Sounding the Five Cerebrals

Namaste friends, good to have you back again. We've been looking at the consonants and seeing what they all sound like and we also saw that there are five letters that correspond to the throat or the guttural, five that correspond to the palates known as the palators and now we move on to the third group of letters known as the cerebrals. In terms of pronunciations it's very interesting especially for the English-speaking part of the world because you have to pay attention to the roof of your mouth try and identify the center point of that roof and place your tongue there so you will get the sound T which is different from the English T or for the French and Spanish-speaking part of the world. They also don't have the sounds because they do a T a soft sound so now just very consciously touch your the tip of your index to the center of your palate the roof of your mouth at the center and then pronounce the T. Got it? So we had the T T T T T now let's see what they look like. They are the cerebrals or sometimes even known as the retroflex. The first letter is a combination of touch and sound at that point so we have the with the vowel a so touch putting it together it becomes the T say that now let's see what it looks like. This one's easy to remember because it looks like a half tomato you have a T okay and then we have the transliteration which is the equivalent in Roman alphabets of the same sound so we have the sound T the letter T and A what you have to remember is because it is a cerebral you have to add a dot below it so in this entire series each of the letters in the transliterated form will have a dot below to indicate that the tongue goes up will you remember that great in terms of the mechanism of the sound it is a combination of touch and sound the code for that for us can be T and S yes the next sound is a combination of touch sound along with your breath it is a T it's quite a powerful sound let's see you doing it great now let's see what it looks like the T look like a half tomato when you add your breath it's the full tomato so it's a T the transliterated form of it is with the edge T T and the mechanism of the sound is touch sound and breath you have that one last time moving on to the next letter it is a combination of sound touch at the roof of your mouth so you go you hear that lovely let's see what it looks like this is a letter that would be hard for the Americans to forget because it looks just like your dollar so it's a D as in dollar but only the tongue goes a little back so dollar and in transliteration it is written like that the D with the dot below and an A in the code for the sound mechanism it is sound and then the touch trying say that together de de de lovely moving on to the next letter it is the sound duh add your breath to it duh sound touch breath duh and it looks like that duh and the transliteration of that is a D with the dot below and edge and an A the mechanism is a sound touch with a breath there you have it we'll say together once duh lovely the last letter in the series is the nasalized cerebral sound which is the nuh place your tongue at the roof of your mouth focus your attention on your nose and say nuh nuh lovely let's see what it looks like that's it nuh and in transliteration you write the N with the dot below it and an A in terms of the mechanism of the sound it is a nasal sound there you are shall we try that together once the first is the tuh tuh duh duh nuh try and also start observing what these letters are doing to you okay we'll do it once more together duh duh duh nuh now it's your turn let's see if you can do it that was easy I'm sure now great just for the last time we'll say together duh duh duh nuh you've got it we are more than halfway through now so now next in our next session we'll have a look at the dentals