Why [ɧ] is NOT REAL

Hello, Good morning Make a video about how the macron should be deleted from languages such as Mayori, Hawaii, Ancient Language, and Latin

“ɧ” means “a linguist somewhere gave up while studying Swedish”

'why [ɧ] is not real' >look at title >[ɧ]

It sounds like xʷ to me

stole my video. no, i didn't finish the script yet, but you must have come back from the future and stolen it. seriously, good video. but also seriously, now i have to rethink my next upload.

This has annoyed me for over a decade, and since I now live in Eastern Norway and hear Swedish all the time, I literally think of this every time I hear /xʷ/.

Proposition: We just force the Swedish to pronouns sk and sj as /sk/ and /sj/

That letter looks like it would kill me while I sleep.

FINALLY SOMEONE SAID IT

As a native Swedish speakers and linguist I whole heartedly agree. It's only [x] or [xʷ] in most dialects outside of Norrland and Finland. Including my own dialect (Stockholm)

Santa Claus is more real than [ɧ]

I have been saying this for such a long time: I shall give some context for the non-Swedes: The sj-sjound developed out of a historic [ʃ] sound. This pronunciation is still kept in some dialects such as most spoken in Finland. In most dialects the sound however has shifted. It has shifted in three different ways in different dialects. In southern dialects it's become [x] (sometimes even uvular) in all positions. In central dialects it's backed in onset positions but still fronted in the coda position. The back version not backed all the way to [x] but is somewhat more between velar and palatal. It's often pronounced with rounded lips and fairly weak friction. In northern dialects and in upper-class speech (Swedish RP), it's still fronted in all positions but is instead a retroflex [ʂ]. This dialectal variation and historically quite recent shifting is what has given rise to a symbol specifically for the sj-sound. It's very useful for Swedish pronunciation dictionaries and such, because all dialects are accounted for. I agree though that it has no place in phonetic transcription. /ɧ/ = good [ɧ] = bad, meaningless

1:58 slight nitpick. <ɧ> is not the only example of a co-articulated consonant having it's own unique symbol, [w] for example is another, if you want us to use <͡ʃx>, then I'd argue for consistency's sake we should also use <β͡ɰ> in place of <w>, Which I'd argue would be somewhat impractical due to the commonality of [w]. Also [t͡ʃ] is an Affricate, But it isn't co-articulated; both sounds occurring in it are at the same place of articulation, but with different manners, and in a clear order. In the case of [w] however, or [ɧ] as a postalveolar-velar fricative, Both sounds are pronounced simultaneously, rather than one before the other, resulting in an audibly distinct sound. I will note that there are co-articulated sounds written as just a combination of the two sounds with a tie bar over them, for example the [ɡ͡b] found in the name of Igbo, for example, but having a unique symbol for them is also not without precedent, it could in my opinion be compared to how some sounds in the IPA, such as [c], have their own unique symbols, whereas others have symbols derived from others, such as [ɲ], which is simply an <n> with the addition of a palatal hook.

I saw the name of this video and wasn't sure if it was linguistics or quantum mechanics.

i randomly got recomended this, and clicked on it thinking it was going to be an exciting physics video about plancks constant, i was dissapointed

As a native swede I fully agree with you — [ɧ] has always bugged me every since I got into linguistics; the IPA is fully breaking their own conventions.

Interestingly, most Swedish sources that I have seen (e.g. Swedish Wikipedia or "Sje-ljudet är det svenskaste ljudet" by Språket) seem to say that [ɧ] represents the "dark" (mörka) or "back" (bakre) sj-sound, whereas the "light" (ljusa) or "front" (främre) sj-sound is written as [ʂ]. In phonemic transcription I usually see the phoneme written as /ɧ/, even though the phoneme can be realised as [ʂ], but picking one realisation as the symbol for a phoneme is pretty normal (I think). Now, I'm not quite sure if the "dark/back sj-sound" actually refers to one single realisation or if it encompasses several similar realisations, but I don't think it encompasses [ʂ] or [ɕ], as those would be a "light/front" realisation of the phoneme /ɧ/. (Although [ɕ] is usually the tj-sound, which is a different phoneme.) In any case, most if not all realisations of /ɧ/ can be written using other IPA symbols, so it is a bit weird that this is kept as an IPA symbol.

I just gotta say you did the tongue twister so well!

I think one thing you missed is how the different allophones of the sounds are used in different dialects. There's too main types of allophones: back (something like [xʷ]) and front (something like [ʂ]). In most dialects (I think anyway), the back version is used syllable-initially and the front version uses elsewhere. In some other dialects, mainly southern ones, only the back version is used, while in some of the eastern dialects only the front version is used. I think this is the root of the problem of using either of these symbols to represent the phoneme. And yeah, it's not the case that /ɧ/ is [ʃ] and [x] simultaneously, but rather something like those sounds in complementary distrubution. Also, in the tonguetwister you pronounced Shanghai wrong. It's supposed to be /²ɕaŋhaj/. I actually ended up pronouncing it the same way when I read it. Presumably it was written by someone with only the front version of /ɧ/ whivh may very well phonetically be [ɕ]. Anyway, yeah, shit symbol. I think we should just use /x/ instead or something like that.

This is a great video, thanks! It does seem like the IPA should take a look at this one.