[dsimms]

https://www.theguardian.com/travel/2010/feb/07/learn-arabic-... says:

: We have a muscle in our throat which is never used except in vomiting. Think about that and pretend you are about to be sick. You will find that what is normally called in English gagging is actually a restriction in the deep part of the throat. If you begin to gag, and then release the airstream from the lungs, you will have produced a perfect : (called :ain in Arabic).

[dsimms]

I also have an Arabic book (which was super fun to read on plane post 9/11, oops), that likens it to Scottish's glottal stop, which seems right on in retrospect:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_4MJUi03GHM

[yebyen]

Except that it doesn't stop, there's another "letter" which is strictly a glottal stop, hamza (ء)

I say letter in quotes because I'm not sure of its status as a letter or not, I think it is a letter but my Arabic game is pretty weak.

[khaled]

Hamza is a letter (basically it is what the letter alif is supposed to be, the long vowel usually written as alif is not a letter itself). But for historical reason it has a very weird set of orthographic rules where is can or can not be seated on other letters depending on the context (and unlike other Arabic letters, the context here involves the vowels).

[sn_master]

It isn't. It can be combined with other letters, mostly with Alef, but I don't know of any case of it being used independently.

[yebyen]

The reason why I would say I think it is a letter, is because it can be a letter in a root. Like in قرأ, the letter Alif is not considered the third letter in the verb, hamza is. I had to look it up, the grammatical term for it is الفعل المهموز, and all of the examples I can find have it placed on the alif in the root form, but it changes depending on how you conjugate it.

Also, what about the word for "thing" شيء it's not placed on the yaa, but written by itself. Or the plural form, things: أشياء has two hamzas in it, only one sits atop an alif.

So that's a thing.

[mohamedattahri]

It actually can. An example would water: ماء

[hinkley]

Is that the same muscle used to roll Rs in some of the Romance languages?

[jdmichal]

It's a slightly different place of articulation. The Arabic <ع> is pharyngeal, while the "R" you are thinking of is uvular.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pharyngeal_consonant

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uvular_consonant

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Place_of_articulation#/media/F... (9 vs 10)

[zeven7]

Arabic has a sound akin to that, but it's a different (similar looking) letter: غ

[dmoy]

There's a decent wiki page on this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guttural_R

[hinkley]

So yeah that helps me articulate, but I’m still fuzzy on if there’s a different muscle back there that Arabic uses, or if the answer is “yes, it’s a variant on the same thing”?

I’m a bit of a parrot and so sounds I can’t reproduce draw me in like a moth to a flame. The click sound in some African languages and the very guttural singsong of Vietnamese/Thai are my only nemeses... so far.

[yebyen]

Ayn is a voiced pharyngeal fricative, ghayn is a voiced velar fricative. My intuitive answer was wrong, I thought the difference was one is fricative and the other is not... at any rate, those are points of articulation, not muscles.

An articulation point is simply supposed to be the place where you put your tongue. In this case it's so far back in your throat, I'm not sure you actually can put your tongue there.

But the muscles are in your tongue, the articulation points are just places in your mouth. Like the palate, for palatal consonants, or lips for labial, in some more familiar examples.

[snovv_crash]

isiZulu / isiXhosa have not one, but three distinct click sounds. I suspect the Khoisan languages have even more.

[animal531]

Not that many more, they mostly only use 4, with 5 in some localised dialects.

[etatoby]

No, the rolled R is just a vibration of the tongue against the roof of the mouth.

[hinkley]

Yeah I dunno how to tell you this, but those of us who make the rrr sound at the back of our throats roll our eyes at you when your backs are turned.

I can't speak for the other Romance languages, but that's for sure the wrong way to make that sound in French, and a lot of people can't seem to hear the difference.

There's a reason some comedians make fun of european languages by clearing their throats. The rolled consonants are throaty, not mouthy (a word I just made up right now, sue me).

[acifani]

There's a (not so) fine difference between the rolled/trilled R [1] and the guttural/uvular R [2]. The former is indeed produced by vibrating the tongue

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dental,_alveolar_and_postalveo...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guttural_R

[yorwba]

I notice you don't link the Wikipedia page about the rolled R [1], probably because it contradicts you. There are many kinds of rhotic trills and the guttural R (aka uvular trill) is one of them.

Another fun trill is the bilabial one [2], like imitating a fart with your lips. It doesn't really qualify as a rolled R, though.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rolled_R

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bilabial_trill

[thaumasiotes]

> Another fun trill is the bilabial one [2], like imitating a fart with your lips.

The normal (American) English term for this is "raspberry".

[hinkley]

> guttural/uvular

That’s the stuff. Thanks for the vocab lesson. And look at that map. Most of northern and Central Europe is a guttural r.

You trilled R motherfuckers in French class ignored your poor teachers’ pained expressions for years, while the rest of us wanted to go up, pat them, and say it’s okay, we share your pain.

Apparently I have some unresolved hostilities toward some people who got A’s but had disastrous pronunciation.

[mcguire]

But do you roll your eyes lingually or uvularly?

[hinkley]

It did sort of feel like my eyes were being sucked back into my skull. Maybe nasally? I’m not an anatomist.

[vram22]

>a word I just made up right now, sue me

No need for suing.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20289473

[jgtrosh]

It's just a growl, but short and controlled

[hinkley]

That’s not far wrong. I was trying to figure out how I would describe it to a new student and “growl” was about the closest I could manage.