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stranger
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stranger
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Is there such a word as uulate? What is the word am I thinking of? Meaning something like the sound of spoken words? Am I dreaming?
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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Awelcome awaddle. I am aware of "ululate", describing (principally) the wail of grieving Arab women; here are a couple of definitions: http://www.dictionary.com/wordoftheday/archive/2000/08/04.html ululate \UL-yuh-layt; YOOL-\, intransitive verb: To howl, as a dog or a wolf; to wail; as, ululating jackals. He had often dreamed of his grieving family visiting his grave, ululating as only the relatives of martyrs may. --Edward Shirley, Know Thine Enemy: A Spy's Journey into Revolutionary Iran She wanted to be on the tarmac, to ululate and raise her hands to the heavens. --Deborah Sontag, "Palestinian Airport Opens to Jubilation," New York Times, November 25, 1998 http://www.bartleby.com/62/45/U1584500.htmlVERB: 1. To utter or emit a long, mournful, plaintive sound: bay, howl, moan, wail, yowl.
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stranger
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stranger
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Thank you, AnnaStrophic. Now I don't need to ululate any further! For your information, I may use this fine word in a poem in which I refer to the monks of Tuva, Siberia, who can produce chords by a kind of glottal magic I envy.
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#7976
10/15/2000 11:44 PM
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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Hi awaddle,
But do these monks not produce some sort of melody - as monks are wont to do. Ululate is generally used for shrill or shrieking sounds from the throat. I've never really seen ululate used to describe something wondrous.
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old hand
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old hand
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>I've never really seen ululate used to describe something wondrous. < In German there is a saying "one man's owl is the other's nightingale" 
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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...And one man's Mead is another man's Persian. 
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#7979
10/16/2000 10:59 AM
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addict
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addict
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and one person's 'fish' is another's 'poisson'.
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#7980
10/16/2000 12:03 PM
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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You win my little "post of the day" award, paul. That's hilarious 
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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Who says that? Who? Who?
Oh, Florence does.
TEd
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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ooo not sure Anna...I think TEd is pretty much up there with his who who post. Can they share the prize?
Aside I love the ones you look at and don't quite get and then it sinks in. TOO funny.
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#7983
10/17/2000 10:04 AM
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veteran
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I don't know, bel - I always thought Johnny Weismuller's ululations as Tarzan were pretty wondrous. And melodious!
Could those be described as ululations?
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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That`s not what Jane said. After Tarzan ululated one to many times she ran off with the chimp.
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#7985
10/18/2000 11:16 AM
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Cried wolf once too often, did he? What a howler. 
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#7986
10/18/2000 11:54 AM
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1. Etymologically speaking, nightingale = night + yeller 2. yell = ululate (near enough) 3. "nightingale" is apparently not a species (surprised me, too) - just a motley bunch of birds that yell at night. 4. It follows that an owl [b}is a nightingale! 
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Pooh-Bah
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Pooh-Bah
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and one person's 'fish' is another's 'poisson'.
Don't you think un ouef is as good as a feast?
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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1. Etymologically speaking, nightingale = night + yeller
2. yell = ululate (near enough)
3. "nightingale" is apparently not a species (surprised me, too) - just a motley bunch of birds that yell at night.
4. It follows that an owl [b}is a nightingale!
What a delightful piece of etymological Jesuitry! Have you ever read Lewis Carroll's critique of a new belfry erected at his Cambridge college? It uses a very similar sort of reasoning on etymology. It's very short, but very funny. I'm sure he would approve of your sophistry.
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stranger
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stranger
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Richard Feyneman (sp.?) the guy who discovered it was a faulty O-ring that downed one of our space shuttles, had this lifelong dream to go to Tuva and hear the Tuvans ululate. He died before the then-USSR government would give him permission. His assistant went there to honor the obsession, and heard 'em. I heard them in concert at Stanford U. with the Kronos Quartet a few years ago. The sound is not very melodic--it's more like a drone, as I recall. I think there is a recording if you are impelled to research further. Let me tell you--we poets lean on poetic license a lot in our search for the right words!
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stranger
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stranger
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The California mockingbird is a nightingale. We used to have one who concertized every morning at 1:00 a.m. sharp. My husband swore he was singing "Figaro, Figaro!" Alas, he flew off to other climes.
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#7991
10/19/2000 11:45 AM
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Sad to say, awaddle, I've never heard a nightingale  Well, not one of the opera-ululating variety, anyway. You could have taped Figaro, digitized him and put him on the Web somewhere! Actually I wouldn't be surprised if this kind of thing has been done already. Anyone out there know?
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#7992
10/19/2000 11:54 AM
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etymological JesuitryMax, you definitely honour me too much by even mentioning me in the same paragraph as Lewis Carroll! But thank you.  No, I don't think I've seen his belfry critique - though I dimly recall seeing examples of his 'logic exercises', some of which were very clever and amusing. Any good Carroll compendiums out there?
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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I can just about live with digitized, but concertized!!! PUH-LEEEZE!!!
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stranger
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The best website I know of on Tuvan throat singing is http://www.atech.org/khoomei/khoomei.html hosted by Steve Sklar. He even gives samples of many different throat singing styles. The spectrogram page is the best of the bunch, in my opinion. I am a voice and speech teacher, and I use the term ululate to mean something different than overtone singing - ululate to me means to use the back of the tongue to go up and down (often very quickly) to make a shrill sound. Often done at a very high pitch, along the lines of 'ah-yuh-yuh-yuh-yuh" etc. However, I went to the website above and listened to some of the samples of the overtone singing, and the harmonics do appear to be, in some cases, much like a ululation. The way the sound shifts is very different (essentially the harmonic that is shifting is different). From my limited knowledge of overtone singing, the formant (or overtone) which is changing is the one that is controlled by the tongue curling back, or retroflecting, as in English vowels that are R-colored, as in "Err, bird, furry, worm" etc. in US speech. Hope that helps, enrique
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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Welcome, Iglesias!
Goodness, the things one learns at this place! Thank you!
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#7996
10/19/2000 11:18 PM
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veteran
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Wow, enrique! That's awesome knowledge. In your professional opinion, is Johnny Weismuller's Tarzan wail a kind of ululation?
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stranger
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stranger
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Dear Enrique, Thank you for your wonderfully detailed information on Tuvan throat singing. I went to the website you recommended and for some reason, I couldn't get my Real Player to play the spectrograph illustrations. It kept on buffering and then cutting out and rebuffering. I did find one all-too-brief example on another website. That made me happy to hear the wondrous sound again. When I was a child I used to try to sing chords--at night--under the covers so nobody could hear me. Too bad I lived in Long Island, not Tuva!
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veteran
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I couldn't get my Real Player to play the spectrograph illustrations. It kept on buffering...awaddle, sounds like a good ol' dodgy connection to me! There's a novelty. Now, you should be able to download the entire sound file(s) rather than play them as a live and shaky audio stream. If you have Internet Explorer, right-click on the spectrographs/sound files and select Save Target As... then choose a location and filename on your PC. The files may take a little while to download, but sounds to me like the wait would be worthwhile for you. One they're downloaded, just double-clicking on the local copies should play them. So go for it, and enjoy! I can probably suss how to do this on other browsers if you don't have IE. Keep us 'posted'.
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