In this post, we look at the buzzing, hissing sounds of Giryama - the fricatives.
Fricatives can have a voicing contrast, like stops:
Fricatives can have a voicing contrast, like stops:
f and v (fat and vat)
th and th (thin and this)
s and z (Sue and zoo)
sh and 'si' (fission and fusion, ancient and Asian)
All of these sounds are in Giriama, written similarly to English. Giriama writes the sound of 'this' with 'dh', and the sound of 'Asian' with zh.
h and h'
Giriama also has voiced and voiceless h. In English, h becomes voiced between vowels (ahead) but is usually voiceless. In Giriama, the voiced h is written h'. Pronounce it as a really breathy version of the following vowel - think of sighing whilst you say it.th' and d'
th and dh can apparently also be aspirated, at which point they are written th' and d'. (I am a little unsure of this information, since aspirated fricatives are very rare, and the source only mentions this in passing.)
v
One source (Verbal Morphology of Kigiryama) describes this as a 'voiced fortis labiodental fricative', whilst another (Volk 2007) describes it as a 'voiced bilabial fricative'. I don't know which is more accurate - or even what the first source intends by 'fortis'.
So I will go with Volk's description, and suggest you pronounce this sound like [β], which is the Greek sound beta, or the Spanish b/v sound. It is like making a [v], but instead of your lower lip touching your upper teeth, it should be (nearly) touching your upper lip, a bit like a [b].
