to make contrasting sounds. For example, Gujarati has vowels with a partially lax phonation called breathy voice or murmured voice (transcribed in IPA with a subscript umlaut ), while Burmese has vowels with a partially tense phonation called creaky voice or laryngealized voice (transcribed in IPA with a subscript tilde ). The Jalapa dialect of Mazatec is unusual in contrasting both with modal voice in a three-way distinction. (Note that Mazatec is a tonal language, so the glottis is making several tonal distinctions simultaneously with the phonation distinctions.) Note: There was an editing error in the source of this information. The latter two translations may have been mixed up. Javanese does not have modal voice in its stops, but contrasts two other points along the phonation scale, with more moderate departures from modal voice, called slack voice and stiff voice. The "muddy" consonants in Shanghainese are slack voice; they contrast with tenuis and aspirated consonants. Although each language may be somewhat different, it is convenient to classify these degrees of phonation into discrete categories. A series of seven alveolar stops, with phonations ranging from an open/lax to a closed/tense glottis, are: The IPA diacritics under-ring and subscript wedge, commonly called "voiceless" and "voiced", are sometimes added to the symbol for a voiced sound to indicate more lax/open (slack) and tense/closed (stiff) states of the glottis, respectively. (Ironically, adding the 'voicing' diacritic to the symbol for a voiced consonant indicates less modal voicing, not more, because a modally voiced sound is already fully voiced, at its sweet spot, and any further tension in the vocal cords dampens their vibration.) Alsatian, like several Germanic languages, has a typologically unusual phonation in its stops. The consonants transcribed (ambiguously called "lenis") are partially voiced: The vocal cords are positioned as for voicing, but do not actually vibrate. That is, they are technically voiceless, but without the open glottis usually associated with voiceless stops. They contrast with both modally voiced and modally voiceless in French borrowings, as well as aspirated word initially. If the arytenoid cartiledges are parted to admit turbulent airflow, the result is whisper phonation if the vocal folds are adducted, and whispery voice phonation (murmur) if the vocal folds vibrate modally. Whisper phonation is heard in many productions of French oui!, and the "voiceless" vowels of many North American languages are actually whispered. Glottal consonants It has long been noted that in