Og Speaks!

[Tuckerfan]

What neanderthals might have sounded like.

Dr. Robert McCarthy, an assistant professor of anthropology in the Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters at Florida Atlantic University, has reconstructed vocal tracts that simulate the sound of the Neanderthal voice.

Using 50,000-year-old fossils from France and a computer synthesizer, McCarthy’s team has generated a recording of how a Neanderthal would pronounce the letter “e.” The brief recording doesn’t sound like any letter in modern languages, but McCarthy says that’s because Neanderthals lacked the “quantal vowels” modern humans use. Quantal vowels provide cues that help speakers with different size vocal tracts understand one another.

“They would have spoken a bit differently,” McCarthy said at the annual meeting of the American Association of Physical Anthropologists in Columbus, Ohio in April. “They wouldn’t have been able to produce these quantal vowels that form the basis of spoken language.”

You can hear him say “e” here.

[aruvqan]

@Tuckerfan

What neanderthals might have sounded like. You can hear him say “e” here.

Supposedly he couldnt pronounce beat and bet [or bit, I read the article yesterday] but I know lots of people who apparently cant pronounce the different e forms and everything sounds alike…

So … how the hell do they know what the larynx was like when pretty much the only thing they can find is hyoid bones?

[Harmonious_Discord]

I listened to it a week ago and don’t wish to hear the unpleasant demo again. I don’t know why the difference in the ability to make a specific sound should mean they couldn’t speak. They still had enough sound making ability to have a language.

[Ale]

@Harmonious Discord

I listened to it a week ago and don’t wish to hear the unpleasant demo again. I don’t know why the difference in the ability to make a specific sound should mean they couldn’t speak. They still had enough sound making ability to have a language.

Indeed, there´s no “e” to be found in “Og Smash!”