Epiglottal clicks and giant balls of feathers
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Why, for heaven's sake, do journalists simply make stuff up when the science involved in a story is linguistic science? When the photos of those planets orbiting HR 8799 in Pegasus appeared this week, the press reported correctly that the objects in question were gas giants like Jupiter. They didn't say that they were giant balls of feathers. But when writing about the death of the late lamented South African singer Miriam Makeba, The Economist asserted that "she could sing while making the epiglottal clicks of the Xhosa language". Bob Ladd has pointed out to me that actually there are two asinine howlers in this. One, which I didn't immediately notice, is that we don't speak about Edith Piaf as being able to sing while making the uvular trills of the French language, because those sounds are part of the French language: they are perfectly ordinary consonants (r-sounds). She sings words that contain them, and if she didn't, she wouldn't be singing the right words. Well, the clicks of Xhosa are (for Xhosa speakers) perfectly ordinary consonants too. But the other thing is more serious: "epiglottal clicks" are a phonetic impossibility. In brief, clicks are produced with a suction action using the middle of the tongue, and the back of the tongue completely seals off the airway during a click. The epiglottis is way down near the larynx. It is literally impossible for there to be a click (i.e., velaric suction stop) articulated at or with the epiglottis. There are epiglottal sounds in some languages, but they are not clicks; and Xhosa doesn't have any epiglottals. The (anonymous) obituarist was simply slinging around phonetic terminology they had come across but did not understand. Shame on you, Economist. Hire a fact-checker. Or look things up on Wikipedia. Or ask Language Log.
I have few serious conjectures about how this could have happened, but one is that the writer might have thought "epi-" was rather like "quasi-", and could be used vaguely, so that "epiglottal" would mean "kind of glottal". It doesn't make any difference, though: the clicks of Xhosa, Zulu, and other Southern African languages aren't glottal either, or even kind of glottal. You might as well say they are made by… giant balls of feathers. The principle we see at work here is that writers think fact-checking is never needed on any point that is broadly about language. They are wrong.
Ryan Denzer-King said,
November 15, 2008 @ 1:59 pm
That is pretty shameful. I try not to throw around technical terms I don't understand even in everday speech, much less a published article. If only they had been writing about Haida. At least Haida has an epiglottal trill.
GAC said,
November 15, 2008 @ 3:01 pm
Second mistake is definitely a bit ridiculous. Maybe mentioning the clicks can be useful for some color (rather rare sound that would be unfamiliar to readers), but definitely don't just make up terms.
Seeing as Xhosa doesn't have epiglottals, exactly where the confusion comes from is the real question. I find it kind of unlikely that he happened to find the term while researching/talking to specialists for this story and misunderstanding (but it's possible). Maybe this guy regularly deals with language-related reports and still never bothered to try to understand the terms?
Simon Cauchi said,
November 15, 2008 @ 3:16 pm
I read this post to my wife this Sunday morning because I thought it would amuse her. But I stumbled over the phrase "velaric suction stop". Tsk, tsk.
Ran Ari-Gur said,
November 15, 2008 @ 7:06 pm
I respectfully disagree with you and Dr. Ladd on the first "asinine howler". The previous sentence mentions (among other things) that she could whisper; clearly, the point here is not to wow us with the perfectly ordinary things that she could do, but to give us an idea of how her audiences felt listening to her. Since her American and European audiences definitely found the clicks to be notable, I think it's a reasonable comment to make.
Chris said,
November 15, 2008 @ 7:12 pm
What about the sentence that follows that one in the article:
"Clicking, clapping, dancing or dreaming, laughing or sad, she seemed to contain all the strength, warmth, sensuousness and burnished beauty of Africa, as well as all its sounds."
As if "clicking" were an activity of a kind with "clapping, dancing, or dreaming".
It's interesting in this context to listen to Miriam Makeba herself talk about her reaction to people asking her, "how do you make that noise?" Her response: "It isn't a noise, it's my language."
Arnold Zwicky said,
November 15, 2008 @ 8:52 pm
She produced a series of velaric
Suction stops — clicks,
Pops, bursts. And all the while
Singing, how remarkable. Just
A moment ago I
Ventured a voiceless interdental
Fricative. Thinking, oh what a
Clever person I am!
Rob said,
November 15, 2008 @ 9:43 pm
Seems that the Economist writer simply mistook the back of the tongue for the epiglottis–probably an easy mistake to make (nonetheless unforgivable in this context) for someone with little knowledge about the organs of speech production.
Laura Whitton said,
November 16, 2008 @ 12:21 am
I am disappointed that I can't find the specific reference that I saw about the "advantage" of being a singer whose language contained clicks, but I think I can reconstruct the details.
Last spring, I had to get a tire replaced. One of the magazines in the waiting area had a small blurb about a singer, who likely was Miriam Makeba. This magazine had been recently created; I believe it was "Science Illustrated". The gist was that clicks did not require either inhaling or exhaling; as such they were quite beneficial to singing, since the singer was not required to inhale or exhale to produce them. Thus, they allowed the singer to be able to produce longer stretches of music, since they weren't burdened with having to take a breath when they made a click!
Robert Cumming said,
November 16, 2008 @ 7:33 am
I checked the Economist story about HR 8799. It's okay but there are confusing liberties taken there too.
The star they are orbiting, the mass of blobs seen in the picture, is known only as HR 8799.
The mass of blobs aren't the star, they're noise left over from subtracting the star. Besides, HR 8799 doesn't have one name, but twenty-two.
Saying that discovery the 'lends support to current theories of planetary formation' is also somewhat off the mark. These planets are, as I understand things, a serious problem for one of the current best bet theories, and potential poster children for its most serious competitor.
In other news, I am keeping my eye out for examples of astronomification. I'm sure they're out there.
Madeleine said,
November 16, 2008 @ 10:38 am
To be nitpicky – I hope I'm right in thinking this – those gorgeous uvular trills in Piaf's song would usually be articulated as voiced fricatives in spoken French. They aren't strictly speaking "part of the French language" – not Piaf's dialect, anyway – except in French singing. Producing them as beautifully as she does in song is something of a talent. Though of course the point would still stand if you'd named any French consonant.
Beth said,
November 16, 2008 @ 3:54 pm
Perhaps the writer confused that fact that there are epiglottalised clicks in Khoesan languages, and I think Xhosa borrowed clicks from Khoesan.
Ray Girvan said,
November 16, 2008 @ 5:00 pm
those gorgeous uvular trills in Piaf's song
I always love the trilled r of some German singers, as in Gisela May's Seeräuber Jenny.
The Click Song
One of many clips on YouTube.
David Marjanović said,
November 16, 2008 @ 9:36 pm
There are French people who use the voiced uvular fricative (and it's apparently widespread in northern Germany*), but here in Paris nobody ever does that. Between voiced sounds they use the voiced uvular trill; elsewhere they use something that can range from the voiceless uvular trill to the voiceless velar fricative — at least closer to the velar than to the uvular one. (You can hear both in the tramway line no. 3: [pɔ̝xtø̞dɔʀleˈɒ̈̃], [pɔ̝xtø̞ditaˈli].)
And French words with /ʀ/ are borrowed into Algerian Arabic not with /ʁ/, but with /rˁ/, judging from a few examples that have come up at Jabal al-Lughat.
That said, "je ne rrrrrrrrrregrrrrrrrrrrrette rrrrrrrrrrrrrien", with those incredibly long trills (maybe five to ten contacts), is not how anyone speaks; there's usually just a single contact (a single bubble of air that gets squeezed through).
If it's not clear what I mean by number of contacts, compare the two alveolar trill phonemes of Spanish: r between vowels has a single contact, while rr, as well as r at the beginnings and ends of words, has a stunning four to five contacts. I find it amazing to listen to, like the Czech looooong vowels.
* But not beyond. The Ausspracheduden is full of shit.
David Marjanović said,
November 16, 2008 @ 9:46 pm
Exact same thing: long uvular trill, far longer than anyone would make it when speaking. (Though, in this video, still shorter than Piaf's.)
Ray Girvan said,
November 17, 2008 @ 7:37 am
David Marjanović
I'd wondered if it was regional, as I like German vocal music and it seems uncommon. I guessed at Berlin, based on Gisela May (East German, sings with Berliner Ensemble), and the Berlin-founded Rammstein (check out the "Sie ist der hellste Sterrrrn von allen" line in the chorus of Sonne). But German r looks a pretty complicated historical-cultural thing. The phonetic and phonological characteristics of German /r/ – Its history and controversy is interesting. (Link to PDF – I can't get A HREF syntax to work: http://nichobot.beaverunited.org/linguistics/NFowler-rhotics.pdf).
greg said,
November 17, 2008 @ 11:32 am
Saying that discovery the 'lends support to current theories of planetary formation' is also somewhat off the mark. These planets are, as I understand things, a serious problem for one of the current best bet theories, and potential poster children for its most serious competitor.
to be nitpicky, the new planets are actually supportive of the theory of planetary development that we had developed prior to other discoveries of extrasolar planets. previous discoveries had thrown some confusion upon the picture because we had evidence of gas giants orbiting much closer than we thought they would. the three planets in the picture are all outside of jupiter's orbit, so there could potentially still be solid planets orbiting inside the innermost one.
linda seebach said,
December 8, 2008 @ 12:24 am
The Economist published Geoff Pullum's letter this week.