The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #164356   Message #3932550
Posted By: Senoufou
22-Jun-18 - 03:05 AM
Thread Name: BS: Life's little absurdities
Subject: RE: BS: Life's little absurdities
Ooooh Backwoodsman! (blushes and swoons) :)

I'm not really clever, but one of my subsidiary subjects at Uni was Phonetics, which I adored (and got Distinction!)
We had to be able to pronounce sounds from phonetic script, and I loved doing it.
For instance one produced a fricative 'sandwich' with a vowel either side. My favourite was the pharyngeal fricative (found in Arabic for example) It's like a deep-throated growl.

But best of all were the clicks. I can do them all. Palatal, alveolar, lateral etc. Miriam Makeba used them when singing. And the San or Masarwa people click away like anything! So do the Zulus.

sigh... I adore languages and accents!