<p>I was able to find an additional image of the seal vocal tract that includes the general flow of air. Sadly, there was nothing animated that would give you a better idea of how all those parts work. The <a href="https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.10.29.466455v2.full" rel="nofollow noreferrer">related article</a> does talk about how seals are fairly adaptable with their voices, so the phonology for your language could be quite robust.</p>
<p>I also found a <a href="https://ocr.org/sounds/leopard-seal/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">site</a> talking about the sounds leopard seals make. What strikes me is that there's a lot of trills as well as more vowel-like sounds. So I would guess a seal language would have lots of trills, nasals, and vowels, and probably fewer sounds that use the front teeth since those aren't as flat in seals.</p>
<p>Beyond that, all I can suggest is watching clips of seals vocalizing and trying to match the sounds to the IPA chart to get your phonology worked out. Quite a few species seem able to vocalize with their mouths closed for underwater communication, which makes observing their vocal machinery difficult. You may also want to choose a specific species because the sounds they make vary widely. <a href="https://sites.bu.edu/guentherlab/miscellaneous-videos-and-oddities/hoover-the-talking-seal/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Hoover the Talking Seal</a> was able to approximate a number of sounds from Maine-accented English. I'm pretty sure I can hear him hitting mostly sounds in the nasals, velar, uvular, pharyngal, and glottal categories when I compare his sounds to those from the IPA chart. The other seals in his tank may not make word-like sounds, but they sound very guttural compared to <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cVOhc6BLNso" rel="nofollow noreferrer">this clip</a> where a Weddell seal's beat-boxing and warbling is rendered as sheet music.</p>

CC BY-SA 4.0
2024-06-21T04:45:26.853Z
Hoover was a harbor seal, so if you like his sounds that's the species to look for.
Yeslek71
CC BY-SA 4.0
2024-08-26T16:30:39.370Z
Aquatic mammals have the ability to close their nostrils, so they would be able to pronounce nasal obstruents. They could also use this to produce sounds which are nasalized but with the nostrils producing a fricative.
Octa9on
CC BY-SA 4.0
2024-06-20T22:00:04.850Z
2024-06-21T04:43:42.537Z
2024-06-21T04:43:42.537Z
Yeslek71
<p>I saw the video &quot;How to Write Languages for Animals&quot;: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8vahlnBkVUA" rel="noreferrer">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8vahlnBkVUA</a>, and I wanted to try my hand at creating one for seals using the following images: <img src="https://www.mpi.nl/sites/default/files/styles/news_detail/public/2022-04/Seal_Larynx_Labels_British.png?itok=FyxmATL_" alt="Seal Speech Cavity" />
<img src="https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=http%3A%2F%2Famericanphonetics.ruhosting.nl%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2FChapter05%2FSpeechOrgans.png&amp;f=1&amp;nofb=1&amp;ipt=5012703dd039ec6b6250932ff28f8bd632157af83ff1c6c09267c95105bc6b24&amp;ipo=images" alt="Human Speech Cavity" />
Only I can't make heads or tails of the seal one because I don't know how many of the listed parts can actually be used to make different sounds. Can anybody else make sense of this?</p>

<phonetics><non-human-language>
What sorts of sounds can seals make?
# What sorts of sounds can seals make?

(Asked by: username_0 on 2024-05-07)

I saw the video "How to Write Languages for Animals": <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8vahlnBkVUA>, and I wanted to try my hand at creating one for seals using the following images: ![Seal Speech Cavity](https://www.mpi.nl/sites/default/files/styles/news_detail/public/2022-04/Seal_Larynx_Labels_British.png?itok=FyxmATL_)
![Human Speech Cavity](https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=http%3A%2F%2Famericanphonetics.ruhosting.nl%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2FChapter05%2FSpeechOrgans.png&f=1&nofb=1&ipt=5012703dd039ec6b6250932ff28f8bd632157af83ff1c6c09267c95105bc6b24&ipo=images)
Only I can't make heads or tails of the seal one because I don't know how many of the listed parts can actually be used to make different sounds. Can anybody else make sense of this?

**Tags:** phonetics, non-human-language

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## 1 answers

### Answer by username_1 on 2024-06-20. Score: 4 | Accepted answer

I was able to find an additional image of the seal vocal tract that includes the general flow of air. Sadly, there was nothing animated that would give you a better idea of how all those parts work. The [related article](https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.10.29.466455v2.full) does talk about how seals are fairly adaptable with their voices, so the phonology for your language could be quite robust.

I also found a [site](https://ocr.org/sounds/leopard-seal/) talking about the sounds leopard seals make. What strikes me is that there's a lot of trills as well as more vowel-like sounds. So I would guess a seal language would have lots of trills, nasals, and vowels, and probably fewer sounds that use the front teeth since those aren't as flat in seals.

Beyond that, all I can suggest is watching clips of seals vocalizing and trying to match the sounds to the IPA chart to get your phonology worked out. Quite a few species seem able to vocalize with their mouths closed for underwater communication, which makes observing their vocal machinery difficult. You may also want to choose a specific species because the sounds they make vary widely. [Hoover the Talking Seal](https://sites.bu.edu/guentherlab/miscellaneous-videos-and-oddities/hoover-the-talking-seal/) was able to approximate a number of sounds from Maine-accented English. I'm pretty sure I can hear him hitting mostly sounds in the nasals, velar, uvular, pharyngal, and glottal categories when I compare his sounds to those from the IPA chart. The other seals in his tank may not make word-like sounds, but they sound very guttural compared to [this clip](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cVOhc6BLNso) where a Weddell seal's beat-boxing and warbling is rendered as sheet music.

> **Comments:**
> **username_1**: Hoover was a harbor seal, so if you like his sounds that's the species to look for.  
> **username_2**: Aquatic mammals have the ability to close their nostrils, so they would be able to pronounce nasal obstruents. They could also use this to produce sounds which are nasalized but with the nostrils producing a fricative.  

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