The Human Voice

• Asoka script (Brahmi) (my rendition based on http://www.ancientscripts.com/brahmi.html download 071109)
• Bengali স (U09B8) • Devanagari स (U0938) • Gurmukhi ਸ (U0A38) • Gujarati સ (U0AB8)
• Burmese-Myanmar {þa.}/{tha.} • *English-Latin (digraph) <th> (Both Burmese and English has pronunciation [θ], but not German)
• Tamil ஸ (UBB8) • Telugu స (U0C38)
(*English-Latin is alphabet -- not abugida) (Bengali group is the northern Indic group, whereas the Tamil group is southern. It is up to you to decide to which group Myanmar is allied to. To say that Myanmar is descended from a south Indian script is unacceptable.)

My study is part of my overall attempt to come up with a reliable method of transliteration (possibly leading to transcription) of  Burmese-Myanmar to Myanmar-Latin which I have named Romabama or {rau:ma.ba.ma}.

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Hisser and Husher (the true fricatives)

Though IPA [θ] sound is quite common in spoken Burmese language, the hissing and hushing sounds represented by [s] and [ ʃ ] are noticeably rare.

Hissers: <)) {sa.} [s];   <)) {za.} [z]
Hushers: <)) {þhya.} [ ʃ ]; { -}  <)) [ ʒ ]
The terms "hisser" and "husher" are from UNIL http://www.unil.ch/ling/page30184_fr.html -- 070823)

A few years after the Second World War, I as a child of 11 or 12, had the chance to attend a European Code school, and my reading (English) was greatly improved. After those years, due to our change of residence, I had to go to an Anglo-vernacular school, where the students read rather poorly. After having been asked to read aloud in class, my classmates, in particular one Maung Kyi, started making fun of me for pronouncing my hissers and hushers. He would open his mouth, stuck out his tongue, and fanned it with his palm, saying "Oh, my tongue is itching, my tongue is itching", and everyone in class laughed at me. The reaction of my classmates in those days, was understandable. In fact, the usual remark one would hear in Myanmar in those days after hearing a Myanmar speak with somewhat of a Western accent is that "he or she speaks {tis-swut-swut} like a {bo}" (literally meaning "speaks like an English person with hissers and hushers."

Probably because of the paucity of hissers and hushers, MLC had difficulty in deciding how to represent the [ ʃ ] sound for some years in the 1960s. Finally they were pressured by the government to come up with a firm decision, and they adopted the spelling {rha.}, but to use {þhya.} especially in the names of some medicinal plants.

The IPA [θ] sound, though classed as fricative is entirely different from the hissers and hushers. It is commonly described as a dental, but since it is produced with the tongue tip held lightly between the upper and lower teeth, I prefer to describe it as an inter-dental.  The IPA [θ] sound is a thibilant, whereas [s] and [ ʃ ] are sibilants. We will see more of them in later sections.

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The Place of Articulation (POA) of consonants:
where sound is produced -- the anatomical approach

This section is based on the very first "book" from which my wife (Daw Thanthan Tun) and I, in our old age, got our introduction to Phonetics:
The Introduction of the Online Phonetics Course, Department of Linguistics, University of Lausanne, Switzerland. The present online link is http://www.unil.ch/ling/page30184_fr.html 070823. Note that online links are changing all the time, and when we accessed this site, the link was different.

If you are a newcomer into the field, especially if you have learned English as your second language (L2), you will feel overwhelmed by the technical terms. Moreover, the same term can mean differently to different authors. For example, I have a hard time trying to pin down the meanings of words like <fricative>, <sibilant>, and <spirant> in trying to placing {þa.} and {sa.} in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) table. Don't despair, there's no other way out -- good luck!

This chapter presents some fundamental ideas about the articulatory production of speech sounds. See articulatory phonetics in my notes. It also introduces the major classes into which speech sounds are divided according to the IPA system. The major speech-sound classes are also described in works on Burmese-Grammar (written in Burmese-Myanmar interspersed with Pali-Myanmar) which might have been based on the works of Panini (written in Sanskrit-Devanagari). Since both Devanagari and Myanmar are derived from the Asoka script, which is based on sound phonemic principles, I am able to transcribe one from the other. These scripts because of their phonemic principles could be called phonetic scripts comparable to the IPA. Through IPA, these Eastern systems (in Romabama) and Western languages (in IPA) could be directly brought together without having to rely on our hearing.

Most sounds in speech are produced by passing a stream of air from the lungs through one or more resonators belonging to the phonetic apparatus. The 4 principal resonators are: 
1. the pharyngeal cavity -- divided into 3 regions:
   nasopharynx, oropharynx, and larygopharynx
   See Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypopharynx 071120
   See also, Bronwyn Jones, Radiographic evaluation of motility of mouth and pharynx , 2006,
   http://www.nature.com/gimo/contents/pt1/full/gimo25.html 071208
   Click to see more details of pharynx:
   lateral view (look for vocal cords), posterior view (look for uvula {lhya-hking})
2. the oral cavity,
3. the labial cavity, and
4. the nasal cavity -- more complex than is shown in Fig.1.2. See Wikipedia articles:
   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nasal_cavity 071101, and
   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Illu_nose_nasal_cavities.jpg 071101

Studies of nasality (nasal sound) have shown that, apart of the nasal cavity, there is at least one "cavity" that functions as a resonator. See J. Laver, The Phonetic Description of Voice Quality, 1980, p.78-. Available as http://www.ling.mq.edu.au/ling/units/sph302/papers/laver_1980_nasal.pdf download 071029. Laver writes:
   "... nasality is a condition of resonance of special kind. ... [It] is the result of resonance in a cul-de-sac resonator [or side chamber ] , opening off the passageway through which a sound is resonated and delivered to the outer air ... [The possible location] ... for this cul-de-sac ... [is] ... a small side chamber formed by the approximation of the back of the tongue behind the velar contact to the undersurface of the uvula, but as in uvular nasals, there is normally a lateral space between the two sets of faucal pillars. Also, in velar and in uvular nasals, the surface of the tongue forward of the closure with the soft palate, if touched with a finger tip, can be felt vibrating with any but the very weakest degree of voicing. The surface of the tongue can therefore excite the resonances of the front of the mouth, and the oral cavity forms a resonant chamber in the formation of these two nasal stops. [{UKT: Are they {na.} and {ma.}?}] The oral cavity is made to resonate here in much the same way that the nasal cavity can be in the voice quality popularly labelled as 'cold in the head voice' when entry to the nasal cavity is blocked by catarrhal mucus in a heavy cold, with the acoustic excitation being transmitted through the tissue of the soft palate itself, or perhaps through the mucal plug."

UKT:
• Cul-de-sac resonator, unlike the other resonators, is a "temporary" resonator, whose location is indicated by faucal pillars. -- (note to be checked with my peers)
• Supralaryngeal means "above the larynx". Broadly speaking, supralayngeal tracts play a large part in the production of consonantal sounds, whereas the larynx is important for the production of vowels. Since the division into consonants and vowels is not clear cut, during the production of a human sound most of the muscles of the sound producing system come into play: some to the fullest extent, whilst others play diminishing roles. However, in the description of a sound, only the major players are mentioned. -- (note to be checked with my peers)

You should also familiarise yourself with the names of the parts of the speech organ shown on the (Fig.1.2). These are the places near which sound is produced. And most of them, especially those in the front part of the mouth, can be easily seen. They are known as the Points of Articulation or POA. The POA have been described in the East thousands of years ago, and there are terms corresponding to modern terms, but for the present, I will not give them.

UKT: See a mechanical model in my notes. When looking at the model, remember also that the vocal organs are made of "soft" tissues, whereas mechanical models are made of "hard" metal or plastic. One of the basic mistakes the introductory books on Phonetics usually make is to "equate" the human voice production apparatus to mechanical models. Though the intention is commendable, it usually leaves a wrong impression with the students. I am speaking this from my own experience who had to learn Phonetics without a human guide.

Note that velum /viː.ləm/ is a term used by linguists and phoneticians for the soft palate. Note where it is located, because, it will be referred to in the production of "velar sounds" and "nasal sounds".

The velar sounds referring to the velum are given by English-Latin letters <k> and <g>, and digraph <ng>. Myanmars should note that of the three, English-Latin <k> has two allophones which are equivalent to {ka.} and {hka.} in Burmese-Myanmar and <g> has two allophones {ga.} and {Ga.}. Thus, there are actually five phonemes [k kʰ g gʰ ŋ] (narrow transcription). However, only three, /k g ŋ/ (broad transcription) are usually shown in IPA table of consonants. In our work on Burmese-Myanmar (including Pali-Myanmar), we need to show all the five, [k , kʰ , g , gʰ, ŋ] and their equivalents {ka., hka., ga., Ga., nga.}. We must note the superscript <h> in [kʰ] by no means shows that [kʰ] is just an aspirated [k]. In Burmese-Myanmar and in Indic scripts, [kʰ] is a phoneme represented by respective dedicated graphemes and ख. That {hka.} is not aspirated {ka.} is important. The process of 'aspiration' (a secondary articulation) in Burmese-Myanmar is the formation of {ha.hto:}-medial, which is not allowed on {ka.}. That is,

{ka.} + virama (or vowel killer) + {ha.} --> not allowed by Burmese-Myanmar phonotactics.
That is, {ka.ha.hto:} is not allowed. That is one of reasons, why Romabama {hka.} is transliterated with "h" before "k".

Since, the term <velum> can also to refer to other membranous tissues in the body, <soft palate> is the term of choice in referring to speech organ. Because [k kʰ g gʰ ŋ] sounds are produced in the region of the velum, they are commonly referred to as velars. The Eastern linguists (i.e. the Pali and Sanskrit scholars) describe {ka., hka., ga., Ga., nga.}, or क ख ग ङ [[Ka, Kha, Ga, Nga]] as Gutturals.

Note that Romabama and Sanskrit transcriptions for the second {wag}-akshara are different -- {hk} and [[Kh]]. Whatever, the "transcription" may be, remember that
• the sounds are not simple "aspirated" sounds but are more complex.
• in either {hk} or [[Kh]], "h" is just a part of the digraph.
• in Romabama, the notation {kha.} means {ka.kri: ha.hto:} which is not allowed in Burmese.

The fundamental difference in transcription between Indic languages and Myanmar is due to two factors. Firstly, the Sanskrit speakers are sibilant speakers: they can not articulate the {tha.} sounds and articulate {tha.} as {sa.}. Secondly, Indic transcriptions were first started by Western phonologists who cannot differentiate c1 from c2 sounds.

UKT: I am speaking from personal experience: my American classmates told me that the two sounds {ka.} and {hka.} were the same. They could only call me as {hkyau} instead of {kyau}. In the end they "christianed" me Joe.

We find the same difference in transcription/transliteration of r4c2 akshara. Romabama transliteration for r4c2 is {hta.}, but the corresponding Devanagari akshara थ (U0925) is [[Th]]. Because of this, we find unnecessary misunderstandings between the speakers of Burmese-Myanmar and Hindi-Devanagari as the following example shows:

UKT: Most Myanmar teachers and students of Geography, think that the name of the Great Indian desert, the Thar Desert to be (Hindi: थार मरुस्थल), to be {þa:} . This is because in Myanmar the <th>, after the English <th> (as in <thin>), has the sound [θ]. If only had we taken the correspondence between Devanagari and Myanmar aksharas, we would have known that the name is to be pronounced with {hta.} (r4c2) sound instead of {þa.}/{tha.} (r6c5) sound. Transliteration of Hindi-Devanagari थार into Burmese-Myanmar is {htar} which might be loosely pronounced as {hta:}. (Since I don't speak or write Hindi-Devanagari, I still need to check the transliteration.) See Wikipedia on Thar Desert: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thar_Desert 071112.

Similarly, our brand of Buddhism, Theravada (Pāli: theravāda , थेरवाद ), is {hté-ra.wa-da.}. However if you follow the transcript "Theravada" you get {þé-ra.wa-da.} -- a wrong spelling. The first syllable is pronounced with [tʰ] not [θ]. (I need to check थेरवाद which I have derived at from Pali-Myanmar.)

The divergence between Romabama and Devanagari stems from the different ways the speakers of Pali-Myanmar and Sanskrit-Devanagari articulate the same akshara r6c5: {þa.}/{tha.} and स (U0938). Burmese-Myanmar and Pali-Myanmar speakers pronounce this akshara as [θ], the same sound as in English-Latin <th> of words such as <thin>. Whereas, Hindi-Devanagari and Sanskrit-Devanagari speakers realised it as [s]. Though English is supposed to be a Germanic language, the [θ] sound present in English is absent in German. The Germans pronounce [θ] as [s].

UKT: In one of our email exchanges, Zev Handel (Assoc. Prof. of Chinese and Linguistics, Univ. of Washington, http://depts.washington.edu/asianll/) (Sep 15, 2007) wrote:
   "The "th" sound is relatively rare in languages of the world.  But I doubt very much that German in the 19th century couldn't recognize it.  They were familiar with English, and as philologists interested in foreign and ancient languages, they would have been alert to the presence of non-German sounds in other languages."

Dr. Handel was responding to my suggestion in the following:
   "I have been interested why {tha.} has become {sa.} in International Pali. Among the prominent Western Pali scholars are Germans such as Friedrich Max Müller (1823-1900), and since their L1 (the spoken German) lacks the sound of {tha.} they could only "hear" {sa.}: this reminds me of Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis. Unable to hear {tha.}, they "typically replace it with a voiceless alveolar fricative" {sa.}."

With this note of mine, I sincerely thank Zev for his patience with me.

I have stated that velars are gutturals. Do not look for gut among the speech organs. It is a term used to describe the throat. Gutturals are velars, uvulas, or sounds produced in the in the interior of the throat, regions near the "soft palate". Please note that soft palate (velum) and palate (or hard palate) are different. Sounds produced near the palate (i.e. the hard palate) are known as palatals. The palatal approximants with sound of / j / ( /jes/ JDPD16-603) are:
• English-Latin <y> in <yes> , and its correspondent
• Burmese-Myanmar {ya.} .

UKT: Note that the palatal vd. stop is given as [ ɟ ] (with a horizontal stroke in the middle) and not [ j ] (without stroke). The palatal stops {sa.} and {za.} (killed forms) are [c] and [ ɟ ] , respectively, in the coda. However in the onset {sa.} and {za.} are sibilants (of the superset 'fricatives') similar to English <s> [s] and <z> [z].

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Uvula

The uvula /ˈjuːvjʊlə/ is a small, mucosa-covered set of muscles, musculus uvulae, hanging down from the soft palate, near the back of the throat. The word is derived from the diminutive of uva, the Latin word for "grape", due to the uvula's grape-like shape. Because, the uvula is quite prominent when a person opens his mouth, cartoons often feature the uvula when characters are shown with gaping mouths. In Burmese-Myanmar, uvula is known as {lhya-hking} (MEDict468).

Do not look for the glottis, in Fig.1.2. Speech Organs. It is not shown. It is the opening or space between the vocal cords at the upper part of the larynx (or voice box). Instead, you should look for the epiglottis which is the thin elastic cartilaginous structure located at the root of the tongue that folds over the glottis to prevent food and liquid from entering the trachea during the act of swallowing.

UKT: See the anatomical details of the mouth, Fig. 994, on the right from The Mouth, by Henry Gray (1825–1861),  Anatomy of the Human Body, 1918. http://www.bartleby.com/107/242.html 071112. Click on the figure to enlarge FIG. 994 – Sagittal section of nose mouth, pharynx, and larynx.

The presence or absence of obstructions in the path of the airstream modifies the nature of the sound produced. By classifying the different types of obstructions that are possible, articulatory phonetics distinguishes the sound classes, such as <velars>, <palatals>, <retroflex>, <alveolars/dentals> and <bilabials> in IPA, and their respective equivalents <gutturals> , <palatals>, <cerebrals>, <dentals> and <labials> by Eastern linguists.

  All the above sound classes are consonantal sounds. They are classified by the POA in the mouth cavity. where the active articulator is the tongue. All the three parts of the tongue, the apex (the tip), the dorsum (the middle), and the root (the rear) can participate in articulation of consonants. However, the tongue-tip is the most active of all. The figures on the right show how the two contrastive consonants, {ka.} /k/ and {ta.} /t/, are produced.
   It should be expected that there would be a slight difference in pronunciation of {ka.} (described as gutteral) and English /k/ (described as velar). Similarly we should expect some difference in pronunciation between {ta.} (described as dental) and English /t/ (described alveolar). However, what is usually described as dental /s/ is quite different from interdental /θ/. Burmese-Myanmar {sa.} in the onset has the pronunciation /s/, but in the coda it is /c/, e.g. {þic~sa} /θɪc.sa/. In this respect, {sa.} is similar to <c> in <success> /sɘk'ses/ (DJPD16-515). I have been wondering if the pronunciation is really /sɘk'ses/, in which case we can say that {sa.} and <c> are the same.

For a small number of articulations, the airstream does not originate in the lungs, but rather from outside. The "ingressive" airstream mechanism produces sound through inhalation. A speech sound can also be generated from a difference in pressure of the air inside and outside a resonator. In the case of the oral cavity, this pressure difference can be created without using the lungs at all (producing clicks, for example).

Ingressive adj. 3. Linguistics Of, designating, or being a speech sound produced with an inhalation of breath. -- AHTD
UKT: The "antonym" of ingressive, "egressive" is not found in AHTD.

Uvula is almost the farthest we can look into the mouth. The consonantal sounds are produced between it and the lips. Now where are the vowels produced? They are produced deeper down in the throat, in the larynx -- in areas which we cannot see. We can feel the vocal folds vibrating (by lighting touching the area of the Adams apple) while vowels are produced (except in languages which have voiceless vowels). In both Burmese-Myanmar and in English the vowels are all voiced. We can feel them being produced. But exactly where and how they were produced were not known until some decades ago. And much of that knowledge has come from the field of surgery.

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UKT notes

aspiration

From: Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aspiration_(phonetics) download 070911

In phonetics, aspiration is the strong burst of air that accompanies either the release or, in the case of preaspiration, the closure of some obstruents (Burmese-Myanmar consonants of r1, r4, r5, excluding the nasals). To feel or see the difference between aspirated and unaspirated sounds, one can put a hand or a lit candle in front of his or her mouth, and say <tore> ([tʰɔɹ]) (sound of {hta.}) and then <store> ([stɔɹ]) (sound of {ta.}. One should either feel a puff of air or see a flicker of the candle flame with <tore> that one does not get with <store>. In English, the <t> should be aspirated in <tore> and unaspirated in <store>.

UKT: English-speaking Myanmars (I was included at one time) are not aware that the native-English speakers, pronounce the Burmese-Myanmar c1 consonants as c2. Thus:
   The pronunciations of <k> in <kin> /kɪn/ (DJPD16-300) and in <skin> /skɪn/ (DJPD16-491) are different. <k> in <kin> is "aspirated" and sounds like {hka.}, but in <skin> it is un-aspirated and sounds like {ka.}.
Similarly, <p> in <pin> /pɪn/ (DJPD16-413) is aspirated (sound of {hpa.}), but <p> in <spin> /spɪn/ is not (sound of {pa.}.
-- (I am expecting input from my peers.)

The diacritic for aspiration in the IPA is a superscript "h", [ʰ] . Unaspirated consonants are not normally marked explicitly, but there is a diacritic for non-aspiration in the Extended IPA, the superscript equal sign, [ ⁼ ].

Voiceless consonants are produced with the vocal cords open. (Voicing involves bringing the vocal cords close together.) Voiceless aspiration occurs when the vocal cords remain open after a consonant is released. An easy way to measure this is by noting the consonant's VOT (Voice Onset Time), as the voicing of a following vowel cannot begin until the vocal cords close. However, aspirated consonants are not always followed by vowels or other voiced sounds; indeed, in Eastern Armenian, aspiration is contrastive even at the ends of words:

Final aspiration in E. Armenian:
• [bard͡z] (pillow) (UKT: /z/ equated to {za.} -- expecting input from my peers)
• [bart͡s⁼] (difficult) (UKT: /s⁼/ equated to {sa.}  -- expecting input from my peers)
• [bart͡sʰ] (high) (UKT: /sʰ/ equated ot {hsa.}  -- expecting input from my peers)

English vl. stop consonants are aspirated for most native speakers [{the word "native speakers" used by Wikipedia is misleading. For our purpose I would use the Indic and Myanmar speakers}] when they are word-initial [{disyllabic word}] or begin a stressed syllable, as in <pen>, <ten>, <Ken>. They are un-aspirated for almost all speakers when immediately following word-initial <s>, as in <spun>, <stun>, <skunk>. After <s> elsewhere in a word they are normally un-aspirated as well, except when the cluster is heteromorphemic and the stop belongs to an unbound morpheme; compare dis[t]end vs. dis[tʰ]aste. Word-final vl. stops optionally aspirate.

UKT: That "Word-final vl. stops optionally aspirate" does not hold for Burmese-Myanmar. For example, in {kak} both the onset and the coda {ka.} are [k] not [kʰ]. However for reverse transcription we have to deviate a little from the usual Romabama rules. Thus, if we are to transcribe English <cat> [kʰætʰ] it would be {hkakt}. However, since the use of more than one killed consonant is not allowed by Burmese-Myanmar phonotactics, we might have to use to show that it is loan word.

In many languages, such as the Chinese languages, Hindi, Icelandic, Korean, Thai, and Ancient Greek, [p⁼ t⁼ k⁼] etc. and [pʰ tʰ kʰ] etc. are different phonemes altogether. (UKT: In Burmese-Myanmar and Indic languages c1 and c2 aksharas are different phonemes.

Alemannic German dialects have unaspirated [p⁼ t⁼ k⁼] as well as aspirated [pʰ tʰ kʰ]; the latter series are usually viewed as consonant clusters. In Danish and most southern varieties of German, the "lenis" consonants transcribed for historical reasons as <b d g> are distinguished from their "fortis" counterparts <p t k> mainly in their lack of aspiration.

UKT: In Burmese-Myanmar, c1 and c2 {wag}-aksharas cannot be made into conjuncts (consonant clusters) by joining with {ha.}, whereas the nasals {nga. Ña. Na, na. ma.} can form conjuncts with {ha.}. The resultant sounds are known as {ha.hto:}-medials. Of the {a.wag}-aksharas only {wa.} can be conjoined with {ha.} without any controversy giving a {ha.hto:}-medial sound similar to <wh> in English, e.g. {whût}.

Icelandic has pre-aspirated [ʰp ʰt ʰk]; some scholars interpret these as consonant clusters as well. Preaspirated stops also occur in some Sami languages; e.g. in Skolt Sami the unvoiced stop phonemes [p, t, c, k] are pronounced preaspirated [ʰp, ʰt. ʰc. ʰk] when they occur in medial or final position.

There are degrees of aspiration. Armenian and Cantonese have aspiration that lasts about as long as English aspirated stops, as well as unaspirated stops like Spanish. Korean has lightly aspirated stops that fall between the Armenian and Cantonese unaspirated and aspirated stops, as well as strongly aspirated stops whose aspiration lasts longer than that of Armenian or Cantonese. (See voice onset time.) An old IPA symbol for light aspiration was [ ʻ ] (that is, like a rotated ejective symbol), but this is no longer commonly used. There is no specific symbol for strong aspiration, but [ʰ] can be iconically doubled for, say, Korean *[kʻ ] vs. *[kʰʰ]. Note however that Korean is nearly universally transcribed as [k] vs. [kʰ], with the details of voice onset time given numerically.

Aspiration also varies with POA. Spanish /p t k/, for example, have voice onset times (VOTs) of about 5, 10, and 30 milliseconds, whereas English /p t k/ have VOTs of about 60, 70, and 80 ms. Korean has been measured at 20, 25, and 50 ms for /p t k/ and 90, 95, and 125 for /pʰ tʰ kʰ/.

The word 'aspiration' and the aspiration symbol is sometimes used with voiced stops, such as [dʰ]. However, such "voiced aspiration", also known as breathy voice or murmur, is less ambiguously transcribed with dedicated diacritics, either [d̤] or [dʱ]. (Some linguists restrict the subscript diacritic [  ̤] to sonorants, such as vowels and nasal consonants, which are murmured throughout their duration, and use the superscript [ʱ] for the murmured release of obstruents.) When it is included as aspiration, voiceless aspiration is called just that to avoid ambiguity.

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articulatory phonetics

From: Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Articulatory_phonetics 071007

The field of articulatory phonetics is a subfield of phonetics. In studying articulation, phoneticians attempt to document how humans produce speech sounds (vowels and consonants). That is, articulatory phoneticians are interested in how the different structures of the vocal tract, called the articulators (tongue, lips, jaw, palate, teeth etc.), interact to create the specific sounds.

Palatography: In order to understand how sounds are made, experimental procedures are often adopted. Palatography is one of the oldest instrumental phonetic techniques used to record data regarding articulators. In traditional, static palatography, a speaker's palate is coated with a dark powder. The speaker then produces a word, usually with a single consonant. The tongue wipes away some of the powder at the place of articulation. The experimenter can then use a mirror to photograph the entire upper surface of the speaker's mouth. This photograph, in which the place of articulation can be seen as the area where the powder has been removed, is called a palatogram.

Technology has since made possible electropalatography (or EPG). In order to collect EPG data, the speaker is fitted with a special prosthetic palate, which contains a number of electrodes. The way in which the electrodes are "contacted" by the tongue during speech provides phoneticians important information, such as how much of the palate is contacted in different speech sounds, or which regions of the palate are contacted, or what the duration of the contact is.

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faucal pillars

From Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pillars_of_the_fauces 071029

faucal pillars (pillars of the fauces) can refer to
• Palatoglossal arch or glossopalatine arch
• Palatopharyngeal arch  or pharyngopalatine arch80309

The palatoglossal arch (glossopalatine arch, anterior pillar of fauces) on either side runs downward, lateralward, and forward to the side of the base of the tongue, and is formed by the projection of the Glossopalatinus with its covering mucous membrane.
-- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palatoglossal_arch download 071029

UKT: In the text, it is stated "The palatoglossus forms the forward arch of the faucal pillars." Click on the figure to enlarge. Note: in the pix, palatoglossus is labeled "Glossopalatine arch".

The palatopharyngeal arch (pharyngopalatine arch, posterior pillar of fauces) is larger and projects farther toward the middle line than the anterior; it runs downward, lateralward, and backward to the side of the pharynx, and is formed by the projection of the Pharyngopalatinus, covered by mucous membrane.
-- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palatopharyngeal_arch 071029
Pix on right: The mouth cavity: the cheeks have been slit transversely and the tongue pulled forward. (Pharyngopalatine arch labeled at upper right.)

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grapheme

From:
• Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grapheme 071111
• Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phonemic_orthography 080309

From Wikpediax 071111

In typography, a grapheme is the fundamental unit in written language. Graphemes include alphabetic letters, Chinese characters, numerals, punctuation marks, and all the individual symbols of any of the world's writing systems.

In a phonemic orthography, a grapheme corresponds to one phoneme. In spelling systems that are non-phonemic — such as the spellings used most widely for written English — multiple graphemes may represent a single phoneme. These are called digraphs (two graphemes for a single phoneme) and trigraphs (three graphemes). For example, the word ship contains four graphemes (s, h, i, and p) but only three phonemes, because sh is a digraph.

Different glyphs can represent the same grapheme, meaning they are allographs. For example, the minuscule letter a can be seen in two variants, with a hook at the top, and without. Not all glyphs are graphemes in the phonological sense; for example the logogram ampersand (&) represents the Latin word et (English word and), which contains two phonemes.

From Wikipedia 080309

A phonemic orthography is a writing system where the written graphemes correspond to phonemes, the spoken sounds of the language. These are sometimes termed true alphabets, but non-alphabetic writing systems like syllabaries can be phonemic as well.

Languages with a good grapheme-to-phoneme correspondence include Bulgarian, Basque, Finnish, Georgian, Hungarian, Macedonian Mongolian in Cyrillic, Sanskrit, Turkish, Croatian and Serbian. Most constructed languages such as Esperanto and Lojban have phonemic orthographies.

UKT: Burmese-Myanmar is a phonemic orthography similar to Sanskrit because both are descended from Asoka script now known as Brahmi script.

As dialects of the English language vary significantly, it would be difficult to create a phonemic orthography that encompassed all of them. However, it is fairly easy to create one based on a standard accent such as Received Pronunciation. This would, however, exclude certain sound differences found in other accents, such as the bad-lad split in Australian English. With time, pronunciations change and spellings become out of date, as has happened to English and French. In order to maintain a phonemic orthography such a system would need periodic updating, as has been attempted by various language regulators and proposed by other spelling reformers.

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nasality

UKT: based on Felicity Cox, The Acoustic Characteristics of Nasals, Consonant Acoustics, in Speech Science Resource Pages, Macquarie Univ., Australia, http://www.ling.mq.edu.au/speech/acoustics/consonants/nasalweb.html 071115

Nasality is above all else an auditory phenomenon (that is, the way you hear) and not primarily an articulatory one able to be specified in terms of the position of the velum.

Nasality is a special condition of resonance. The auditory impression of nasality is the result of resonance in a cul-de-sac resonator.

A cul-de-sac resonator is a chamber opening off from the passageway through which a sound is resonated and sent to the outer air. In the production of nasal consonants, the oral tract becomes the cul-de-sac. In nasalised segments, the nasal cavity is the side chamber.

In normal speech production the velum does not completely close off the pharyngeal passage to the nose, and the degree of velic opening is variable. It has been found that the perception of a sound as nasalised will depend on the ratio of the sizes of the two openings into the nasal cavity and the oral cavity. When the nasal port is large relative to the oral port then nasality will be perceived.

The type of phoneme that is produced during speech will affect the height of the velum. The following is a progression from highest to lowest. The highest velum position means the nasal passage is closed, whilst the lowest velum position means, the nasal passage is opened to maximum. I have given Burmese-Myanmar aksharas as examples:

• Vl. stops {ka.} [k] --> • Vd. stops {ga.} [g]
--> • Vl. fricatives {þa.} [θ] --> • Vd. fricatives {þa.} [ð]
--> • Oral close vowels { i } [i] --> • Oral open vowels {a} [a]
--> • Nasalised close vowels {awn}/{un} --> • Nasalised open vowels {an}
--> • Nasal segments {än}

• "/k/ and /g/ are one of the pairs of consonants said to be distinguished from each other by being 'fortis' or 'lenis' rather than voiced or voiceless." From DJPD16-575: VELAR consonants
• The last {än} is not present in English: the nearest is [ʌn]. You may not agree with me in my examples of nasalised vowels. -- I am waiting for comments from my peers in Myanmar.
• The nasals and vowels are all voiced. In this respect, Burmese and English are similar.)

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phonotactics

From Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phonotactics 071230

See also sonority hierarchy in these notes.

Phonotactics (in Greek phone = voice and tactic = course) is a branch of phonology that deals with restrictions in a language on the permissible combinations of phonemes. Phonotactics defines permissible syllable structure, consonant clusters, and vowel sequences by means of phonotactical constraints.

Phonotactic constraints are language specific. For example, in Japanese, consonant clusters like /st/ are not allowed, although they are in English. Similarly, the sounds /kn/ and /ɡn/ [obviously the {nga.} [ŋ] sound] are not permitted at the beginning of a word in Modern English but are in German and Dutch.

UKT: In English both /sw/ and /st/ are allowed, whereas in Burmese, though /sw/ is allowed /st/ is not.
This shows that English /t/ is more sonorous than Burmese /t/. Whatever the case may be, in transliterating English to Burmese, we have to accept the "killed" {sa.}, {s}  in the onset, e.g. <stat> {s~tat} or {stat}.
I am waiting for comments from my peers.

Syllables have the following internal segmental structure:

• Onset (optional)
• Rime (obligatory, comprises Nucleus and Coda):
- Nucleus (obligatory)
- Coda (optional)

Both onset and coda may be empty, forming a vowel-only syllable, or alternatively, the nucleus can be occupied by a syllabic consonant.

English Phonotactics: The English syllable (and word) twelfths /twɛlfθs/ is divided into the onset /tw/, the nucleus /ɛ/, and the coda /lfθs/, and it can thus be described as CCVCCCC (C = consonant, V = vowel). On this basis it is possible to form rules for which representations of phoneme classes may fill the cluster. For instance, English allows at most three consonants in an onset, but among native words under standard accents, phonemes in a three-consonantal onset are limited to the following scheme:

/s/ + pulmonic + approximant:
• /s/ + /m/ + /j/
• /s/ + /t/ + /j ɹ/
• /s/ + /p/ + /j ɹ l/
• /s/ + /k/ + /j ɹ l w/

This constraint can be observed in the pronunciation of the word blue: originally, the vowel of blue was identical to the vowel of cue, approximately [iw]. In most dialects of English, [iw] shifted to [juː]. Theoretically, this would produce ** [bljuː]. The cluster [blj], however, infringes the constraint for three-consonantal onsets in English. Therefore, the pronunciation has been reduced to [bluː] by elision of the [j].

Other languages don't share the same constraint: compare Spanish pliegue [ˈpljeɣe] or French pluie [plɥi].

Sonority hierarchy: In general, the rules of phonotactics operate around the sonority hierarchy, stipulating that the nucleus has maximal sonority and that sonority decreases as you move away from the nucleus. The voiceless alveolar fricative [s] is lower on the sonority hierarchy than the alveolar lateral approximant [l], so the combination /sl/ is permitted in onsets and /ls/ is permitted in codas, but /ls/ is not allowed in onsets and /sl/ is not allowed in codas. Hence slips /slɪps/ and pulse /pʌls/ are possible English words while *lsips and *pusl are not. There are of course exceptions to this rule, but in general it holds for the phonotactics of most languages.

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sagittal plane

From: Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sagittal_plane 071219

A sagittal plane of the human body is an imaginary plane that travels from the top to the bottom of the body.

From a broader perspective, it is one of the planes of the body used to describe the location of body parts in relation to each other. The other reference planes used in anatomy are:
• The coronal (or frontal) plane divides the body into dorsal and ventral (back and front) portions.
• A transverse (or horizontal) plane divides the body into cranial and caudal (top and bottom) portions.

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speech machine model

From: Wolfgang von Kempelen's speaking machine and its successors, http://www.ling.su.se/staff/hartmut/kemplne.htm 071107

The first attempts to produce human speech by machine were made in the 2nd half of the 18th century. Ch. G. Kratzenstein, professor of physiology in Copenhagen, previously in Halle and Petersburg, succeeded in producing vowels using resonance tubes connected to organ pipes (1773). At that time, Wolfgang von Kempelen had already begun with his own attempts that led him to construct a speaking machine. Von Kempelen was an ingenious person in the service of empress Maria Theresa in Vienna. He was born in 1734 in Bratislava, then capital of Hungary, and he died in Vienna in 1804. While he became known for various additional feats, his main concern was the study of human speech production, with therapeutic applications in mind. He has been called the first experimental phonetician. ...

As late as in 1937, R. R. Riesz (USA) constructed a device similar to those mentioned above, but with a vocal tract shape that was close to the natural.

UKT: In the diagram, you will notice two valves in the larynx (the glottal area), and one at the velum. The nature of the sound can be changed by Manipulating these valves.

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thorn <þ>

UKT: I would like to represent every Burmese-Myanmar akshara-grapheme with single letter of the English-Latin alphabet. Unfortunately, there are some akshara-graphemes that cannot be represented by single letter of English-Latin alphabet because the latter has only 26 letters. Among the Burmese-Myanmar akshara-graphemes, there are three that are in dire need: r1c5, r2c5 and r6c5.

For r2c5, I could choose the Spanish Ñ.

For r1c5, I have to use digraph <ng> (of the English word <sing>). Remember that a "digraph" is a grapheme (unit of typography) made up of two letters such as <n> and <g>. The pronunciation of <ng> is different from either <n> or <g>. This reminds me of Chemistry where a compound such as NaCl has properties entirely different from either of its constituent-elements: Na or Cl. Without explaining that <ng> is a digraph, we are simply told of its changing pronunciation in different environments:

<sing> /sɪŋ/ -- DJPD16-490 (<g> is not pronounced)
<singer> /sɪŋ.əʳ/ -- DJPD16-490 (<g> is pronounced)
<finger> /fɪŋ.gʳəʳ/ -- DJPD16-204 (<g> is pronounced -- the implication is that it is not part of the digraph)
This has led me to point out to Myanmars NOT to pronounce English words according to their spellings. This is exactly opposite to our saying that "what is written is correct, but what is pronounced is just sound".

For r6c5 , and <th> (of English <the> and <thin>). At one time there was a character to represent <th>. It is known as "thorn".

thorn n. 4. The runic letter [ þ ] originally representing either sound of the Modern English <th>, as in <the> and <thin> , used in Old English and Middle English manuscripts. [Middle English from Old English] -- AHTD

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