Articulatory phonetics

Intergalactic linguistics: The extraterrestrial language of Angine the Poitrine deciphered

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             By Retep Rakbek, Berte Pakker, Pratek Beek and Peter Bakker

The folk/rock/metal/electronic music band Angine de Poitrine is taking the world by storm. The two-person band is known for the music that is not from planet Earth, and apparently microtonal, according to musicologists. The first landing took place in the small town in Saguenay, Québec, a city of about 150,000 inhabitants. Their concerts tend to be sold out quickly. Their exoplanetary language has not been studied by linguists yet. This is the first analysis.

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Language data

The musicians, despite their 333 year presence on our planet, have not yet learned to speak Earthian, but they understand enough French and English so as to give an occasional interview in which … ↪

What is schwa?

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what is schwa

A friend asked me this question recently. I thought the answer was simple, something along the lines of ‘it is the sound you make in unstressed syllables when your oral articulators are doing nothing and your vocal folds vibrate’. A sort of unmarked setting of the articulatory muscles if you will. But alas, nothing is ever as simple as it seems which I quickly realised during my reading. And what better way to share my new insights than with a Lingoblog entry! The focus of this blog post is the articulatory aspects of schwa, though many other interesting fields are relevant to a description of the sound.

Is schwa a mid-central vowel?     
Schwa (named after a Hebrew diacritic by German … ↪