Résumé
In geography, a sound is a smaller body of water usually connected to a sea or an ocean. In English usage, the word sound refers to an inlet that is deeper than a bight and wider than a fjord; and refers to a narrow sea channel or an ocean channel between two land masses, such as a strait); and also refers to the lagoon between a barrier island and the mainland. A sound is often formed by the seas flooding a river valley. This produces a long inlet where the sloping valley hillsides descend to sea-level and continue beneath the water to form a sloping sea floor. These sounds are more appropriately called ria. The Marlborough Sounds in New Zealand are good examples of this type of formation. Sometimes a sound is produced by a glacier carving out a valley on a coast then receding, or the sea invading a glacier valley. The glacier produces a sound that often has steep, near vertical sides that extend deep underwater. The sea floor is often flat and deeper at the landward end than the seaward end, due to glacial moraine deposits. This type of sound is more properly termed a fjord (or fiord). The sounds in Fiordland, New Zealand, have been formed this way. A sound generally connotes a protected anchorage. It can be part of most large islands. In the more general northern European usage, a sound is a strait or the narrowest part of a strait. In Scandinavia and around the Baltic Sea, there are more than a hundred straits named Sund, mostly named for the island they separate from the continent or a larger island. In contrast, the Sound is the common international short name for Øresund, the narrow stretch of water that separates Denmark and Sweden, and is the main waterway between the Baltic Sea and the North Sea. It is also a colloquial short name, among others, for Plymouth Sound, England. In areas explored by the British in the late 18th century, particularly the northwest coast of North America, the term "sound" was applied to inlets containing large islands, such as Howe Sound in British Columbia and Puget Sound in the U.
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