People around world associate rolled R with a jagged line, study finds (www.theguardian.com)

submitted 8 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[-] [email protected] 7 points 8 months ago

I’m guessing it’s to do with the perturbed waveform. Someone should do a followup study to see whether any other sounds with similar characteristics(i.e. an idling car engine, a TR-808 drum machine handclap) would have similar associations.

[-] [email protected] 11 points 8 months ago

I think that this is most likely the case:

In the audio for this spectrogram I've pronounced [rä arä lä älä]. Even with all background noise, it's obvious how smoother the [l] is in comparison with [r] - in one you're simply redirecting the airflow laterally, in another you're "turning" it on and off, by hitting the alveolar ridge with the tongue.

this post was submitted on 20 Nov 2024

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