Gasping in Twelve Languages

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11. Gasping in Twelve Languages


This segment contains only the sounds of breathing from the Voyager’s recording of greetings in 55 languages. Twelve sets of lungs are represented in this segment, as owners of the other 43 pairs seem to have crowded out the sound of their own breathing with labiodental fricatives, uvular trills, and other phonemes popular on our planet. Here, we hear the sounds of silence in German, Marathi, Armenian, Gujarati, Indonesian, Latin, Punjabi, Rajasthani, Spanish, Urdu, Ukrainian, and Quechua.