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vikinglanguage · 3 years

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Hej Love your blog! I was wondering... Could you enlighten me and try to explain how to pronounce that weird soft d sound? I've been learning Danish for quite some time now and I just can't figure it out. 😭 What is supposed to happen in my mouth?? I'd be so thankful for a proper linguistic explanation! Thank you 🌼

Well, boy oh boy am I thrilled to tell you that I got an A in Phonetics and Phonology, hopefully rendering me qualified to give a proper linguistic explanation! (Yes, this is absolutely me bragging)

How to pronounce soft d – as explained by a Danish linguistics student

I think a good way to start is the way that ordnet.dk narrowly transcribes soft d: [ð̠ˠ̞]. So rather than it just being a voiced dental fricative like English [ð] in the, it is velarised, retracted and an approximant rather than a fricative. I had to look the term up, but I believe Wikipedia is correct in its claim that it is a velarized laminal alveolar approximant. At leat that does seem to accurately summarise the position of my tongue.

Let's go through it step by step, assuming you already know how to pronounce [ð], which most phonologists find similar enough to justify using in a broad transcription.

To start, here's a diagram of the oral cavity, for reference.

Velarisation, which is indicated by the little gamma, describes the act of raising the back of the tongue (4-5 on the diagram) towards the velum. The effect this has is often described as giving the phone you're producing a "darker" sound. This is also where the term "dark L" for the English velarised alveolar lateral approximant [ɫ] comes from. This velarised lateral is found near the end of words, i.e. in milk or pool. If you try saying either of these two words slowly, you should be able to feel the back of your tongue almost the soft palate during production of the lateral.

Velarisation of consonants is also quite common in Slavic languages, so if you try to imagine speaking in a Russian accent that might help you too?

Now, keeping this position of the back of the tongue in mind, this is one part of producing the soft d.

So; laminal. Laminal means the active part of the tongue is the lamina or blade of the tongue (2 on the diagram). I believe English [ð] is most commonly produced with the apex (1 on the diagram), or at least that is the way I pronounce it, but soft d should be produced with the part just behind the tip instead. However, the tongue will not be touching anything, but we'll get to that.

Then we get to alveolar. As you might recall, I described [ð] as dental, which means it's produced with the tongue touching the back of the upper teeth. But seeing as soft d is retracted, that means the sound is produced slightly further back in the vocal tract, instead placing it at the alveolar ridge, which (as you can tell on the diagram) is the part where the roof of your mouth slopes downwards towards your front teeth.

In praxis, this means that the place of production rather than that of [ð] is that of [z] as in zebra or [s] as in summer. But again, the tongue will not be touching the roof of the mouth, so you will in fact not be making either of those sounds.

This last part, I believe, is the trickiest part. The little T indicates that the sound is lowered, and when a fricative is lowered, it becomes an approximant. Approximants native to English are [l], which we've already discussed, [ɹ] as in red, [j] as in yes, and [w] as in we.

Approximants are characterised by the active articulator, in our case the tongue, moving towards the passive articulator, in our case the alveolar ridge, but never touching it.

So basically, rather than touching the alvolar ridge as you would for [z], you slighly lower the tongue, so that the blade of it is NOT touching the roof of your mouth.

In my experience, all this results in your tongue being in an honestly rather awkward position (that is not unlike a weirdly fronted [l] – I suddenly don't find it that odd that non-natives tend to hear soft d as an l), where the sides of the tongue are kind of touching the bottom of the molars and the blade of the tongue is so very close to the middle of the alveolar ridge, but never quite gets there. This further means that the tip of your tongue in the effort of not touching it to the alveolar ridge either ends between your front teeth or touching the back of your lower front teeth. Additionally, we must not forget that the back of the tongue should be nearing the velum.

A final thing that I kind of skipped, because it is part of just [ð], is voicing. Soft d is voiced, like [ð] or [z] or [l], which just means that the vocal folds are vibrating, but it is a central part of it.

I realise this is, like, super long, but you did ask for a proper linguistic explanation. And, well. This is a very comprehensive linguistic explanation. So I hope that helps! As usual, please to feel free to ask any clarifying questions if I said something that doesn't make sense to you. I am quite passionate about soft d, right alongside stød and [ə].

#danish #phonology #phonetics #acoustic phonetics #soft d #pronunciation #original #ask #anonymous #danish phonology #long post #langblr #language #tongueblr #...literally

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