Blowing a raspberry

A man blowing a raspberry

Blowing a raspberry, razzing or making a Bronx cheer, is to make a noise similar to flatulence that may signify derision, real or feigned. It is made by placing the tongue between the lips and blowing.

A raspberry (when used with the tongue) is not used in any human language as a building block of words, apart from jocular exceptions such as the name of the comic-book character Joe Btfsplk. However, the vaguely similar bilabial trill (essentially blowing a raspberry with one's lips) is a regular consonant sound in a few dozen languages scattered around the world.

Spike Jones and His City Slickers used a "birdaphone" to create this sound on their recording of "Der Fuehrer's Face", repeatedly lambasting Adolf Hitler with: "We'll Heil! (Bronx cheer) Heil! (Bronx cheer) Right in Der Fuehrer's Face!"^[1]^[2]

In the terminology of phonetics, the raspberry has been described as a voiceless linguolabial trill, transcribed [r̼̊] in the International Phonetic Alphabet,^[3] and as a buccal interdental trill, transcribed [ↀ͡r̪͆] in the Extensions to the International Phonetic Alphabet.^[4]

^ Hinkley, David (March 3, 2004). "Scorn and disdain: Spike Jones giffs Hitler der old birdaphone, 1942". New York Daily News. Archived from the original on April 8, 2009.
^ Gilliland, John (April 14, 1972). "Pop Chronicles 1940s Program #5". UNT Digital Library.
^ Pike called it a "voiceless exolabio-lingual trill", with the tongue vibrating against a protruding lower lip. Pike, Kenneth L. (1943). Phonetics: A Critical Analysis of Phonetic Theory and a Technique for the Practical Description of Sounds. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.
^ Ball, Martin J.; Howard, Sara J.; Miller, Kirk (2018). "Revisions to the extIPA chart". Journal of the International Phonetic Association. 48 (2): 155–164. doi:10.1017/S0025100317000147. S2CID 151863976.

[1] Hinkley, David (March 3, 2004). "Scorn and disdain: Spike Jones giffs Hitler der old birdaphone, 1942". New York Daily News. Archived from the original on April 8, 2009.

[2] Gilliland, John (April 14, 1972). "Pop Chronicles 1940s Program #5". UNT Digital Library.

[3] Pike called it a "voiceless exolabio-lingual trill", with the tongue vibrating against a protruding lower lip. Pike, Kenneth L. (1943). Phonetics: A Critical Analysis of Phonetic Theory and a Technique for the Practical Description of Sounds. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.

[4] Ball, Martin J.; Howard, Sara J.; Miller, Kirk (2018). "Revisions to the extIPA chart". Journal of the International Phonetic Association. 48 (2): 155–164. doi:10.1017/S0025100317000147. S2CID 151863976.

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