you are so incredibly informative to both laymen and long time linguistics enthusiasts, absolutely enjoyed this video

@chriscorbo7439

Жыл бұрын

I indeed want to know what this special k is, who’s using it and how to make it. 👀

@ajwinberg

Жыл бұрын

Right?

@Malchiar010695

Жыл бұрын

You probably lay men

@rsvihla

Жыл бұрын

As he said, it’s not a click.

It's so bizarre to suddenly hear the click after being a native English speaker for 40 years lol. I don't think I'll ever unhear it!

@ConDude25

Жыл бұрын

I thought the same thing! Also bizarre that you can say the words both ways correctly.

@rhopi

Жыл бұрын

As an Indian it was the other way round for me. In Indian languages, the ejective sounds are separate consonants and in Indian English we primarily use the ejective sounds so that's how I used to hear it. Only recently did I realise that Western speakers primarily use the 'regular' sounds.

@pratn

Жыл бұрын

@@rhopi can you give an example from an Indian language

@rhopi

Жыл бұрын

@@pratn For example, in Hindi we have the letters क for ejective K and ख for regular K. But when speaking English, Indians generally use the former for K.

@dani-elle-au9935

Жыл бұрын

That's arguable 🤣

k'- snare drum p' - kick drum t'- hi-hat Now go forth and beatbox

@grzegorzbrzeczyszczykiewic8158

2 жыл бұрын

I can confirm that the ejectives are used in beatboxing

@drunkdriver983

Жыл бұрын

May I suggest a ts’ for a hi hat

@markcox5385

Жыл бұрын

t’ for closed hi-hat. ts’ for open hi-hat. 😀

@SIC647

Жыл бұрын

Ohh. Thank you. Now I understand how my son can do a rythm and melody at the same time.

@Ixaglet

Жыл бұрын

I'm an ESL teacher and I teach my students to beatbox by saying "boots, cats", without pronouncing the vowels. B-ts-C-ts :D

Using Tom Scott as a linguistics sample is excellent!

@Mythraen

Жыл бұрын

When he fixes his channel so that you can say words like "he" and "black" without having your comment shadowbanned, maybe I'll stop thinking of him with anything besides disgust. Try it, go to a video of his, make a perfectly innocuous comment in reply to any thread, use the word "he" in it somewhere, then check the thread while logged out and you won't see your comment. (Note, use a link to the thread and _not_ a link to the specific comment. Those will work.) There's quite a number of perfectly innocent words that will cause this, and it seriously disrupts the ability to have a discussion under his videos. I e-mailed him about it more than a year ago. I never received a response and, so far as I know, nothing has been done.

@jacobbannier

Жыл бұрын

I'm APPAULED!

@MysticKoolAidMan

Жыл бұрын

@@Mythraen yikes, just tested, he's right

@molamolalaaa2968

Жыл бұрын

@@Mythraen I kind of understand ‘black’ but what’s wrong with ‘he’?

@Mythraen

Жыл бұрын

@@molamolalaaa2968 I mean, I can only speculate on what happened. My speculation is that someone (not necessarily Tom, as I expect he has channel managers for this) tried to ban a phrase/sentence/comment and instead banned all of the words in that phrase/sentence/comment individually. Also, while you can certainly say some bad things about black people and that's not acceptable, referring to black people or black, the color, is generally not remotely controversial in itself. I discovered this one while talking about his _black_ and white lines video. Note, those two words were the ones I remembered. There were several more that I found, and likely many I did not find. If you want a real explanation, though, I suggest you ask Tom Scott... and then he can ignore your e-mail too.

i'm a na'vi learner, and your video is now being used within the community as an example of how to use the ejectives!

@DrGeoffLindsey

Жыл бұрын

Really? Can you give me a link of some kind?

@KevinJennissen

Жыл бұрын

@@DrGeoffLindsey You know that the aliens from Avatar you jokingly used in the video are called na'vi, right? EDIT: this comment was egotistical, lame, and innacurate. I apologize.

@ferrous719

Жыл бұрын

​@@KevinJennissen he literally named them. He was requesting an example of his work being used for teaching.

@KevinJennissen

Жыл бұрын

@@ferrous719 Wow, I am stupid. I thought the commenter was joking and claiming to be a literal na'vi, not someone learning the fictional language. I want to delete my snarky, "um, actually" comment, but I'll leave it up to possibly embolden others to admit their mistakes and learn from them.

@corneliastreet2491

Жыл бұрын

I’d love a linK or a piK

I've been speaking English as a native for over 60 years and never noticed the click. This series is fascinating to get an outside perspective on something I just take for granted - the English language!

@thelukesternater

Жыл бұрын

Wow I’m half way, 30 years myself!

@DrGeoffLindsey

Жыл бұрын

Thanks so much. (By the way ejectives are strictly different from the sounds we call 'clicks' in phonetics, though obviously the sound is like a click.)

@seneca983

Жыл бұрын

@@DrGeoffLindsey I think it would make more sense to call the click consonants something else. Maybe "smack" (in the sense of the sound of a loud kiss)? Ejectives sound more "clicky" to me than click consonants. Of course, changing established terminology would be difficult.

@danielmcelroy4505

Жыл бұрын

💯💯💯

@herrrob14

Жыл бұрын

I'm a native speaker of English who is a German teacher. I learned so much about the structure of German. However, in my 40's I started teaching English as second language, as well. I was blown away by how complicated the structure of English really is, including the sound system and grammatical structures. It's fascinating to discover all the rules and patterns that I've been following my whole life and I wasn't even aware of them.

As a native German speaker who's trying to lose his tell-tale glottal stop before vowels, it's comforting to hear that native English speakers are on their way to meet me half-way 😄

@cinnamon3389

Жыл бұрын

I’m a native English speaker and I tend to say a glottal stop before vowels too, am I not meant to do that?

@jakobraahauge7299

Жыл бұрын

I learned a formal British English - one of things I had work on to make it sound more palatable to Americans was to kick the glottal stop. I was surprisingly hard for me to soften my accent! Now I speak an obscure with somewhat continental accent somewhere in between British and American English. Unless I snap - then I regress right back to what I learned in school 🤬😂

@unvergebeneid

Жыл бұрын

@@jakobraahauge7299 And here I thought sounding _any_ kind of British would immediately get you laid in the US...

@TS29er

Жыл бұрын

That is exactly what I was thinking when he said that English native speakers tend to use the glottal stop more frequently

@unvergebeneid

Жыл бұрын

@@cinnamon3389 I think as a native English speaker you're in the comfortable position to do whatever the heck you want ;D Except for that comma splice there... you're supposed to know better 😘

I was taught to pronounce words like this while singing in choir (USA), especially when a word ends with a 't' to make it more audible to the audience. So interesting to find this video by chance! Thank you, algorithm :)

@annasolovyeva1013

Жыл бұрын

Singing in choir in Russia it's even more complicated: you study to use the sounds in singing and in your English speaking (to emphasize the ends, Russian has quite a different approach to word endings), but you never speak like that.

@frankifyed.

Жыл бұрын

When you're recording music, its the opposite because mics are sensitive, which is why you have a pop filter between you and the mic to mitigate the harshness of plosives

@annasolovyeva1013

Жыл бұрын

@@frankifyed. academic technique is for a big hall /cathedral unamplified, not microphones. It often sounds awful with a micro.

@kendramiller8419

Жыл бұрын

Same. Taught this in choir but without the technical explanation.

@heidi_mcheidiface

Жыл бұрын

I learned that some choir members just sing the word normally and a few replace the consonants with harsher ones. For example the word God is frequent in choir music, and some people would sing Cod or Cot instead.

We use A LOT of these (including [p'] and [t']) when teaching English to Japanese speakers. The Japanese language doesn't have many final consonants, so students can have trouble hearing and producing them without the extra emphasis granted by the ejective -- although over-using them can have the adverse effect of "coddling" students and pushing them to over-pronounce their words. Language and teaching language can both be tricky things. I never knew the word for these before or realized they were pronounced differently from a standard "kh" sound, though, so this video has been really informative!

@evantesseract737

Жыл бұрын

@Suzann Lee I've been trying to learn Korean and going the other way is pretty tricky too 😂

@evantesseract737

Жыл бұрын

@Suzann Lee it's the right kind of hard for me! Consonants I couldn't even hear at first and particles everywhere and having to figure out how formal I'm trying to be 🤣🤣🤣 I'm three months in and at the point where I can hear a sentence in Korean and hear exactly enough words I recognize to say "he's politely agreeing with something and adding that something exists" or "wait we're talking about a dog, or maybe a crab" 😂

@mariah5714

Жыл бұрын

I'm working as an English teacher in Japan and just realized this because of your comment. I definitely do this when trying to teach kids how to pronounce things.

@doyleeee

Жыл бұрын

I am a Japanese learner of English and I never knew this until now. I am very surprised because no one told me about it and I was not aware of it. Language learning is interesting.

@cjmacq-vg8um

Жыл бұрын

there's nothing odd about that. its called a "k" sound. the difference is many americans don't pronounce the "k" at the end of words. or they pronounce it lazily, like a "g.' i swear, people can't even get their differences right. there's NO problem with how the english pronounce "k's!" one thing i noticed, beginning particularly with oild beatles' interviews, the english tend to really sound-out the "g" with words ending in "ing." this "ejectivizing' really comes out on your "g's" not your "k's." americans's just kind of leave off the "g" sound at the end of words. "loving" becomes"lovin'." "standing" becomes "standin'." its the "g" not the "k" that's different.

Thank you. it's a little embarrassing when you're getting you masters in linguistics and you haven't even noticed this feature of language

@lujinahjfairi3760

Жыл бұрын

May be because your visual perception is more dominant over your audio.

@litigioussociety4249

Жыл бұрын

Unless you're studying a language that specifically uses the feature to distinguish between words, then it's not going to be relevant. Every language has ranges of pronunciation of different syllables, and has variations in dialects in regard to whether something is homophonic or not. As long as you're a descriptivist about language and not a prescriptivist, you'll be all right.

@tolgaaykut4557

Жыл бұрын

More embarrassing still, is that you have written “you” and not “your” in your statement. Bravo.

@ellisonsimon

Жыл бұрын

@@tolgaaykut4557 Burn

@rillloudmother

Жыл бұрын

As soon as I heard this, I realize I only do this when I am trying to be annoying.

This gives me a new respect for the language in the Avatar movies, and for Paul Former. I didn't know so much care was put into the language construction and usage. The fact that a Na'vi speaker has a specific accent while speaking English is something we don't see in any other movie with a constructed language that I know of. Those little details are what make a universe feel alive.

@Man_fay_the_Bru

Жыл бұрын

Pity the movie is total crap about space hippies🤷‍♂️

@benpuljak2304

Жыл бұрын

@@Man_fay_the_Bru go watch rambo

@DawnDavidson

Жыл бұрын

@@Man_fay_the_Bru but they are very pretty space hippies, with a nifty conlang! 😂

@kayzee3595

6 ай бұрын

@@Man_fay_the_BruOnly a hippie would think Na’vi are hippie 😂 Pathetic loser!

Thank you for irreversibly altering how my brain perceives my own native language, I will now forever be subconsciously listening to this when people speak to me forever 👍 It's like noticing your accent for the first time. It changes you. Thanks, Scott the Woz for being from Ohio. You're why I noticed how nasally we speak and it has changed me forever.

I'm a native English speaker, and after experimenting with this, I agree that the click seems to happen when I use hard attack. I think that people do this when speaking formally to keep their words clear, enunciated, sharp, and separate. Otherwise, things tend to run together, take over sort of becomes takeover.

@DrGeoffLindsey

Жыл бұрын

Yes, hard attack is characteristic of 'explanatory' type speech more than conversation. But older folks like me don't use it much.

@Whatevsbabes

Жыл бұрын

Separate has two when I say it.

@nepdisc3722

Жыл бұрын

You had a heart attack!? Are you okay!?!?

@dietotaku

Жыл бұрын

that's what it sounds like to me. hearing all those examples i was like "that's just proper diction..."

@unwilling_fan

Жыл бұрын

I did realize I do this most when I'm teaching/tutoring bc I want others to understand me better

I always associated ejectives with relatively obscure languages like Georgian or Chechen, I never realised they were in English. I guess I never noticed because they're purely allophonic rather than true phonemes

@marioluigi9599

Жыл бұрын

I always associated them with people being pretentious lol. I'm surprised they're not... or maybe they still are?

@extasja

Жыл бұрын

based pfp

@highgroundproductions8590

Жыл бұрын

I'm not even sure what his pfp is.

@marioluigi9599

Жыл бұрын

@@highgroundproductions8590 what's a pfp?

@highgroundproductions8590

Жыл бұрын

Profile picture

This is the kind of content I love: really particular information that I'd likely never ask about, but the presenter (who is likely an expert in the subject) is enthusiastically enjoying sharing this information in a clear, digestible, and relatable and/or silly way. And for some reason, at least in my experience, they're almost always from the UK... I'm sure that's a coincidence, though.

Did Geoff just hold his breath long enough to read 2 books? That's impressive.

Bit' of a sly reference to Tom Scott' who after all makes his own phonetics vids. BTW, using this in my phonetics class!

@DrGeoffLindsey

3 жыл бұрын

Thanks, I hope your class like it!

Was once a teacher of English as a Foreign Language and always taught the students the phonemic alphabet to help them improve their pronunciation and work it out by looking at a dictionary. Never noticed the ejective plosives and have now discovered it in my own speech. What appears not to be mentioned in this (as usual) superbly made video is that the ejectives appear always (as far as I can work out) at the end of a word, and may appear even when nothing follows. Eg: 'Let's go for a walk.'

@DrGeoffLindsey

Жыл бұрын

As I show, other languages like Quechua have ejectives at the start of words. And as I say at the end, I think English ejectives may be becoming more common because of glottal stops at the start of the next word. (Very rarely I do hear one inside a word in English.)

@thomaswilliams2273

Жыл бұрын

A possible midword example would be indicative.

@sKadazhnief

Жыл бұрын

@@thomaswilliams2273 I really don't think 《indicative》 has any ejectives in it, perhaps you are mistaking it for aspiration? if not, perhaps could you be more specific as to where in the word you find the ejective consonant?

@thomaswilliams2273

Жыл бұрын

@@sKadazhnief It's just that I believe I have heard the word pronounced with a pause between the c and the I. Not all the time though, but more when it's used in frustration when answering a question.

@sKadazhnief

Жыл бұрын

often I find in my own accent, the ejective plosives are far more common before words that have an unwritten initial glottal stop. in the coda at the end of a sentence my plosives tend to become unreleased versions (at least in quick speech): [p̚ t̚ k̚] lets ɡo to the park ⟨park⟩ [päːk̚]

Though I was never consciously aware of ejective consonants, I have previously used them when I was intentionally trying to sound insufferable or obnoxious (as a tool for mockery). It's weird how some things can go completely unnoticed by one area of your mind, while a separate area of your mind, not only understands it, but is actively using it as a communication technique.

I’ll chime in here as a linguist and 30-year ESL teacher who’s never been overtly aware of these ejectives. Fascinating! I’m also impressed that you collected all those video examples.

I've noticed that I've been doing this in an effort to speak clearer and more concise for people to understand me. I am American, but when I was younger somehow inherited a rapid, less enunciated k's and other letters, kind of ran together, sort of mumbling, my mom said my dad did this, so I feel speaking this way makes it easier to understand English really.

@wohdinhel

Жыл бұрын

This is definitely a regional thing and by no means universal. Most of my adolescent English was influenced by Appalachian dialects, where consonants are very much *not* heavily emphasized. The only time in which we would have done an ejective k’ is when deliberately enunciating for emphasis.

My partner is from Greece and he likes to repeat this sound when I do it. I had never even noticed I did it until he did. I also didn't realise it was an emerging trend. I think it's quite common where I'm from in Manchester, even with the older generations.

Non-native English speaker here. I always thought that's how these consonants should be pronounced and that I was just not pronouncing them properly. Thanks so much for this informative and entertaining video!

@randomdude4669

Жыл бұрын

It is, its just not common in American English

I’m more impressed by your ability to read half of Bone in one breath than the amount of ejective Ks I now notice

Really interesting! Reminds me of the unique sound “sks” makes, like in “masks” or “tasks”. Once you notice it, it’s impossible to ignore 😁

@gangstreG123

Жыл бұрын

Probably closer to a glottal flap in that case

@JoeJigsy

Жыл бұрын

Or Crisps

@AB-ft7ng

Жыл бұрын

@@JoeJigsy Yeah, kind of similar! “-sks” feels like the throat closes off somewhere, whereas “-sps” is just closing the lips. You can also hold and repeat “-spspsps..” for as long as you can hold a breath unlike “-sks”

@JoeJigsy

Жыл бұрын

@@AB-ft7ng I agree, although you can definitely say '-sksks...', but much slower than '-spsps...'!

@jorriffhdhtrsegg

Жыл бұрын

@@JoeJigsy wasps. Makes a whilsting sound when i say these words

Wow! Legitimately fascinating. I was having trouble making the /k/ sound but found it far easier if I say "like and". I think the only time I've ever come across ejective consonants in conversation is when someone purposefully stresses the word "nope" and it has the /p/ sound at the end.

@sKadazhnief

Жыл бұрын

you probably have come across it, without realisinɡ lol

I study K’iche’, and as the name of the language suggests, it has a glottal stop k’! It’s a distinct sound that changes the meaning of a word when it’s used rather than a non glottal stop k. When I started learning k’iche’, I had difficulty with the glottal stops. This video helps me reconceptualize how I practice the various glottal stops and electives in the language. My favorite tho is glottal stop q (q’)

I'm a native speaker of American English, and I'd never noticed that sound as being a separate sound before, either. But yes, I think your explanation for it is right. We have so many more people doing public speaking now than we used to, with video blogging and podcasts! They have to be careful to be understandable and not run their words together too much. Another sound I'm curious about is way we do 2 "t"s in the middle of the word - button, getting, etc. and why it sounds more like a hard glottal stop in some words like button, and more like a "d" in others - betting vs bedding, for instance. This is probably different in the various accents, but not many English speakers would use an actual "t" sound.

@rebeccamay6420

Жыл бұрын

Language and pronunciation fascinate me. After watching these and other accent & dialect videos, I became very attuned to the difference between the glottal stop in "button" and the softened T in "butter" and the hard T in "between."

@EebstertheGreat

11 ай бұрын

It's hard to say, because it depends a lot on your accent. In a word like "betting" or "bedding," you might be pronouncing both like [ɾ], an alveolar flap, which is the same sound as in the Spanish word "para." This is common in many parts of the U.S. The reason you (and most people) hear it as a /d/ (rather than a /t/) might be because it is not aspirated. This isn't necessarily exclusive to words spelled with a doubled t or d. Words like "hater" and "glider" are pronounced with that same sound in my dialect (and thus, "trader" and "traitor" are homophones). Words like "button" have many possible pronunciations, including with a glottal stop [ʔ] for the t, which is also common in many parts of the U.K. This still isn't only restricted to double t, considering words like "mightn't" and "matins." Most examples do have a double t, because most examples have the inflection or suffix -en, and a final t is typically doubled before an -en (e.g. batten, written).

@livrowland171

9 ай бұрын

In RP English we use an 'actual T sound' in betting 🤔

Actually, the speakers I know, who have a very pronounced ejective k' (all relatively young Brits), also regularly have it at the very end of a turn of talk, without any vowel, or anything else, for that matter, following it.

@DrGeoffLindsey

2 жыл бұрын

Sure, that's where it started, and it was rare before vowels. But I think the increase in hard attack has probably increased its use before vowels. It's striking how Margot Robbie uses normal k utterance finally then ejective k' before a vowel.

@Pruney-

Жыл бұрын

Young brit from the north west, didn't even realize I clicked this much. Can't get myself to do a none ejective...

Thank you so much for this explanation. I am an amateur linguist whose little hobby is going around various IPA lists of other languages on wikipedia and trying to learn how to pronounce those very foreign sounds. I got the hang of the majority of sounds (I think so at least) but the ejective consonants have always escaped me because I could never get any feedback to know if I am doing it right, and your little demonstration here showed me that I've been doing it my entire life with ease, without even knowing it! The more I learn about phonetics and phonology the more I am amazed at how many different sounds we are capable of producing without even realizing it.

@sheep4483

Жыл бұрын

this reminded me of a while ago, when I was trying to learn to sing a bit, and I kept hearing things like "you need to train to raise your palate," so I assumed I must have been doing it wrong because I would need to train it, I was thinking like "but if I raise it too much it starts to hurt and make me gag, am I supposed to train to stop that from happening to raise it more?" but no I just found it super natural from learning some IPA years earlier so I did it the first time I tried (or maybe I'm just still doing it wrong)

@Konim96

Жыл бұрын

@@sheep4483 Are you referring to the back palate which opens up with nasal sounds? 😁 If so, I too had no idea I had control over the back palate until I learned how nasal sounds work

I have to appreciate how you clearly did your research to pronounce Valery Moskvin's name. It sounds quite close to how a Russian native would pronounce it. Granted, idk if he's Russian, but with a name like that it's very likely

Fascinating. This video was made 2 years ago. I am excited to go back and watch all your videos. Thank you for taking your time to share your knowledge. You have such an organized and clear style.

I am not aware of using ejectives, but people have told me I do and asked me why. In my case, it is especially true of the k'. I'm an American, but I've had exposure to a lot of English dialects by moving around throughout my life. I have my own blend of features. I just found your channel and have been enjoying and learning from every video. Thank you for publishing.

Have spent years talking English with people for whom it is a second language, so over the years my natural speech patterns have wound up much clearer and stronger than they started out, as i've strived to be easier to understand. So a lot like your previous video ending, actually! I reckon the massive rise of communication via conference calls must be causing a shift towards increasingly marked pronunciation, as people try to make themselves understood through compression and audio artefacts.

@tinfoilhomer909

Жыл бұрын

If you're interested in dialect levelling there are papers on the Antarctic accent.

@dianeshelton9592

Жыл бұрын

And masks, we must indeed have learnt to speak differently , especially those in the Nhs and care indusdutry who spent the last 2 years wearing a mask for up to 12 hours a day.

@brentwalker3300

Жыл бұрын

Good point.

I love your videos because they are both detailed and insightful for those familiar with the subject matter and those who are not so. Thanks a lot!!

Amazing stuff. As a singing teacher I'm very aware of glottal stops and what their value is in interpreting a lyric (and more importantly when singers should try to minimise them) but this video about ejectives is just mind-blowing!

The professor giving the speech and using the little pop when saying "up" instantly reminded me of a Game Grumps joke about the same pop, and then I tested it out and it CLICKED! (heh) You really do close the glottis whenever you make sounds like these!

@danielsebald5639

2 жыл бұрын

Fancy seeing you here!

@LukeZuniga

2 жыл бұрын

what was the context for the joke? I love Game Grumps

@dwoktheraynejonsohn4849

Жыл бұрын

@@LukeZuniga Dan asked Arin if he would still be his friend if he enunciated the "p" sound in every word that has it. During the sonic heroes playthrough

There's even pharyngelized ejectives like in the extinct Ubykh language which is notorious for it's inventory of consonants.

@nohandle508

Жыл бұрын

Now I know what I'm reading about at the weekend, thank you!

As someone who loves trivia and esoterica the was wonderful. I also appreciate that you use humour in your instruction as learning doesn't need to be dry and serious to be 'good' teaching.

Your videos are fascinating. Understanding pronunciation facilitates speaking other languages correctly, as well as understanding my own. I appreciate the educational value of this channel. Thank you.

I’m an American singer, and have been taught to call these “shadow consonants,” [edit: oops, I meant that the vowel after them is a shadow vowel, my brain is old] along with G, D, B, and M, N, F, and V, mostly. The direction is generally that shadow consonants get a conscious schwa, almost a new syllable, at the end. The point is to make the diction better for the audience, especially in choral settings. For solo singing, of course, they are a bit much, unless you like to sing-ah about the moon-ah and the June-ah and the Spring-ah.

@clara_cross

Жыл бұрын

I'm not trained in singing at all, but I've noticed these, and I've always called them ghost vowels.

@polyrhythmia

Жыл бұрын

You hear Bob Seger doing this in the song "Turn the Page-uh".

I've always been at least partially aware of these sounds, and I've always sort of thought of them as verbal punctuation. I typically use them at the ends of sentences, or when I really want to emphasize the importance of a certain word in a sentence.

Hey, this was my first video of yours and I absolutely love it. Linguistics is becoming a favourite subject of mine, and your content explains things beautifully. The clip from Glasgow Uni was amazing too. Thanks for the video!

Your work is a treasure. I really appreciate your videos. That was A Lesson.

I’ve subscribed to your channel in just 20 seconds. Thanks for reading a Russian name with Russian accent and the T-shirt is super amazing

@DrGeoffLindsey

2 жыл бұрын

Не за что :)

This was the clearest explanation I've ever heard for the use of ejectives in English. Thank you! I'm finally able to really notice the difference!

A colleague shared this video to me and I'm so grateful they did. Thank you for putting together all those clips to so clearly show the phenomenon of ejectives. I feel much wiser!

Fascinating. I was learning about ejectives in a phonetics class I'm taking and was driving myself crazy because I couldn't figure out how to make them, but watching this video I realized I have been unknowingly making them my whole life.

A friend linked me here and really enjoyed it, I love your sense of humour. I'm from South Australia and I use the ejective K sometimes, never realised what it was or why I do it! Wow at that lecturer using the trifecta haha.

Thanks for mentioning this phenomenon that I have noticed ever since I visited Georgia 20 years ago and learned Georgian from native speakers. As ejective consonants are contrastive phonemes in their language, they noticed and pointed out when I was doing it inaccurately at the end of their words! Then I realized it was a regular feature of my speech, and I haven't read any linguistic treatment of it since then.

So happy to have stumbled on this channel! I learned today the name of part of what was missing from my warped accent. Canadian who worked with many Brits and Aussies, resulting in some kind of strange accent not native to anywhere. Ejective consonants feel difficult for me to pronounce.

Great video. Finally someone talking about English really knowing the material.

Incredibly fascinating- I had heard this before but never noticed it. In the dialect of American English I speak & most often hear spoken, our final stops are invariably very weak, almost unreleased.

@nckoes

Жыл бұрын

New England? We drop our Ts and Rs like crazy. I'm realizing that I use the K.

@pseudonym1337

Жыл бұрын

@@nckoes West Coast- I don't think anyone uses this ejective K here but now I'll be on the lookout

I first came to remark some ticking sounds in some native languages in Guatemala. Now I understand a little bit more on how those sounds are made and it's very instructive. I'll be more aware of them in english speaking thanks to you. Very intresting video.

These are fascinating videos. Never considered that clicking sounds exist in English. I've heard them in Xhosa and Swahili but never detected them in English before this. Mind blown.

@gwen6622

Жыл бұрын

as he says in the video, it's not a click, it's an ejective. the clicks in xhosa are different than these sounds, and swahili does not have clicks or ejectives. clicks and ejectives are different, separate things

@wojciechgrodnicki6302

Жыл бұрын

@@gwen6622 I stand corrected about the ejective.

I used to live in Peru and picked up on a few Quecha words and phrases. I never realized we make those sounds in English too. Thanks for the content!

THANK YOU, I CAN FINALLY PRONOUNCE GEORGIAN!

This is the first video of yours that I have watched and it's totally fascinating. I'll be watching more! I love linguistics even though I've never studied it. It's so interesting that technically it doesn't matter whether (as English speakers) we use the ejective or not, and we probably make the sound (and listen to others making it too) without consciously knowing about it. Whereas I guess with the other languages mentioned, it actually does matter.

Why is this in my KZread feed? Why did I watch the whole thing? Why was it so fascinating? Here's a lik'e.

This landed in my recommendations and I'm really happy! Great work!

I NEVER NOTICED THIS! And now I'm going to hear it every time someone does it. I've always had a hard time producing ejectives (I don't speak any languages that have them as contrastive phonemes, but I've read about some and tried to make the sounds).

When I was in middle school I moved to a new city and a new school. I was made fun of because I had a strong ejective K accent. I’m originally from central Texas. It’s good to finally learn what this is called. FYI, I also have a strong pin-pen merge which my wife finds hugely amusing!

@adampope5107

Жыл бұрын

I'm from North Carolina and my pen and pin have no difference. It drives my wife, who's from Chicago, crazy.

@paulabuls5802

Жыл бұрын

@@adampope5107 my wife is from Ohio. She made fun of my pin-pen merger until I discovered that she pronounces wolf with out sounding the L. She pronounces it “woof”. We both have a better respect for each other’s regional dialects now. 🙂

@samuraitoaster

Жыл бұрын

@@paulabuls5802I’m from the Seattle area, married a Texan and moved to Texas. I’ll never forget one time asking my mother in law if she had a pen I could borrow, she goes “A what?” Me: “a pen?” Her: “I don’t understand what you’re saying” Me:“ P. E. N…PEN” and she goes “ OHHH!!! A PIIIIIIIN!” 😂. What makes me laugh the most is that I have no idea what she could’ve thought I was saying or if it sounded like gibberish? I have no clue lol

@adampope5107

Жыл бұрын

@@samuraitoaster maybe she thought you were saying pan funny and was confused?

@loopbraider

7 күн бұрын

@@samuraitoaster Your "pen" probably sounded something like "pan" to her!

I've watched 5 of your videos this morning (so far). For my tastes, you're doing absolutely everything right in your videos in terms of information content and presentation. I studied languages in my youth but am definitely not a linguist, more of a lazy enthusiast. But beyond all that, you're consistently hitting some magic tone that makes me love you the way I do Chris Hayes on MSNBC. Very hard to define, but surely "a thing." I'm looking forward to viewing more, as I have lik'ed and subscribed.

Informative and really useful video, thank you!

Amazing, fun and as clear as water !!! There is so much to learn on your videos:) I`m sharing it on Fb so that it keeps going Thank you Geoff!!

@DrGeoffLindsey

3 жыл бұрын

Thanks so much Stella

Best existing video on ejectives! Thank you.

@DrGeoffLindsey

3 жыл бұрын

Thank you. Very kind.

I don't know why KZread decided to recommend me this but it was fascinating. I'd never noticed the sound before and now I hear it very clearly. I like your sense of humor too.

I have discovered you some days ago and as retired English teacher I am astonished and amused at the same time, and every day I watch one of your videos. They make me think of my phonetics class when studying English Philology in Salamanca. My teacher was a horrible man and a worse teacher!!!! I am having a great time now with your excellent videos and make me feel young ,happy and motivated to go on learning Thank you for your great job and your excellent lessons. Greetings from Spain.

This video just helped me so much studying for a production test! Thanks so much

@DrGeoffLindsey

2 жыл бұрын

Glad it was useful!

I learned so much from this video, thank you so much!!

Thank you for making this! We now have this linked over at LearnNa'vi in our examples for sounds for new learners on how to make the ejectives. We have speakers from all over the world so it's a great resource to have when people aren't familiar with what ejectives are.

I took a phonetics class and was really confused by ejectives because I was never able to produce them on purpose. When you said that they were usually formed in English before glottal stops at the beginning of a word, I tried that and was immediately able to produce and then isolate all three. Thank you!

There are a lot of ejective stops in languages around Caucasus. For example, in the Georgian dish _khachapuri_ , _ch_ and _p_ are originally ejective. But I never knew they may occur in English, thank you very much!

Ah, depth! Delighted to've encountered this channel :)

Thank you! This was a question that I had, too! And for some reason unknown to me, this video was suggested to me by YT today. I'll have a look at your channel ... maybe I'll stay here.

I live in the eastern Netherlands and my family speaks Achterhoeks, a dialect of Dutch Low Saxon. I believe I've heard ejective consonants in Achterhoeks and other Low Saxon dialects as well (if not mistaken for aspirated consonants or something else)

This makes me think about how, at least in American English, we often place a glottal stop right before a vowel if it is the first word in a sentence. (At least, in my dialect - I've not studied it much for others) I think ejective consonants are very neat, so thank you for the informative video!

Awesome video! Thank you for teaching us

This was so incredibly fascinating, I had to sun right away!!

I'm from Italy, I've been learning and using English for the last 25 years and I've discovered today with your video that I always use the " k' " at the end of a word before another one starting with a vowel... and I have no idea why, since I've never even noticed it. Thank you :)

As a native English speaker I never realised this was a thing. While watching I was convinced I couldn’t do it at all until you started explaining hard attacks then I realised that it did naturally happen for me with most of the example phrases. Mind blown 🤯 Thank you for such an interesting video!

I have no idea why KZread recommended this video. I have never seen one of your videos before and your channel has never been recommended before. Ironically I got my degree in Applied Linguistics. Loved the video! I have subscribed ❤️

Thanks so much your videos are amazing. Even though I have always heard this sounds I have never really noticed them.

Very interesting, thank you. I kept reading about these ejectives in Hausa, Korean and Lakota. Thanks for explaining how to pronounce them It's particularly interesting to me bc i've studied Arabic, Chinese, Romance, and Indian languages and i never knew of this sound, but then this sound is in various languages across the world from Korean to Hausa to Lakota and even English

@DrGeoffLindsey

3 жыл бұрын

Thanks for commenting. I'm glad if it was useful!

@Albukhshi

Жыл бұрын

What's interesting to me is that Arabic's pharyngeal sounds (aka emphatics) used to be ejectives: this was standard to Proto-Semitic. But this was thousands of years ago. If you want Semitic languages with these sounds still (more or less) intact, you should look up Tigrinya, or Mehri, or some of the other non-Arabic Semitic Languages in Yemen, Eritrea and Ethiopia.

@sheep4483

Жыл бұрын

I realize this is over a year old but I just had to make a correction, Korean doesn't have ejectives (perhaps there's a particular dialect but not to my knowledge), as a learner I'd thought that as well at first because there's an old romanization system that (very confusingly) uses p', k', t' to represent "tense consonants," which're basically just geminated consonants, pronounced strongly, without aspiration

@asdic888

Жыл бұрын

@@sheep4483 That had me scratching my head.

@Zariel_999

Жыл бұрын

@@sheep4483 in my korean class, the teacher specifically told us not to use ejectives as they could be confused with the 'euh' vowel at the end of a word.

Probably a bad time to note that Special K refers to Ketamine in some places... Also surprised that Dr Lindsay didn't use Alan Rickman as an example since he was fairly famous for using ejectives in his speech!!

@kilgoretrout4491

Жыл бұрын

In others it’s breakfast cereal

@Gloamy17

Жыл бұрын

Ketamine can be pretty great!

Amazing piece of common vulgarisation. I wish half of my professors put half the effort to self contain and clarirify their topics. thx alot for your work sir.

I never noticed that sound, and now I love it!

I'm a non-native English speaker (my native language is Russian) and I noticed like a long time ago that I make an ejective "k" before "a" (like "u" in "cup") consistently. Very interesting video, I would like to see more videos about English

As a non-native speaker, I was tought since elementary that I have to half-repeat the consonant sound after an English word. Everyone was kinda joking about it (we don't have this in my native language). Today I learn there is a name for that sound. Thank you.

Wow, so glad I found your channel! Subscribed👍

Thank you for this video! 😀💐

Amazing video!!! because of you I bought the book "English After RP", could you please make a video on the fleece diphthong?

@DrGeoffLindsey

3 жыл бұрын

Thank you, Bryan! Yes, FLEECE is tricky and deserves a video for sure.

As a completely native speaker I never noticed this as something distinct until this video, probably because it’s so normal to me I didn’t even think about it as something other than pronouncing the word lol. now I don’t know if I’ll ever not notice it haha

The fact the first example was a clip from Citation Needed / Tom Scott warms my heart

Loved the video, very easy to follow. And yeah, i was about to comment that, at least i use those sounds when emphasizing certaint words.

Strangely this helped me understand a Russian sound I’ve been struggling to learn. At the end of some words there’s a ь sound that has been described to me by a native Russian speaker as a palettization of the tongue. But when learning on duo lingo, you have to speak aloud for exercises and the AI says if you get it right, and I found the way to get it to accept is to make a harder ejective sound.

Aha! I'd been trying to work out why some of my final plosives sound "funny" - it turns out that I use these ejective consonants regularly in words like "mop" and "clock" at the end of a sentence and some other contexts. In fact, if saying the word on its own, it takes some effort for me not to do that.

@almostfm

Жыл бұрын

I spent 10 years in radio, and I've actually softened all my plosives to the point that I can't add them back in without working at it. (One of the things with working close to a microphone is that any plosives you make anywhere in a word jump out at you when you hear them.

I have even noticed myself doing this with voiced consonants and I find that really interesting. Thank you for showing me this

That was so interesting, thank you!

My guess (based on your explanation) was that the Ejective was used more often in current speech due to longer sentences going unbroken, and thus the conservation of air in the lungs was a naturally occurring benefit to using the Ejective(say this sentence without taking a breath to understand what I mean). Survival of the fittest consonants if you will.