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The other day i heard John Cleese laugh and was taken by the fact that unlike many of the other sounds i've indirectly heard him make, i would be unable to transcribe them accurately. The same applies to many of the other sounds we make, particularly paroxysmal ones. When was the last time you read
a precisely delineated textual version of an orgasmic outburst?
In the case of language, it's relatively trivial to define phonemes via point and mode of articulation, or by the changes between such points and modes. Intonation can also be represented to some degree. This is sometimes also true of laughter, coughing, and cries of pain and grief, but often not.
Therefore, i propose an International Paroxysmal Alphabet for the rest of the sounds we make: laughter, eructations from various orifices, coughing (which is an exaggerated glottal stop), vomiting, clapping and so forth, with sufficient subtlety to give us some idea of the noises we all make without actually hearing them. It could even be useful. For example, a bovine cough has diagnostic value and i suspect my farts sound different because my sigmoid is a different shape than most people's.
So, an entirely separate and probably much longer alphabet for phlegmy coughs, borborygmi, ululation and retching.
[link]
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This is fairly complicated, can you spell it out for me? |
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I choose to imagine that nineteenthly's sigmoid is shaped like nineteenthly, rendering them and their sigmoid together a one-stage colonic matryoshka. |
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Excellent idea, by the way. |
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Perhaps we just need more punctuation types. Or
perhaps punctuation should merge with html tags in
some fashion. They could then create the perfect
sneeze emoticon. |
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//glottal stop// I've always wondered what a glottal start would sound like. |
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//I've always wondered what a glottal start would
sound like.// It's an East-Londoner's pronunciation
of the "tt" in "bottle". |
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The closest I can get to an explanation is to say the
"bo" part of "bottle", stopping abruptly. Then say
the "le" bit (which is pronounced close to "ull"). In
between the two, the sound is stopped in your
throat; so the "ull" is almost a throat-clearing sound.
Hence the term glottal stop. |
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[MB] you've successfully described what a glo'al stop
is, but I was wondering what a glottal *start* might
sound like. |
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Ah - yes - always read the question. Always read the
question. |
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I was quite disappointed to learn, as a teenager, that the
sounds described in children's books, using terms such as
"Tsk, tsk" (soft noise made by pressing the tongue
against the upper front the and withdrawing it quickly)
didn't sound anything like the way I'd seen them written. |
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Your idea may take some time to catch on [19thly] but it
certainly has merit. |
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The "Tsk" in "Tsk, Tsk" already has an accepted IPA
symbol. It's |, the pipe symbol on your keyboard next
to the slash. In typefaces where they may be
confused, ʇ is used instead. |
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A glottal start would be an /h/. |
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I used to work with someone who read the Tin Tin books in French rather than English and was much struck by the French's inaccurate rendering of Snowy's frequent 'Woof! Woof!' as 'Wooya! Wooya!'. So, clearly, there is a requirement for standardised exclamations (in France, at least, if nowhere else).
nineteenthly, having foolishly taken an interest in the subject, is the person that I volunteer to take things forward. Submit a full report to the committee by the end of the month please, 'teenthly. |
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OK, i can make that happen. |
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