Search found 180 matches
- Mon Sep 30, 2019 6:02 pm
- Forum: Languages
- Topic: Amusing Language Names
- Replies: 162
- Views: 160773
Re: Amusing Language Names
…Getting back on track, I would like to submit that I have been always amused by "self-describing" language names such as Bandjalang, Bambalang, Gunbarlang, Tanglang, Camling, Waling, Wutung, Kalkatungu.
- Thu Sep 19, 2019 1:58 pm
- Forum: Conlangery
- Topic: Sound Change Quickie Thread
- Replies: 1333
- Views: 823498
- Mon Sep 16, 2019 3:23 am
- Forum: Languages
- Topic: Rhoticization
- Replies: 27
- Views: 19794
Re: Rhoticization
I don't know about the rest of it, but there is at least one Dravidian language with two phonemic degrees of vowel retroflexion, Badaga . (I don't know if there are others, I only know about Badaga because of the UCLA Phonetics Lab page.) This is an interesting claim, but then the UCLA clips don't ...
- Mon Sep 16, 2019 2:46 am
- Forum: Languages
- Topic: Alveolar Non-sibilant and Tapped Fricatives
- Replies: 3
- Views: 5748
Re: Alveolar Non-sibilant and Tapped Fricatives
The exact POA is hard to tell from these clips, but they're very clearly apical fricatives. The laminal equivalents (as used in Icelandic) are much more similar to usual dental [θ ð]. The notion of "tapped fricative" is new to me and, frankly, sounds nonsensical. The voiced example here se...
- Fri Sep 13, 2019 6:58 am
- Forum: Languages
- Topic: The Great Macrofamily thread: Indo-Uralic, Altaic, Eurasiatic, Nostratic etc.
- Replies: 263
- Views: 164285
Re: The Great Macrofamily thread: Indo-Uralic, Altaic, Eurasiatic, Nostratic etc.
*looks at Albanian and Armenian Swadesh list...* ...OK no, you're probably right. And a lot of the cognates we'd find between Italian and Albanian would actually be loanwords from Latin... Although it does seem a bit suspicious that we happen to only have the Armenian and Albanian of the family... ...
- Mon Sep 09, 2019 2:45 am
- Forum: Languages
- Topic: Linguistic Miscellany Thread
- Replies: 4725
- Views: 2083645
Re: Linguistic Miscellany Thread
Finnish distinguishes inclusive ( tai ) and exclusive ( vai ); That's not quite the distinction, it's one of pragmatics: as a conjunction vai is primarily used for questions with options, tai otherwise (the non-conjunction uses are not relevant at all probably). The former pretty much implies exclu...
- Sun Sep 08, 2019 10:49 am
- Forum: Conlangery
- Topic: Sound Change Quickie Thread
- Replies: 1333
- Views: 823498
Re: Sound Change Quickie Thread
Is i a u>e o o/_C*V where V is an identical vowel. realistic Identical to the input or identical to the output? Vowel assimilation will make some sense almost always.* Dissimilation might be a harder sell in this case. If it's the former, I'd go a bit further even: if you have a change like i…e > e...
- Sat Sep 07, 2019 12:34 pm
- Forum: Languages
- Topic: The Great Proto-Indo-European Thread's Sequel
- Replies: 909
- Views: 1084833
Re: The Great Proto-Indo-European Thread's Sequel
About a dozen of Bomhard's proto-consonants are only based on the evidence of one branch; a few of these are nominally continued in a larger number, but in practice the overlap between their evidence is too small to make any difference. – alveolar vs. postalveolar sibilants *cʰ, *cʼ, *dz, *s | *čʰ, ...
- Sat Sep 07, 2019 4:57 am
- Forum: Conlangery
- Topic: Conlang Random Thread
- Replies: 3043
- Views: 2858060
Re: Conlang Random Thread
Some stuff put thru some sound changes on a whim, you can try hazarding a closer guess 
- Fri Sep 06, 2019 7:57 pm
- Forum: Conlangery
- Topic: Conlang Random Thread
- Replies: 3043
- Views: 2858060
Re: Conlang Random Thread
expris kisuney sibrin pyena mirey u bri akar yedas
nexert pagan trey u kayrimin inuras
xaynis zignasun nix yazar si nix yazard
- Tue Jul 30, 2019 1:53 pm
- Forum: Conlangery
- Topic: Sound Change Quickie Thread
- Replies: 1333
- Views: 823498
Re: Sound Change Quickie Thread
Yeah, Icelandic has instances of [tj] that go back to Proto-Germanic (roughly 2000 years), e.g. *hwatjanan > hvetja 'to sharpen' (the actual English cognate is "to whet"). There's also an area in northwestern Finland that has retained /t̪j/ for the last ~2000 years, though almost everywhe...
- Wed Jun 19, 2019 1:47 pm
- Forum: Languages
- Topic: Can phonemic mergers reverse?
- Replies: 52
- Views: 31846
Re: Can phonemic mergers reverse?
So did RP spontaneously reverse this sound change - without, so far as I'm aware, any hypercorrection - or is SSBE not actually descended from RP at all, but from a very similar and unrecorded 'vulgar English', as it were, that never underwent these shifts? I think the CLOTH-THOUGHT merger only aff...
- Wed Jun 19, 2019 1:24 pm
- Forum: Languages
- Topic: Orange in French
- Replies: 14
- Views: 10120
Re: Orange in French
Tom Lehrer managed to rhyme "orange." You need the Boston accent, though, and some maybe weird syllabification. "Eating an orange while making love leads to bizarre enj- oyment thereof." Ah yes, rhyming by linebreaks, I've seen that before For the word silver , finding a rhyme r...
- Sun May 19, 2019 7:41 am
- Forum: Languages
- Topic: Voynich manuscript deciphered again
- Replies: 35
- Views: 24416
Re: Voynich manuscript deciphered again
We can't rule out that some lost linguistic lineage survived just long enough in a remote valley in the Alps or the Appenines or wherever, such as a descendant of Etruscan Was that a reference to this , or a serious theory? If the former, heh. If the latter, yeah. I wasn't even aware of that one! I...
- Mon May 06, 2019 12:19 pm
- Forum: Languages
- Topic: Words perceived as opposites/antonyms that aren't.
- Replies: 22
- Views: 16987
Re: Words perceived as opposites/antonyms that aren't.
"Broad-leaved (tree)" makes IMO a better conjugate for "conifer", seeing how these do not overlap; "deciduous" does, viz. larches. But I get the feeling this is not really thought of as a single concept in English. (Finnish has the somewhat succinct lehtipuu 'leaf tree'...
- Fri May 03, 2019 10:05 am
- Forum: Languages
- Topic: The Great Proto-Indo-European Thread's Sequel
- Replies: 909
- Views: 1084833
Re: The Great Proto-Indo-European Thread's Sequel
I think he meant loans, not genetics. Though few words with laryngeals are thought to be loans. Fair. Indeed, I think there are quite a few Neolithic Wanderwörter in both IE and Semitic. I don't know, though, how many of those include laryngeals. Bomhard has the following examples for *χ ~ *h₂ (not...
- Fri May 03, 2019 9:06 am
- Forum: Languages
- Topic: The Great Proto-Indo-European Thread's Sequel
- Replies: 909
- Views: 1084833
Re: The Great Proto-Indo-European Thread's Sequel
Anthony Yates recently argues that the reason *χ ≤ *h₂ was geminated but *s wasn't is that *s was unspecified for voice, while *χ contrasted with *ʁ ≤ *h₃. I suppose this could be taken to imply that there was an (allophonic) change *-s- > *-z- before the voice-to-gemination shift he defends. (new ...
- Fri May 03, 2019 8:09 am
- Forum: Conlangery
- Topic: Sound Change Quickie Thread
- Replies: 1333
- Views: 823498
- Thu May 02, 2019 3:36 pm
- Forum: Languages
- Topic: The Great Proto-Indo-European Thread's Sequel
- Replies: 909
- Views: 1084833
Re: The Great Proto-Indo-European Thread's Sequel
Anthony Yates recently argues that the reason *χ ≤ *h₂ was geminated but *s wasn't is that *s was unspecified for voice, while *χ contrasted with *ʁ ≤ *h₃. I suppose this could be taken to imply that there was an (allophonic) change *-s- > *-z- before the voice-to-gemination shift he defends. (new n...
- Thu May 02, 2019 3:22 pm
- Forum: Conlangery
- Topic: Sound Change Quickie Thread
- Replies: 1333
- Views: 823498
Re: Sound Change Quickie Thread
In Estonian this only occurs for C+/r l/ clusters (and C+j clusters turn into /Ci/), but in Hungarian this occurs for most heterorganic consonant clusters. The so-called "syncope stems" hence also include plenty of level or falling-sonority consonant clusters, e.g. from *rm: három : hárm(...