Uncle Jazzbeau’s Gallimaufrey

tsk tsk

There’s a new symbol (a hooked v for a labiodental flap) that’s made its way into the IPA. And, in the course of writing about it, Bill Poser over at Language Log brought up the Bronx cheer and the IPA symbol used for it. I, for one, am not convinced that a Bronx cheer (aka a raspberry) is a bilabial trill (IPA /ʙ/). For me, the tongue is placed between the lips, and trilling takes place between the bottom lip and the tongue. (I don’t know, maybe it’s a dialectal difference.) There is another sound, usually of contempt ( and which Homer on The Simpsons makes quite often), that is a sort of relaxed bilabial trill, which is also used to imitate a snorting horse.