4 ms·

What sounds can we only pronounce with underbites?

• tboyd47 2y ago
  There's a sound you can make like an /f/ by pressing your lower row of teeth against your top lip and blowing. That one. (It sounds basically the same as /f/).
  • peterfirefly 2y ago
    I can easily make it when pushing my lower jaw forward (to give myself an underbite). Pretty sure everybody else can too. The kids I met with an underbite (when I myself was a kid) had no trouble making that sound.
  • naniwaduni 2y ago
    Interestingly, I find it perceptually closer to /θ/... would want to try recording though.
• pineaux 2y ago
  I really dont buy the premisse of this piece. I can easily make the same sounds with an underbite
  • talideon 2y ago
    I think you're misunderstanding things a bit: it's the jaw misalignment that leads to an overbite (or underbite) the allows the pronunciation of these sounds. Whichever you have, you're still producing labiodentals. What changed is that huge swathes of the population went over time from having aligned jaws to misaligned jaws, which is what lead to the sounds becoming common. The fact that people can have underbites and produce the sound is immaterial: the number of people with underbites has never been particularly large except in groups unless your surname was Habsburg.
  • tlb 2y ago
    But is it comfortable to talk that way for hours? Can you shout and whisper and sing that way? If not, people would've gradually shifted to easier sounds.
    • tiltowait 2y ago
      Speaking as someone with an underbite: yes. Easily.