OFFICIAL RECOGNITION A sound present in more than 70 African languages has been included in the International Phonetic Alphabet of 28 vowel symbols, 86 consonant symbols and 75 other marks for tone, stress, aspiration and other phonetic details. The sound, the labiodental flap, is the first to be added to the alphabet in 12 years.
The sound, a buzz sometimes capped by a faint pop, is present in more than 70 African languages. It is produced by the lower lip moving back and forward, flapping on the inside of the upper teeth.
"The labiodental flap sound is as important as any other sound to speakers of languages that use it," said Peter Ladefoged, emeritus professor of linguistics at the University of California, Los Angeles. "Think how Americans would protest if there were no way of transcribing the vowel in 'bird,' which in the usual U.S. pronunciation is almost as rare among the sounds of the world's languages as the labiodental flap."
Until now, linguists have recorded the sound with made-up symbols, usually the letter v modified by accents. The venerable phonetic alphabet was established in 1886, and now, after slow increments of change, includes 28 symbols for vowels, 86 for consonants and 75 other marks for tone, stress, aspiration and other phonetic details.
One of the most recent sounds to win a symbol was the bilabial click, used in two African languages. The labiodental flap is much more widely used but took longer to be recognized.
One reason, said Dr. Ladefoged, is that clicks, often considered to be the most exotic of speech sounds, have been noticed by Europeans since the 17th century. They also occur in politically important languages like Zulu and Xhosa.
"None of this is true about labiodental flaps," Dr. Ladefoged said in an e-mail message. "Even now, some people think they are a minor effect in a few words in a few languages."
Last spring, he encouraged Kenneth S. Olson, a linguist at SIL International who has studied the extensive use of the labiodental flap in Africa, to propose officially that the sound, first observed in 1907, have its own symbol.
SIL International is a Christian organization based in Dallas that studies, documents and helps in developing lesser-known languages.
Dr. Olson encountered the sound while conducting research in Congo and had performed extensive acoustic analysis to determine that the sound was, in fact, a flap, not a fricative consonant like the "f" of English. Nor did it involve a sharp intake of air like the clicks.
The new symbol had been recommended by a fellow linguist, Geoff Pullum, who described it "as if a fishhook R had been slammed leftward into a lowercase v so hard its vertical had merged with the right leg of the v, and the dangly bit had been left hanging there like the drain pipe out of an upstairs toilet in a partially demolished building."
In June, Dr. Olson received a note from the association, informing him that the proposal had been voted on and accepted. Mono speakers are pleased, Dr. Olson said. "The idea of an I.P.A. symbol would offer some prestige to the language, that this oddity is valued by people around the world."
Other language oddities wait for their moment. There is a bilabial trill in two Brazilian languages, Oro Win and Wari' (phonetics.ucla.edu/appendix/languages/orowin/orowin.html) and what Dr. Ladefoged called "hissing-hushing fricatives" of Ubykh, once spoken in Turkey (phonetics.ucla.edu/appendix/languages/ubykh/ubykh.html).
Dr. Olson plans to visit the Philippines to study a sound that speakers produce by sticking their tongues out of their mouths, a sound that outsiders ridicule.
Dr. Olson says an official symbol might raise the status of the sound and the people who pronounce it, though perhaps not with the symbol from rock 'n' roll marketing he jokingly proposed - the Rolling Stones' lips.
Source: New York Times Website
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