IPA /ɦ/ (voiced glottal fricative), troubles

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IPA /ɦ/ (voiced glottal fricative), troubles

Postby outcast » Wed Dec 22, 2021 10:01 pm

Hello,

I try not to be a complete nerd posting questions about matters that perhaps may seem over-sutble, but I'm a stickler for at least trying to reproduce sounds in a faithful form (as much as I can without entering into sunken cost). So I have been trying to produce this sound in isolation, which is reputed to occur naturally in many English speakers in the word "behind" (the "h" here being realized as this voiced glottal). It occurs in Dutch, many forms of Portuguese, Hindi, Danish, and in certain environments in Korean and English.

I really don't know how to produce this sound, and when I produce it, it just sounds like an IPA /x/ (velar fricative, the Spanish "j") but coming from further down in the throat.

If there is anyone here with experience with this sound, or if anyone knows of some resource to produce it, I would appreciate it. (So far I've only found some videos on the sound itself, but not on any tips to reproduce it for learners).
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Re: IPA /ɦ/ (voiced glottal fricative), troubles

Postby Deinonysus » Wed Dec 22, 2021 10:40 pm

It sounds like you're overthinking it. It's just the voiced version of /h/. It's the same as the difference between /f/ and /v/ or /s/ and /z/. The only difference is a buzzing in your throat. Put your hand on your throat and say "aha". You will feel a buzz at the beginning and end that goes away during the /h/ consonant. Try to say it again but with no loss of the buzzing (sustaining it through the consonant), and if you can do that you will have /ɦ/.
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Re: IPA /ɦ/ (voiced glottal fricative), troubles

Postby Axon » Thu Dec 23, 2021 6:59 am

Deinonysus wrote:It sounds like you're overthinking it. It's just the voiced version of /h/. It's the same as the difference between /f/ and /v/ or /s/ and /z/. The only difference is a buzzing in your throat. Put your hand on your throat and say "aha". You will feel a buzz at the beginning and end that goes away during the /h/ consonant. Try to say it again but with no loss of the buzzing (sustaining it through the consonant), and if you can do that you will have /ɦ/.


This sounds like describing "/a/ while breathing out more heavily than usual", which in fact is what I've always heard this consonant being described as. It's less a distinct consonant like /x/ but a marker that the following (or preceding?) vowel is breathy. Wikipedia's list of words with /ɦ/ include Croatian Czech hlava and Azeri möhkəm as the only ones with /ɦ/ next to a consonant. To my ear, there's a tiny /ə/ hiding between the <h> and <l> in hlava, and I don't hear anything surprising about the fricative in möhkəm. How about you?
Last edited by Axon on Thu Dec 23, 2021 4:02 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: IPA /ɦ/ (voiced glottal fricative), troubles

Postby vonPeterhof » Thu Dec 23, 2021 7:49 am

Axon wrote:Wikipedia's list of words with /ɦ/ include Croatian hlava and Azeri möhkəm as the only ones with /ɦ/ next to a consonant.

I think you meant Czech there. Here's a few examples from Ukrainian:

тягнути (/ɦ/ before a consonant)
згода (/ɦ/ after a consonant)
безграмотний (/ɦ/ in between consonants)
ріг (/ɦ/ word-finally; standard Ukrainian is notable among Slavic languages for not having final devoicing, although in practice some bilingual speakers from a Russian-speaking background might still devoice their finals unconsciously).
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Re: IPA /ɦ/ (voiced glottal fricative), troubles

Postby outcast » Thu Dec 23, 2021 10:36 pm

Perhaps I do need to not focus on it for a day or too, which is what I did. I will try again with some of the tips!
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