text:
Talk:Formant

Synthesis
The term "Formant synthesis" redirects here (and there's a synthesis template present), but there is no actual discussion about synthesis in this article. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 131.107.0.98 (talk) 22:01, 21 April 2010 (UTC)

Throat Singing
I added the paragraph on throat singing, but didn't realize I was logged out.--Theodore Kloba 22:37, Dec 16, 2004 (UTC)

should have spectrogram images. - Omegatron 17:45, Jan 26, 2005 (UTC)

Vowel charts
The list of frequencies for various vowels has two major problems that concern me. The first is that the anon who first added them didn't cite any source. More importantly, though, it uses orthography rather than IPA values when showing the vowels. It doesn't even say what language those vowels occur in (the only language I've found that uses all of <ä>, <ö>, <ü>, and <å> is Finnish, but it doesn't use <å> in any native words, and I don't know how it's pronounced in the words borrowed from Swedish anyway; these symbols have significantly different pronunciations in the different languages in which they occur). Does anyone know what the phonetic values of these vowels are intended to be? --Whimemsz 01:12, 23 January 2006 (UTC)

 * Finnish actually doesn't use ü (they use 'y' for the close front rounded vowel, the same as in IPA). I guessed that ü was y, so if the person that posted that intended something other than y, please correct it.  Also, I changed the vowels from capital to lower case because there is a difference in IPA between i and I, for example. (Technically, it's i and ɪ, I know.)  In Finnish, ä is IPA æ, ö is ø.  I've always heard Swedish å realized [o].  I guessed which IPA vowel 'å' was supposed to be based on the formant frequencies and changed it to ɑ.  The changes, however, may not be right because å, ä, ö and ü vary from language to language (hence IPA).

 * Also, if there are sources for these formant frequencies, I'd like to see them. I have Peter Ladefoged's A Course in Phonetics (4e, p 172) in front of me and the numbers listed for F1 and F2 of some of the vowels are quite different (ie the number listed for F2 is closer the Ladefoged's F3 number on [i]).  Sources/suggestions? JordeeBec 19:32, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

I am also concerned about the vowel charts. First, the two charts seem rather redundant - better (imho) to go with a single chart that incorporates what both of these charts are trying to do: list approximate frequencies of the first two formants and indicate the range of variation. Second, The frequency of the second formant given for [i] in both charts seems too high, and is probably actually the third formant frequency (the other formant frequencies are in the right ballpark - but of course there is the issue already mentioned about variation from language to language, getting the IPA symbols right, and variation from utterance to utterance for a given speaker). Third, the second chart's "main formant regions" (only one for back vowels, but two for front vowels) are related to auditory processing of vowel acoustics, and not to the acoustics themselves. Since this page is specifically about formants, I suggest sticking with the actual formants rather than main formant regions. Lulich 02:07, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

The fact the charts are unsourced is a serious problem, as a couple of the previous contributors have pointed out, yet in the last three and a half years nothing has been done about them. This is a serious problem, as I've seen them being cited in an academic context, where they refer to what language? I suggest removing them and replacing by the charts from Deterding (1997) or some other reliable source. MarcusCole12 (talk) 05:35, 20 November 2009 (UTC)

 * There are various things editors can do to warrant attention to sourcing. In order of increasing effectiveness, they are: bringing it up in the talk page, marking it (and/or the page) as uncited, and taking it out.  If Deterding (1997) has more authoritative formants, I'd be sure to cite them inline with the proper page number.  — Æµ§œš¹  [aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]  05:02, 21 November 2009 (UTC)

 * Does anyone have access to Catford (1988) p. 161 that could share it to clarify his data on the vowel formants? The citation was originally added on |27 March 2013 by Matty1487 who no longer exists. 41.5.94.123 (talk) 14:04, 1 May 2017 (UTC)

Introduction
I find the first line confusing. Please could someone make this clearer.

This whole article is in need of editing with rigour and and with careful attention to English expression.Yergnaws (talk) 13:42, 17 August 2009 (UTC)

Okay, I'll have a try at the first line of the intro. The old first line was indeed confusing: a formant is not the 'shaping' (which might mean maxima or minima or both); it's the spectral maxima that are called formants. Further, it's not in much contrast to the second definition: in reference [2], a broad consensus of voice acoustics researchers (including the author of [1]) support the definition given as that for acoustics, rather than the 'shaping' definition. Whether or not the strongest harmonic is taken as the formant frequency could depend on whether the fundamental frequency is low (allowing one to interpolate the envelope of the spectrum) or high (where the lack of resolution in frequency does not allow accurate estimation of resonance frequencies). Inala (talk) 11:10, 13 July 2020 (UTC)

 * Thank you for your edits! I personally like the fact that your definition, by mentioning a "broad peak", covers the two definitions that are generally found in the literature. However, I think that mentioning the existence of the two definitions (a peak in the filter function vs. a peak in the spectrum) may help readers that came to this page after encountering one or the other. But perhaps it indeed doesn't need to be the first thing the reader sees. So how about starting with you general definition, but then, maybe as part of History, we can mention that the term is used to mean different things? – egaudrain (talk) 15:29, 15 July 2020 (UTC)

Formants in sonorants vs. obstruents
The article makes some incorrect statements about what kinds of sounds formants belong in. For instance, "Not all sounds used in human language are composed of formants. Formants are restricted to sonorants [...]". Since formants are basically resonances of the vocal tract, they are always present regardless of the type of sound being produced. The distinction between sonorants and obstruents (and various gradations between) concerns the means of exciting the resonances - whether by periodic voicing (in vowels) or by noise (in fricatives), for instance. "Note that fricatives always lack formant structure and are distinguished by the frequency range with the most noise, as well as overall strength of frication." Fricatives actually do have formant structure. For instance, [S] and [s] are largely differentiated by the strength of the 3rd formant. The fact that certain frequency ranges have more noise than others (depending on the fricative) is derived from the location of the noise source within the mouth. For [s] it is near the teeth, so that low formants (resonances) belonging to the back of the mouth (behind the source) are not excited much - this is in contrast to vowels, in which the periodic voicing source is at the larynx so that all of the formants are excited strongly. Check out Ken Stevens' book Acoustic Phonetics for confirmation. Lulich 02:07, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

Spectrogram
I have a problem with the spectrogram. It represents three sounds that don't change through time, and yet the time resolution is quite high, definitly overkill, and because of that, the frequency resolution is very poor, as it's really all that matters (so much that we could content ourselves with the magnitude part of the DFT of these sounds). That'd be cool if someone could do it again with a much lower time resolution.

Also due to the nature of speech it wouldn't be bad if the frequency scale was logarithmic (base 2 of course)

Opening paragraph
The reference to Alvin Lucier's "I Am Sitting in a Room" clearly doesn't belong in the opening paragraph. Apparently, it was included only to illustrate that the word "formant" can refer to a peak in the acoustic resonance of a room. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Unfree (talk • contribs) 12:43, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

Fant?
What's Fant? Is it a company? A person? I'm confused. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 64.122.56.143 (talk) 02:27, 6 July 2009 (UTC)

Gunnar Fant, Swedish phonetician. See the first reference. MarcusCole12 (talk) 09:27, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

Look at: Peterson, G.E., Barney, H.L., 1952. Control methods used in the study of the vowels. J. Acoust. Soc. Amer. 24, 175–184. They use term "formants" in the current meaning before Fant's publication. Is anyone from wikipedia who can correct this? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 178.42.58.70 (talk) 12:47, 3 November 2010 (UTC) 178.42.58.70 (talk) 12:51, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

 * What does the first sentence "Formants are defined by Gunnar Fant as..." mean? Was Fant the one who first defined formants? Or are we simply using his definition as a starting place? Could someone clarify this? Goochelaar  (talk) 15:49, 1 June 2011 (UTC)

 * actually the term was coined by Erich Schumann in 1929 (Formant), the article should definitely be updated 79.49.120.35 (talk) 12:17, 22 March 2013 (UTC)

 * Rather, Ludimar Hermann (1838-1914), according to the article about him. Bn (talk) 14:17, 5 June 2018 (UTC)

Vowels
By definition, the information that humans require to distinguish between vowels can be represented purely quantitatively by the frequency content of the vowel sounds.

By definition? Whose definition of vowel says this? 68.239.116.212 (talk) 03:34, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

What is an "antiformant"?
I reached this article from a link on the word "antiformant" in the article Rhinoglottophilia. Neither article explains what an "antiformant" is. Collin237 166.147.104.149 (talk) 22:48, 1 February 2012 (UTC)

 * Paraphrasing Glottopedia, an antiformant lessons amplitude at a given frequencies. The example is the effect of the nasal cavity on nasal vowels and consonants. The nasal consonant anti formants are more pronounced; the frequencies show greater "silencing".

66.81.29.144 (talk) 03:06, 28 November 2013 (UTC)

Needs a basic explanation
Nowhere does this article clearly explain, in a way that a novice can understand, what a formant is. The only actual definitions of formant that appear in the article are: (1) "the spectral peaks of the sound spectrum |P(f)|' of the voice", (2) "an acoustic resonance of the human vocal tract", (3) "the distinguishing or meaningful frequency components of human speech and of singing". Of these, (1) uses undefined technical terms, and (2) and (3) are too general, in that they include various things besides formants.

The article does contain a lot of information about what the formant frequencies of various vowels are, how they're affected by consonants, how they're labeled (f1 etc.), how they're produced by the vocal tract, etc. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Linguistatlunch (talk • contribs) 21:32, 22 August 2012 (UTC)

 * I definitely agree. I came here to find out what "F3" means.  Well, I found out, not surprisingly, that it is the "third formant," but I don't know what a formant is after struggling through this contorted article.  Why are so many Wikipedia articles written as if they are trying to hide the essence of what they are about?  If I lived somewhere where there were a decent library, I'd just go to the library and get a decent description I'm sure.  Alas, I'm stuck with only the Internet.  202.179.19.8 (talk) 07:14, 13 February 2013 (UTC)

 * In human speech not all frequencies are of equal amplitude (loudness). This becomes visually apparent when a spectrogram is used. In the clearest layman terms I can use formants are dark bands you see in a spectrogram, or hill peaks in a sound spectrum. Formants are most pronounced in vowels. If you have the formants of a vowel you can generate them synthetically with free computer programs such as Praat or VocalTractLab.

 * In anything that isn't white noise, not all frequencies are of equal amplitude. It's not anything special to human voice. All frequencies of equal amplitude = white noise. Cyisfor (talk) 22:17, 19 September 2014 (UTC)

 * If I were to create a dictionary definition I would call a formant a frequency of locally maximum amplitude in a frequency spectrum. In less technical language they are the "notes"->Hz that are most prominent in a sound.

 * A frequency is something that repeats, not a characteristic of a sound. That's like if for example someone were saying "a" over and over again, once a second. The frequency spectrum would show their local maximum amplitudes repeating with a frequency of 1Hz. So the formant as "a frequency of locally maximum amplitude in a frequency spectrum" would be in this case 1Hz. And if they said "b" repeatedly, once a second, it would have the exact same formant of 1Hz. But if they said "a" twice a second, it would have a different formant of 2Hz. That just doesn't seem right. Cyisfor (talk) 22:17, 19 September 2014 (UTC)

 * What do you call the pattern evident in the distance between peak harmonics of a characteristic sound at any given pitch? That sound at a higher pitch will have different harmonics, but they will fit into the same pattern. That's what I thought a formant was, that pattern. It's not quite a proportion, because some harmonics stay the same, hisses and pops and strikes and such, but the bigger, lower frequency harmonics will change proportionally with pitch. Cyisfor (talk) 22:17, 19 September 2014 (UTC)

66.81.29.144 (talk) 02:43, 28 November 2013 (UTC)

Gender bias
The study of speech acoustics has a long and inglorious history of treating the adult male voice as the basis for generalizations about speakers in general. Female voices are usually relegated to footnote status if mentioned at all. This article does nothing to redress the balance, but I think it should. RoachPeter (talk) 20:57, 17 March 2014 (UTC)

 * A complicated matter, and somewhat ironic: Women’s vocal tracts are more similar children’s and infants’, apart from being larger. It is men’s that are different from the others. So all that male-subject research focused on the anatomically NON-standard case. Jmacwiki (talk) 18:44, 13 November 2021 (UTC)

Is a formant related to pitch?
As the formants are described in Hertz, it sounds like the article is saying that different vowels are made at different pitches. Are the two actually related? I am only confused.74.102.216.186 (talk) 02:04, 28 November 2016 (UTC)

 * It seems that there is a difference. I found out that a pitch is defined as fundamental frequency.  However, formant frequency can be described based off the length and width of your vocal cord when making the sound.  I found this article that can explain the difference: (f.k.a. 74.102.216.186)LakeKayak (talk) 15:17, 21 January 2017 (UTC)

A human voice will produce no single frequency, even when speaking a "simple" vowel, but a frequency spectrum. The formants are essentially the frequencies of the overtones. You can approximate the sound of a particular human voice with speech synthesis by successively adding its formants, starting with the most significant; in each iteration the synthesized voice will sound more natural and more similar to the original speaker. -- Theoprakt (talk) 07:55, 31 January 2020 (UTC)

 * Not of the overtones (which arise solely from larynx). From the resonances of the mouth, which filter those overtones to emphasize some and suppress others. Jmacwiki (talk) 18:39, 13 November 2021 (UTC)

lead section has both style and definition issues
The lead section does not conform to MOS:INTRO as it is unnecessarily complicated by immediately diving into technical details how different fields of research use slightly different definitions, that are, as the lead itself states, in most cases irrelevant. Furthermore, this edit, said to "clarify" things, completely sweeped the formerly used definition from acoustics under the rug (i.e. a definition that is in the domain of sound without referring to human anatomy) and folded it in under the speech science definition of formants that refers to the human vocal tract. -- Theoprakt (talk) 07:41, 31 January 2020 (UTC)

incomprehensible intro
''A vowel, according to him, is a special acoustic phenomenon, depending on the intermittent production of a special partial, or “formant”, or “characteristique”. The frequency of the “formant” may vary a little without altering the character of the vowel. For a, for example, the “formant” may vary from 350 to 440 Hz even in the same person.''

This talks about only one formant whereas the rest of the article talks about vowels consisting of two. In addition, the frequency values given for the formants of vowel a are completely different, 850 and 1610. --Espoo (talk) 14:20, 27 April 2020 (UTC)

 * It also uses “partial” as a noun, which is nonstandard usage, stilted at best (except sometimes in multivariate calculus). I’ll take a crack at it, but only in small steps. This talk page shows that lots of people have been very poorly informed by this page, both over the years and even in recent months. Jmacwiki (talk) 18:37, 13 November 2021 (UTC)

Vowel space diagram
I have seen many, many vowel-space figures. Like most scientific figures where two variables have a conventional order (“x” before “y”, or F1 before F2), they plot the first variable horizontally, the second vertically.

Where did we get this diagram, which plots the transpose? Does anyone have a more standard replacement? Jmacwiki (talk) 19:36, 13 November 2021 (UTC)

Width inconsistency
We start by saying that formants (apparently by definition) are spectrally broad. But in the Phonetics section, we say that singers create sharp resonances (formants) to select high vocal harmonics.

If we believe the second, then apparently we do not accept our own definition. Which to edit? Jmacwiki (talk) 19:58, 13 November 2021 (UTC)

Redundant diagrams
The last 3 diagrams are all describing the same thing (actually the first two as well, just in a different form), so I've removed two of them. I really don't see the point of the "Average vowel formants for a male voice" table but I'll leave it for now. Also, this article seems extremely limited to only the perspective of phonetics when formants are supposedly integral to so many other fields as well. 30103db (talk) 16:54, 22 November 2021 (UTC)

Long e
The History paragraph gives F1 value for high vowels, but it lists a, which is low (adult F1 about 700 Hz, not 400) as the example. Now corrected. However, this example doesn’t fit very well in a History section anyway. Does anyone know the editor’s intention? Should the sentence be moved, or the section renamed?

Also, do we have agreed notation for vowels? IPA may be unkind to our readers, so I used a DARPAbet code, but we should have a better solution. Jmacwiki (talk) 06:20, 25 November 2021 (UTC)

Ellipses
I've seen a lot of charts based on empirical data (or statistical models) displaying ellipses rather than point estimates to give some idea of the distribution. (I'm writing this from the LSA annual meeting but I'm not a phoneticist.) It might be good to display an example here, both for its own sake and also to give readers a visual sense of the range of variation. 207.237.164.107 (talk) 04:10, 7 January 2024 (UTC)

 * I have an as-yet unpublished paper from William Kretzschmar and Joseph Stanley in which they describe the history of this practice (and also explain the unusual 3rd quadrant axes) as a lead-up to criticizing it. Historically, once phoneticians began to be able to measure F1 and F2, they started plotting vowel sounds in F1/F2 space — using the 3rd quadrant axes once they realized that this would align the points with the IPA vowel chart quadrilateral. Originally, the ellipses were drawn by hand, encircling all of the data points (or all of the points that, by the researcher's impressionistic judgment, represent a particular vowel), but today, with much larger speech corpora and the ability to do automatic forced alignment with high accuracy, it is common to either present point estimates or to draw ellipses automatically to reflect a 95% confidence interval. Kretzschmar and Stanley note that F1/F2 values in large speech corpora are not normally distributed and thus using statistics that assume a normal distribution, such as mean and variance, is invalid. They further note that the empirical distribution is scale-invariant. This material was presented by Kretzschmar at the 2024 ADS annual meeting but the paper is as yet unpublished so it isn't WP:V and can't (yet) be used in this article. However, all of the historical claims are themselves cited to earlier sources; I just don't have the time to verify them in the library. 121a0012 (talk) 04:00, 15 January 2024 (UTC)
 * For a WP:V reference on the non-normality of linguistic data distributions, I did find . 121a0012 (talk) 04:20, 15 January 2024 (UTC)

title: Talk:Formant


text:
Talk:Silence

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment
This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 20 January 2021 and 3 May 2021. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Sayedalirezaahmadi.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 09:21, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

Merger discussion directs here
Oppose merger. This page lists various unrelated dictionary definitions of silence and incorporates a couple sentences without citation. Much of it appears to be written off the top of someone's head with their personal pontification on the broad array of topics. For instance, the legal right to remain silent has nothing to do with the use of silence in musical notation. Etc.
 * Did you know that there is a disambiguation page already set up with a vast number of topics, laid out concisely, and linking to the appropriate pages?

To the extent that it is legitimate to theorize about possible underlying metaphysical connections between these different uses of the word silence in the English language, any such demonstrations woudl be if not original research, certainly original synthesis.
 * The whole point of disambiguation pages is to discourage these kinds of concatenation articles attempting to unite disparate meanings of the term, eg. silence. The appropriate place for that kind of listing is on Wiktionary, not Wikipedia. Sorry to be so blunt, but these mergers might make sense from the perspective of wiki administrators, but they make no sense whatever in terms of the area of expertise which the content providers are most familiar. Please allow those who do the work of writing and know the topic areas configure the categorization cascades. Thank you in advance for your thoughtful consideration and deliberation.

Bard गीता 21:32, 26 May 2011 (UTC)

section heading omitted
"Feelings of loneliness with uncomfortable silence is easier in early life, but most people have roughly the same experience throughout their whole life. Most people often have problems finding words to say, but also many people have no problem finding things to say, and might never have this feeling at all."

Who the hell wrote that? LOL

1926 seems a bit late for South Africa to have had its first casualty list. Sure we don't mean 1916?
 * Yes, thanks for spotting the error. Impi 22:43, 16 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Someone please acknowledge the title of this page as moderately amusing. I cannot be the only person who enjoys cheesy humor. 82.92.119.11 22:45, 16 Dec 2004 (UTC)

9/11 silences
''The victims of the September 11, 2001 attacks were commemorated by two minutes' silence in the UK, three elsewhere. ''

SNIyer12 changed this to:

The victims of the September 11, 2001 attacks were commemorated by three minutes of silence throughout Europe.

Are you sure about his? Do you have a source? My info came from the Guardian G2 of 5.1.05. If yours cannot be reliably sourced it should probably be reverted. Flapdragon 10:57, 12 July 2005 (UTC)

Does the history of silence merely consist of the history of "x minutes of silence"?

"interjectional command"
The wor[l]d itself is often used as an interjectional command for someone (or a group of people) to stop talking to cease any noises.

As an interjection, it is an order for someone, usually the reciever in communication, to cease speech or noise, and it is usually spoken by supervillains, megalomaniacs, and people in authority, like kings or queens.

(etc)

This seems to be the fourth time you've added this sentence or some variant thereof, without any justificaton. Strangely you haven't done the same at order, warning, patience, nonsense, nightmare and a hundred other words that can be used as an interjection or a command.

Remember, Wikipedia is not a dictionary. The article is supposed to tell us something about the subject of silence, rather than explain why people might exclaim "silence!" (which anyway you might think was pretty obvious really).

Given that you're so keen on this sentence, I'm surprised you don't have anything to say to defend it; but since you don't, please don't keep reinstating it. I'm sure we both have better things to do...

Best wishes, Flapdragon 23:59, 22 July 2005 (UTC)

Topic outline for future reference
As usual, the topic is treated here with a strong bias towards the discursive and political. Since silence is a fundament of communication, I think it needs more attention, so I'm posting this (admittedly excessive) suggestion of an outline for a truly encyclopedic treatment:

Physical foundations

 * Sound and its absence
 * physics and acoustics
 * hearing and touch
 * ambience and 'quiet' (relative use of the term)

 * Communication
 * binary codes and analog experience
 * context and relevance
 * systems, constraints, orders of complexity
 * metaphors of silence

 * Rhythm
 * difference
 * continuity and punctuation

 * Language
 * linguistic study of silence
 * framing and sequencing
 * non-verbal discursiveness
 * psycholinguistic silences

Cultural foundations

 * Negotiated silences
 * social constraints
 * kinesics
 * roles
 * emotions
 * symbolic uses

 * Institutions
 * silent spaces
 * ritual
 * authority and submission

Political and personal uses of silence
 * Cultural difference
 * variations in contextual sensitivity
 * cross-cultural encounters
 * silence is both differentiating and unifying

 * Repression
 * censorship
 * taboo

 * Political resistance strategies
 * refusing participation
 * maintaining integrity through secrecy
 * redefining silence at the margins

 * Regeneration
 * personal retreat
 * quiet design
 * mediation and community
 * heightened sensitivity as ecological awareness

 * Religious and existential inquiry
 * meditation
 * mystical silences, contemplation, solitude
 * art

Disagreements and suggestions welcome. This outline is based on information from Acoustic Communication and Handbook for Acoustic Ecology by Barry Truax, and "Silence in the Contemporary Soundscape" by Wreford Miller (myself), and generally based on work done by the World Soundscape Project. I'll contribute more as soon as I have time (and figure out markup and formatting rules).

Wreford 06:34, 2 November 2005 (UTC)

Human effects of silence
I think it would be a good idea to include some info on the effects of prolonged silence on a persons state of mind. It is known that some people find silence uncomfortable, and to the extream, unbarable. Think outside the box 15:45, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

"In labs, animals that have been subject to a total lack of noise have shown signs of [...] death." Lit. lol. I'm removing this until someone finds some evidence. Jameshfisher 11:13, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

''In modern society, especially in the western society, when people are meeting and talking to each other, people often start talking nonsense to skip moments of silence. People seem to have the same feeling all over the world, however silence seems to be much more appreciated in the eastern world (China etc.)''

Etc. Can anyone supply anything to make this less vague and anecdotal? If not it would be better pruned right back to something concrete as it's at risk of spoiling the article. It also duplicates what is said elsewhere about the embarrassing effect of silence in social situations in most (not all) cultures. Flapdragon 13:28, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

The whole "Human effects" section has very simplistic language. Also, I'm fairly certain that it isn't most cultures that avoid silence. I always believed the avoidance of silence to be a Western phenomenon, with the constant need for background music, a television, or small talk. I don't know specifically of any research on this, but I'm sure it would not be hard to find.

Proposed Disambiguation page
"Quiet" redirects here without any mention of the Jazz album Quiet by John Scofield. I propose either a disambiguation for the word quiet or a mention on the top of this page of the album.
 * I've changed the Quiet page to a disambiguation for the Jazz album and Silence. Think outside the box 11:22, 15 May 2007 (UTC) 72.95.213.74 22:05, 30 June 2007 (UTC)James

Repaired vandalism
Replaced the section on music that had been vandalized with a short quote from a relevant wiki article.

58.169.205.201 04:02, 22 September 2007 (UTC)

Silence in Social Interaction: Functions, Meanings, and Interpretations
"Silence is noticed through the basic human need of social interaction: communication. Categorized into forms and functions, silence can fall into three distinct sections..." -- already this section is looking pretty vague and poorly expressed. Phrases like "the sociocultural framework of silences in which it can be found through the cultural communicative habits, that is, that communication is formed through cultural norms and that it follows the culturally defined patterns of social interaction" and "a Christian Methodist faith organization" are pretty verbose to say the least. The section also sounds as if it might be original research. If not we could use a reference to what it's taken from. At the moment it doesn't really seem to add anything to the entry and should probably be deleted. It should certainly not be the top section. Flapdragon (talk) 18:59, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

Complete silence
The article on american composer John Cage also contains some discussion about his experience and thoughts on "complete silence". In particular, see section Black Mountain, 4′33″. --Marozols (talk) 01:22, 14 March 2009 (UTC)

Missing mentions of silence
In case someone can think of a way to fit these in: llywrch (talk) 21:21, 26 July 2010 (UTC)
 * Herman Melville, in his Pierre: or, The Ambiguities, suggests that the voice of God is silence. (Sorry, I can't recall either the page where this is stated, nor the expert who states this.)
 * The conclusion of Ludwig Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus: "What we cannot talk about we must pass over in silence." (Pears/Guinness translation)

Qualities of Silence
I have read about different qualities of spiritual silence - ie it is not all the same but can be more or less dense and texture can vary. Oxford73 (talk) 09:41, 25 April 2011 (UTC)

This is really just Original Synthesis or a verbose Disambig page listing unrelated use of the term
Rests in music have nothing to do with the right to remain silent, in law. Etc. This is best a disambiguation page with separate pages for different universes of thought. IMO.Bard गीता 06:14, 26 May 2011 (UTC)

Removal of last paragraph in introduction
I removed the last paragraph from the introduction, as it looked unnecessary. It looked like it was trying to make a strenuous connection between sounds and one's "inner voice" (..."silence" refers to a state in which one is unable to take in meanings, which means that for a person to experience silence, they must have no thought...) as well as restate facts already mentioned earlier (...according to physics however, silence is the lack of "sound"...) and stating the obvious (Deaf people function in a completely silent culture). -Anagogist (talk) 16:24, 14 November 2012 (UTC)
 * As someone with tinnitus, I do not find the fact that deaf people function in a completely silent culture obvious. It is difficult or impossible for me to understand (subjectively) what  complete silence is.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 211.225.33.104 (talk) 01:01, 21 June 2014 (UTC)

quantitation and objectivity
The article need some numbers (how many decibels is quiet? how common or rare is quiet?) and some discussion of why real quiet (near absence of noise) is rare, desirable, and sometimes attainable. Does society value quiet and if so what does it do to achieve it?Paulhummerman (talk) 21:34, 30 August 2013 (UTC)

Train
The picture of a train car has what might be an error in its accompanying text. The text read 'No mobile phones are permitted in designated "quiet carriages" such as this one on a train operated by First Great Western in the UK.' Perhaps it should read, 'The use of mobile phones is not permitted ...."  I doubt that the rule is as strict as the original text says, but not having any  experience or first-hand information with the rail company and its rules, I only raise this as a question rather than act boldly.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 211.225.33.104 (talk) 00:57, 21 June 2014 (UTC)

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Talk:Silence


text:
Centro

Centro may refer to:

Brazil

 * Centro, Santa Maria, a neighborhood in Santa Maria, Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil
 * Centro, Porto Alegre, a neighborhood of Porto Alegre, Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil
 * Centro (Duque de Caxias), a neighborhood of Duque de Caxias, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
 * Centro (Niterói), a neighborhood of Niterói, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
 * Centro, Rio de Janeiro, a neighborhood of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
 * Centro (São Paulo), the historic downtown of São Paulo, Brazil
 * , Aracaju, Sergipe, Brazil

Mexico

 * Centro, Guadalajara, Jalisco, Mexico
 * Centro, Puerto Vallarta, Jalisco, Mexico
 * Centro Municipality, Tabasco, Mexico
 * Centro (borough), Tijuana, Baja California, Mexico
 * Centro, Yucatán, Mexico
 * Centro, the historic center of Mexico City, Mexico

Elsewhere

 * Centro Habana, Cuba
 * Centro, Mandaue, a barangay in the Philippines
 * Centro Region, Portugal
 * Centro, Moca, Puerto Rico, a subdivision (also called a barrio) of Moca, Puerto Rico
 * Centro (Madrid), a district of the city of Madrid, Spain
 * Centro (Málaga), a district of the city of Málaga, Andalusia, Spain
 * Centro, Montevideo, downtown barrio of Montevideo, Uruguay

Transport

 * Centro, the Central New York Regional Transportation Authority in the United States
 * Plaxton Centro, a bus body built by Plaxton in the UK
 * West Midlands Passenger Transport Executive, formerly named Centro, the body formerly responsible for public transport in the county of West Midlands, England

Other

 * CentrO, a shopping mall in Oberhausen, Germany
 * Centro Tampa, a Spanish-language newspaper in Tampa, Florida, USA
 * Palm Centro
 * Vicinity Centres, a retail property developer formerly trading as Centro Property Group

title: Centro


text:
Category:Hamlets in Buckinghamshire

Hamlets in the county of Buckinghamshire, England.

title: Category:Hamlets in Buckinghamshire


text:
Talk:List of deaf people

Problems
There are some tremendous problems on this page. The most glaring is that the inclusion of some people such as Bill Clinton (I'm using him ONLY as an example and not for any imagined political reason) who experienced minor hearing loss at some point in his life; this trivalizes and diminishes the experiences and legacies of the profoundly deaf people who were pre-lingually deaf or born deaf. The ONLY reason in modern scholarship that a person's deafness is notible is because of the historic advances made by people from the signing deaf community.

Deaf people themselves made this subject a topic of interest; not former presidents, popular singers and other related ilk. We need to make clear that the happenstance incidents of deafness to rock stars and media celebs doesn't merit historic notation. What, for example, has Rush Limbaugh contributed to the history, culture and understanding of the community of deaf people? Nothing! Limbaugh, in fact, represents a kind of negative. His deafness was virtually self-inflicted due to his illegal use of pain medication. He's a very wealth man and he used his pocket change to have a $90,000.00 coclear implant installed in his head. There's a tremedous irony here. The history of the deaf is repleat with examples of the deaf children of the very wealthy and powerful being the ONLY ones believed worth educating. But aside from that, the underlying message is that if one can't afford such a device or if such a device doesn't benefit a deaf person, that deaf person isn't worth much. I think this list of names should be severely edited and returned to one of dignity.

 * I agree with this completely. Persons like Rush Limbaugh, Bill Clinton (Ronald Reagan is also a bit hard of hearing) do not belong on this list. They are still hearing, period. Also the use of the term "hearing loss" is problematic. To Deaf persons, not able to hear is not a hearing loss. The list of individuals who became deaf after 19 should be classified as "late deafened persons". The names should be selected extremely carefully, for otherwise the list could become too unwieldy to become uninteresting. The criteria for inclusion in the list of "notable late deafeded persons" need still to be hammered out. Also I am surprised of the paucity of the names of many other really notable Deaf individuals. They have been featured in many sources: H.Lane "When the Mind Hears", D.Wright "Deafness", Braddock "Notable Deaf Persons", F.Bowe "Notable Deaf Persons", Moore "Notable Deaf Persons", etc.  Hartmut69 (talk) 04:27, 2 September 2009 (UTC) Hartmut69, 1 September 2009

Posting Criteria and Information Page Links
Two Questions:

1.By what criteria are deaf people being added to this list?

2. Why are people added when they are not linked to an information page?

Re: Criteria: What, may I ask, is the reasoning behind listing people here whose lives are not distinguished by their achievement as deaf persons, but rather by their achievements as hearing persons? Incidental deafness is completely irrelevent! Doesn't it make more sense to list people who achieved their reputations and greatness as deaf people? Partially deaf or deaf after their career was completed? That describes half the human population of the world over age 60! What's the big deal? It doesn't distinguish these people at all and it trivalizes the lives of people who achieved greatness or notarity and were severely or profoundly deaf at the time they made their mark on the world.

Here's a best case scenerio: Laurent Clerc is on the list. Who is he? Clerc is the *central* most important and distinguished individual in the history of American deaf education. He is deaf from infancy yet was a not only a distinguished man of letters, he was a polyglot, a master of four languages, and a renowned leader of both the Paris and Hartford deaf communities. He is a legend among the deaf because he founded the first system of deaf education in American history. Now THAT'S a case of of being distinguished as a deaf person.

Re: Link to Information page: Who posted Laurent Clerc's name yet provided no information page? What sense does it make to post a name that people do not know and then not link it to information that tells you who the person is? That ought to be a rule on this page. Please don't post unlinked names and if you do post and link people, make sure the information page describes why the person should be distinguished for their deafness.

Disambiguation of "deaf"
Relating to the disambiguation of the word "deaf" currently under discussion at Talk:Deaf... Since we appear to be working under the assumption that "deaf" means different enough things to warrant a disambiguation page for "deaf", should this list here now be split into Famous people in Deaf culture and List of famous hearing impaired people? eg. I would suggest that folks like Beethoven, Ronald Reagan, and Steve Jobs would be on the latter list but not the former (since Deaf culture either didn't exist at their time or they were/are not members of the Deaf community). --Ds13 03:59, 2005 Mar 1 (UTC)

 * My, and Pengo's reply (so far) to this comment seems to be taking place only on the Talk:Deaf page. Click there if you are interested in following the full discussion. Qaz

Page renaming. "Notable" or "famous" is redundant
I've put this page back to its original title. The people in the list are implicitly notable or it wouldn't be "encyclopedic". That's how all the other lists operate. For example: List of people with dyslexia, List of pacifists, List of vegetarians. There is no need to have all these lists titled "List of notable x".

--Pengo 14:21, 4 Mar 2005 (UTC)

VfD result
This page was voted on for deletion at Votes for deletion/List of deaf people. The final result was Keep. --Deathphoenix 02:02, 16 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Julia Brace or Laura Bridgman?
This article lists Julia Brace as the first deafblind American to receive an education, as does the separate article on Laura Bridgman. Which is correct? And if one is correct, what is the other's claim to notability? GeeJo 11:23, August 22, 2005 (UTC)

 * Well spotted GeeJo! Both have been claimed as the first deafblind person to be educated. I added a page on Julia Brace and updated the Laura Bridgman article, to hopefully clarify things. They are both notable as they tell us a lot about the lives of deafblind people in history, and both played a role in the development of deafblind education.

 * I'm going to add an observation of my own — the page could almost be renamed List of deaf Americans! Anyone with information about non-American Deaf people, pls add them! ntennis 03:41, 23 August 2005 (UTC)

Helen Keller and socialism
With only a few words to describe her, selecting one particular political cause that she espoused is POV. She advocated for women's rights, pacifism, birth control, and other issues. All of these, along with author and lecturer, cannot be included in a description of a few words. I have changed the description from "socialist" to a more general term, "activist". Ward3001 19:58, 11 November 2007 (UTC)

 * Helen Keller's socialism was is what she was known for in her lifetime - she was an active member of both the socialist party under E. V. Debs and of the IWW, arguing consistantly for workers rights - even joining a picket at the opening of a film of her lifestory. Generations of schoolchildren have grown up knowing her as a "poor little deaf-blind girl at the water pump" without any idea what she became famous for as her legacy has been whitewashed. Ms medusa 19:18, 12 November 2007 (UTC)

 * I'm not one of those who thinks of her as a "poor little deaf-blind girl at the water pump", and I am aware of her involvement with socialism. My point is that socialism was not her only cause, and when you have to describe her in three or four words, "activist" is a better generic descriptor that encompasses more than one cause. Otherwise it's POV pushing. Ward3001 19:39, 12 November 2007 (UTC)

Mabel Hubbard Bell
The name of Bell's wife is placed here in the list of deaf musicians. Nevertheless in the Wikipedia article "Mabel Hubbard Bell" there is no information about the fact that she was a musician. However the mother of Bell, Eliza had problem with hearing and she played piano. Could it be so that the author of the list confused these two women? If not, it would be necessary to give a source of this information. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Alevtina27 (talk • contribs) 12:45, 19 February 2012 (UTC) Sorry, forgot to sign Alevtina27 (talk) 17:22, 19 February 2012 (UTC)

Content creep
If the article is going to remain what the title says it is, namely, a List of deaf people then non-deaf people, no matter how interesting or important, don't belong; therefore, I removed the Children of deaf people section, interesting as it was. (Perhaps it could make a subsection of the Deaf history or Deaf culture article, as hearing children of deaf parents usually grow up with Deaf culture.) Also, the very interesting short section on deaf history is not part of a "List", and it is more thoroughly covered in Deaf history anyway. What remains is now a list, or at least, several lists, a bit closer to what the title claims it is. Mathglot (talk) 09:00, 30 October 2015 (UTC)

title: Talk:List of deaf people


text:
Euganei

The Euganei (fr. Lat. Euganei, Euganeorum; cf. Gr. εὐγενής (eugenēs) 'well-born') were a group of populations, difficult to define, settled in the flat and mountainous areas of Northeast Italy, between the Eastern Alps and the Adriatic. With the arrival of the Adriatic Veneti they retreated to the Alpine valleys, blending in with the Rhaetians.

Pliny the Elder, referring to Cato, states that the Euganeans were divided into three lineages, the Triumpilini (Val Trompia), the Camunni (Val Camonica) and the Stoni. All these populations were Romanized before the beginning of the Common Era.

History
It has been hypothesized that "Euganei" derives from the Greek εὐγενεῖς ("of noble lineage"), but a connection with Ingauni, a Ligurian population, is also possible. More likely, it is the term with which the Adriatic Venetians referred to a non-homogeneous group of tribes who, at the time of their arrival in Northeast Italy, occupied the vast area from Istria to Garda (or Oglio).

According to what is reported by the well-known legend on the origins of the Adriatic Venetians (handed down from a tragedy by Sophocles and taken up by Livy), it was the latter who drove out the Euganeans who, having retreated to the Alpine valleys, mixed with the Rhaetians; it cannot be ruled out, however, that "Reti" referred to the Euganeans themselves after this migration.

Further pressured by the arrival of the Gauls in the 5th century BC, the Euganean tribes maintained their independence until the end of the 2nd century BC, when Quintus Marcius Rex and Marcus Aemilius Scaurus subjugated the Stoni to Rome; Camuni and Triumpilini were definitively subjugated by Augustus in 16 BC. The Euganeans willingly accepted Roman domination, as demonstrated by the monuments erected in honor of the Augustan dynasty and the existence of a pagus called Livius by Livia.

According to Pliny, referring to Cato, the Euganeans were distributed in 34 oppida among which the "capital" Stoenos, an alpine locality which is difficult to identify, stood out. Pliny himself recalls how Verona was a city of Rhaetian and Euganean origin.

Toponymy
The literature of the imperial era continued to use the term "Euganean" not as an ethnic one, but as a learned geographical name to indicate Northeast Italy, or as a synonym of Patavinus.

The expression "Euganean Hills", which indicates the group of reliefs located south-west of Padua, is instead an invention of the Renaissance, while "Venezia Euganea", coined by the linguist Graziadio Isaia Ascoli, is even later.

title: Euganei


text:
Indian Ocean raid

The Indian Ocean raid, also known as Operation C or Battle of Ceylon in Japanese, was a naval sortie carried out by the Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN) from 31 March to 10 April 1942. Japanese aircraft carriers under Admiral Chūichi Nagumo struck Allied shipping and naval bases around British Ceylon, but failed to locate and destroy the bulk of the British Eastern Fleet. The Eastern Fleet, commanded by Admiral Sir James Somerville, was forewarned by intelligence and sailed from its bases prior to the raid; its attempt to attack the Japanese was frustrated by poor tactical intelligence.

Following the attack the British expected a major Japanese offensive in the Indian Ocean. The main base of the Eastern Fleet relocated to East Africa, and Ceylon was reinforced, but Somerville kept his fast carrier division, Force A, "...in Indian waters, to be ready to deal with any attempt by the enemy to command those waters with light forces only." However, the Japanese had no short-term plans to follow up on their success, and within the year operations in the Pacific made it impossible to do so.

Strategic situation
The island of Ceylon was strategically important, since it commanded the Indian Ocean. Thus it controlled access to India, the vital Allied shipping routes to the Middle East and the oilfields of the Persian Gulf. Ceylon held most of the British Empire's resources of rubber. An important harbour and naval base, Trincomalee, was located on the island’s eastern coast. Japanese propaganda had an effect on some of the Sinhalese population, who now awaited their arrival.

The fall of Singapore on 15 February 1942 broke the United Kingdom's eastern defensive perimeter of the Bay of Bengal; and the Japanese occupation of the Andaman Islands on 23 March gave Japan control of the Andaman Sea enabling ships to resupply Japanese troops in the Burma Campaign for control of India. Both German and British authorities anticipated Japanese capture of Ceylon to solidify control of the Bay of Bengal and disrupt British resupply for defence of India, Australia, and perhaps the Middle East. Ceylon was hastily garrisoned by Australian troops returning from North Africa; and HMS Indomitable (R92) was relieved of naval duties to serve as a high-speed aircraft ferry shuttling available planes to Ceylon.

Japanese intentions to mount a major offensive into the Indian Ocean were placed on hold in March 1942; strong naval forces were needed in the western Pacific against the United States, and the Imperial Japanese Army (IJA) refused to allocate troops for an invasion of Ceylon. In response, the IJN developed Operation C, a plan for an aggressive raid into the Indian Ocean in early April. Operation C aimed to destroy the British Eastern Fleet, and disrupt British lines of communications in the Bay of Bengal in support of the Burma Campaign.

British intelligence correctly assessed the Japanese strategy. The Americans were notified; the Doolittle Raid – which was already in progress – took on the additional role of a diversion.

Japanese preparations
Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto issued the initial order to proceed with Operation C to the IJN's southern force, commanded by Admiral Nobutake Kondō, on 9 March 1942. By 16 March, the plan was to depart from Staring Bay, Celebes, on 26 March for an attack on Colombo ("C day") on 5 April. The Japanese expected to destroy the British Eastern Fleet in port.

The Japanese force, commanded by Admiral Chūichi Nagumo, had a core of five aircraft carriers; JAPANESE AIRCRAFT CARRIER Akagi, JAPANESE AIRCRAFT CARRIER Shōkaku and JAPANESE AIRCRAFT CARRIER Zuikaku in Carrier Division 5, and JAPANESE AIRCRAFT CARRIER Sōryū and JAPANESE AIRCRAFT CARRIER Hiryū in Carrier Division 2. The carriers were accompanied by all four Kongo-class battleships, and both Tone-class cruisers.

Japanese intelligence on the composition of the British Eastern Fleet in the Indian Ocean was reasonably accurate, while overestimating the air strength on Ceylon. The 19 March operational order vaguely advised that a "considerable" portion of British naval and air forces in the Indian Ocean were "deployed in Ceylon area".

The Japanese stationed reconnaissance submarines outside of the known British anchorages at Colombo and Trincomalee; their effectiveness was limited. At least one submarine was sent to scout the Maldive Islands but failed to detect Port T at Addu Atoll.

At the same time as Operation C, the IJN also dispatched Malay Force under the command of Vice Admiral Jisaburō Ozawa. His force consisted of the aircraft carrier JAPANESE AIRCRAFT CARRIER Ryūjō, six cruisers, and four destroyers to destroy shipping in the Bay of Bengal on 1 April. Malay Force was not part of Operation C.

In 3 days, Ozawa's force managed to sink 23 merchant ships (20 in a single day), totaling over 130,000 gross registered tons. In addition, April saw 32,000 tons of shipping sunk by Japanese submarines off India's west coast. Ryūjō's aircraft also bombed the ports of Cocanada and Vizagapatam, causing relatively minor damage. The tonnage and number of ships sunk by Malay Force, are comparable to that of the 3-month long Operation Berlin raid conducted by two battleships of the Kriegsmarine from January to March 1941. In both raids against merchant shipping, Allied merchant ships were not sailing in convoys escorted by large vessels.

British preparations
The reinforcement of the British Eastern Fleet depended on transfers from Britain and the Mediterranean, a reflection of active warzones and the demands on the Royal Navy's (RN) resources.

In late-December 1941, a reassessment of the threat posed by Japan envisioned transferring the majority of the RN's heavy units to the Eastern Fleet. Matters were made urgent by the crippling of the United States Pacific Fleet's battle line at Pearl Harbor, which exposed the weak forces in Malaya to attack. Heavy units were freed up by American reinforcements in the Atlantic. The construction programs of the late-1930s were also starting to yield new heavy units. The Mediterranean yielded far fewer reinforcements than expected due to serious losses in that theatre in 1941.

The Eastern Fleet that Vice Admiral Sir James Somerville assumed command of in March 1942 was smaller than what had been envisioned in December 1941. Somerville divided the fleet into two groups, based on speed. The faster "Force A" included the aircraft carriers HMS Formidable (67) and HMS Indomitable (92), the modernized battleship HMS Warspite (03) (as flagship), as well as the modern cruisers and destroyers. The slower "Force B" was formed around the old carrier HMS Hermes (95) and four unmodernized Revenge-class battleships. A few submarines were also available. The ships had never operated together before, and both ship and air crews were deficient in training.

Allied intelligence accurately assessed the strength of the Japanese force. Somerville planned to evade the Japanese during the day and close to launch torpedo strikes with radar-equipped Fairey Albacore bombers during the night. However, the plan was based on information provided by the Far East Combined Bureau (FECB), which identified only two carriers in the Japanese force. FECB also believed the Japanese would sail from Staring Bay on 21 March for a "C day" of 1 April. Thus, Somerville sailed early expecting to fight a smaller and manageable enemy force, particularly in aircraft strength. As such, Somerville likely did not see his plan as incompatible with his orders from the Admiralty, which were to protect the lines of communications in the Indian Ocean, and to maintain the Eastern Fleet as a fleet in being by avoiding unnecessary risks.

The British recognized the threat of Japanese carrier-borne air attack on Ceylon after the strike on Pearl Harbor, and the island's air defences were reinforced. On 7 December 1941, air defences consisted of four obsolescent three-inch anti-aircraft guns – at Trincomalee – with neither fighters nor radar. By 4 April, there were 67 Hawker Hurricanes and 44 Fairey Fulmar fighters, a radar station each at Colombo and Trincomalee, and 144 anti-aircraft guns; 37 or 38 Hurricanes were serviceable around Colombo on 5 April. The fighters were divided into three Royal Air Force (RAF) squadrons of Hawker Hurricanes (two at Colombo, and one at Trincomalee), and two squadrons of RN Fleet Air Arm (FAA) Fairey Fulmars. In the same time frame, other air forces increased from eight obsolete torpedo bombers, to seven Consolidated PBY Catalina flying boats, 14 Bristol Blenheim IV bombers, and 12 Fairey Swordfish torpedo bombers. On the eve of battle, RAF forces were part of 222 Group, commanded by Air Vice-Marshal John D'Albiac.

First moves
The Japanese sailed from Staring Bay on 26 March as planned.

Somerville sailed on 30 March in expectation of an attack on 1 April, and deployed his fleet in a patrol area 100 mi south of Ceylon. Ceylon air defences and forces went on alert, with land-based aerial reconnaissance concentrating on the southeast, where the Japanese were expected to approach to launch strikes at Colombo and Trincomalee. Late on 2 April, the British retired toward Port T – 600 mi southwest of Ceylon – to refuel. Somerville also detached various ships to resume previous commitments; the heavy cruisers HMS Cornwall (56) and HMS Dorsetshire (40) were sent to Colombo, and Hermes to Trincomalee. Air defences stood down, although Catalina patrols continued.

At about 16:00 on 4 April, PBY Catalina flying boat (AJ155/QL-A) from the Royal Canadian Air Force's (RCAF) 413 Squadron flown by Squadron Leader Leonard Birchall spotted Nagumo's fleet 360 mi south-east of Ceylon on a course that would have entered Somerville's previous patrol area from the south. The Catalina transmitted the sighting, but not the size of the fleet, before being shot down. At this time, Somerville was refuelling at Port T; Force A sailed eastward toward the Japanese upon receiving the sighting; Force B could not be ready until 5 April. Catalina FV-R from 205 Squadron RAF took off at 17:45 to shadow the Japanese fleet, making its first report at 22:37 on 4 April, and a final report at 06:15 on 5 April while 110 mi from Ceylon. FV-R was shot down about 90 minutes after the final report.

Within an hour of QL-A's report, D’Albiac met with his subordinates to discuss an anticipated Japanese strike after dawn. 222 Group issued a warning to subordinate units before midnight, and units went on alert at 04:00 on 5 April. On the morning of 5 April, six Swordfish from 788 Naval Air Squadron (788 NAS) began relocating from China Bay, near Trincomalee, to Colombo, in preparation for a strike on the Japanese fleet. Admiral Geoffrey Layton, on Ceylon, ordered ships put to sea to avoid being attacked in harbour. Cornwall and Dorsetshire, which had just reached Colombo, were sent to rejoin Force A; they sailed late on 4 April. Hermes sailed from Trincomalee and was ordered to hide northeast of Ceylon.

The Japanese did not perform an aerial reconnaissance sweep along their intended course on the afternoon of 4 April, and a planned reconnaissance of Colombo harbour by cruiser floatplanes was cancelled. The Japanese realized surprise was lost after intercepting a signal from Colombo asking QL-A to repeat its report.

Attack on Colombo
Japanese intelligence on the morning of 5 April 1942 indicated that British carriers were absent, and the Japanese morning air search was limited accordingly. At dawn, Japanese aerial reconnaissance aircraft flew off to the south-west and north-west; they would fly out to a maximum of 200 mi over the next few hours. A reconnaissance Fulmar launched from Force A at 08:00 spotted one of the Japanese aircraft at the extreme edge of the south-west search area at 08:55 about 140 mi ahead of Force A.

Shortly after 06:00 Nagumo's force began launching 91 bombers and 36 fighters for the strike on Colombo. British early warning failed to detect and identify the incoming strike, forcing British pilots to scramble under fire when the first Japanese aircraft appeared over them at 07:45. The effective defence of the Ratmalana airbase by British fighters left the harbour exposed. The armed merchant cruiser HMS Hector (F45), the Norwegian tanker Soli and the old destroyer HMS Tenedos (H04) were sunk; three other ships were damaged. The port was damaged but was not put out of action. 20 of the 41 British fighters that took off were destroyed. At least one fighter was damaged and made incapable of flight while attempting to take off. The six Swordfish of 788 NAS arrived during the battle and were shot down. The Japanese lost seven aircraft.

Nagumo changed course to west-southwest at 08:30 – unknowingly causing the opposing fleets to steam toward one another – and recovered the Colombo strike from 09:45 to 10:30.

The size of the airstrike on Colombo was Somerville's first concrete evidence that the Japanese force contained more than the two carriers he expected. Nonetheless he continued to steam toward the enemy at 18 knots. Radar-based fighter direction would allow Force A to avoid surprise attack by neutralizing shadowing Japanese aircraft.

Loss of Dorsetshire and Cornwall
At 10:00, an aircraft from Tone searching the southwest area spotted and began shadowing Dorsetshire ' s force; the aircraft reported that the cruiser was heading southwest and making 24 knots. The cruisers reported the shadower, but had no means to drive it off. Nagumo increased speed from 24 to 28 knots upon receiving the sighting. Carrier Division 5's reserve strike force was ordered rearmed with anti-ship torpedoes, replacing the high explosive bombs intended for a second strike on Colombo. The rearming encountered delays, and the strike was carried out by Carrier Division 2 instead; Soryu and Hiryu began launching dive bombers at 11:45. Force A radar detected the air strike on Dorsetshire ' s force at 13:44, putting the aircraft 34 mi to the northeast. Cornwall and Dorsetshire were sunk at 1400; ultimately 424 officers and crew were lost.

The Japanese missed an opportunity to find Force A after sinking the cruisers. The aircraft shadowing the cruisers flew another 50 mi along the cruisers' course before returning to Tone. It would have detected Force A if it had flown southwest another ten minutes.

Nagumo recovered the strike against the cruisers at 14:45.

Nagumo evades Somerville
Somerville launched four Albacores from Indomitable at 14:00 to search an arc to the northeast out to 200 mi. Nagumo's southeasterly course would have taken the Japanese fleet right through the centre of the arc. However, at 15:00 or 15:30, Nagumo changed course to the southwest. Carrier Division 2 did not immediately follow; it performed a series of kinking manoeuvres starting at 15:00 that initially took it northwest. Carrier Division 2 was spotted by the two northerly Albacores around 16:00. Hiryū launched Mitsubishi A6M Zero fighters to intercept the scouts; one Albacore was damaged at 16:04, and the other shot down at 16:28 without reporting. The two southernmost Albacores missed Nagumo's main body.

Somerville did not receive the damaged Albacore's sighting report until 16:55; the report gave the position of Carrier Division 2 with reasonable accuracy, placed the Japanese 125 mi away, but contained no other data. At 17:00 he received signals intelligence (SIGINT) from Colombo reporting the Japanese course at 14:00 as southwesterly at 24 knots. Somerville ordered a course change to the southwest at 17:26, not knowing that Nagumo's main body was 120 mi away, and that Carrier Division 2 was only 100 mi away. The course change was presumably to maintain distance between a superior enemy that was believed to be still closing, or to cover Port T from attack, but it also meant the British lost an opportunity to meet the enemy; had Force A continued on its easterly course, Carrier Division 2 would have passed right in front of it at 21:00 at range of about 20 mi.

The damaged Albacore landed at 17:45, less than a half-hour before sunset, and the crew was debriefed. There were two resulting revisions to the 16:00 sighting, which were transmitted to Somerville at 18:00 and 18:17 respectively, and differed significantly from the other and the original report. The final revision correctly identified the two carriers of Carrier Division 2 – which Somerville likely realized to be only part of the enemy force – but also claimed they were heading toward the northwest at a position 25 mi or the original sighting. The course heading conflicted with the first revision, which suggested a course toward the southeast. Late on 5 April, FECB decrypted a JN 25B message containing Nagumo's planned movement on 6 April, but this did not aid Somerville as the transmission to the fleet was garbled. Somerville declined to launch a strike based on poor information, and opted to head northwest in pursuit. One radar-equipped aircraft was launched to search a northern arc out to 200 mi. Later, aircraft were sent to search the easterly arc. By this time it was too late to reestablish contact with the Japanese.

For the Japanese, too, there was a lost opportunity to find the British before night fell. Nagumo did not order a search for the British carriers at the appearance of British carrier-based aircraft. Search aircraft might require homing signals from the carriers to return, homing signals which the enemy could use to locate the Japanese. The Japanese continued southeast at 20 knots completely unaware of the presence of Force A. Carrier Division 2 rejoined the main body's track at 18:00, and caught up at 22:00 180 mi due east of Force A. The Japanese circled wide to the south and then east in preparation for striking Trincomalee. The Japanese suspected the presence of British carriers, and on the morning of 6 April they launched a much denser westward air search, but found nothing. Further searches on route to Trincomalee were equally unsuccessful as the British carriers were by that time far to the west.

By 6 April, British SIGINT indicated the Japanese force contained four carriers and three battleships, a force Somerville clearly realized as beyond the Eastern Fleet's capability to engage without undue risk. The declining serviceability of his fighter force also reinforced his caution. Even so, Somerville did not immediately withdraw or return to port. Force B rejoined early on 6 April. In the afternoon 1,122 survivors from Dorsetshire ' s force were recovered, while maintaining a look-out for the superior enemy force with all-around air reconnaissance. Intelligence from Ceylon put the Japanese between Port T and Ceylon. Somerville cautiously arrived at Port T from the west at 11:00 on 8 April and refuelled.

Attack on Trincomalee
By 8 April, the Eastern Fleet had withdrawn and the Japanese fleet was approaching Trincomalee from the east. The Japanese fleet was detected by a RAF Catalina at 15:17 on 8 April. The harbour at Trincomalee was cleared that night. Hermes, escorted by HMAS Vampire (D68), was sent south along the coast.

The Japanese air search on the morning of 9 April was limited as on 5 April, as British carriers were no longer expected.

The Japanese strike group of 132 aircraft was detected at 07:06 on 9 April by the radar of AMES 272 at a range of 91 mi. The defending fighters - 17 Hurricanes and six Fulmars - took off in time, and inflicted the first kills of the battle when a section of Hurricanes attacked three Zeroes and shot down two. The China Bay airbase and the port were heavily bombed. The monitor HMS Erebus (I02) was damaged. SS Sagaing, a merchant ship carrying aircraft and ammunition, was set on fire and abandoned. Eight Hurricanes and a Fulmar were lost, although no serviceable fighters were lost on the ground. The Japanese lost four aircraft.

At 07:16 another Catalina from 413 Squadron RCAF spotted the Japanese fleet, but was shot down while reporting.

Blenheims attack the Japanese carriers
Around 10:25, nine unescorted Blenheims from 11 Squadron RAF attacked Nagumo's force. They were not detected inbound by the combat air patrol (CAP). Hiryū spotted the aircraft but failed to relay a warning to the other ships. As a result, the attack achieved total surprise. The bombers unloaded at 11000 ft on Akagi; the bombs fell close to the target with no hits. Four bombers were shot down over the carriers by CAP A6M2 Zeroes (two of which were claimed by Kaname Harada), and another by Japanese aircraft returning from the strike on Hermes. In return, a Zero was shot down near the carriers and another in the returning strike. This was the first time a Japanese carrier force had faced a concerted air attack.

Loss of Hermes
Hermes and Vampire were 65 mi away when Trincomalee was attacked. At 09:00 they reversed course. Shortly after the end of the attack on Trincomalee, an aircraft from Haruna spotted the ships. 80 Aichi D3A "Val" bombers, held in reserve on the Japanese carriers, attacked starting at 10:35. Both were sunk before noon near Batticaloa. Hermes was lost with 307 men after being hit by over forty 500 lbs bombs. Vampire was lost with 8 men. The nearby hospital ship Vita rescued 600 men.

The Japanese attack expanded to nearby ships. The corvette HMS Hollyhock (K64) was hit by aircraft from Soryu and sunk with 53 men. Also sunk were the naval auxiliary Athelstone, the tanker British  Sergeant, and the cargo ship Norviken.

British land-based Fulmars arrived only after Hermes was sunk. Two Fulmars and four Vals were destroyed.

Nagumo disengaged after recovering the strike on Hermes.

British reaction
The Japanese inflicted disproportionate damage on the enemy. They damaged port facilities, sank one carrier and two cruisers, destroyed a third of enemy ground-based fighters and nearly all of the enemy ground-based strike aircraft. In addition, 23 merchant ships, totalling 112,312 tons, were sunk, including those by the separate Japanese Malay Force. In return, the Japanese lost only 18 aircraft (six fighters, ten dive-bombers and two high-level bombers), with damage to about 31 more. Conversely, they failed to destroy, or even locate, the main bulk of the British Eastern Fleet.

The British interpreted their position as precarious. Ceylon and the Eastern Fleet were required to safeguard the sea lines of communications through the Indian Ocean. The British expected the Japanese to continue threatening these lines. SIGINT suggested that the Japanese were preparing a deliberate advance across the Indian Ocean. The raid demonstrated that the RAF was too weak to defend Ceylon and the naval anchorages, and that the navy was ill-prepared to meet a Japanese carrier force.

The Eastern Fleet transferred its main base to Kilindini, Kenya in East Africa, temporarily ceding the eastern Indian Ocean to the Japanese; from there it continued contesting control of the central Indian Ocean on better terms. Force A, including its two aircraft carriers, Indomitable and Formidable, retired to Bombay, and Somerville regularly deployed a fast carrier force to the central Indian Ocean over the next six months, during which he operated from or near Ceylon for nearly half that time. On 18 April, naval planning accorded the Eastern Fleet the highest priority for reinforcement, which also included transferring most of the carriers from the Home Fleet and the Mediterranean, with the intention of returning to Ceylon in September.

By June, Ceylon was defended by three RAF squadrons (64 aircraft, plus reserves), three strike squadrons (including one of Beauforts), and much improved radar and anti-aircraft defences. Ground defences were manned by two Australian army brigades.

The invasion scare was short-lived. British intelligence detected the movement of the Japanese carrier force eastward in mid-April, and their deployment in the Pacific in mid-May. After the Battle of Midway in June, it was realized that there was no longer the threat of major Japanese naval activity in the Indian Ocean. In September, British intelligence predicted Japan would go over to the defensive. As a result, the Eastern Fleet was not reinforced as planned and, instead, shrank after early July.

Japanese reaction
The Japanese did not exploit their victory as the British feared. The decision to postpone major operations in the Indian Ocean was upheld. The Japanese aircraft carriers required maintenance and replenishment after months of intensive operations, and there was already difficulty in maintaining the strength of frontline air units. Nagumo and officers such as Mitsuo Fuchida (commanding Akagi's air group) felt that the losses inflicted on the British did not justify the loss of experienced Japanese air crews. Japanese attention also lay elsewhere. In early May, Japanese carriers fought the Battle of the Coral Sea in the southwest Pacific, followed in June by the Battle of Midway. In both cases, losses constrained Japanese options further.

In June, the IJA developed a plan for a major offensive in the Indian Ocean, including an invasion of Ceylon. The Germans were advancing in North Africa, which made an Axis link-up in the Middle East attractive. Resource constraints forced the IJN to reject it, especially once the Guadalcanal Campaign started.

Subsequently, the limit of Japanese operations in the Indian Ocean was against trade using submarines and armed merchant cruisers. Notably, a submarine group patrolling off East Africa attacked the harbour at Diego-Suarez, Madagascar, while the Allies were capturing the island. Ironically, the Allies were motivated by fears that the Japanese might establish a base there to attack trade. Overall, Japanese attacks on trade enjoyed some success, but after 1942 the presence of major Japanese naval units in the Indian Ocean virtually ceased.

Criticism of Nagumo
Nagumo's leadership has been characterized by Andrew Boyd as rigid and unimaginative, and contributed to the escape of the British Eastern Fleet. The manoeuvring of his fleet was mainly to facilitate strikes on Colombo and Trincomalee; the possibility that the enemy might be at sea was apparently not seriously considered. He failed to appreciate that the direction that Dorsetshire ' s force was sailing, and the later appearance of British carrier-based aircraft, were related. Furthermore, due to limited aerial reconnaissance, Nagumo had little concrete information of what was around him, especially to his front and exposed flanks. He was not served by the confidence that there was nothing else to be found outside of the few searches made.

The limited air searches conducted at the start of the battle reflected contemporary IJN practice, where the intensity of air searches was scaled according to expected threats. The stronger morning search on 6 April reflected the suspicion that British carriers might be present. The intensity of later air searches dropped off when the British carriers were not found and there was little expectation of encountering them. Ultimately, all navies suffered from inadequate air search planning during this period.

Problems with Japanese carrier operations
The raid also provided early examples of problems with Japanese carrier operations. Inadequate aerial reconnaissance failing to locate the enemy fleet in a timely fashion, the difficulty of rearming aircraft for a different mission at short notice, and the penetration of the CAP by enemy aircraft due to the lack of radar-directed fighter control would all recur at the Battle of Midway.

Criticism of Somerville
Somerville's leadership was characterized by a willingness to take risks, bordering on recklessness.

The initial deployment of the fleet on 30 March endangered the British fleet in multiple ways. Somerville was relying on radar – manned by inexperienced personnel – to locate the enemy and facilitate night strikes. If the Japanese approached as expected from the southeast and the British failed to find the Japanese before dawn, the distance between the two fleets would be no more than 100 mi; the British would be detected by Japanese aerial reconnaissance at dawn and be subject to air attack for the entire day. Much the same could have been expected had Somerville still been on station when the Japanese arrived – as they did – from the southwest. Somerville's decision to refuel at Port T – rather than on Ceylon – on 2 April allowed the Eastern Fleet to avoid Nagumo a few days later, and likely saved the Eastern Fleet from destruction.

The failure of the Japanese fleet to appear on 1–2 April led Somerville to mistakenly believe that the entirety, rather than a part, of Allied intelligence concerning Operation C was flawed. As a result he detached Cornwall, Dorsetshire, and Hermes, which were subsequently lost after being sent into areas overflown by Japanese aerial reconnaissance.

Andrew Boyd notes: "[Somerville] underestimated the risks he was running at least up to dusk on 5 April. He drew over-optimistic conclusions from the available intelligence, he grossly underestimated IJN air strength. and he hazarded his fleet in direct contravention of his instructions from the chiefs of staff. Ceylon was not his finest hour."

The disquieted Admiralty broadly agreed.

Somerville faced challenges not experienced by the RN in the Atlantic or Mediterranean. Japanese air superiority made it difficult to scout, close, and attack during the day. Radar-enabled night attack was the only viable offensive option. This was a high-risk strategy. A combination of careful positioning, luck, and Japanese errors nearly produced the preconditions for a strike on the night of 5 April; the enemy was within 125 mi – 1-hour flight range in an Albacore – but accurate information on the enemy's vector was missing. Even then, it required experienced air crews to find their targets at night, using radar with a range of just 20 mi and new tactics.

title: Indian Ocean raid