About k, t, and p

[Ayzìsìt Alenantang]

I came to know there's something a bit tricky about those- tha fact that they are unaspirated. how DO I pronounce them? Is the word "Teya" (full) is suppoused to be read "eya"?

[Erimeyz]

As luck would have it, I just now finished the first draft of the first half of the first page of my beginners' guide.  And it just so happens I cover this very subject!

Check out this link and let me know if that helps!

In short: you do pronounce them, but without expelling any air.  It takes a little practice.

  - Eri

[kewnya txamew'itan]

Erimeyz is correct. At the end of a syllable they're even more annoying though as they are unreleased. What this means is that as you end the vowel and move your tongue or lips into position for the consonant you need to close of your air stream so that when your tongue or lips relax no air is released and it sounds almost as if you didn't say the consonant (although it is just about audible).

[omängum fra'uti]

English actually has a lot of unreleased consonants in casual speech.  Formally it doesn't, but when people are speaking in a more relaxed manner, it's easier not to release the consonant.

(Some regional dialects even take it a bit further and drop the consonant completely using a glottal stop in its place.)

Try considering the contraction of "can not" can't...  If you say it with an unreleased t, people will still hear you say "can't", despite the fact that the opposite (can) would be the same sound without the t at the end.

[AyekongAyauyä]

Here's a trick my first linguistics teacher used when explaining the difference: hold your hand a couple inches in front of your mouth while pronouncing the stop. If you feel the puff of air, it's aspirated; if you don't, it's not. As for learning to pronounce them in the first place, just use English words that have the sounds in the middle, like happen, pickle, or matter (pronounced "carefully" so you get the alveolar stop instead of the flap). Pay attention to how they sound, repeat them a few times, then try cutting off the first syllable of the word, so you're left with "pen", "kul", "ter", etc.

If you're a native English speaker, a properly-pronounced unaspirated voiceless stop will sound a lot like a voiced stop, so it can be hard to tell if you're doing it right. But don't give up!

[Kaiatéya]

The unreleased consonants at the end I'm totally hip with, now.

The problem I've been having is that I made some sound samples, and people told me I'm aspirating the k/t/p. That's fine, I can see that after learning about it. So I started trying to look at some tutorials and such, and figure out what I need to do differently. I listen to sound samples of words that have k/t/p in them on e.g. the Learn Na'vi main site pages and their k/t/p don't sound very different from many of mine. So either those samples are not correct, or I can't even hear the difference. That or maybe the ones listening to my samples were just meaning to comment that some of mine are bad.

Does anyone have sound samples or a video where they show asperated (incorrect) k/t/p and unasperated (correct) k/t/p? Are the Learn Na'vi main site samples good in this regard?

Irayo!

[TorukMakto!]

This instructive video will help you :
http://www.talknavi.com/videos/92/na%27vi-pronunciation-guide-1
The appropriate thread that this video was disussed is:
http://forum.learnnavi.org/audio/navi-pronunciation-guides/

Enjoy .

[omängum fra'uti]

It's very possible the sound samples also have an aspirated consonant.

To an English speaker, k t and p should sound like g d and b when unaspirated.  (They aren't ACTUALLY g d and b, but they will sound like that to ears only used to hearing English consonant sounds.)

[Kaiatéya]

Bummer. Yeah, I watched that video. Very cool, even though I noticed some problems with his 'ng' and occasionally 'ì' and 'o'. 'fpom' came out more like 'fpam' a few times. His ejectives and quick speech are a joy to the ears though.

I still don't get it though. He gives examples like skill vs kill, but I can put my hand in front of my mouth, I can pay attention to how my mouth is moving, I can listen to the way it sounds .. it sounds identical to me. So he's still aspirating the 'k', or I am not aspirating any of my 'k' (which I don't think is true), or I am simply too dense to hear the difference. (That last one being entirely possible/probable. ) I listened to Dr Frommer's recent speech sample and I hear the same things. A lot of his t/p/k sound aspirated too, at least by the descriptions I've read.

I re-listened to my video and my t/p/k sound kind of over-asprated in a few spots, almost more like tx/px/kx. I am thinking some of that was nervousness (lol) and some of it was just not knowing better as an English speaker. I'll have to do another one some time to test.

Either way, thank you all for answering comments and providing all these materials to help people out! It's very helpful.

[Erimeyz]

I still don't get it though. He gives examples like skill vs kill, but I can put my hand in front of my mouth, I can pay attention to how my mouth is moving, I can listen to the way it sounds .. it sounds identical to me. So he's still aspirating the 'k', or I am not aspirating any of my 'k' (which I don't think is true), or I am simply too dense to hear the difference. (That last one being entirely possible/probable. ) I listened to Dr Frommer's recent speech sample and I hear the same things. A lot of his t/p/k sound aspirated too, at least by the descriptions I've read.

It's possible, indeed likely, that anyone you listen to is going to over-aspirate p/t/k, even Frommer.  Those that do it all the time may need better instruction, but even the best speakers are going to blow it (hah!) from time to time.  Honestly, even native speakers probably vary in the amount of aspiration they give to p/t/k, depending on the circumstances.

I think the key thing is that p/t/k and px/tx/kx are at opposite ends of a continuum.  They're both unvoiced and they both use no air from the lungs.  p/t/k use no air at all, while px/tx/kx use a very strong ejection of air (but only from the mouth, not from the lungs!).  Na'vi makes a syntactic distinction between the two, so you should strive to make them sound distinct from each other.  If there's a little air escaping when you say p/t/k, that's probably okay (but not "perfect") as long as it's 1) not as much as in the "normal" English pronunciation and 2) very clearly distinct from px/tx/kx.  If you can do at least that much, native speakers should have no trouble understanding you, although they may note that your accent is a little weird.

If you're not feeling or hearing a difference between aspirated and unaspirated p/t/k, I suggest doing the hand-to-your-mouth thing and working spill/pill still/till skill/kill, deliberately trying to make pill/till/kill expel as much air as possible (from your lungs! don't make them ejectives!) and trying to make spill/still/skill expel as little as possible.  The point of the exercise is to get you to see the difference!  If you don't see a difference, it means you're naturally unaspirating everything or naturally aspirating everything - neither one of which will help you with your Na'vi pronunciation.  So practice exaggerating the contrasting pairs until you see a difference... and then use the spill/still/skill ones as the model for your Na'vi pronunciation.

Good luck!  Keep us updated on your progress, and let us know what, if anything, works for you.

  - Eri

[Doolio]

you may try this also:

say the word (for example 'taron'), but do not use ANY air at all, don't let the air to flow either way while you are saying it. basically, just move your mouth without any sound so that one can read your lips, but can't hear you even if he got his ear millimeters from your lips.
then try to say the word 'taron' out loud, but "keep the 't' " in the unaspirated mode:)

this is not the exact way to pronounce unaspirated consonants though, BUT it does help people to grasp and differentiate what is going on there. also, this exercise doesn't have any negative effects.

[Kaiatéya]

Irayo for the pointers, Eri and Doolio.

I think I do naturally have the same amount of aspiration on word pairs like spill/pill, skill/kill. I guess I'm weird like that. I can hear the difference in people's examples though, and definitely the difference between either of those and ejectives. I've gotten to be decent at ejectives so I guess as long as I'm not massively aspirating the t/p/k things should be OK.

When I listen to my video I posted earlier, I hear a lot of aspiration on some of the consonants. More than is normal for me. So I think I was just trying too hard to be clear, or perhaps was just nervous .. Also I hadn't actually heard of the aspiration issue at that point, so I was probably in don't-care mode on it. I try harder now when I'm speaking.

Actually it's entirely possible that this discussion about my aspirated p/t/k is what caused me to lose a lot of aspiration in my English speech. Oh dear. Now I'm paying attention to it and don't like it.

(btw: native speakers? )

I will try Doolio's exercise when I'm not sitting at my desk at work, hehe.. It sounds like a really good thing to try.

Overall I think I need to make a new sample to see if people still think I'm overdoing it.

[Erimeyz]

native speakers?

Well, there's notional native speakers... fictional, but still nominally existent.

Then there's hypothetical native speakers.  It could happen!  You never know...

  - Eri

[Erimeyz]

Irayo for the pointers, Eri and Doolio.

Zìyeva'u.

I've gotten to be decent at ejectives so I guess as long as I'm not massively aspirating the t/p/k things should be OK.

I should hasten to point out that unaspirating p/t/k does more than just distinguish it from the ejectives... it sounds exotic and beautiful, and so is worth working on for that reason alone.

  - Eri

[Kaiatéya]

Well, there's notional native speakers... fictional, but still nominally existent.

Then there's hypothetical native speakers.  It could happen!  You never know...

Hehe .. I mentioned on the "most embarrassing moments" movie thread that my partner caught me trying to teach ejective consonants to our one year old son.

Zìyeva'u.

Ok... That's just beautiful.

I should hasten to point out that unaspirating p/t/k does more than just distinguish it from the ejectives... it sounds exotic and beautiful, and so is worth working on for that reason alone.

Very true. For that reason alone I continue to work on it. There's this really narrow place between "not pronouncing it at all" and "asperation" that I'm working on hitting regularly. It does actually give it a very pretty and exotic sound, at least to an English speaker.

[Erimeyz]

Hehe .. I mentioned on the "most embarrassing moments" movie thread that my partner caught me trying to teach ejective consonants to our one year old son.

I think the last thing you need to teach him right now is to forcefully eject things from his mouth, unless you really enjoy cleaning food off your glasses.

Zìyeva'u.

Ok... That's just beautiful.

Seiyi oe irayo.

(please please please note: my usage of za'u etc. is completely speculative and not remotely supported by anything that Frommer or anyone else has ever said and eventually we're going to learn how to say "you're welcome" at which point my usage won't be speculative any more it will just be plain old wrong so be advised that here be dragons)

That said, I think I like nìmun zìyeva'u better than just zìyeva'u even for the short form, since the "again" part is important enough that it should be stated rather than just implied - which is a difference from kìyevame.  So not only is this not official, not only is it something I just made up, I can't even make up my own mind about it.

There's this really narrow place between "not pronouncing it at all" and "asperation" that I'm working on hitting regularly. It does actually give it a very pretty and exotic sound, at least to an English speaker.

You should make more videos.

  - Eri

[Kaiatéya]

I think the last thing you need to teach him right now is to forcefully eject things from his mouth, unless you really enjoy cleaning food off your glasses.

LOL

I've already taught that kid so many weird noises .. popping, clicking, growling .. he has taught me some in return. He taught me this sound that sounds like a baby murloc (from WoW) and that led to my discovery of how to make effective wookie noises. (Just do the Na'vi 'rr' with a high pitch, and a LOT of volume and lung output. ) Good times...

Seiyi oe irayo.

(please please please note: my usage of za'u etc. is completely speculative and not remotely supported by anything that Frommer or anyone else has ever said and eventually we're going to learn how to say "you're welcome" at which point my usage won't be speculative any more it will just be plain old wrong so be advised that here be dragons)

Yeah, I understand. It's a bummer we don't have more canonical grammar, vocabulary and idioms to work from, but I think half the fun is speculating on stuff like this. Trying to compose things out of the pieces we do have and imagine what the Na'vi would have thought about it, the words they'd use...

On the other hand -- you know, we have Frommer's attention here and it wouldn't surprise me if he cruised the forums and saw something like what you wrote, and went .. whoa .. that's exactly what I was looking for! I mean .. I don't doubt he has a pretty good mental map and notes about what he wants the language to be like, but surely he hasn't mapped it all out 100% yet.

You should make more videos.

I may just have to do that.