explain xkcd - User contributions [en]

2942: Fluid Speech

2024-06-06T14:04:56Z

FrustratedPhonetics:

{{comic
| number = 2942
| date = June 5, 2024
| title = Fluid Speech
| image = fluid_speech_2x.png
| imagesize = 740x406px
| noexpand = true
| titletext = Thank you to linguist Gretchen McCulloch for teaching me about phonetic assimilation, and for teaching me that if you stand around in public reading texts from a linguist and murmuring example phrases to yourself, people will eventually ask if you're okay.
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|Created by sum'un who wud rite like'is all'u time if e'cud gi'away with'd- Title text not adressed. How would the utterance of the fourth panels actually sound? Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}
This comic is about {{w|sandhi}}.

[[Randall]] states that people often unconsciously shorten words in various ways when speaking to optimize the fluidity of speech.
He then presents four side-view diagrams of the human mouth and paths depicting how it moves when saying increasingly fluid versions of "going to."

The first diagram gives the pronunciation /ɡoʊɪŋ tu/ ''GO-ing TO''. This is the version found in dictionaries and used when one is speaking slowly and deliberately. Here, the tongue and lips have to move a lot. The phrase starts at the back of the throat with the velar /g/ and moves forward through the diphthong /oʊ/ and the approximant [w] to the near-close vowel /ɪ/. (Though it's not in the traditional IPA transcription or the comic, most native accents will insert [w] between [ʊ] and another vowel.) The tongue then has to move all the way back for another velar consonant /ŋ/, followed by an even bigger jump forwards to the alveolar /t/ and back again for the back vowel /u/. Since /t/ is an voiceless consonant, the vocal cords will briefly stop vibrating, interrupting the sound, which the diagram illustrates as a gap in the path.

The second diagram shows a slightly more efficient pronunciation, in which the /ŋ/ is replaced by an /n/ instead since both /n/ and /t/ are alveolar sounds. The final /u/ weakens to the more neutrally positioned /ə/, which is the "default" vowel (aka you should be making this sound if you relax your mouth completely and give a small grunt). All doubling back of the tongue is now removed, leaving only a small, nearly closed loop.

The third diagram shows an even more efficient and very common pronunciation of the phrase, /ɡʌnə/ ''GUN-na''. Here rather than optimizing tongue movement hard-to-pronounce sounds are removed or further replaced instead. The /t/ is dropped leaving only /n/, while the vowel(s) of the first syllable go from /o/ to /ʌ/ between which the only difference is the optional rounding, or pursing of the lips - though more likely given Randall Munroe's prior comics demonstrating a {{w|Phonological history of English close back vowels#STRUT–COMMA merger|ꜱᴛʀᴜᴛ-coᴍᴍᴀ merger}}, a supposed /ə/.

The fourth diagram shows the most reduced pronunciation. The /n/ is lost as a consonant in its own right, with only remnants of its existence found by the nasalisation of the preceding vowel where part of the airflow is redirected through the nose. (This is, incidentally, the same manner how French got its famous nasal sounds - sequences of what used to be vowel + /n/ from Latin were reduced.) This way, the only motions one must make is to draw the tongue to the back of the mouth to articulate the /ɡ/, although the epiglottis or other laryngial elements may also be employed in the modulation of such rear-mouth plosive effects.

In the bottom text, Randall comments on the perception of reduced pronunciations, remarking that while many perceive them as being sloppy, in reality deliberately pronouncing each word with the "supposed" pronunciation in its dictionary form sounds stilted, forced, and unnatural. The final 't' in the word "hot" is an example of this. Most people perceive the plosive /t/ to be the "full" pronunciation of the letter 't', but in reality 't' has many possible allophones depending on its position and one's accent. After a vowel and before a consonant (as in 'hoT potato'), it is almost always pronounced as a glottal stop [ʔ].

For more about Schwa, see [[2907: Schwa]].

The title text is a serious shout-out to linguist Gretchen McCulloch who has been teaching Randall about this stuff, but includes a joke about what happens when he tries these things out in public.

==Transcript==
{{incomplete transcript|Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}

:[Above the panel:]
:Fun fact: Experienced speakers constantly merge, drop, and alter sounds when talking at normal conversational speed to optimize for efficient mouth movement.

:[The panel shows four labeled side profiles of a mouth with paths of sounds made in different parts of the mouth. There is a label "More fluid" with an arrow pointing to the right. From left to right:]

:[Label:]
:Going to
:/ɡoʊɪŋ tu/
:[Path:] G O >> I >> NG >> >> >> T >> >> O

:[Label:]
:Goin' to
:/ɡoʊɪn tə/
:[Path:] G O >> I >> N T >> >> O

:[Label:]
:Gonna
:/ɡʌn.ə/
:[Path:] G O >> NN >> A

:[Label:]
:How fluent speakers ''actually'' say it when speaking rapidly
:/ɡə̃/
:[Path:] G >> >> ə̃

:[Below the panel:]
:If you think ''you'' don't do this, try to use "hot potato" in a sentence and fully pronounce the first "t" without sounding like an alien impersonating a human.

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Language]]
[[Category:Fun fact]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Gretchen McCulloch]]

Talk:2942: Fluid Speech

2024-06-06T13:57:40Z

FrustratedPhonetics:

I've noticed that this doesn't seem to be the case in all languages. For example, when native Polish speakers talk rapidly (even when speaking English), they enunciate every sound accurately in quick succession while flattening out the tone and rhythm of their speech. I wonder if this is because Polish is an inflected language where the grammar of the sentence is determined by endings of words rather than word order. Does anyone know if there have been any studies on this? [[Special:Contributions/162.158.74.49|162.158.74.49]] 23:12, 5 June 2024 (UTC)

:I'm not linguists but based on how many those are, definitely. -- [[User:Hkmaly|Hkmaly]] ([[User talk:Hkmaly|talk]]) 00:10, 6 June 2024 (UTC)

:Russian also has vowel reduction like English and it's a Slavic language like Polish, so I don't think so. Although someone who knows more than me might be able to chip in on whether the effect is stronger in English. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.114.198|162.158.114.198]] 03:24, 6 June 2024 (UTC)

I've just added a very barebones version of an explanation based on what I could understand from the comic. I can tell that the four diagrams depict that of the human mouth but since I am not a linguist, I lack the knowledge of various terms and thus, can't fully explain the comic. I understand what the comic is trying to convey, I just can't explain it. Looking forward to seeing how this progresses. [[User:OmniDoom|OmniDoom]] ([[User talk:OmniDoom|talk]]) 00:22, 6 June 2024 (UTC)

I don't think #4 is a real IPA symbol, but as I am not a linguist, I have no idea. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.91.36|162.158.91.36]] 01:38, 6 June 2024 (UTC)
:/ə̃/ is a {{w|Nasal_vowel|nasalized}} {{w|schwa}} --[[Special:Contributions/172.71.160.92|172.71.160.92]] 08:53, 6 June 2024 (UTC)

The hovertext joke is that every English speaker fully pronounces the first "t" in "Hot Potato". It's at the end of "hot". Nobody says "ha potato". [[User:Nitpicking|Nitpicking]] ([[User talk:Nitpicking|talk]]) 03:01, 6 June 2024 (UTC)

:Unless you mean "the glottal stop should be considered an allophone of <t> at the end of syllables" then yes they do. It's /hoʔ/, not /hotʰ/. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.114.198|162.158.114.198]] 03:24, 6 June 2024 (UTC)

:(Edit conflicted with 162, above, so this is my own reply...) I thought it was that it isn't "ho T'p otato", with the "teh-peh" awkwardness. For me, the natural way to say it is to glottalstop the first T for more "ho'potato" (the other Ts, there I find awkward ''not'' to get the "t>s<" out of, the ">s<"-tail being what makes a full-T not a lazy one). But clearly a different accent involved, as "ha" doesn't work at all for me unless I try to use some sort of (probably awful) Goodfellas-type accent. And my native accent is notoriously good at glottlestopped Ts (that most people misinpersonate badly, by attaching them to the wrong adjacent syllable).
:As for "going to", experimentally holding my finger over the length of my tongue, it seems it barely has to move at all in "going" (the whole tongue wants to rise on the "i", but I can suppress that and do the tone-change from further back, if not straight from the vocal chords). Though continuing through to the "to", with my finger in there, it's no better than "going ku" as I prevent the tongue-tip doing the necessary small movement to fulfil any form of T. I can do better through basic gastromancy, but behind my unmoving jaw and lips (''without'' the finger almost down my throat, of course), I can feel the tongue tip doing it's small but vital "crossing the T" work. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.86.64|172.70.86.64]] 03:53, 6 June 2024 (UTC)
:For me, it's more like "ho'buh-deh-duh" - so none ot the t's get pronounced properly. And I'd drop the n in 'going to' before I dropped the t.[[Special:Contributions/172.70.163.120|172.70.163.120]] 08:22, 6 June 2024 (UTC)
:Wunber dayder, doober dayder, freeber dayder for. (But then, oddly, uh baguv tayterz.)[[Special:Contributions/172.70.162.58|172.70.162.58]] 13:18, 6 June 2024 (UTC)

Unless someone's willing to start an "explain explain xkcd", I think this explanation still needs a lot of work to be intelligible to non-linguists (myself included). That aside, I do appreciate whoever took the time to type all that up. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.166.210|162.158.166.210]] 03:31, 6 June 2024 (UTC)
:The current explain reads, to me at least, more like a 102 lecture than an explanation of the comic. I of course have no idea what is in a 101 first week lecture so shrug. (Aside, wth? This keyboard doesn't have a tilda. Copy and paste ftw) [[Special:Contributions/172.71.223.38|172.71.223.38]] 05:51, 6 June 2024 (UTC)
:::Meta-response about the {{w|tilde}}: at the top of this editing window is a bar of formatting buttons (which I mostly just try to avoid accidentally clicking when I touchscreen-scroll). The second from the right gives <code><nowiki>--~~~~</nowiki></code>, having a depiction of a signature. (The "--" is not necessary, nor does anything with actual formatting/markup, but comes from quite old text communications standards.) Personally, in this current situation of using an onscreen keyboard, my configurstion hides the tilde behind the "?123" then "=\<" change-keyboard buttons.
:::(Ironically, all three of "=", "\" and "<" are already available as long-presses of the primary keyboard layout. But the much more useful "/" is hidden behind the "?123" press, ''except'' when it explicitly detects that I'm in a browser address field. Some UI designers have strange ideas that definitely mis-mesh with my usage!)
:::That's where I usually go, to sign-off. But on physical keyboards, depending upon internationalisation options, it might be either off the top-left (left of "1" key) 'triple-key, perhaps needing Shift or AltGr fingering (from experience of US (mis)configuring), or the key in the "hook" of the <Enter> key (all my physical UK keyboards, even the most squished-up laptop ones, have that as <sub>#</sub><sup>~</sup>). If you're neither in US nor UK (and your device knows this), then where it gets shuffled out of the way of any ß, ē or ø type stuff, I wouldn't know for sure, but using the AltGr (right-Alt) ''might'' reveal characters you never ever knew you had... ;)
:::Copypasting out of the "<nowiki>Please sign your posts with ~~~~</nowiki>" Infobox or any residual from the {{template|unsigned}} templates is, of course, also a valid option. ;) [[Special:Contributions/172.69.43.184|172.69.43.184]] 10:18, 6 June 2024 (UTC)
: I think it's fine if you can read/interpret the {{w|International Phonetic Alphabet|IPA}}. If you don't it's utterly incomprehensible. I think we need some examples here as to how the sounds written here are pronounced. Like "sound <x> as in <word>" [[User:Elektrizikekswerk|Elektrizikekswerk]] ([[User talk:Elektrizikekswerk|talk]]) 06:52, 6 June 2024 (UTC)
:: Yeah, except [[2819]] [[Special:Contributions/172.70.163.120|172.70.163.120]] 08:30, 6 June 2024 (UTC)

>Alien impersonating a human

Sounds like a normal Runglish to me, just like the one you can hear in this clip: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GXNKUo5MrbM]

I hate that he pointed this out, because I'm going to start pronouncing things the way they're supposed to sound and everyone will think I'm weirder. [[User:Psychoticpotato|Psychoticpotato]] ([[User talk:Psychoticpotato|talk]]) 12:37, 6 June 2024 (UTC)
: How are you pronouncing 'Psychoticpotato'?[[Special:Contributions/172.69.195.6|172.69.195.6]] 13:10, 6 June 2024 (UTC)

I added a bit more detail to the first diagram, but I agree it's not really plain English right now. btw, maybe it's pedantic of me, but diphthongs such as /oʊ/ are one vowel, and the whole word /ɡoʊ.ɪŋ/ only has two vowels

As for "hot potato", the post-vocalic T *is* pronounced, it's pronounced as a glottal stop. T is simply pronounced differently in different positions, it's how the letter works. Randall's probably referring to the alveolar plosive /t/, which most people think of as "the T sound" and would make you sound like an alien. SMBC made the point better: https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/2012-05-08
[[User:FrustratedPhonetics|FrustratedPhonetics]] ([[User talk:FrustratedPhonetics|talk]]) 13:57, 6 June 2024 (UTC)

2942: Fluid Speech

2024-06-06T13:40:39Z

FrustratedPhonetics: Made the description of the diagram more accurate and complete

{{comic
| number = 2942
| date = June 5, 2024
| title = Fluid Speech
| image = fluid_speech_2x.png
| imagesize = 740x406px
| noexpand = true
| titletext = Thank you to linguist Gretchen McCulloch for teaching me about phonetic assimilation, and for teaching me that if you stand around in public reading texts from a linguist and murmuring example phrases to yourself, people will eventually ask if you're okay.
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|Created by sum'un who wud rite like'is all'u time if e'cud gi'away with'd- Title text not adressed. How would the utterance of the fourth panels actually sound? Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}
This comic is about {{w|sandhi}}.

[[Randall]] states that people often unconsciously shorten words in various ways when speaking to optimize the fluidity of speech.
He then presents four diagrams of the human mouth and paths depicting how it moves when saying increasingly fluid versions of "going to."

The first diagram gives the pronunciation /ɡoʊɪŋ tu/ ''GO-ing TO''. This is the version found in dictionaries and used when one is speaking slowly and deliberately. Here, the tongue and lips have to move a lot. The phrase starts at the back of the throat with the velar /g/ and moves forward through the diphthong /oʊ/ and the approximant [w] to the near-close vowel /ɪ/. (Though it's not in the traditional IPA transcription or the comic, most native accents will insert [w] between [ʊ] and another vowel.) The tongue then has to move all the way back for another velar consonant /ŋ/, followed by an even bigger jump forwards to the alveolar /t/ and back again for the back vowel /u/. Since /t/ is an voiceless consonant, the vocal cords will briefly stop vibrating, interrupting the sound, which the diagram illustrates as a gap in the path.

The second diagram shows a slightly more efficient pronunciation, in which the /ŋ/ is replaced by an /n/ instead since both /n/ and /t/ are alveolar sounds. The final /u/ weakens to the more neutrally positioned /ə/, which is the "default" vowel (aka you should be making this sound if you relax your mouth completely and give a small grunt). All doubling back of the tongue is now removed, leaving only a small, nearly closed loop.

The third diagram shows an even more efficient and very common pronunciation of the phrase, /ɡʌnə/ ''GUN-na''. Here rather than optimizing tongue movement hard-to-pronounce sounds are removed or further replaced instead. The /t/ is dropped leaving only /n/, while the vowel(s) of the first syllable go from /o/ to /ʌ/ between which the only difference is the optional rounding, or pursing of the lips - though more likely given Randall Munroe's prior comics demonstrating a {{w|Phonological history of English close back vowels#STRUT–COMMA merger|ꜱᴛʀᴜᴛ-coᴍᴍᴀ merger}}, a supposed /ə/.

The fourth diagram shows the most reduced pronunciation. The /n/ is lost as a consonant in its own right, with only remnants of its existence found by the nasalisation of the preceding vowel where part of the airflow is redirected through the nose. (This is, incidentally, the same manner how French got its famous nasal sounds - sequences of what used to be vowel + /n/ from Latin were reduced.) This way, the only motions one must make is to draw the tongue to the back of the mouth to articulate the /ɡ/, although the epiglottis or other laryngial elements may also be employed in the modulation of such rear-mouth plosive effects.

In the bottom text, Randall comments on the perception of reduced pronunciations, remarking that while many perceive them as being sloppy, in reality deliberately pronouncing each word with the "supposed" pronunciation in its dictionary form sounds stilted, forced, and unnatural.

For more about Schwa, see [[2907: Schwa]].

==Transcript==
{{incomplete transcript|Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}

:[Above the panel:]
:Fun fact: Experienced speakers constantly merge, drop, and alter sounds when talking at normal conversational speed to optimize for efficient mouth movement.

:[The panel shows four labeled side profiles of a mouth with paths of sounds made in different parts of the mouth. There is a label "More fluid" with an arrow pointing to the right. From left to right:]

:[Label:]
:Going to
:/ɡoʊɪŋ tu/
:[Path:] G O >> I >> NG >> >> >> T >> >> O

:[Label:]
:Goin' to
:/ɡoʊɪn tə/
:[Path:] G O >> I >> N T >> >> O

:[Label:]
:Gonna
:/ɡʌn.ə/
:[Path:] G O >> NN >> A

:[Label:]
:How fluent speakers ''actually'' say it when speaking rapidly
:/ɡə̃/
:[Path:] G >> >> ə̃

:[Below the panel:]
:If you think ''you'' don't do this, try to use "hot potato" in a sentence and fully pronounce the first "t" without sounding like an alien impersonating a human.

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Language]]
[[Category:Fun fact]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Gretchen McCulloch]]