uring
density lock on a California freeway, I took notice of
the cars around me:
- Accord and Acura;
- Bronco and Buick;
- Cadillac, Camaro, Camry, Caprice,
Carrera, Chrysler, Comanche, Corolla, Corvette,
Cougar, and Cutlass;
- Celica, Civic, and Escort;
- Lincoln and Pontiac;
- Suzuki and Volkswagen.
Do you notice it too? These names share a
common phonetic attribute: the "unvoiced, velic-closure,
stopped consonant," which is the sound produced by the
letter c in the word car or, in other
words, the letter k.
If not in the vehicle's proper name,
then in the model by virtue of the letter x:
Aerostar XL, Jaguar XJS, Probe LX, Pulsar NXXE, Ranger
XLT, Taurus LX, Thunderbird LX.
Of course, not all automobiles have velar stops in their
names. But the airplanes
I fly do: Cardinal, Cutlass, Dakota, Skyhawk, Skylane.
Sound of a
Kiss
n
the early sixties, I worked on the development of a
voice synthesizer, which required a quick study of
speech production. Apart from classifying the sound of
a kiss as an "ingressive unvoiced bilabial fricative,"
I have seldom made practical use of my knowledge of
phonetics.
Back in the sixties, according to one reference,
the English Language used 29 phonemes, the smallest
units of speech that distinguish one utterance from
another. For whatever you want to say out loud, all
you need are 8 primitive vowels and 21 consonants.
One consonant is the velar stop, which I
symbolize with the capital letter .
Why so many Ks in car names? I
wondered.
rade
names are subject to an obvious commercial motivation.
High risk and cost attend the selection of a product
name. Worth every penny, though.{HyperNote
1}
"Share of market follows share of mind."
The market acceptance of -- the desire for
-- a given automobile apparently benefits somehow from
the sound of K in its name.
- My informal count finds K
in more than half of them. Not bad for a
phoneme that represents less than a 5% share of the
consonant supply.
- On the average, an automobile name
owns 3.5 consonants, which means only one vehicle
out of six should make the K sound, not
one in two.
- The consonant K appears as
the initial sound in one out of five names,
where it must compete with the vowels as well as
other consonants. You should expect to hear K
at the beginning of only one name in 29, not
one in five.
Hey, maybe we're on to something here:
Names do get to be worth billions, you know. Once off
the freeway, I reviewed my notes from decades ago. What
follows cost me a week's TV watching.
Look,
Listen, and Stop
ook around you.
Listen. See and hear all those velar stops? K
is exceptionally popular, although in written form K
gets concealed in five spellings:
- sKool (ch)
- blaK (ck)
- Kar (c)
- etiKette (qu)
- seKs (x)
K's closest competitor is Z, hiding
in two spellings:
- Zylophone (x)
- surpriZe (s)
How did all those Ks get there?
Words come into existence in various ways -- as slang
mostly, truth be known. Not sophisticated, so let's drop
it.
It may have something to do with how a
person forms the sound of K: restricting and
releasing air from the back of the throat instead of
from some other place in the vocal tract.
Easy-Speak
aybe K takes less effort than
pressing lips together (for Ps and Bs)
or mashing tongue against palette (for Ts and
Ds) or flexing the diaphragm (for Hs
and vowels). My guess is that K simply feels
good. If so, one should expect a disproportionate
density of K-cars on foreign freeways. I leave
the researching of that point to others.
Psychologists have demonstrated that the
easiest words to find on a printed page are
those with letter x in them (hence perhaps
Exxon and Xerox). Don't remember why, but it could
have something to do with... never mind.
Is it that K-words are easier to hear?
Or simply easier to remember, for some unknown reason?
Meanwhile, I moved to Boise and take
the bus.
Commerce-Speak
e should not be
astonished to see the commercial benefits of K-names...
- MKDonalds and Burger King
- TaKo Bell and ShaKeys.
Celebrity names likewise have commercial
significance, whether chosen or given.
- For each Barbra is there a RaKel?
- For each Presley, a HumperdinK?
A network anchor may not select a last
name, but networks select the anchors.
- For each Pauley is there a BroKaw?
- For each Rather, a KronKite?
The practice goes way back, seems to me.
- For each Matthew is there a MarK?
- For each John, a LuKe?
Among sports figures, eminence is
determined objectively. Numbers select names. Except for
nicKnames.
Speaking of sobriKets, ordinary
people get to make the selection.
- BucK, ChucK, and
DicK;
- FranK, HanK, and IKe;
- JacK, MacK, and MicK;
- NicK, RicK, and VicK;
- DeKe, ZacK, and ZeKe.
Let Your
Fingers Do the Talking
magine missing
Jeapardy to study the names in the Boise phone
book.
- There are 7,000 initial K-phonemes
out of 67,000 residential listings (10%), thrice
what you should expect by chance.
- Out of 21,360 Boise businesses;
2,400 (11%) have initial K-sounds -- velar stops. Tell
your friends.
Here's a thought: In the selection of
street names, consensus plays a role. Sure enough...
- Boise has 170 street names out of
2,160 (13%) that start with the K-sound.
- City names demand wider consensus,
presumably, and more velar
stops: 36 out of 255 (14%) in Idaho
(Caldwell, Coeur D'Alene ...), four times K's
fair share.
Which reminds me, a
friend who lives in Mississippi has no explanation for
people picking Picayune for their municipal moniker.
picayune
- Of
little value or importance paltry.
- Petty;
mean; trivial.
- A
Spanish-American half-real piece.
- Something
of small value; a trifle.
|
Might be that K-sound in
Picayune, don't you think? Still there are plenty of
choices -- English-sounding choices -- for a city
name.
How many? The answer to that question
took another night's work...
The
Velar Stops Here
by Paul Niquette
Copyright ©1996 Sophisticated: The
Magazine. All rights reserved.
|
Part
2: How to Save a Billion Bucks
|
ne
never knows where a solution to a billion-dollar
problem will come from.
For my voice
synthesizer project back in the early sixties, I
needed 29 single-character phonemes that I could peck
upon the keyboard of what we used to call a
'typewriter' (q.v. in the Smithsonian
someplace) -- "typographic phonemes," I called them.
Here is a summary of their derivations, which you may
want to skip {SkipLink}.
The list of consonants I concocted
starts out with the fifteen easy ones:
- B, D, F, G, J, ,
L, M, N, P, R, S, T, V, Z.
As shown above you don't need C, Q,
and X, so I use C for the ch
in charm, Q for the ng in song, and X
for the th in the. That leaves H
for the beginning of hard, making it necessary to pick a
symbol for wh in which, for which I stole Y
from the vowels. For the sh in cash, I used $.
There are eight vowels that seem to
hold still in the mouth. Back in 1961 I called them
"standing vowels."
- Four standing vowels -- A ah,
E ee, I ih, U uh -- make it easy to
say pot, peat, pit, putt.
- To say pat and pet, I made use of
the typographic symbols @ aa, and &
eh, leaving O oh and W oo for
poach and pooch.
The standing vowels can be combined into
pairs to form moving vowels, conventionally called
'diphthongs.' Of the 56 possible diphthongs (8
times 7), English uses only 17.
In my system, the motion in diphthongs
can take one of two directions: forward and reverse.
- Four forward diphthongs AE
and @E, @O and OE give you
the ability to say pipe and pate, pout and point.
- The 13 reverse diphthongs usually
signal the start of a syllable: EA yawn, E@
yack, E& yes, EO yoke, EU
yuck, EW you, WA want, W@
wag, WE we, W& went, WI
win, WO woe, WU won. For woo, WEW
works.
Of the 420 possible pairs of consonants, I
figure English uses 67. Here they are for your speaking
pleasure:
- BL, BR, DR, FL, FR, GL, GR, KL,
KR, PL, PR, SL, SM, SN, SK, SP, ST, TR at the
beginning of syllables and...
- BZ, BD, DZ, DX, LM, LN, LZ, LF,
L$, LX, LC, LB, LD, LJ, LV, LK, LP, LT, MZ, MB,
MD, MP, MT, NZ, NX, NC, CT, ZD, RL, RM, RN, RZ,
RF, R$, RX, RC, RB, RD, RG, RJ, RV, RK, RP, RT,
GZ, ZD, JD, VZ, VD, PX at the ending of
syllables.
Syllables, by the
way, give phoneticians and hyphenators fits, mostly
because of what they call 'syllabic consonants' -- the R
in merge, for instance. So I m&Rged the &
with the R, thus mandating a vowel to occupy the
interior of all my syllables. {HyperNote 2}
Picayune Question
e are working
on the answer to a question here, in case you
forgot...
How many English-sounding choices are
there for a city name?
The city fathers (all right, and mothers)
may have insisted on a K-sound in their city
name. If so, the number of English-sounding choices the
people of Picayune had to pick from depends on the
answer to an intermediate question...
How many English-sounding syllables
have a K in them?
Almost 400, it turns
out -- for each vowel. Since there are 25 vowels
including diphthongs, English offers 10,000 syllables
that contain the K-phoneme. {HyperNote
3}
Here are the ones with just the I-vowel,
with all spelling variations...
ilk irk bilk birk blirk blick blilk blisk bick bisk
brirk brick brilk brisk cilk cill cilled cills cilm cilp
cilt cir cirb circk cird cirdge cirf cirg cirl cirm cirn
cirp cirs cirse cirsh cirt cirtch cirth cirve cimb cimt
cise cised cises cived civ chilk chirk chick chisk
chrirk chrick chrilk chrin chrins chrisk clilb clilk
clilled clills clilm cliln clilp clilsh clilt clilve
climb clims climse clirk clilse clise clised cliv cliver
clilf clibb click click clid clidge cliff clig clil
clilch clildge clilk clilth clim climed climp climt
clinch cling clinn clinned clins clinse clint clinth
clip clish clisk cliss clit clitch clith cliv cib cibbed
cibbs cick cick cicked cicks cid cidge cids cidth cig
cigged cigs cilb cilch cildge cilf ciln cilsh cilth cilv
cim cims cimse cin cinch cing cinned cins cinse cint
cinth cip cipped cips cipth cis cish cished cisk cisk
cisp cist cit citch cith cithed ciths cits cigh cighs
crilm criln crilve crir crirk criw criw criwl criwldge
criwled criwls cribb crick crid cridge crigg crilb
crilch crilf crilk crilk crilp crilse crilsh crilt
crilth crimb crimmed crimp crims crimse crimt crinch
crind cring crinse crint crinth crip crish crisk criss
crit critch crith criz crizzed dilk dirk dick disk drirk
drick drilk drisk filk firk flirk flick flilk flisk fisk
frirk frick frilk frisk girk glirk glick glilk glisk
gick gisk grirk grick grilk grisk hilk hirk hick hisk
jilk jirk jick jisk kils lilk lirk lick lisk milk mirk
mick misk nilk nirk nick nisk ict isk ix pilk pirk plirk
plick plilk plisk pick pisk prick prilk prisk rilk rirk
rick risk silk sirk scild scildge scilf scilfse scilk
scill scills scilsh scilt scilve scir scirk scised sciw
scibb scick scick scidd scidge scigg scilb scilch scilk
scilm sciln scilp scilth scim scimb scimmed scimp scims
scimse scimt scin scinch scind scing scins scinse scint
scinth scipp scish scisk sciss scit scitch scith scizz
shilk shirk shlick shick shisk shrirk shrick shrilk
shrisk slirk slick slilk slisk smirk smick smilk smisk
snirk snick snilk snisk sick sisk spirk spick spilk
spisk srirk srick srilk srisk stirk stick stilk stisk
tilk tirk thilk thirk thick thisk thrirk thrick thrilk
thrisk tick tisk trirk trick trilk trisk virk vick visk
whilk whirk whick whisk zilk zirk zick and zisk.{HyperNote 4}
A good list to
keep handy for naming a car. Or a city...
Ilkayune, Irkayune,... Zickayune, and
Ziskayune.
hus,
with 29 symbols (A-Z, @, &, $) it is possible
to represent the sounds of each and every word in the
English Language, including PIKAEWN -- an
adjective some will apply to this whole exercise. I hope
not. I gave up both Gilligan's Island and Bowling
for Dollars for it.
But then, there is just this one minor
observation...
TWMARO AND TWMARO AND TWMARO REPS
IN XIS P&TE P@ES FRUM D@E TW D@E TW XA L&ST
SILAB&L OV REORD&D TAEM. AND
AL AOR E&ST&RD@ES H@V LAET&D FWLS
X&R W@E TW DUSTE D&X. AWT AWT BREF @ND&L.
LAEF IZ BUT A WAEQ $@DO A PWR
PL@E&R YW STRUTS AND FR&TS HIZ AWR UPAN XA
ST@EJ AND X&N IZ H&RD NO MOR. IT IZ A T@EL
TOLD BAE @N IDEAT FUL OV SAWND AND FEWRE SIGNIFAEEQ
NUXEQ.
You will find no product names in MaKBeth's
lament, only ordinary English-sounding words. But
someone named ShaKespeare (or BaKon?)
chose each one. Plenty of volition involved in that --
and for its time, not a little commercial motivation.
Why do you suppose there are only four Ks
out of 280 phonemes? -- fewer than half the number you
would expect by chance alone.
It may not be too far-fetched to speculate
that this sample of Bard-based statistics has revealed
an invisible -- not to say sophisticated -- aesthetic
guidance:
Choose your use of Ks
carefully to maximize the force of what is
being expressed.
|
Picayune
Payoff
umans
learn
to speak first, then read. Five years earlier, some
say. Later, as school children, we scanned printed
words in an effort to identify them by their sounds.
Often we faced words transliterated from a polyglot of
languages, forcing us to struggle against our natural
heuristic impulses -- to
generalize from each particular spelling that comes
along. We found ourselves confounded by more
exceptions than you can shake a diphthong at.
It's a wonder that we didn't all drop out -- or that
'rules' of any kind ever receive our respect. If any
sentence deserves an exclamation point it might be the
previous one. And the next two...
Think of the expense.
Non-phonetic spelling must cost extra billions to
teach.
Back in 1961, I coined the term speel
in place of spell for...
Want to save money in
education? Here's a sophisticated first step: Teach kids
to speel first then spell. {HyperNote
5}
- Right away, let the printed words
impart knowledge, describe images, expound upon
ideas.
- Getting 100% on every speeling
test builds self-esteem too.
That's what I thought back then . Other
matters came along and pushed the speeling concept
aside. If it's a good idea, I thought to myself, it'll
get done. Decades went by.
Then I took a drive on a California
Freeway and started noticing car names...
It's aristocratic, I
think, to insist on preserving the linguistic origin of
each word in its spelling. It's misguided
sophistication. It's wasteful of tax dollars. It's UNAMARIK&N.{HyperNote 6}
HyperNotes
{1} Sophisticated Businesspersons
will have read any number
of books in the management library giving the history
of companies that attribute a measure of their success
-- or failure -- to the choice of commercial names. {Return}
{2} Sophisticated Phoneticians will recognize that the
speech-sounds provided here are incomplete. I can
live with that.
My limited number
of phonemes will not support an accurate
pronunciation of words like 'pussyfoot' (PUSEFUT,
PUSEFWT, PWSEFUT, PWSEFWT). I can live with
that, too.
But the conclusion
of this memoir finds fault with American education --
a costly defect, which sophisticated phoneticians
might have recognized but apparently did not. Long
ago, they might better have put aside their venerated
implements to propose a practical remedy.
If my
professional life were devoted to the field of
English pronunciation -- pronunciation as relevant
to teaching children to read -- and I had passed up
such an opportunity, I don't think I could live with
that.{Return}
{3} Sophisticated Technologists
will see right through
what's been done here:
The formulation of a set of
cyber-friendly tools for systematically -- some might
say mindlessly -- automating the generation of
English-sounding syllables.
Which marks the beginning -- not the end
-- of something hard to do: Selection of
English-sounding syllables that have a relevant meaning.
And aesthetic quality.{Return}
{4} Sophisticated Readers will notice that I used hoky approximations
of the English spellings for each of these syllables.
That was to facilitate readability for unsophisticated
readers, who are not fluent in the single-character
phonetic symbols presented here. {Return}
{5} Sophisticated Scientists
will recognize this picayune exercise as merely the
first step in the Scientific Method:
- Formulate an Hypothesis
- Design the Critical Experiment
- Take the Data
- Analyze the Results
The author will continue to hope that
others, upon
seeing social merit and potential economic payoffs in
'speeling' as an educational instrument, will
carry out the rest of the Method
Meanwhile, here's the Speeling Key.
{Return}
{6} Sophisticated Educators
will doubtless have much progress to report on the
effectiveness of 'Phonics' (as in "Hooked On") for
teaching our children to read. Their comments
are especially welcome.{Return}
As expected, when The
Velar Stops Here was first published in
1996, a number of people expressed contrary views --
none with more technical precision than my friend Norm
Bryga, who is famous among those who know him for his
-- well, his technical precision.
Unvoiced
Lingua-Palatal Fricative
You make your observations while stuck
on freeways, I make my observations elsewhere. I have
noticed a pattern in names of mattresses...
- Seally
- Serta
- Simmons
- Slumberland
- Somma
- Spring Air
- Strearns & Foster
- Stress-O-Pedic.
Will you please come up with a theory for
this sample of data? -- Norm Bryga
Thanks, Norm, for wiping out another
night's sleep for an old guy in Idaho. -- PN
Other views were not so contrary,
here are comments offered in 2001 by my other friend
Rich Alexander, who has a keen eye for business
relevancies.
Explosive
Sound
While grazing over your observations about
the frequent use of Ks or K-sounds in car names, I've
heard that good product names tend to begin with an
"explosive" sound rather than a soft, recessive sound,
to add punch to the product. K does that.
Another thought, and a curious thought
I've not heard from anyone else: When communicating in
all the basic codes (Morse code radio, Morse code
flashing light, semaphore...) the letter K has the
universal meaning of "invitation to transmit." K in
code is similar to the proword "Over" in voice radio.
A semaphore operator holds his flags (or hands)
showing K, to indicate that he is ready to receive. K
might have an archetypical meaning -- with subliminal
marketing value -- as the letter that indicates an
interest by the manufacturer in communicating with the
customer.
-- Rich Alexander
Then too, my dictionary gives the origin of
the expression O as the
popularized slogan of the O.K. Club, the Democratic
Party's political club of 1840; for Old Kinderhook,
the nickname of President Martin Van Buren, who was
born at Kinderhook, New York; but previously attested
in the 1830s as a modish slang abbreviation of
favorable but uncertain meaning, possibly connected
with another abbreviation, D.K. for "don't know,"
which just happens to be my response to the question,
Why has "okay" been appropriated by languages all over
the world?
-- PN
Speeling Key
Natural Consonants
b
|
d
|
f
|
g
|
j
|
k
|
l
|
m
|
n
|
p
|
r
|
s
|
t
|
v
|
z
|
B
|
D
|
F
|
G
|
J
|
K
|
L
|
M
|
N
|
P
|
R
|
S
|
T
|
V
|
Z
|
Auxiliary Consonants
ch charm
|
C
|
ng song
|
Q
|
th the
|
X
|
h hard
|
H
|
wh while
|
Y
|
sh cash
|
$
|
Standing Vowels
ah
|
ee
|
ih
|
uh
|
aa
|
eh
|
oh
|
oo
|
pot
|
peat
|
pit
|
putt
|
pat
|
pet
|
poach
|
pooch
|
A
|
E
|
I
|
U
|
@
|
&
|
O
|
W
|
Forward
Diphthongs
pipe
|
pate
|
pout
|
point
|
AE
|
@E
|
@O
|
OE
|
Reverse Diphthongs
yon
|
yack
|
yes
|
yoke
|
yuck
|
you
|
want
|
wag
|
we
|
went
|
win
|
woe
|
won
|
EA
|
E@
|
E&
|
EO
|
EU
|
EW
|
WA
|
W@
|
WE
|
W&
|
WI
|
WO
|
WU
|
Consonant Pairs
Beginning
|
BL BR DR FL FR GL GR KL
KR
PL PR SL SM SN SK SP ST TR
|
Ending
|
BZ BD DZ DX LM LN LZ
LF
L$ LX LC LB LD LJ LV
LK
LP LT MZ MB MD MP MT
NZ NX NC CT ZD RL RM
RN RZ RF R$ RX RC RB
RD RG RJ RV RK RP RT
GZ ZD JD VZ VD PX
|
|