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Ask-A-Linguist - Message details
Subject: Implosives b, d, g, j in Swahili
Question:
I just took up some Swahili for fun, and I had never encountered these sounds before.

I more or less can figure out the phonological information around, or at least as long as just taking in air as opposed to expel it. This is what I can do, only that I seem to choke. The books say something like, ''in fact, no air is ingressed, what happens is the glottis pulls down creating sort of a depression...'' Should I ''ingress'' air, if that is the word, or not? Could then be Swahili be viewed as a language where chunks of speech are ''out'' when others are ''in''-ward? Any practical tip you can give us students to come round this issue?

I see on the other hand that some methods simply equal them to the more usual /b,d,g/, such as ''Le swahili sans peine'', with some caveats to not ''affricate'' too much ''j'', and others say ''some speakers''...; Can we just do that and nothing serious happens, phonologically speaking?

Much obliged.

From: Tomas
Date: Sep-09-2009
Replies:
  1. Re: Implosives b, d, g, j in Swahili Herbert Frederic Stahlke   (Sep-12-2009)
  2. Re: Implosives b, d, g, j in Swahili Madalena Cruz-Ferreira   (Sep-12-2009)
  3. Re: Implosives b, d, g, j in Swahili John M. Lawler   (Sep-12-2009)
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