Voiceless labiolingual trill

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A man blowing a raspberry
Buccal interdental trill
ↀ͡r̪͆
ↀ
Voiceless labiolingual trill
r̼̊
ʙ̼̊
IPA number122 + 407 + 402A
Audio sample
Encoding
Entity (decimal)r​̼​̥
Unicode (hex)U+0072 U+033C U+0325

A raspberry, or razz, also known as a Bronx cheer, is a mouth noise similar to a fart that is used to signify derision. It is also used as a voice exercise for singers and actors, where it may be called a raspberry trill or tongue trill. It is made by placing the tongue between the lips and blowing, so that the tongue trills against the lower lip.

Name

The nomenclature varies by country. In most Anglophone countries, it is known as a raspberry, which is attested from at least 1890,[1] and which in the United States had been shortened to razz by 1919.[2] The term originates in rhyming slang, where "raspberry tart" means "fart".[3] In the United States it has also been called a Bronx cheer since at least the early 1920s.[4][5]

In Italian it is known by the Neapolitan word pernacchia; in Spanish as pedorreta or trompetilla.

Production

The sound is made by placing the tongue between the lips and blowing, so that the tongue trills against the lower lip. When it is used as a catcall in public arenas, the sound is sometimes blown into the palm or back of the hand to amplify its volume. In Russia it is commonly accompanied by rolling the eyes.[6]

In the terminology of phonetics, the raspberry has been described as a (pulmonic) labiolingual trill,[7] transcribed [r̼] or [r̼̊] (depending on voicing) in the International Phonetic Alphabet;[a] and as a buccal interdental trill, transcribed [ↀ͡r̪͆] in the Extensions to the International Phonetic Alphabet (the ICPLATooltip International Clinical Phonetics and Linguistics Association suggests that [ↀ] may also be used alone as an abbreviation if a speaker frequently uses the sound).[8]

Usage

Blowing a raspberry is common to many countries around the world, including European and European-settled countries and Iran. In Anglophone countries, it is associated with catcalling opposing sports teams, and with children. It is not used in any human language as a building block of words, apart from jocular exceptions. However, the vaguely similar voiced bilabial trill [ʙ] and its voiceless counterpart [ʙ̥] (essentially blowing a raspberry with only one's lips, i.e. without usage of the tongue) is a regular consonant sound in a few dozen languages scattered around the world.

The last name of the comic-book character Joe Btfsplk is a representation of this sound.

Spike Jones and His City Slickers used a "birdaphone" to create this sound on their recording of "Der Fuehrer's Face", repeatedly lambasting Adolf Hitler with: "We'll Heil! [ Bronx cheer ] Heil! [ Bronx cheer ] Right in Der Fuehrer's Face!"[9][10]

The Knorkator song "[Buchstabe]" (the actual title is a glyph) on the 1999 album Hasenchartbreaker uses a voiced linguolabial trill to replace "br" in a number of German words (e.g. [ˈr̼aːtkaʁtɔfl̩n] for Bratkartoffeln).

See also

Notes

  1. By analogy of the bridge above diacritic ⟨◌͆⟩ used for dentolabials in extIPA, labiolinguals (with the tongue against the lower lip) may be transcribed ad hoc with the seagull above diacritic ⟨◌᫥⟩, to distinguish them from linguolabials (with the tongue against the upper lip). The labiolingual trills can therefore be transcribed as [r᫥] and [r̥᫥].

References

  1. "raspberry". Oxford English Dictionary (online ed.). Oxford University Press. (Subscription or participating institution membership required.)
  2. "razz". Oxford English Dictionary (online ed.). Oxford University Press. (Subscription or participating institution membership required.)
  3. Holder, Robert W (25 September 2008). Dictionary of Euphemisms. Oxford University Press. p. 318. ISBN 978-0-19-923517-9.
  4. Runyon, Damon (19 Oct 1921). "All Chicago backs up its footballers". San Francisco Examiner. Universal Syndicate. p. 19. Retrieved 18 Jun 2019 – via Newspapers.com. ....the East will grin and give Western football the jolly old Bronx cheer.
  5. Farrell, Henry L. (30 Nov 1922). "Wills looks like boob in Johnson bout". San Antonio Evening News. United Press. p. 8. Retrieved 18 Jun 2019 – via Newspapers.com. While the crowd was giving vent to the 'Bronx cheer' and hurling garlands of raspberries from the gallery....
  6. Samokhina I. A. Combined techniques of transmitting cultural and historical realities in a fiction text // Foreign languages: linguistic and methodological aspects. Tver State University, 2014. No. 25. P271-273.
  7. Odden, David (2005). Introducing Phonology (1st ed.). New York: Cambridge University Press. p. 130. ISBN 978-0-511-10970-6.
  8. Ball, Martin J.; Howard, Sara J.; Miller, Kirk (2018). Arvaniti, Amalia (ed.). "Revisions to the extIPA chart". Journal of the International Phonetic Association. 48 (2). Cambridge University Press: 155–164. doi:10.1017/S0025100317000147. eISSN 1475-3502. ISSN 0025-1003. LCCN 74648541. OCLC 474783413. S2CID 151863976.
  9. Hinkley, David (March 3, 2004). "Scorn and disdain: Spike Jones giffs Hitler der old birdaphone, 1942". New York Daily News. ISSN 2692-1251. OCLC 9541172. Archived from the original on April 8, 2009.
  10. Gilliland, John (April 14, 1972). Pop Chronicles 1940s Program #5. UNT Digital Library. University of North Texas. ARK ark:/67531/metadc1633240/m1/.