Fur suite

[Ryall]

I'm with Contrast on this one. Real life furries would not be as attractive as the human feminine form.

What were all those "realistic furry" pics about then? The ones you uploaded of shopped people, like that bunny girl.

[Fluke]

Luckily we can dream of a halfway point.

I would have no problems with that whatsoever.

[Valerion]

There's few things that put me off so completely as a in-betweener. Either you are human or furry. I like either, though I prefer furs. But part-human part-fur ... nope.

[Ryall]

I actually agree: human or anthro. Nekos aren't exotic enough to distinguish themselves from regular humans, yet I find the idea of a fluffy tail sprouting out of an otherwise hairless, human buttocks to be rather disturbing.

Also, the hair of that girl in the .gif is ridiculous.

[Helios_phi]

Sheesh..... tough croud. The realistic furs aren't bad.
Kissing furry lips thou.....
Also the looming prospect of wet fur smell.
I can't even handle a dog.
Aaaahhhh!!!
I'm between a mental rock and a hard place.

[Ryall]

Lol, wet fur is a gross idea yes, but then so is oily skin and greasy hair. Part of the reason dogs smell the way they do is because they don't shower every day like us.

[Helios_phi]

Can you imagine how often they would clog the shower and drain with hair.

[Leeward]

Two words: outdoor shower.

[Ryall]

It's fine, I'm used to it. VoxLupus sheds hair like a Labrador and keeps messing up my room and bathroom. :\

[Leeward]

sheds hair like a Labrador

Having owned two labrador retrievers I find that extreme very apt.

[Kenjomik]

I would actually be quite curious to see how Anthros do (attempt) to pronounce human words. I mean conceptually their larynges could be the same as humans, but obviously the shapes of their mouths and tongues would be different. I wonder...

Being a linguistics student who is very much into phonetics, I came up with some ideas for you Ryall.

Anthros would probably have a lot of difficulties pronouncing human words, even if they had a human-like larynx.

When it comes to consonants, anthropomorphic canids, felines, and similar animals would probably not be able to pronounce consonants formed with the lips, such as [p], , [m], [f], and [v], since those animals have less muscular control of the lips and cheeks as far as I know.

Depending on how strong the tongue is and how well it can serve to make a total closure in the mouth, anthros might have problems producing stop consonants such as [p], [t] and [k], affricates such as [tʃ] (ch as in church) or producing [r] (a rolled r like r in Afrikaans or rr in Spanish; it’d probably end up sounding more like [ɹ] i.e. the r in English). On a similar note, they might struggle to pronounce consonants such as , which requires very precise tongue placement and could easily turn into [θ] (th as in think) or become lisped.

It’s much more difficult to say something about the vowels since there is still more research needed on how the shape of the mouth exactly influences the outcome in vowel production. However, a very differently shaped mouth compared to a human mouth might cause the vowels to sound weird in general, and again less muscular control of the lips could possibly cause vowels with lip-rounding such as becoming unrounded [ɯ] (like u in Japanese). I’m not sure whether animals such as dogs and cats can close off the nasal cavity; if they can’t all vowels would be nasalized (compare to nasal vowels in for example French or Portuguese), and stop consonants such as [d] and [g] would become nasal [n] and [ŋ] (ng as in ring).

On the other hand, anthros would perhaps be able to pronounce speech sounds that humans can’t; if they’d speak languages different from human languages a longer mouth could lead to a larger number of consonants produced at different places along the roof of the mouth and a larger number of distinguishable vowels.

Hope you found this answer satisfying :)

[Leeward]

[Stuff about linguistics and phonetics]

Hope you found this answer satisfying

I found it fascinating, thank you!

[Kenjomik]

Awesome, I'm glad

[Sev]

I found it fascinating, thank you!

The only thing that confuses me is the part about anthros not being able to pronounce consonants formed with the lips, but then being able to pronounce a large number of consonants produced at different places along the roof of the mouth. What would these consonants sound like, exactly, since we are not able to produce them?

[Ryall]

Montgomery, how is he supposed to type out noises they could make that we couldn't, if letters are limited to the sounds we could make? Are you hoping for something like Qkcxxxx?

Thanks for that Kenjomik, that was very interesting. I'm glad to see you still visit the forums every now and then.

[Sev]

Montgomery, how is he supposed to type out noises they could make that we couldn't, if letters are limited to the sounds we could make? Are you hoping for something like Qkcxxxx?

Thanks for that Kenjomik, that was very interesting. I'm glad to see you still visit the forums every now and then.

I was wondering how we would know that they would be classed as consonants, if we can't even produce them?

[Leeward]

Because they make an unvocalised sound, as opposed to a long, vocal sound (i.e. vowel).

[Kenjomik]

The only thing that confuses me is the part about anthros not being able to pronounce consonants formed with the lips, but then being able to pronounce a large number of consonants produced at different places along the roof of the mouth. What would these consonants sound like, exactly, since we are not able to produce them?

The thing is that different articulators are involved, so even if they wouldn't be to pronounce consonants where the lips are the articulators, they could produce consonants where the tongue and the roof of the mouth are the articulators.

Taking English as an example, there are two places of articulation along the roof of the mouth (two spots where consonants are produced): there are the alveolar consonants [n], [t], [d], and [z] that are produced with the tip of the tongue against the ridge behind the upper teeth, and the postalveolar consonants [tʃ] (again, the ch in church), [dʒ] (the j in jump), [ʃ] (the sh in ship) and [ʒ] (the s in vision) that are produced a bit further back along the roof of the mouth.

Now, different human languages use different numbers of places of articulation along the roof of the mouth; some use two as in English, some use three as in Polish or Mandarin Chinese, and some even use four. Here are two links with audio examples of the different t-like sounds in the Australian language Nunggubuyu and the different n-like sounds in the Indian language Malayalam (the bilabial and velar places of articulation are not formed with the tongue against the roof of the mouth). See if you can hear the difference between the consonants!

More than four places of articulation is probably unheard of in human languages simply because the auditory contrast between them would be too small, but an elongated mouth such as that of say an anthropomorphic canid could perhaps lead to more places of articulation because the distance between them would be larger. As you can hear in the examples, the differences are pretty small and you wouldn't get any really different or weird sounds.

I was wondering how we would know that they would be classed as consonants, if we can't even produce them?

What Leeward said. The classification of speech sounds into consonants vs vowels is pretty easy; a consonant is produced which a complete or partial closure of the vocal tract (for example by the tongue) whereas a vowel is produced with an open vocal tract letting the airstream exit the vocal tract unhindered.

Thanks for that Kenjomik, that was very interesting. I'm glad to see you still visit the forums every now and then.

Glad you liked it! I go on here quite often, I just don't post a whole lot

[Sev]

Thank you for that clarification, the theory behind language is not my forte.

[YoteFox]

Really interesting how this post went from someone looking for a fursuit to proper pronunciation of words

[Sev]

Really interesting how this post went from someone looking for a fursuit to proper pronunciation of words

That is what makes forums so interesting: you never quite know where a thread is going to go.

[Eylof]

My kind of fur suits

[Eylof]

....

[Sev]

I'm also quite a fan of the less cartoony looking fursuits.

[Eylof]

I'm very picky about fur suits.... Only prob.... The more realistic the more $$$ ....

But I will get myself one.... Soon I hope lol

[Eylof]

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Os1Arn3pKNA

[Eylof]

Dream suit... *sigh*

[Sev]

That person at the bottom reminds me of Kari Byron.

[Eylof]

Lol if you look fast it looks like her XP