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[mastahcheese]

I had a science teacher once that insisted that your eyes changing color was impossible. While he accused me of wearing cosmetic contacts because my eyes were a different color than they'd been the day before.

My eyes changed colors back when I was a kid.
They stopped after a few years, but I remember that, and they changed on a weekly basis, too. It was fast.

[SealyStar]

I had a linguistics professor who adamantly maintained English had no voiced stops and they were actually voiceless unaspirated. I guess I just imagined the vibration in my throat, then.

[Neonivek]

I had a linguistics professor who adamantly maintained English had no voiced stops and they were actually voiceless unaspirated. I guess I just imagined the vibration in my throat, then.

Linguistics is probably one of the sciences that has the most pseudo-science mixed in with it.

[SealyStar]

I had a linguistics professor who adamantly maintained English had no voiced stops and they were actually voiceless unaspirated. I guess I just imagined the vibration in my throat, then.

Linguistics is probably one of the sciences that has the most pseudo-science mixed in with it.

More that it's on the softer edge of science, which correlates with how many competing theories there are in it. The big outlier, of course, is physics, which is so hard that it's gone horseshoe into an all-out abstract circlejerk about how the universe works.

But... I mean, the professor's claim is just flat-out wrong. It's just provably false by anyone who can put their fingers against their Adam's apple and say "bagged".

[TheDarkStar]

Physics went wayyyyy past "Duh, this is how the world works" to "I have no idea what this means, but the equations work out right and we can make cool lasors with it".

[Tawa]

...anyone who can put their fingers against their Adam's apple and say "bagged".

* Tawarochir attempts this

...Oh gods why did you do this to my anatomy

[mastahcheese]

...anyone who can put their fingers against their Adam's apple and say "bagged".

* Tawarochir attempts this

...Oh gods why did you do this to my anatomy

You brought this on yourself.

[Neonivek]

Physics went wayyyyy past "Duh, this is how the world works" to "I have no idea what this means, but the equations work out right and we can make cool lasors with it".

Fairly typical of physics to teach you the math before teaching you its significance or what it even means.

[FearfulJesuit]

I had a linguistics professor who adamantly maintained English had no voiced stops and they were actually voiceless unaspirated. I guess I just imagined the vibration in my throat, then.

Linguistics is probably one of the sciences that has the most pseudo-science mixed in with it.

More that it's on the softer edge of science, which correlates with how many competing theories there are in it. The big outlier, of course, is physics, which is so hard that it's gone horseshoe into an all-out abstract circlejerk about how the universe works.

But... I mean, the professor's claim is just flat-out wrong. It's just provably false by anyone who can put their fingers against their Adam's apple and say "bagged".

He's not wrong. English really just has a strong and a weak series of stops, which manifest word-initially as an aspiration distinction and word-medially as a voicing distinction.

How can you test this? English stops are voiceless but unaspirated in word-initial clusters after /s/- so while pie is [pʰai] (with aspiration), spy is [spai] (with no aspiration).

If you record a native English speaker saying spy, then mess around with the recording to delete the /s/ (this is easily done in a program called Praat, which is free to download and which linguists use all the time), and then play the result to a native English speaker, they'll hear by. In other words, word-initially, aspiration is the salient feature- not voicing. (Weak stops are usually at least a little voiced word-initially, but that's not what we listen for, in other words.)

This sort of situation, where a set of sounds cuts across two categories that are usually well-defined, is not actually very unusual. Most of the indigenous languages of Brazil have a system where nasal vowels are phonemic (like in French or Portuguese), and there's a series of stops that are just plain voiced stops [b d g] before non-nasal vowels, but nasals [m n ŋ] before nasal vowels. These contrast with the plain unvoiced stops, which don't vary like this. Are they nasals or voiced stops, underlyingly? There's a good case to be made for both.

[Xantalos]

https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/originals/2a/a0/e5/2aa0e5b039d826dfd1279be32feb46ed.jpg

[mastahcheese]

https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/originals/2a/a0/e5/2aa0e5b039d826dfd1279be32feb46ed.jpg

...

[ggamer]

https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/originals/2a/a0/e5/2aa0e5b039d826dfd1279be32feb46ed.jpg

...

oh jesus

I nearly choked. Thanks, Xantalos.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

AAAAAH! I'M GONNA DIE IN A MONKEY AND DESTROY THE WORLD, TOO! AAAAAAAAAH! OH NO! do you have nice tits though? AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!

[Xantalos]

oh jesus

I nearly choked. Thanks, Xantalos.

Dammit!

[SealyStar]

I had a linguistics professor who adamantly maintained English had no voiced stops and they were actually voiceless unaspirated. I guess I just imagined the vibration in my throat, then.

Linguistics is probably one of the sciences that has the most pseudo-science mixed in with it.

More that it's on the softer edge of science, which correlates with how many competing theories there are in it. The big outlier, of course, is physics, which is so hard that it's gone horseshoe into an all-out abstract circlejerk about how the universe works.

But... I mean, the professor's claim is just flat-out wrong. It's just provably false by anyone who can put their fingers against their Adam's apple and say "bagged".

He's not wrong. English really just has a strong and a weak series of stops, which manifest word-initially as an aspiration distinction and word-medially as a voicing distinction.

How can you test this? English stops are voiceless but unaspirated in word-initial clusters after /s/- so while pie is [pʰai] (with aspiration), spy is [spai] (with no aspiration).

If you record a native English speaker saying spy, then mess around with the recording to delete the /s/ (this is easily done in a program called Praat, which is free to download and which linguists use all the time), and then play the result to a native English speaker, they'll hear by. In other words, word-initially, aspiration is the salient feature- not voicing. (Weak stops are usually at least a little voiced word-initially, but that's not what we listen for, in other words.)

This sort of situation, where a set of sounds cuts across two categories that are usually well-defined, is not actually very unusual. Most of the indigenous languages of Brazil have a system where nasal vowels are phonemic (like in French or Portuguese), and there's a series of stops that are just plain voiced stops [b d g] before non-nasal vowels, but nasals [m n ŋ] before nasal vowels. These contrast with the plain unvoiced stops, which don't vary like this. Are they nasals or voiced stops, underlyingly? There's a good case to be made for both.

Maybe he's right about how some people talk, but I can clearly feel the voicing in [b d g] while he suggests that they are always realized as [p t k]. He actually showed us stuff in Praat and while I agree it's hard for me to tell the difference between voiceless unaspirated and voiced, there is definitely a voicing difference the way most English speakers say them that he unilaterally denied existing. It may only be one part of the contrast but it's definitely there.

[miauw62]

Performance art of the 21st century.

Can someone please explain to me what this conveys?

The duality of man.