Voiceless Vowels and Other Sonorants
Sonorants are those sounds, such as vowels and nasals, which are voiced in most of the world's languages. However, in some languages sonorants may be voiceless, usually allophonically. For example, the Japanese word sukiyaki is pronounced . This may sound like to an English speaker, but the lips can be seen compressing for the . Something similar happens in English with words like peculiar and potato .
Sonorants may also be contrastively voiceless, not just voiceless due to their environment. Standard Tibetan, for example, has a voiceless /l̥/ in Lhasa, which sounds similar to, but is not as noisy as, the voiceless lateral fricative /ɬ/ in Welsh, and which contrasts with a modally voiced /l/. Welsh contrasts several voiceless sonorants: /m, m̥/, /n, n̥/, /ŋ, ŋ̊/, and /r, r̥/, the latter represented by "rh".
In the Moksha language there is even a voiceless palatal approximant /j̊/ (written in Cyrillic as <йх> jh) along with /l̥/ and /r̥/ (written as <лх> lh and <рх> rh). The last two have also palatalized counterparts /lʲ̥/ and /rʲ̥/ (<льх> and <рьх>). In the Kildin Sami language there is also this /j̊/ <ҋ>.
On the other hand, although contrastively voiceless vowels have been reported several times, they have never been verified (L&M 1996:315).
Read more about this topic: Voicelessness
Famous quotes containing the words voiceless and/or vowels:
“We have heard all of our lives how, after the Civil War was over, the South went back to straighten itself out and make a living again. It was for many years a voiceless part of the government. The balance of power moved away from it—to the north and the east. The problems of the north and the east became the big problem of the country and nobody paid much attention to the economic unbalance the South had left as its only choice.”
—Lyndon Baines Johnson (1908–1973)
“These equal syllables alone require,
Though oft the ear the open vowels tire;”
—Alexander Pope (1688–1744)