Hmm, as others have suggested, the name Jack is from the Hebrew יעקב yaʕakov 'Jacob' via French Jacques. Jack is pronounced /'ʤæk/ which involves quite a bit of articulation: e.g., the stop d involves the tip of the tongue stopping the flow of air in the vocal tract at the alveolar ridge right behind the front teeth. That stop is released, slightly, and a point of contact further back along the hard palate, is not completely closed off to allow the fricative /Ʒ/ to be articulated. Then comes the vowel /æ/ which involves constrictions at various places in the vocal tract. Finally comes the unreleased stop /k/, which stops the flow of air at the soft palate or velum. During roughly the first two-thirds of the words duration, the vocal cords are vibrating, but they stop with the onset of the velar stop /k/. The simplest sound to make is a broad vowel /ɑ/, which is pronounced by completely relaxing the vocal tract and vibrating the glottis. You can replicate this sound by taking a paper towel tube which will stand in for the vocal tract and blowing a raspberry into the end. Something like an /ɑ/ will be heard. (Of course, a paper towel tube is not really the same thing as the human vocal tract.)

[Fixed spelling error.]

Last edited by zmjezhd; 04/30/08 03:00 PM.
Ceci n'est pas un seing.