Enga mellom fjella

Blubbering about the letter B

Linguistics 01 Phonetics.

Lesson 1, The letter B

Well, ain't this sweet! No rant to a day brought to you by the letter B .

B ... hmmm ... let me introduce y'all to my friend Mister B.

As in Burns, Bayh, Beech, Barnes, Boatwright.

Yep. All beeeees. ***ouch***

Nasty little critters like to sting.

B = bilabial, voiced plosive stop.

1. Family members:

Peaches, a quiet breathy popping sister. (aspirated, voiceless bilabial stop)

Forrest, a hissy lippy cousin (voiceless fricative)
Viola, a very vampy step-sister (voiced fricative)

Miles, hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm, a pondering uncle (voiced nasal)

Guillaume, a distant franco-german 3rd cousin. (voiced velar plosive stop)

Wanda, a witchy willowy wandlike wannabe. Probably a long lost sister or cousin. (voiced labialized approximate/glide)

2. Contrasts:

A. bat vs Pat; tab vs tap: Notice the voiced B by lightly placing fingers on the voice box (throat) Careful not to press too hard, unless close to an emergency room. The P is voiceless and the vocal cords do not vibrate as much. Put your hand in front of your lips. The P is followed by a puff of air, the B isn't (T as in Tattie is also a puffy person).

B. bigger vs vigor; Gabe vs gave. The V and B are both voiced. The vocal cords are vibrating vigourously, but more so for the V. Why? Because one can hold onto the V. as in v-v-vroom. You cannot do that with broom unless you stop each time, as in b b broom and that would be stuttering. The mouth is a bit more relaxed with V, more air flow is allowed. A V is more sonorant than B.

C. bit vs fit; rib vs riff. As with V/B except note that F is voiceless. It doesn't quite hiss as well as S, but it is related, as in pffffft!

D. boot vs moot; tube vs tomb (in my dialect). The B stops abruptly, the M can linger and linger kinda like an uncle who won't go home! Hommmmme? Both are voiced. The M is resonated in the nasal passages and is a very sonorant sound.

E. Ah ... Guillaume! gum vs bum; lab vs lag (my dialect has different sounding vowels). Both are voiced stops. But B uses the lips, and the tongue is 'somewhere'; while the G does not use lips and the tongue is at the back in the velar position. Historically, Indo-European had Labio-velars a BG sound that used the lips while the tongue was in the back of the mouth. There are still signs of this in Germanic languages as Guillaume = William (Bill) and in Spanish where in some dialects bueno can be pronounced güeno.

F. won/one vs bun; no/know vs nob vs nope. Not always spelled as a w, W has a wicked history. Both B and W are voiced and use the lips. With W the mouth is more relaxed and sound is not released in a burst. It can be held similar to F and V, its closest relatives. Note the English William versus the German Wilhelm {w = V). It is found in dipthongs and can be considered a glide. The long O (OO) is pronounced OW (not ow as in now, that would be a-oo or AW). In some languages the long sound does not glide. In Japanese, Basho is actually BASHOO and has a length of 3 µ (mora). The prolonged O is not a W. Another W note: which and what is still pronounced [HWITsh] and [HW^T] in some dialects. See Norwegian kvilke/hvilke and kva/hva

3. When is b a P?

Good question! When b follows an s as in absolute the b is pronounced as a P in many dialects. This P is unaspirated as is also evident in the word spy compared to pie. There may be good historical reason to spell words with a b but poets need to know a P vs B when they hear one.

4. Notes.

A. It combines with R, L: brew, blue, blurb, bulb.

B. It can follow a W: globe [GLOWB]

C. It combines initially in Spanish with W: bueno [BWENO]; but not in English (bwana and bwah-ha-ha being the only exceptions I know of).

D. However it combines initially with the glide Y as in beaut, butte [BYUT] as well as after it in babe [BAYB].

E. There may still be dialects that have MB combinations as in lamb [LAMB] but not in my dialect [LAM].

F. Prenasalised stops are found in Bantu (Africa) languages and elsewhere as in the name of the author Mda, or South Africa's leader Mbeki.

G. It does not combine with N (assimilates to M) nor NG. Nor with S nor Z (as it does in Italian sbato, zbaio).

H. It is one of the most common sounds cross-linguistically. Only a few languages do not have it. Cherokee is one example where a name like Peter (they don't have P neither) is spelled out in the Agayuh/agayv syllabary as KWI.DA. Cherokee has the labio-velar but not the labial B, P, V or F; it does have M and W.

See: http://www.native-languages.org/cherokee_alphabet.htm

I. Remember that in words like amble the B is part of the following syllable [AM.BL]

J. Think about how the voiced b affects the s in Casbah [CAZBA]. Words that begin in the morpheme (not morphine; although, the field of morphology does put some to sleep)en- may be spelled em- or pronounced as such (as in Spanish) in English words such as embalmed, embarrass, embark.

5. Practical Poetics:

A. Know what sounds are related. One can have fun talking about Resident Push moving in next door from his previous address on Bentsylvania. Think of these possibilities: Pill, Will, Bill, Phil; over, Ober, Omar, oh where.

B. Slant rhymes! rim, rip, rib, riff; row, robe, rope, rove, roam.

C. B is a lippy sound. String a bunch together! Bush's baby bumpkin blabbered ... bonk, bash, boot. Add a mix of W, P, F, V and M and the lips are having a partEE. Use the rounded vowels as in bought, boat, boot and it goes over the top! (Note that French has a couple rounded front vowels as in tu and Japanese high-back vowels are not rounded, as in natsu.)

D. B is unaspirated. It does not have the popping aspiration of P, T, K. It mixes well with D and G, especially with G.

E. In Spanish the b/v actually is two sounds B and a beta ß (bi-labial fricative), both spelled either with a b or a v. The Spanish system of voiced plosives is lentis-fortis (strong-weak) and is not to be confused with the English phomenic nor phonetic system.

And just think ... as I figure out more to blubber about, I can add more .

Resource:

IPA: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Phonetic_Alphabet