Talk:Sonorant

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Sonorous, the ability of a metal to 'ring' when dropped or struck with a hammer.

Is a tap really a sonorant?[edit]

The page says that "a sound is sonorant if it can be voiced continuously at the same pitch." But it also lists taps as sonorants. How can a tap be voiced continuously? I don't think this makes sense.

Fricatives can also be voiced continuously at the same pitch, and are important to exclude from sonorants. It looks like Dog.o.matic's "more accessible definition" is simply false. I'll try to fix it, but I'm not so good with "accessible", so this is a stopgap. 76.88.68.174 (talk) 08:38, 1 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Er, I wasn't logged in. Darekun (talk) 09:03, 1 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The class of sounds that description is referring to is continuants. --Trɔpʏliʊm • blah 21:16, 2 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Conflicting information[edit]

Are the nasal consonants /m/ and /n/ sonorants or stops? I have two conflicting answers from two pages: Sonorant and Nasal consonants.LakeKayak (talk) 22:24, 24 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@LakeKayak: Nasal stops are not the same as oral stops. The former can be elongated (as long as physically possible), but in the case of the latter you can only delay their release (see e.g. Italian) or quickly re-articulate them. This seems to agree with the lead of his article. I see no conflict. You could say that nasal stops sound like strongly articulated approximants (which are sonorants). Mr KEBAB (talk) 15:11, 25 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Mr KEBAB: I was only confused. Thanks for clearing me up.LakeKayak (talk) 19:14, 25 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Voiceless sonorants in English?[edit]

Words beginning with "wh" in English, such as "whence", "whither", "where", used to be pronounced with a soft start sounding a bit like "hw" in which the "h" is almost an unvoiced short blow of air. Would "wh" in that case be a voiceless sonorant? Bermicourt (talk) 08:08, 1 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]