Breathy voice in Her & acquiring mispronunciations from my parents

           As I read “The Production of Speech” by Gussenhoven, I enjoyed saying the example English words which matched to the specific physical phenomena described using “organs of speech.” It seemed intuitive to me that the mouth is the most important part of the vocal tract, but I had no idea how the crown interacts with so many different parts of the mouth to produce essential sounds. For example, how the crown can make such different sounds between contacting the alveolar ridge and contacting the ridge’s edge. I never would have noticed that between certain sounds there is a different (but slight) movement from the tongue.  Another aspect of the Gussenhoven reading I appreciated was the explanations of breathy and creaky voice. Also, when Gussenhoven mentions that breathy voice is “sometimes jocularly used to create the effect of a sexy voice” I immediately thought of the voice in the movie Her. The voice is breathy and a tad raspy, and I wonder why this signals “sexy” to a listener. Perhaps a voice with slight imperfections makes it more musical or inviting to listen to.

            From the Kenstowicz reading I began to understand how native speakers of a language are unaware of all the sounds associated with a letter. For example, as mentioned in the reading I had no idea that “take” and “stake” have different sounds. Gussenhoven touches upon this in his reading too, particularly when he mentions how “cat” has a brief h-like sound. Gussehoven says that a briefer transcription is “sufficiently informative if the reader knows the language concerned.” It’s interesting to think about how when I was a kid I had a lot of trouble with pronunciation (but I was a great speller!) and I personally believe it’s because my Spanish speaking parents taught me English (their second language). I acquired a lot of what I heard in my household, and not from the order of letters in a word.