| THE SOUNDS OF "CH" AND "J" |
By WINIFRED SCRIPTURE
BRYN MAWR COLLEGE
THE sounds "ch" and "j," as in "church" and "judge," have been represented, on the one hand, as being composed of two sounds, "t" or "d" with "sh" (in phonetic transcription ts and dz) and on the other as being single sounds (in phonetic transcription? and J). Related to this is the question whether the Italian "c" and "g" before "i" or "e," as in "cio" and "gia," are more like "ch" and "j" or like the two forms of "sh."
Records of these sounds were made with a voice-recording apparatus (Fig. 1). This apparatus consists of a mouthpiece into which the words are spoken. The waves thus formed proceed down a tube to a rubber membrane at the end, making it vibrate. A straw lever is attached to the membrane with which it rises and falls in unison and so makes a record on a surface of smoked paper around a revolving cylinder.
Records of typical pronunciations of "ch" and "j" enable us to settle their nature definitely.
Fig. 1. Recording the Voice. The waves from the mouth proceed down the wide tube to the rubber membrane at the end. The vibrations of the membrane are recorded by a straw lever on a surface of smoked paper around a revolving cylinder.
