#ipatranscriber

@favorite-phoneme-creature

Well, the obvious answer is sje (a.k.a. /ɧ/), but that's not really a phoneme, that's at best a diaphoneme.

I think I've heard of a language with a doubly articulated (probably labial-velar) affricate, but a quick Google search doesn't find anything like that and it doesn't seem very clear that those are even possible.

yes and no, whether i "speak" it i can never decide, i feel reluctant to say i speak it, i am definitely far from fluent, but i understand it pretty well, and have always understood it, since my mother has always spoken to me in portuguese. my conversational ability depends on my anxiety levels.. and the topic. i am relearning what i forgot + finishing my unfinished language acquisition at the moment (i never fully acquired it). very classic situation for many heritage speakers, i think

as for european portuguese, NO. it's so hard to understand. i tried watching a show in european portuguese and after a minute i gave up, deciding i just can't make out more other than a few words but not even enough to know what they're talking about.

at times i hear european portuguese spoken in public and don't realize it's portuguese for a moment.

as for sounding like russian.. it definitely sounds slavic, not romance. russian has a lot of palatalization, and it's own distinctive sounds, but i honestly think russian is as close in sound to european portuguese as latin spanish is to brazilian portuguese. so yes there is a lot of similarity!

i wonder why that is? maybe due to certain vowel reductions? the prosody?

my usual disclaimer is that metrical analysis is about language and poetry, and applying it to music/nonlinguistic rhythm is always going to be kind of analogical rather than an optimal technical way to analyze the rhythm. but yes! boogie-woogie is largely written in 4/4, so its structure repeats after 4 beats, like a poem written in tetrameter. the reason it sounds trochaic is that its rhythm is swung (typical of jazz, blues, etc): each beat is divided into two uneven parts and the downbeat takes significantly more time than the upbeat.

@favorite-phoneme-creature

you ask too much of me! just one?

it's a toss-up between || and ɬ. both are included in my conlang ise'xhanaani!

I'm a big fan of the alveolar lateral just because it's.... fun to say, i guess? and because it's really cool that it pretty much only shows up in african languages. and it's DIFFICULT to pronounce when you don't come from a linguistic background that uses it. it gets me sometimes, but when i correctly pronounce it, it's like a "yesssss" moment.

@favorite-phoneme-creature

/ɣ/ and /ʒ/ are kind of both my favorite? i was asked about a month ago (in real life) what my favorite vowel was and i still don't really have an answer to that but i DO have baseless consonant opinions

estonian because i like the idea of living in estonia and the sound of the language is incredibly pretty, aside from that i'd choose it because i think the language is just so underrated and has beautiful grammar features. it's also so unique in europe being an uralic language. uralic language power!! the only downside? it would be a pain in the ass to find estonian resources, but my motivation would make up for it

italian because it sounds aesthetic and it would be pretty easy to learn for me since i already know a romance language, and i can't pick nine difficult af languages

latvian, i know this one will be a bitch to learn because it's a completely different language family being a baltic language, but i love how it sounds, and ever since i found out it has some german sounding words it got me hooked

spanish because i like latin american culture and the language is pretty, also, it sounds similar to portuguese i'd have an easy time learning it. i would probably pick ecuadorian, mexican or venezuelian spanish, can't decide yet

finnish too, it's like estonian just more monotone. and i like the monotone. it would be easy to learn after knowing estonian too

lithuanian, i also like the sound and it's just fascinating to me how a baltic language can have some resemblance to brazilian portuguese. the slight brazilian portuguese vibes + that ancient slavic feel is just a pure eargasm. it would also be easier to learn after learning latvian since both are baltic languages

polish. it genuinely sounds like an alien language to me and making all those consonants would be so cool! i cannot imagine being a mega polyglot and not knowing a slavic language anyway.

icelandic, this would be a bit of a hassle to learn too because of the lack of resources but i love iceland and the thought of being able to talk icelandic to the locals? awesome. also it has some consonants i really like, a th sound which is cool (and rare!! and this is also one of my favorite features about the english language), it's very unique and has a beautiful sound, i like how whistly it sounds. speaking a language with noun cases (german) the grammar would probably not be as hard to learn as some others