Beaks and Speech

[SteveZilla]

Re: Beaks and Speech

 

My idea exactly. You don't need to find words standing in for a sound if you can just MAKE that sound. And they could easily put things like past and future tense into it via extra sounds' date=' a certain amplitude or some other way that we humans can't figure out (with out lousy ears, that work in the totally wrong frequency areas).[/quote']

 

What sound dos a rock make? Or sunlight? Or love?

[Christopher]

Re: Beaks and Speech

 

What sound dos a rock make? Or sunlight? Or love?

From the perception point of a bird? Hard to tell. It's one thing to perfectly immitate thier senses with sensors, another to actually see, hear and smell from thier point of view.

I would certainly not put it as impossible that sentient birds have a "word" for it.

[ghost-angel]

Re: Beaks and Speech

 

While I agree that language is the key foundation for communication of such ideas' date=' I think it is a misnomer to think that language is define by the sounds made. English, for example, has around 35 discrete sounds (forgot the exact number). But there are languages with as few as 10 or so - heck one language has well over 100. But I find it hard to believe that English speakers have a harder time communicate than the others. What is classically considered important for something to pass the language threshold is the ability to Alter and create new "words" and thus not be limited to a generationally specific lexicon, for it to be able to reference concepts out of the 'now', thus being able to communicate about the past, the future, the here and the over their; and for it to be able to embed upon itself so as to have the ability to create infinitely complex and long streams of communication. For that reason, no animal communication has been seen to able to mach human language. Bees can talk about the "over their" but can't create new words and thus are limited to the lexicon they were given at maturation.[/quote']

 

The term you looking for here is Phonology, it's generally accepted that English has 24-25 Consonant and 19-23 Vowel sounds (depending on which linguist and which dialect is being presented), for a total in the range of 45-50 distinct sounds in the spoken language.

 

Not to be mixed up with the Phonetics, which is a different idea of speech transmission.

 

Also - you're confusing the conversation for what Birds Can Do and the OPs question of What Would A Race Of Beaked Creatures Sound Like;

 

Birds have an amazing range of vocal sounds, language aside, and generally at a higher pitch that human sounds. I've heard parakeets completely able to mimic words with "lips sounds" in them like 'Baby' - though I've never heard one reproduce each distinct letter of the alphabet so I've never heard a parakeet say "B" versus say a word with a "B" in it.

 

Getting back to the OP - the native language of a beaked race probably has a large number of trills, chirps, screeches, and a few other sounds (the parakeet next to me regularly makes a "fft" noise when annoyed for example, and kind of huffs). Not all of it is high toned, there's an entire set of lower toned squawk's made when he's mad (emotion is also displayed in physical actions just like people, flapping of wings and some hopping denotes a general unhappiness - while standing taller and thinner is nervous, along with stretching his wings in a downward motion, and a number of other things).

 

And a beaked race would perfectly be able to mimic a non-beaked speech as long as we're going to use some modern birds as comparison - especially if the beaked race is modeled off of the budgie and various parrots species of birds, who have been known to have a much greater vocal range than other species.

 

Certain Corvids have also been known to mimic human speech with similar ease (ravens being the most common).

[McCoy]

Re: Beaks and Speech

 

Certain Corvids have also been known to mimic human speech with similar ease (ravens being the most common).

And Corvids are spooky-smart! Tool making and a grasp of math!

 

My mother clearly remembers a Raven that lived on a neighbor's porch. It was free to come and go as it pleased, but it had a perch on the porch and was fed by the family. It could say a few words of English. It called some individuals by name, but what really impressed my mother was that it could tell race in humans. The road was clearly visible from the raven's perch, if a Black person turned in at the gate it would call out "Someone's coming!" Maybe call them by name as they got closer. But if a White person, man or woman, turned in at the gate it was "White folk coming, Essie, White folk coming!"

[Sougen]

Re: Beaks and Speech

 

The term you looking for here is Phonology, it's generally accepted that English has 24-25 Consonant and 19-23 Vowel sounds (depending on which linguist and which dialect is being presented), for a total in the range of 45-50 distinct sounds in the spoken language.

 

Not to be mixed up with the Phonetics, which is a different idea of speech transmission.

 

Also - you're confusing the conversation for what Birds Can Do and the OPs question of What Would A Race Of Beaked Creatures Sound Like;

 

Although I veered away from using the words phonology and phonetics and a whole host of other such words, I'm well aware of them given that my degree is in linguistics. And as a side note, English (at least American English) is accepted to have about 10/11 discrete (possessing phonemic distinction) vowel sounds. There is some variation but rarely does it drop below 10 nor rise above 11. Now, maybe someone is trying to account for dipthongs as being wholly different and also including simi-vowels, otherwise the 19-23 range would be hard to achieve.

 

As a side note, Phonetics is the study of sound production: a very mechanical field. Phonology is the study of a language's use of sounds: pattern / rule generation, acquisition, adaption, etc.

 

Last thought on this tangent of phonology, as an issue of phonology, humans have a tendency to 'hear' X sound and think it is Y sound because X doesn't exist in their native language but is relatively close to Y in acoustic value. This is why we also have a tendency to hear certain sounds from animals and think they are saying reasonably well formed words in our native language even though the acoustic values are quite different.

 

---

 

But at the end of the day, I was trying to echo the comments of the earlier posters on this thread about what sounds a bird like creature could make. Certain sounds would be generally absent from their speech. It would have a variety of other sounds, though. Many of which you make good point to note. It could also likely produce many of the sounds native to human speech (t, d, k, g, and r to name but a few). What the exact sounds that would exist would be determined by a lot of biological issues (glottis control, nasaling ability, fine motor control of tongue, exact specs on oral cavity). But then again, those would determine the upper max available, not what is actually used. English uses less than a forth of the total sounds available to humans (uses in the sense of discreteness - phonemic distinction), and other languages use a third of English's usage but still can convey the same level of information. There is no reason to assume birds would need more than a handful of discrete sounds nor that they couldn't use an extreme range either.

 

Perhaps the biggest determinate in a 'beaked races' sound production for language will be on how that language is used. Will they need to convey information over great distances or short? If the latter is true, low tone sounds more akin to human language will probably prevail. If the former is the case, high pitch squawks and sounds that can travel a distance before losing acoustic value will prevail. This would also have major effects on the culture of the race, too.

[dmjalund]

Re: Beaks and Speech

 

"White folk coming' date=' Essie, White folk coming!"[/quote']Nod ya head!

[SteveZilla]

Re: Beaks and Speech

 

From the perception point of a bird? Hard to tell. It's one thing to perfectly immitate thier senses with sensors, another to actually see, hear and smell from thier point of view.

I would certainly not put it as impossible that sentient birds have a "word" for it.

 

I agree. I was making the point that a Language for a fully Sentient species would (imo) need to be able to create/repurpose words to describe intangible concepts, that naturally don't make reproducible sounds. From simpler concepts like "inside", to more abstract ones like "love" or "quantum mechanics".

[Badger]

Re: Beaks and Speech

 

I've got a little bit of language training, so let's try it out for what we need lips (I asume they have tongues, otherwise they could not use 90% of the alphabeth):

A - normally

B - without lips, all you can do is a E. B next to imposible without lips

C- normally

D- normally

E- normally

F- impossible without lips, teeth and the ability to bring the lips to the teeth

G- normally

H- normally

I - again, need lips

J- normally

K- normally

L- normally

N- normally

M- based on lips

O- normally

P- lips-based

Q- normally

R- normally

S- normally

T-normally

U-normally

W-double U, so the D strikes again

X-normally

Y-lips based

Z-normally

 

Not sure about I though. Although very difficult it seems you could make sort of a similar sound by using your throat a bit more. (though a bird species probably wouldnt use except when using human language)

[bigbywolfe]

Re: Beaks and Speech

 

I just tried every "I" sound I've ever heard in English or Japanese, including dipthongs, and none of them absolutely require lips, or are even very difficult to do without moving your lips. I am now curious what sound some of you are attributing to the letter "i". Wish I could type using the phonetic alphabet from my phone...

[Badger]

Re: Beaks and Speech

 

I just tried every "I" sound I've ever heard in English or Japanese' date=' including dipthongs, and none of them absolutely require lips, or are even very difficult to do without moving your lips. I am now curious what sound some of you are attributing to the letter "i". Wish I could type using the phonetic alphabet from my phone...[/quote']

 

Well, I think it was corrected afterwards in later post. (I suffer sometimes from premature posting )

[Christopher]

Re: Beaks and Speech

 

Not sure about I though. Although very difficult it seems you could make sort of a similar sound by using your throat a bit more. (though a bird species probably wouldnt use except when using human language)

Corrected taht in number 4, when I trying out with what to repalce them.

[Sougen]

Re: Beaks and Speech

 

I just tried every "I" sound I've ever heard in English or Japanese' date=' including dipthongs, and none of them absolutely require lips, or are even very difficult to do without moving your lips. I am now curious what sound some of you are attributing to the letter "i". Wish I could type using the phonetic alphabet from my phone...[/quote']

 

A defining characteristic of most vowel sounds is their low use of lips. The English vowels encoded with will very rarely require lips - indeed, the use of lips would generally cause the sound to no longer the the standard English version. Now, to accurately produce the English /o/, or /u/ (and another that I can't type on my comp), require the lips. In particular, they require the lips to be rounded so as to create the correct sound. Now, if you don't round them, you are indeed making a different sound than English normally tries for but because it is a sound without discrete value (phonemic value) in English, it will normalize to the closes acoustic sound that does exist in English. Thus, an unrounded /o/, no matter how different it is in reality, will still be heard as its rounded /o/ brethren.

[Cancer]

Re: Beaks and Speech

 

And Corvids are spooky-smart! Tool making and a grasp of math!

 

My mother clearly remembers a Raven that lived on a neighbor's porch. It was free to come and go as it pleased, but it had a perch on the porch and was fed by the family. It could say a few words of English. It called some individuals by name, but what really impressed my mother was that it could tell race in humans. The road was clearly visible from the raven's perch, if a Black person turned in at the gate it would call out "Someone's coming!" Maybe call them by name as they got closer. But if a White person, man or woman, turned in at the gate it was "White folk coming, Essie, White folk coming!"

 

Across town, it has been demonstrated satisfactorily that crows recognize individual humans. And it seems they communicate things about individual people to other crows. The study had someone wearing a particular mask and clothing set who would harass the crows (throw stuff at them, run them off food drops, etc.) in that costume. The crows would harass the person wearing that costume ... even crows who had not been been present at the original human-harassing-crows episode. The same person not in the costume was largely ignored, as most people on UW campus are if they are just passing through.

 

I've witnessed the same sort of thing at my house. Back when we had two black cats (Siegfried who was large and Felix who was medium-sized), the crows would treat them quite differently. I had seen Felix stalk crows and I think he wounded one at least once ... I have a picture of a crow with a bloody wing that I am reasonably sure Felix caused. The crows would yell at him from a safe height whenever they saw him. Siegfried ignored crows entirely and the crows ignored him. It was a little odd watching one black cat saunter through the yard with crows jeering at him, and then the other walk through the same yard and draw no comment from crows still perched on the wires over the street.