing the other half. 😉

[@le-marin]

Ahoy, Cap'n! Could you possibly do a vid with an exaustive-minute, very fine nuances included-explanation on the difference between FUI and ERAM, or preterite vs imperfect in general? Sure thing, it's not that big a deal, this topic that is, esp. for those who speak/know Spanish. But still, I find myself, time and again, baffled and musing about which one of these two forms/tenses I should use in this or that particular case. Or maybe both? Quod interdum molestissimum esse potest. Precor opem feras. Your help woud really... help!

[@BogdanMicic]

Great video as always! If I may, I'd like to suggest you using square brackets [...] to indicate pronunciation. You used slashes /.../ throughout the video, but slashes are in fact used for the phonem(at)ic abstraction of the sound. This may sound like a technicality and in a way, it indeed is one. Therefore I'd understand, if you had done this intentionally. But for some of your examples it strikes me as very odd, if not wrong, to use slashes: for example there aren't two distinct German phonemes /ç/ and /x/. In fact [ç] is an allophone of the phoneme /x/ (a priori one could also argue that it's the other way around, but [x] is the ‚elsewhere allophone‘, so it's the base form). Therefore phonemically German ‚ich‘ and ‚ach‘ employ the same phoneme which ought to be transcribed as /x/ in both cases: /ɪx/ and /ax/. Their phonetic realisation, i.e. actual pronunciation, differs: [ɪç] and [ax]. To account for this fundamental difference I'd strongly suggest using brackets. I think that, if you'd have used different examples, it might have worked anyways, but some of your examples clearly are employing allophonic differences which would not be visible in phonemic transcription (another example is [r] vs. [ɾ] in Italian). In fact you yourself talk about the fact that some languages don't employ all sounds they use as phonemes. But by using slashes you treat all the sounds as if they were phonemes even if they aren't. Great video nonetheless. Best wishes from Austria. :)

[@polyMATHY_Luke]

I’m glad you liked the video. The convention you described is also used, but it is not the only convention. I mentioned this in the previous video on IPA kzbin.info/www/bejne/qqG1ZnqagL2jfcU The only “technical” difference, as you say, is that [] is for narrow transcription and // is for broad transcription. All this tells the reader is that the author uses [] with more confidence than //. For some, [] had better be a flawless description of a precise idiolect, and if you have any chance of getting it wrong then you had better use //. I have confirmed this practice is current with many linguists. When it suits me, I also use the phonemic vs allophonic convention you described.

[@BogdanMicic]

@@polyMATHY_Luke Thank you for your reply! I wasn't aware that apparently some linguists use slashes to indicate broad transcription. I am in fact a university student of linguistics and the convention I learned, know and follow is to use slashes strictly for phonemic transcriptions whereas brackets are used for broad and narrow (phonetic) transcription alike (as noted in the article about Phonetic Transcription in the English Wikipedia: The difference between broad and narrow is a continuum, but the difference between phonemic and phonetic transcription is usually treated as a binary distinction.) While I favour using slashes for phonemic transcription exclusively I acknowledge that apparently there are different transcription conventions and you simply use slashes to indicate broad transcription. Thank you for clarifying this for me!

[@kori228]

@@polyMATHY_Luke IPA Handbook, pg 175: [] are phonetic, // are phonemic. No mention of broad vs narrow phonetic transcription. I would stick with it being phonemic vs phonetic, it'll get confusing otherwise for people looking into languages further on their own. You mention the primary distinction as phonemic vs phonetic in your previous, why aren't you keeping it consistent and clear? It gives people a confusing idea of the difference between phonemic and phonetic transcriptions. I would assume the linguists you confirmed with were Phoneticians working with single languages, which is fine if they need the specificity. But if you're teaching language and IPA broadly, I would say keep it to Phonemic vs Phonetic transcription. If you've accustomed people to using slashes for broad phonetic transcription, how do you teach people phonology without getting them confused? You can always make a transcription more narrow by adding diacritics, but you can't really broaden a transcription to account for phonemes if you've already used slashes. Also as a note, Wikipedia keeps it to Phonemic vs Phonetic. edit: it confirms that Phonetic, whether broad or narrow, should be in brackets (IPA Handbook, pg 175)

[@SirEdward96]

Excellent video. Also is there any reason why affricates aren't included in this table?

[@driksarkar6675]

I think me and some other people occasionally pronounce a /ð/ in the word “thanks,” but only variably and only at all when the preceding word ends in a vowel.

[@corneliaschindelin4439]

Actually, "coronal" and "dorsal" refer to the part of the mobile articulator, the tongue, which is active in making these sounds in the columns below these words.

[@polyMATHY_Luke]

Ah thanks

[@kara1599]

I have been looking for IPA related videos for a while. this one gratefully helps me understand it. May I suggest you put hashtags in your description such as #IPA to make people easier to find this video.

[@polyMATHY_Luke]

Thanks! Good suggestion

[@vedicved5602]

Your Explanation is really wonderful dude👌! I really want to learn complete IPA and want master it completely🤓, because of you I've interestingly 65-80% learnt both Vowels and Constants(Pulmonic), I guess. And really want to Thank you for that through directly from my heart❤! And Therefore, I humbly request you to please upload more videos over IPA, on everything! For Example, Diacritics, Suprasegmentals, Tones and Word Accent, Consonants (Non-Pulmonic) and Other Symbols etc... I'll be grateful 😇 to you!

[@polyMATHY_Luke]

Very kind! I’ll do my best

[@vedicved5602]

@@polyMATHY_Luke /θæŋk juː/

[@Frilouz79]

There is a word that I love in Italian, which is: "magari", from the Greek "μακάρι", with a lenition of the intervocalic /k/ to /g/. It means "by chance, maybe, hopefully".

[@polyMATHY_Luke]

Indeed!

[@nightfox6738]

32:15 The Japanese r is actually not the pure alveolar tap. It's lateralized too: [ɺ] (one of the phonemes I think you skipped). So its not quite the same as the more common flipped r. Everything else was great though. You make such amazing videos!

[@richardb.6475]

Thank (voiced) you! I was rather hopeful you'd do the Welsh 'll' :)

[@oceantree5000]

Braf iawn, boi! Ti’n siarad Cymraeg? Ri’n ni yma o hyd! ❤️ That sound is all over North American indigenous languages as well. Also notably present in Icelandic, and as an allophonic realization of final-position slender L in Sc. Gaelic. It’s such a salient sound!

[@spellandshield]

You are truly a god unto men! Such industry and knowledge are rare sights to behold!

[@polyMATHY_Luke]

Too kind

[@Cyclonus2377]

As usual, молодец! Or to put it another way: Euge! 😊😊😊😊

[@syrik11]

Well done! Speaking about a voiced h, it also dissapears between vovels in my dialect of Ukrainian, e.g. saying вза'алі instead of взагалі or то'о instead of того.

[@popular_dollars]

Your [ðæŋks] reminded me i have a fringe variation of my own. I sometimes losen the fricative to an approximate [θ̞æŋks], which practically sounds like "hanks" to laymen.

[@unarealtaragionevole]

Thought experiment, just saw your Thermae Romae Novae reaction. For some reason I kept thinking, "What would be the linguistic community's reactions and/or justifications if Cicero visited 21st century Rome, and didn't sound like how we think he should via the classical reconstruction?" Who would the experts say is more wrong? Him...us? LOL

[@polyMATHY_Luke]

Haha it would be truly amazing

[@unarealtaragionevole]

@@polyMATHY_Luke I can see Cicero coming back and as the world awaits his next epic oration...they are shocked to discover he sounds like Gilbert Gottfried. Headline reads: "Rome's best orator sounds like Arabian parrot."

[@AtomikNY]

I used to say [ðẽŋks] but I switched to [θẽŋks] when I realized the vast majority of people said it differently. Some people in my family still say [ðẽŋks] though, and it's inconsistent. My two siblings do not pronounce it the same. Our dialect is intermediate between Canadian and Northeast US varieties.

[@polyMATHY_Luke]

Cool, thanks for the response!

[@duzejajamam]

I love IPA🔥🔥🔥

[@MauveStingerStings]

finally, all I have been waiting for :D

[@almazu2770]

13:36 Persian has ɢ sound

[@polyMATHY_Luke]

Cool! I didn’t know that

[@alsatusmd1A13]

And so did Proto-Indo-European according to one of the odder models of the Glottalic theory: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glottalic_theory#Original_glottalic_proposal

[@prenomnom2812]

Great video! Really interesting, and helps a lot understanding the IPA. ðank you!

[@eyeofthasky]

CORONAL refers to the PERIMETER/OUTSCRITS/EDGES/whatever u call that in english, OF THE TONGUE, even if a diademe would fit better since it is not a closed circle.

[@the_linguist_ll]

Coronal consonants are the front of the tongue

[@eyeofthasky]

@@the_linguist_ll an L uses the SIDES of the tongue for creating air turbulence, and is a coronal sound .... Q.E.D

[@eyeofthasky]

the click which in nonclick languages often is used for calling horses, ||, is a coronal click too. "corona" is the soft rim around the whole tongue, everything else that is not the tongue root, or the thick muscle in the middle that u can bulge (like u do in domed palatal sounds) which is called "dorsum", hence dorsal sounds.

[@the_linguist_ll]

@@eyeofthasky /s/, /t/, /ʃ/, and /n/ don't, and are all coronal

[@borahbros1664]

I’ve always pronounced thanks with eth, I didn’t know it was unusual.

[@prezentoappr1171]

Ah finally the sequel

[@biblebot3947]

So how would you pronounce “Banach”? Especially that sound at the end.

[@alanwhite3154]

Never heard "ðaŋks" in my life. It sounds odd and artificial. I will pay more attention to that word pronunciation from now on. Great overview of the IPA consonants table. "θaŋks" 😀 P.S. the word "thanks" is pronounced millions of times in KZbin videos. Could you find any example of ðaŋks? Youglish allows for a systematic search.

[@ancientlanguageinstitute]

Awesome video as usual, Luke!

[@polyMATHY_Luke]

Thanks very much! Especially for the support

[@santiagobustos8065]

This man reads my mind

[@wordart_guian]

/ɢ/ occurs in persian and also mongolian i think

[@yohanneslucky5538]

Thanks አመሠግናለሁ

[@klauswh]

Great video and very helpful!

[@ToastyOs]

I don't think I've ever heard someone say ðæŋks before. Or perhaps I've just never noticed. In fact I'm realizing you must have said it many times in your videos but I never noticed it happening until the end of this video.

[@polyMATHY_Luke]

Yeah, I’ve said it hundreds of times in all my videos. Isn’t that interesting? You’ve probably heard lots of people say it, but this particular variation usually goes unnoticed by 99% of people who hear it, including the speakers with it who assume, like I once did, that everyone uses the voiced version.

[@lodevijk]

I'm so glad "a bo'o o' wo'ah" made it into the video

[@juan2910]

This is a great video as always!

[@The_name105]

That ? Sound was, in duo lingo, explained as the sound between uh and oh when one says uh-oh.

[@zyctc000]

I concur because I've been using this /ʔ/ in my local dialect for my entire life. I'm Chinese, this sound does not exist in modern Mandarin but it exists in my local dialect and it actually makes some ancient Chinese poems rhyme better! It is exactly like the pause between uh-oh.

[@The_name105]

@@zyctc000 It is amazing how just by speaking and then thinking about what you say can make you understand language as a whole a lot better.

[@abhinavchauhan7864]

Luke just a tip from a hindi speaker. while making retroflex sounds you tounge is too far back in mouth and also your are making it a little bit more like a fricative or in better words "a losse plosive sound". It should be a tight plosive sound

[@georgios_5342]

23:55 WHAT? I would have sworn they were the same! I guess my accent would then easily give away me being native Greek 😅