Mazatec

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Voice Quality Contrasts in Jalapa Mazatec

In addition to normal voicing, Jalapa Mazatec has both creaky and breathy voice (See Ladefoged, 2005, p. 127-130).

tʰa
("seed")
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ndæ̰
("buttocks")
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ndæ̤
("horse")
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Note on the Sonagrams (from Gordon & Ladefoged, 2001), for example, that the breathy vowel is not equally breathy throughout: virtually voiceless at the beginning, and fairly normally voiced at the end.
See also Gordon & Ladefoged (2001) for more discussion.


Additional material

Here you can find the same words ("seed", "buttocks", "horse") spoken twice by two speakers, (so 4x "seed" etc.).
In each PDF you can see sonagram and spectrum for the first example of the word.

tʰa
("seed")
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ndæ̰
("buttocks")
emu WebApp
ndæ̤
("horse")
emu WebApp





Audio Source:
Sounds of the Worlds Languages.

References
Gordon, M. / Ladefoged, P. (2001): Phonation types: a cross-linguistic overview. Journal of Phonetics, Volume 29, pp. 383-406. Ladefoged, P. (2005): Vowels and consonants: an introduction to the sounds of languages. Malden: Blackwell.