The minimal pair /ra-la/ can be cued by the direction of the third formant transition alone. When the portion of the acoustic signal common to the members of the pair (the base) is presented to one ear and the F3 transition differentiating the members of the pair is presented to the other ear, /ra/ or /lla/ is heard contingent upon the direction of the F3 transition. Interestingly, the speech sound is typically heard on the side to which the base is presented, and in addition a nonspeech sound (typically described as a frog croak or a cricket chirp) is also reported on the side which received the isolated F3 transition. Thus the isolated F3 transition is heard as a speech sound and a non speech sound simultaneously. This phenomenon is similar to one briefly described by Rand [J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 55, 678–680 (1974)] in a study of stop consonant transitions. When the F3 transition changes in intensity listeners report hearing a change in the loudness of the nonspeech percept. To elicit reports of changes in the loudness of the speech it is necessary to change the intensity of the base. Thus the intensity of the F3 transition cue—the only cue to the difference between /r/ and /l/—does not appear to affect the perceived loudness of the phonetic segments or of the syllable. Further studies were performed to investigate some of the limits of this phenomenon. [Work supported by NINCDS and NICHD.]