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There are 25 messages in this issue.
Topics in this digest:
1. Re: Japanese Long Consonants
From: Roger Mills <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
2. Re: Japanese Long Consonants
From: Sai Emrys <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
3. Re: Japanese Long Consonants
From: Sai Emrys <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
4. Re: Japanese Long Consonants
From: Philip Newton <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
5. Re: Anybody on AIM
From: Sai Emrys <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
6. Re: Japanese Long Consonants
From: Sai Emrys <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
7. Re: Japanese Long Consonants
From: Philip Newton <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
8. Re: (Mis)Naming a Language
From: Andreas Johansson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
9. Re: Hobbits spoke Indonesian!
From: Wesley Parish <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
10. Re: Japanese Long Consonants
From: Chris Bates <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
11. Re: Japanese Long Consonants
From: Chris Bates <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
12. Going to be missing for a few days
From: Chris Bates <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
13. Re: (Mis)Naming a Language
From: "Thomas R. Wier" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
14. Re: (Mis)Naming a Language
From: Andreas Johansson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
15. Re: Hobbits spoke Indonesian!
From: Andreas Johansson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
16. Re: USAGE: name pronunciation
From: "Mark J. Reed" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
17. Re: (Mis)Naming a Language
From: John Cowan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
18. Re: Hobbits spoke Indonesian!
From: Chris Bates <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
19. Re: Japanese Long Consonants
From: Philip Newton <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
20. Re: Hobbits spoke ?
From: Ray Brown <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
21. Re: (Mis)Naming a Language
From: "B. Garcia" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
22. Re: Japanese Long Consonants
From: Muke Tever <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
23. Re: Information on future English language development?
From: John Cowan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
24. Re: Hobbits spoke Indonesian!
From: Rodlox <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
25. Re: Hobbits spoke ?
From: Rodlox <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
Message: 1
Date: Fri, 29 Oct 2004 00:53:28 -0400
From: Roger Mills <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Japanese Long Consonants
Jeff Jones wrote:
>Japanese long consonants come mainly from /t/ + consonant AFAICT.
I know that's how they're indicated in writing (with the "tsu" character),
but how did they actually arise historically? From clusters? For ex., IIRC
"Nippon" is a compound of two Chinese words-- something like ni- '???' + pun
'origin'(?) Perhaps the ni- part ended originally in a C? (Of course,
"Nihon" also occurs.)
Re long voiced C:
> Japanese *does* allow them, e.g. beddo -- a Western style bed (IIRC),
Could that be an attempt to show the [E] vowel quality?
>even
> if they don't occur in native words. And I've seen "rr" in SinoJapanese.
How about long nasals, long /s/? Fascinating language, I wish I'd had
time/opportunity to learn it............among many others :-(
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Message: 2
Date: Fri, 29 Oct 2004 01:09:21 -0400
From: Sai Emrys <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Japanese Long Consonants
>From my somewhat more recent knowledge of Japanese:
Japanese has long vowels, and psuedo-long consonants.
Long vowels are actually fairly common, and there are many minimal pairs.
They're written as /cv/+/v/, with the second V being changed to /u/ if the
first one is /o/ or /u/. They are two "beats" long, and depending on the
accent there may or may not be an audible beat inbetween the two.
There are "long" consonants; these are written as /small-tsu/+/cv/. They
work moreorless like the shadda in Arabic; the initial part of the consonant
is pronounced, held, and finished. E.g., Kappa = ka-smalltsu-pa = ka, hold
lip-press of p, release. ("Smalltsu" is just the letter 'tsu', written small
and next to the preceeding letter. It's not pronounced 'tsu' at all in this
form.)
That's also more rarely used as a glottal stop at the end of an explanation,
e.g., 'a-smalltsu!'
Dunno if any of that matters to your implementation or not, but there ya go.
- Sai
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Message: 3
Date: Fri, 29 Oct 2004 01:23:15 -0400
From: Sai Emrys <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Japanese Long Consonants
>Re long voiced C:
>> Japanese *does* allow them, e.g. beddo -- a Western style bed (IIRC),
>
>Could that be an attempt to show the [E] vowel quality?
Not AFAIK. It's written 'be smalltsu do'. The smalltsu only affects the
following letter; if there isn't one it's a glottal stop. I've never heard
it change the vowel preceeding.
>>even if they don't occur in native words.
They do. E.g. "shikko", knee-walking.
>How about long nasals, long /s/? Fascinating language, I wish I'd had
>time/opportunity to learn it............among many others :-(
Nasal yes - e.g. "konnichiwa" (good morning), which is written 'ko n ni chi
ha' (the ha is being used as a grammatical marker, which is an irregular
pronounciation). I can't think of any use that would have smalltsu + n/m,
though there may be. (Syllabic n is sometimes pronounced m...)
S too - "sesseto", assidiously.
- Sai
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Message: 4
Date: Fri, 29 Oct 2004 07:19:23 +0200
From: Philip Newton <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Japanese Long Consonants
On Fri, 29 Oct 2004 00:53:28 -0400, Roger Mills <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> how did they actually arise historically? From clusters? For ex., IIRC
> "Nippon" is a compound of two Chinese words-- something like ni- '???' + pun
> 'origin'(?) Perhaps the ni- part ended originally in a C?
*nods*. It's "yat" in Cantonese IIRC, so I suppose something like
"nit" may be likely, or possibly "ni?".
AFAIK, final stops in Chinese were all three of -p -t -k; final -p
often becomes -u (< -fu < -pu) in Japanese, -t becomes -tsu or -chi,
and -k often becomes -ku; -tsu -chi -ku are the most common endings
turning into double consonants in compounds, though -ku turns into
-kk- only if the next bit starts with k-, I believe. (For example,
gakkou "school" from characters pronounced, in isolation, gaku + kou.)
> How about long nasals,
I'm not sure whether that counts, but /nn/ sequences do occur, but
AFAIK they're limited to cases where one morpheme ends in /-n/ and the
next begins with /n-/, and they're never written with smalltsu.
> long /s/?
This does exist (e.g. kissaten "caf�"), and is written with smalltsu.
Cheers,
--
Philip Newton <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Watch the Reply-To!
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Message: 5
Date: Fri, 29 Oct 2004 01:36:33 -0400
From: Sai Emrys <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Anybody on AIM
Me too, me too. *cough*
AIM: saizai
YIM: saizai1
MSN: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
ICQ: 75598651
And IRC sometimes too. Yay Trillian. ;-)
I'm on pretty much all day, but I'm only at my computer in the evenings PST.
- Sai
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Message: 6
Date: Fri, 29 Oct 2004 01:38:53 -0400
From: Sai Emrys <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Japanese Long Consonants
>That's also more rarely used as a glottal stop at the end of an
explanation,
>e.g., 'a-smalltsu!'
Er, I meant to say "exclamation".
- Sai
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Message: 7
Date: Fri, 29 Oct 2004 08:26:08 +0200
From: Philip Newton <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Japanese Long Consonants
On Fri, 29 Oct 2004 01:23:15 -0400, Sai Emrys <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> >Re long voiced C:
> >> Japanese *does* allow them, e.g. beddo -- a Western style bed (IIRC),
> >>even if they don't occur in native words.
>
> They do. E.g. "shikko", knee-walking.
That's not voiced! "They" was referring to long voiced stops.
> S too - "sesseto", assidiously.
That looks onomatopoetic to me; "massao" (deep blue) or "kissaten"
(caf�) may be better examples. Or something like "sessen" (tangent /
snow line).
Cheers,
--
Philip Newton <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Watch the Reply-To!
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Message: 8
Date: Fri, 29 Oct 2004 10:05:33 +0200
From: Andreas Johansson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: (Mis)Naming a Language
Quoting Benct Philip Jonsson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>:
> Andreas Johansson wrote:
>
> > Quoting Benct Philip Jonsson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>:
> >
> >
> >>My conlang Sohlob was originally _Sahrab_, but then I discovered
> >>that this is a Pakistani surname, so lest I offend some Mr/Ms
> >>Sahrab I changed the name to _Sahlab_, only to discover that this
> >>is a (modern) Egyptian drink of some kind(*), so I changed it
> >>again to _Sohlob_, this time Googling to make sure it didn't exist.
> >>Somehow the Egyptian association stuck though, for the conculture
> >>and the land where it is located bears som similarity to ancient
> >>Egypt.
> >>
> >>(* I also had troubles keeping apart the lang's /r_0/ and /S/ in
> >>my own pronunciation, so I changed all instances of /r_0/ to /K/
> >>which is a cooler sound overall. Later I changed /S/ to /s\/ --
> >>a much more distinctive sound -- and resurrected the /r_0/ ~ /K/
> >>distinction in a dialect of the language, which has three dialects,
> >>a fourth in the works and a sister language planned.)
> >
> >
> > Nevertheless, the thing the name always make me think of is Shelob. No
> offense
> > to arachnophobe sohlobophones!
>
> How can you possibly confuse [sQ'KQb_0] and ['Si:lQb]?
a) The spellings are rather more similar, and this is a written medium.
b) I'm somewhat dyslectic.
Andreas
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Message: 9
Date: Fri, 29 Oct 2004 21:38:44 +1300
From: Wesley Parish <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Hobbits spoke Indonesian!
On Fri, 29 Oct 2004 05:14, Chris Bates wrote:
> Rodlox wrote:
> > according to recent archeological discoveries, it is now known that
> > Hobbits existed in Indonesia...so, which language do you think they'd
> > have known? :)
>
> The common tongue of course! No... they did find some simple tools with
> them and are suggested that despite their brain size (grapefruit sized
> apparently) they did use tools. But language is another matter, and I'm
> not sure language on our level is possible with a brain the size of a
> monkey's.
This is inaccurate. The brain size is approx. 380 cc, chimp-sized. However,
it is the brain of a homo erectus derivation. Which implies it has had
several hundred thousand years worth of homo erectus tool use and the
subsequent brain development. Not forgetting, the need to manage vastly more
complex social structures than would have been common to australopithecines.
And they were three feet high, give or take a few inches. At slighly less
than six feet we have a brain about 1300 cc. I would estimate that with a
brain about a third of our size, and a body about half, they had enough spare
capacity to manage language more complex than the chimpanzees have been shown
capable of mastering - consider that a chimp needs that 380+ cc to manage
society, and life jumping through trees, and so forth, and the Hobbits no
longer had to consider jumping through trees ... that would've freed up about
60 cc, at least, for language use.
> Some language perhaps, but I wouldn't expect anything as
> complex as a natural language that's spoken by homo sapiens if I
> travelled back in time. :)
--
Wesley Parish
* * *
Clinersterton beademung - in all of love. RIP James Blish
* * *
Mau e ki, "He aha te mea nui?"
You ask, "What is the most important thing?"
Maku e ki, "He tangata, he tangata, he tangata."
I reply, "It is people, it is people, it is people."
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Message: 10
Date: Fri, 29 Oct 2004 08:38:28 +0000
From: Chris Bates <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Japanese Long Consonants
>
> From: Jeffrey Jones <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> Date: 2004/10/28 Thu PM 06:41:42 GMT
> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Subject: Re: Japanese Long Consonants
>
> On Thu, 28 Oct 2004 16:45:52 +0100, Chris Bates
> <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> >
> > I've read that Japanese Long consonants are actually a glottal stop and
> > another consonant together,
>
> Not in any Japanese that I've ever heard (admittedly limited to Japanese
> classes 20+ years ago, and mostly older people), but that doesn't affect
> your conlang proposal. Glottal stop + consonant could be used and long
> consonants could be derived from that. Japanese long consonants come mainly
> from /t/ + consonant AFAICT.
Guess I was wrong then. :) I found a webpage that claimed that after seeing it written
on the Japanese page on Wikipedia and looking it up.
>
> > which I guess is why I find it easier to hear the difference in Japanese
> > than in a language like Hungarian (where the long consonants aren't
> > formed by adding glottal stops). I was thinking of introducing into a
> > language a system of three accents:
> >
> > unaccented eg i short
> > acute accent eg � long
> > grave accent eg � short, terminated by glottal stop.
> >
> > So for instance I guess nippon written using this system would be n�pon.
> > But I'm not sure about this... I'm not sure if I should have long vowels
> > that can terminate with a glottal stop as well.
>
> If you do, you could use the circumflex.
>
THat's what I was thinking, but to be honest I'm not sure I want to do long vowels +
glottal stops. My brain keeps trying to cut them off early and make them short.
> > I was thinking that this system could let me do some interesting sound
> > changes... like for instance, d -> D inside words, like in spanish,
> > but the change is blocked by a glottal stop (which later gets dropped),
> > so I could have:
> >
> > d after any vowel without a grave accent: D
> > d word initially or after a vowel with a grave accent: d
> >
> > Since these might be contrasted in some pairs, it wouldn't just be a
> > phonetic rule. I was thinking of a whole raft of similar changes I could
> > do that the glottal stops would influence, so the accents would alter
> > the pronounciation of the following consonant as well as the length of
> > the vowel.
>
> This also suggests a possibility for an initial mutation. I've done
> something vaguely like this in Rubaga. I mean using accent marks on the
> vowel to indicate consonant quality as well as vowel length, although there
> was no glottal stop involved.
>
That was part of my plan. :) The language I'm designing has something of a trigger
system, and I'm also introducing mutations etc... I'm going for a Tagalog/Welsh/a few
bits from other languages hybrid, which I tried once years ago but didn't quite finish
to my satisfaction.
> > Although... Japanese doesn't allow "long" voiced stops I don't think,
> > although if I'm doing them right I don't have any problem pronouncing
> > them.
>
> Japanese *does* allow them, e.g. beddo -- a Western style bed (IIRC), even
> if they don't occur in native words. And I've seen "rr" in SinoJapanese.
>
That's okay then. :)
-----------------------------------------
Email provided by http://www.ntlhome.com/
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Message: 11
Date: Fri, 29 Oct 2004 08:44:01 +0000
From: Chris Bates <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Japanese Long Consonants
>
> From: Roger Mills <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> Date: 2004/10/28 Thu PM 04:31:38 GMT
> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Subject: Re: Japanese Long Consonants
>
> Chris Bates wrote:
>
> > I've read that Japanese Long consonants are actually a glottal stop and
> > another consonant together, which I guess is why I find it easier to
> > hear the difference in Japanese than in a language like Hungarian (where
> > the long consonants aren't formed by adding glottal stops).
>
> In the languages of South Sulawesi (Indonesia) that I worked with, the
> geminate stops could be realized as either [?C] or [C:]; for voiceless stops
> it was hard to hear much difference; for the voiced ones, a quite noticeable
> difference, and the [C:] version was considered "more elegant".
Well, I am planning on ditching the glottal stops at some point, I simply want them to
generate certain phonological changes as the language evolves, and also to explain
peculiarities in the writing system. :)
>
> I was
> > thinking of introducing into a language a system of three accents:
> >
> > unaccented eg i short
> > acute accent eg � long
> > grave accent eg � short, terminated by glottal stop.
> >
> > So for instance I guess nippon written using this system would be n�pon.
> > But I'm not sure about this... I'm not sure if I should have long vowels
> > that can terminate with a glottal stop as well.
>
> In the SSul languages, there was correlation between long vowel + 1
> consonant, vs. short vowel + geminate, so: /sapa/ ['sa:pa] vs. /sappa/
> ['sa?pa ~ 'sap:a]. But syllable weight/mora distinctions were not
> significant there, as they may be in Japanese.
>
> Some other language might very well have the long C conditioned by the short
> vowel, however.
>
Thanks for the examples. At least I know that the system I'm proposing is semi
plausable. Can these long stops occur without a preceding vowel though? The system
I've suggested is such that you can't get "long" consonants except post vocally,
mainly because of my own difficulty pronouncing consonant clusters with glottal stops
in the middle of them.
>
> I was thinking that this
> > system could let me do some interesting sound changes... like for
> > instance, d -> D inside words, like in spanish, but the change is
> > blocked by a glottal stop (which later gets dropped), so I could have:
> >
> > d after any vowel without a grave accent: D
> > d word initially or after a vowel with a grave accent: d
>
> Something similar occurs in various Indonesian languages, usually after the
> schwa vowel (or its reflex), so it's possible to have e.g. /sara/ < *sada
> vs. /sada/ < [EMAIL PROTECTED] It suggests that there was something phonologically
> "odd" about the historic *@ (which is indeed the cause of most of the
> gemination in the SSul languages)
>
Again, thanks. :)
> Of course a phonemic [?C ~C:] can arise from old consonant clusters too, if
> your lang. is going to permit them. Example: Bugis sad:a ~sa?da 'voice' <
> **sabda (Saskrit); Makassarese je?ne 'water' probably cognate with Ml.
> [EMAIL PROTECTED] 'clear'; it also seems to account for some irregularities in
> Tagalog:
> araw 'sun, day' (it "ought" to be *alaw) vs. related langs. aldaw, adlaw,
> presumably < PPh. **aldaw (AN [EMAIL PROTECTED], where the *al- _may_ be a prefix)
>
Since most of the glottal stops are going to vanish in the future, as the main reason
I want them is to explain certain sound changes and peculiarities in the writing
system, I don't think I'll have such a contrast, but the loss of the glottal stops
might produce true long consonants in some situations. :)
> > Since these might be contrasted in some pairs, it wouldn't just be a
> > phonetic rule. I was thinking of a whole raft of similar changes I could
> > do that the glottal stops would influence, so the accents would alter
> > the pronounciation of the following consonant as well as the length of
> > the vowel.
>
> Yes indeed; geminate/long consonants are fun.
>
> Although... Japanese doesn't allow "long" voiced stops I
> > don't think, although if I'm doing them right I don't have any problem
> > pronouncing them.
> >
> Is that true, O Japanophones? If so, I wonder why.
>
-----------------------------------------
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Message: 12
Date: Fri, 29 Oct 2004 08:47:40 +0000
From: Chris Bates <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Going to be missing for a few days
Sorry to drop out in the middle of the discussion I started on Japanese long
consonants, but unfortunately my comp blew up last night. Well..... made a burning
smell then stopped working. It'll take me a couple of days to get the bits and fix it,
so until then I won't be posting on the list. At least I'll have more time to work on
my new language. :) Sorry, and hear from you all again soon.
-----------------------------------------
Email provided by http://www.ntlhome.com/
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Message: 13
Date: Fri, 29 Oct 2004 04:55:16 -0500
From: "Thomas R. Wier" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: (Mis)Naming a Language
From: Carsten Becker <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
On Thu, 28 Oct 2004 09:34:35 -0600, Muke Tever <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> > and a Rhaeto-Romance language more commonly in English called "Ladin".
>
> Heh, you Americans would pronounce "Ladin" and "Latin" the same when
> speaking uncarefully ["l&:4In], wouldn't you?
As others have pointed out, this is not the case. The conditioning
environment is more complicated than usually put (it also apparently
involves stress), but the phonetic tap [r] (NOT [d]) never surfaces
before syllabic nasal [n=], as in these words. There, and only there
AFAICT, American English has a glottal stop.
Well, I'm off to the Algonquian Conference in Madison, WI. I'll see
y'all's posts on Sunday.
==========================================================================
Thomas Wier "I find it useful to meet my subjects personally,
Dept. of Linguistics because our secret police don't get it right
University of Chicago half the time." -- octogenarian Sheikh Zayed of
1010 E. 59th Street Abu Dhabi, to a French reporter.
Chicago, IL 60637
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Message: 14
Date: Fri, 29 Oct 2004 12:20:31 +0200
From: Andreas Johansson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: (Mis)Naming a Language
Quoting John Cowan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>:
> Herman Miller scripsit:
>
> > Later I
> > found out that Rissa is the scientific name of a kind of gull called a
> > kittiwake (two species: black-legged, R. tridactyla, and red-legged, R.
> > brevirostris).
>
> It turns out that even Linnaean names aren't absolutely unique: the
> same name can be shared by an animal taxon and a plant taxon.
> See http://home.earthlink.net/~misaak/taxonomy.html for such examples
> as _Cannabis_, which is a genus of birds as well as of the well-known
> and widely cultivated plants. In principle, I suppose, there could
> even be a plant called _Boa constrictor_.
If memory serves, B. constrictor became Constrictor constrictor when they
reformed the taxonomy a while ago, so a plant called B. constrictor would most
likely be alone with that name.
Interestingly, prokaryots are not allowed to get names used by a plant or
animal. I'm sure they're most miffed.
Andreas
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Message: 15
Date: Fri, 29 Oct 2004 12:22:34 +0200
From: Andreas Johansson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Hobbits spoke Indonesian!
Quoting Roger Mills <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>:
> Joe wrote:
> > Rodlox wrote:
> >
> > > according to recent archeological discoveries, it is now known that
> > > Hobbits existed in Indonesia...so, which language do you think they'd
> > > have known? :)
> > >
> > 'Hobbits', you mean?
> >
> > Well, if the local legends are true, they had their own, 'murmuring'
> > language. How likely that is, I don't know.
> >
> Hmm. If, as is proposed, the isolated island environment led to their
> miniaturization, the perhaps their language also got miniaturized :-)))
>
> This is a fascinating and remarkable find, if true. There must have been
> some contact, somewhere along the way, with Papuan/Australian peoples (who
> reached their modern locations at least 30-40,000 years ago). Maybe these
> "Hobbits" were a group that stayed behind during one or another migration,
> then became reduced in size and (apparently) skeletally different due to
> isolated environment +some bad gene(s) +interbreeding +poor nutrition over
> the millennia. In that case, their language would have been Papuanoid or
> Australoid.
They're supposedly erectids, so they presumably had spent the better part of
forever in Indonesia when the ancestors of the Papuans and Australians came
there.
Andreas
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Message: 16
Date: Fri, 29 Oct 2004 06:56:47 -0400
From: "Mark J. Reed" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: USAGE: name pronunciation
On Thu, Oct 28, 2004 at 09:11:14PM +0200, Philip Newton wrote:
> On Thu, 28 Oct 2004 11:49:15 -0400, Roger Mills <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> > Along with the Featherstonehaughs [f&nSO] (IIRC) and the Beauchamps
> > [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
> And the Marjoribanks [mA:tSb&nks], some of whom might live in Beaulieu
> [bju:li] or Loughborough ["[EMAIL PROTECTED]@].
Nah, "Loughborough" is just plain old ordinary everyday English
pronunciation. I mean, without ever running into that word before,
["[EMAIL PROTECTED]@] would be my second guess as to how to pronounce it (the
first having [laU] instead of [lVf]).
Whereas I would never have guessed anything but [,t&li@'fEr\o] for
"Taliaferro" before the first time I heard it pronounced (at a Billy
Joel concert, in fact; there was a Miss Talieferro singing backup,
and he introduced her, and I was looking at the program at the time and
quite surprised at the disconnect).
-Marcos
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Message: 17
Date: Fri, 29 Oct 2004 07:32:34 -0400
From: John Cowan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: (Mis)Naming a Language
Carsten Becker scripsit:
> Heh, you Americans would pronounce "Ladin" and "Latin" the same when
> speaking uncarefully ["l&:4In], wouldn't you?
No, in fact. "Latin" is pronounced [l&tn=], with nasal plosion, whereas
"Ladin" would be [l&4in] (except that I'd say [lAdin], actually).
A similarly contrasting pair that are not proper names would be "mitten"
(nasal plosion) vs. "midden" (flapped). Likewise, "metal" and "medal"
are flapped, but "meddle" gets lateral plosion.
--
"In my last lifetime, John Cowan
I believed in reincarnation; http://www.ccil.org/~cowan
in this lifetime, [EMAIL PROTECTED]
I don't." --Thiagi http://www.reutershealth.com
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Message: 18
Date: Fri, 29 Oct 2004 11:40:50 +0000
From: Chris Bates <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Hobbits spoke Indonesian!
I didn't say they would have no language, or only language at the same level as
chimps... I'm just not convinced that they would speak a language as complex as ours.
:) I was thinking somewhere between the two extremes. But we'll probably never know
unless they happen to have been advanced enough to leave written records for us, and
we're clever enough to decipher them, which is doubtful since even if such records
existed you usually need some knowledge of a related language to decipher a writing
system like that. I know they needed such knowledge to figure out the Egyptian
hieroglyphs.
>
> From: Wesley Parish <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> Date: 2004/10/29 Fri AM 08:38:44 GMT
> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Subject: Re: Hobbits spoke Indonesian!
>
> On Fri, 29 Oct 2004 05:14, Chris Bates wrote:
> > Rodlox wrote:
> > > according to recent archeological discoveries, it is now known that
> > > Hobbits existed in Indonesia...so, which language do you think they'd
> > > have known? :)
> >
> > The common tongue of course! No... they did find some simple tools with
> > them and are suggested that despite their brain size (grapefruit sized
> > apparently) they did use tools. But language is another matter, and I'm
> > not sure language on our level is possible with a brain the size of a
> > monkey's.
>
> This is inaccurate. The brain size is approx. 380 cc, chimp-sized. However,
> it is the brain of a homo erectus derivation. Which implies it has had
> several hundred thousand years worth of homo erectus tool use and the
> subsequent brain development. Not forgetting, the need to manage vastly more
> complex social structures than would have been common to australopithecines.
>
> And they were three feet high, give or take a few inches. At slighly less
> than six feet we have a brain about 1300 cc. I would estimate that with a
> brain about a third of our size, and a body about half, they had enough spare
> capacity to manage language more complex than the chimpanzees have been shown
> capable of mastering - consider that a chimp needs that 380+ cc to manage
> society, and life jumping through trees, and so forth, and the Hobbits no
> longer had to consider jumping through trees ... that would've freed up about
> 60 cc, at least, for language use.
>
> > Some language perhaps, but I wouldn't expect anything as
> > complex as a natural language that's spoken by homo sapiens if I
> > travelled back in time. :)
>
> --
> Wesley Parish
> * * *
> Clinersterton beademung - in all of love. RIP James Blish
> * * *
> Mau e ki, "He aha te mea nui?"
> You ask, "What is the most important thing?"
> Maku e ki, "He tangata, he tangata, he tangata."
> I reply, "It is people, it is people, it is people."
>
-----------------------------------------
Email provided by http://www.ntlhome.com/
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Message: 19
Date: Fri, 29 Oct 2004 13:48:00 +0200
From: Philip Newton <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Japanese Long Consonants
On Fri, 29 Oct 2004 08:38:28 +0000, Chris Bates
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> >
> > From: Jeffrey Jones <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> >
> > On Thu, 28 Oct 2004 16:45:52 +0100, Chris Bates
> > <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> > >
> > > which I guess is why I find it easier to hear the difference in Japanese
> > > than in a language like Hungarian (where the long consonants aren't
> > > formed by adding glottal stops). I was thinking of introducing into a
> > > language a system of three accents:
> > >
> > > unaccented eg i short
> > > acute accent eg � long
> > > grave accent eg � short, terminated by glottal stop.
> > >
> > > So for instance I guess nippon written using this system would be n�pon.
> > > But I'm not sure about this... I'm not sure if I should have long vowels
> > > that can terminate with a glottal stop as well.
> >
> > If you do, you could use the circumflex.
>
> THat's what I was thinking, but to be honest I'm not sure I want to do long
> vowels + glottal stops. My brain keeps trying to cut them off early and
> make them short.
AFAIK, Finnish has a four-way VC - V:C - VC: - V:C: distinction, and
IIRC Swedish (or common Scandinavian?) used to as well. So it's not
unheard-of (though they may not have used glottal stop for their C:
segments).
Cheers,
--
Philip Newton <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Watch the Reply-To!
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Message: 20
Date: Fri, 29 Oct 2004 13:47:20 +0100
From: Ray Brown <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Hobbits spoke ?
On Thursday, October 28, 2004, at 07:53 , Rodlox wrote:
[snip]
> and would these "Hobbits" and Neandertals have spoken more in their
> throats
> or with the fronts of their mouths (principally dental sounds), given
> their
> voice box placement?
The placement of our voice boxes does not limit us to either the front of
the mouth or just to the throat. We use the _whole_ of the vocal tract
from the nose and lips right through to the glottis. If they were limited
to the front of the mouth, it implies their voice box was situated there,
which seems to me quite improbable. If their voice box was in the throat
(as I assume it was), why, if they were capable of speech, should the
so-called 'Hobbits' and of Neanderthals not have used the whole vocal
tract just as we do?
> just wondering.
The only way to satisfy your curiosity will be to discover the secret of
time-travel :)
As for the Neanderthals, on the one hand I have seen it confidently stated
that their primitive social structure did not require communication any
more sophisticated than that of modern apes & chimps and that the anatomy
of their skulls did not permit the range of human sounds (i.e. they did
not speak). On the other hand, however, I have also seen it stated with
equal confidence that their advanced social structure would have been
impossible without speech and that their anatomy was essentially the same
as ours (i.e. they spoke much as modern man does). I have seen it stated
that Homo Neanderthalis could not interbreed with Homo Sapiens and that
the latter simply drove the former to extinction; I have have also seen it
stated that not only could Homo Sapiens Neanderthalis interbreed with Homo
Sapiens Sapiens but that they actually did do so.
The simple fact is that we just do not know what their language, if any,
was like - sadly, they committed nothing to writing nor did they leave us
any recordings!
One thing that IMO it is quite safe to say is that the image of cave-men
communicating with monosyllabic guttural grunts at the level of "Me Tarzan,
you Jane" type of sentence belongs fairly & squarely to the realm of
fiction.
Ray
===============================================
http://home.freeuk.com/ray.brown
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
===============================================
Anything is possible in the fabulous Celtic twilight,
which is not so much a twilight of the gods
as of the reason." [JRRT, "English and Welsh" ]
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Message: 21
Date: Fri, 29 Oct 2004 05:34:54 -0700
From: "B. Garcia" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: (Mis)Naming a Language
On Fri, 29 Oct 2004 12:20:31 +0200, Andreas Johansson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
> If memory serves, B. constrictor became Constrictor constrictor when they
> reformed the taxonomy a while ago, so a plant called B. constrictor would most
> likely be alone with that name.
>
Yes, but most people (Americans at least) call Constrictor constricto
"Boa constrictor". So, a plant could at least share its taxonomic name
with the common name of the snake.
> Interestingly, prokaryots are not allowed to get names used by a plant or
> animal. I'm sure they're most miffed.
One prokaryote to another:
Why do the animals and plants get to use each other's names?! It's
JUST NOT FAIR!
Oh and here's a small list of amusing taxonomic names from:
http://cache.ucr.edu/~heraty/menke.html
Cedusa medusa McAtee, 1924 (a bug)
Chaos chaos (Linnaeus), 1758 (a protozoan)
Chrysops asbestos Philip, 1950 (a horsefly collected from a mule)
Gluteus minimus Davis and Semken, 1975 (a Devonian fossil of uncertain
affinities)
La cucuracha Blezynski, 1966 (a pyralid moth)
La paloma Blezynski, 1966 (another pyralid moth)
Leonardo davincii Blezynski, 1965 (yet another pyralid moth)
Reissa roni Evenhuis, 2002 ( a microbombyliid fly) (Named after "Rice a Roni")
Scrotum humanum Brookes, 1763 (a dinosaur)
Phthiria relativitae Evenhuis, 1985 (a fly)
Colon rectum Hatch, 1933 (a colonid beetle)
Agra vation Erwin, 1983 (a carabid beetle)
A friend of mine uses the online nickname of "zyzzyva" which is a type of weevil
And an interesting genus: Ninjameys - Ninja - Japanese assasins, meys
- turtle. Anyone growing up in the early 90's would remember the
"Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles"
There is another similar page, but that one will do :).
--
You can turn away from me
but there's nothing that'll keep me here you know
And you'll never be the city guy
Any more than I'll be hosting The Scooby Show
Scooby Show - Belle and Seb
astian
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Message: 22
Date: Fri, 29 Oct 2004 07:40:58 -0600
From: Muke Tever <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Japanese Long Consonants
On Fri, 29 Oct 2004 00:53:28 -0400, Roger Mills <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Re long voiced C:
>> Japanese *does* allow them, e.g. beddo -- a Western style bed (IIRC),
>
> Could that be an attempt to show the [E] vowel quality?
Actually, I think it is. There is, actually, a pair:
bureddo (bread)
bure:do (blade/braid)
Apparently English short vowels are more reminiscent of /V?/ than /V/
in Japanese. (Similar to how /{/ sometimes is spelled as "ya".)
*Muke!
--
website: http://frath.net/
LiveJournal: http://kohath.livejournal.com/
deviantArt: http://kohath.deviantart.com/
FrathWiki, a conlang and conculture wiki:
http://wiki.frath.net/
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Message: 23
Date: Fri, 29 Oct 2004 09:34:37 -0400
From: John Cowan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Information on future English language development?
Sally Caves scripsit:
> John, would you consider Lojban, in part, a kind of "future" language,
> given that it consciously develops patterns of logic that would make
> machine/language interface easier?
Perhaps. I myself have never given much credence to this part of the
Lojban story.
> What incentives (fictive, philosophical, linguistic, scientific)
> drive one to invent a future English?
Pragmatic, I'd say: it's easier to understand (given a modicum of
linguistic knowledge) how one's own language might change than another
language.
> Do you consider _A Clockwork Orange_ to be an example of future English?
It's just a specific slang embedded in 20th-century English, I think.
Galach has been mentioned, but it's not well-developed in the _Dune_
books themselves. L. Sprague de Camp wrote a classic article in 1938
"Language for Time Travelers", about the problems the latter would
have when they touched down in the 22nd century; it contains samples of
several different future Englishes of different kinds (vowel shifted,
holophrastic, etc.) I particularly cherish the Fresh and the Jumms
(of Jummy).
_Riddley Walker_ by Russell Hoban is of course entirely written in a
future English (specifically Kentish):
He said, 'Whats the use of helping qwirys on him that poor simpo
I dont think he knows nothing to tel no moren any of them ever
do. I do like other Pry Mincers done befor me becaws thats what
the Mincery wants. Im terning them frontwards in a woal lot of
ways only I cant do it all at 1ce. We aint none of us what you
cud call qwick but mos of them roun me theyre 2ce as unqwick as
I am Iwl tel you that. May be you ben thinking Im your nemminy
but that aint how it is. You think like I do you feal like I
do we aint nemminys. Its them as cant think nor feal none of
them things theyre the nemminy. Them peopl as jus want to hol
on to what theyve got theyre afeart to move even 1 littl step
forit. I dont care if its Mincery of forms or fentses its them
as wont move theyre the nemminy. Riddle may be you dont know it
but you dont have no better frend nor me?"
Embedded in the text is a story written in a different version of English,
archaic from Riddley's viewpoint:
On the stags hed stud the Littl Shynin Man the Addom in be twean
thay horns with arms owt strecht & each han holdin tu a horn.
There's also the Poul Anderson story "A Tragedy of Errors", which is
specifically about semantic shift: the words "friend" and "business" have
dropped out of the local language (in favor of "camarado" and "'change"),
but have been recently reintroduced, by an incursion of pirates, in the
senses "pirate" and "piracy" respectively (as in "We're your friends,
and we're here to do business with you.") The next set of travelers who
arrive saying "We're friends" get shot at. Because "slave" has locally
come to mean "worker" or "employee", they shoot back, with disastrous
results all around.
http://test.linguistlist.org/issues/6/6-418.html is a useful "linguistics
and SF" summary as of 1995.
> Whether "lie" will disappear from English altogether and be replaced
> with "they"?
I know what you meant, but this is a neat idea anyhow.
--
Time alone is real John Cowan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
the rest imaginary http://www.reutershealth.com
like a quaternion --phma http://www.ccil.org/~cowan
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Message: 24
Date: Fri, 29 Oct 2004 17:42:56 +0200
From: Rodlox <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Hobbits spoke Indonesian!
----- Original Message -----
From: Andreas Johansson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Friday, October 29, 2004 12:22 PM
Subject: Re: Hobbits spoke Indonesian!
> > > Well, if the local legends are true, they had their own, 'murmuring'
> > > language. How likely that is, I don't know.
> > This is a fascinating and remarkable find, if true. There must have been
> > some contact, somewhere along the way, with Papuan/Australian peoples
> > the millennia. In that case, their language would have been Papuanoid
or
> > Australoid.
>
> They're supposedly erectids, so they presumably had spent the better part
of
> forever in Indonesia when the ancestors of the Papuans and Australians
came
> there.
hm...so, the Austronesian languages could have borrowed from them?
:)
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Message: 25
Date: Fri, 29 Oct 2004 17:42:07 +0200
From: Rodlox <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Hobbits spoke ?
----- Original Message -----
From: Ray Brown <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Friday, October 29, 2004 2:47 PM
Subject: Re: Hobbits spoke ?
> On Thursday, October 28, 2004, at 07:53 , Rodlox wrote:
>
> [snip]
> > and would these "Hobbits" and Neandertals have spoken more in their
> > throats
> > or with the fronts of their mouths (principally dental sounds), given
> > their
> > voice box placement?
>
> The placement of our voice boxes does not limit us to either the front of
> the mouth or just to the throat. We use the _whole_ of the vocal tract
> from the nose and lips right through to the glottis.
okay, I phrased the question wrong...we use the whole of the vocal
tract...but does the placement of the voice box at all affect/effect our
range of sounds?
> If they were limited
> to the front of the mouth, it implies their voice box was situated there,
> which seems to me quite improbable. If their voice box was in the throat
> (as I assume it was), why, if they were capable of speech, should the
> so-called 'Hobbits' and of Neanderthals not have used the whole vocal
> tract just as we do?
>
> > just wondering.
>
> The only way to satisfy your curiosity will be to discover the secret of
> time-travel :)
already did that...but somebody else is renting that era of time, so other
time travelers can't use it.
> As for the Neanderthals, on the one hand I have seen it confidently stated
> that their primitive social structure did not require communication any
> more sophisticated than that of modern apes & chimps and that the anatomy
> of their skulls did not permit the range of human sounds
ahh, the old hyloid bone debate. :)
> The simple fact is that we just do not know what their language, if any,
> was like - sadly, they committed nothing to writing nor did they leave us
> any recordings!
>
> One thing that IMO it is quite safe to say is that the image of cave-men
> communicating with monosyllabic guttural grunts at the level of "Me
Tarzan,
> you Jane" type of sentence belongs fairly & squarely to the realm of
> fiction.
absolutely.
besides, "tarzan" isn't monosyllabic. :)
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