တိုင်လာ Tyler 郝樂
Ejective consonants

I've recently started learning the Georgian language. As expected I am having considerable difficulty pronouncing the ejective consonants. While I realize that the true difficulty will be with the grammar of Georgia, I want to really focus on correct pronunciation in the beginning.


Any suggestions on how to pronounce these sounds?

Mar 19, 2017 7:25 PM
Comments · 1
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Here's a page with suggestions on how to pronounce ejective consonants:

http://linguistics.stackexchange.com/questions/381/can-you-give-me-some-tips-on-how-to-pronounce-ejective-consonants

Prior to reading the page, you may need to familiarize yourself with the names of mouth and throat "parts" if you're not already familiar with those terms. It really does help to know that vocabulary anyway when you're learning a language with very unfamiliar sounds.

When I studied Chinese at the university many years ago, we were instructed right down to how to curl the tongue backward to get retroflex sounds right. (The prof was a real stickler for pronunciation.) It's good to be able to articulate what you're doing with your mouth to make the right sounds. If you don't actually understand what you're doing with your mouth, tongue, throat, etc., how can you do it, right?

When I first started to study Arabic, I had to Google "How do I make pharyngeal fricatives in Arabic?" to figure those out, lol. I actually might not have done that except I remembered how my Chinese prof taught pronunciation, and I knew I needed *someone* to describe to me what to do with my mouth and throat to make correct sounds.

Hope that helps. Good luck!
March 20, 2017