There are 15 messages in this issue.
Topics in this digest:
1.1. Re: THEORY: How to be beautiful?
From: Krista D. Casada
1.2. Re: THEORY: How to be beautiful?
From: Ian Spolarich
2a. Re: Ot: Ihilda and the Mescratchious
From: And Rosta
3a. Re: Tone Morphemes and Prepositions
From: Alex Fink
3b. Re: Tone Morphemes and Prepositions
From: Garth Wallace
4a. Re: Is this a good place to present Ehenív?
From: C. Brickner
5a. Re: "How do you say X (in LANGUAGE)?"
From: James Kane
5b. Re: "How do you say X (in LANGUAGE)?"
From: Jyri Lehtinen
5c. Re: "How do you say X (in LANGUAGE)?"
From: Christophe Grandsire-Koevoets
5d. Re: "How do you say X (in LANGUAGE)?"
From: Padraic Brown
5e. Re: "How do you say X (in LANGUAGE)?"
From: Roger Mills
6a. Re: Revising Tirelat romanization
From: C. Brickner
7a. Why does the glottal stop often replace /t/ in English?
From: Matthew George
7b. Re: Why does the glottal stop often replace /t/ in English?
From: Matthew Boutilier
8a. Re: LAFUNI
From: Virginia Keys
Messages
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1.1. Re: THEORY: How to be beautiful?
Posted by: "Krista D. Casada" kcas...@uark.edu
Date: Thu May 30, 2013 12:00 pm ((PDT))
Hi,
(With various bits snipped): Lao certainly overlaps these two uses of tone
mentioned below, and my inquiries about how singing in harmony (part-singing)
affects tone and/or meaning tend to get answers like, "We don't know. There are
experts for stuff like that, and we're not them."
Also, it's slightly OT, but it's fun to watch changing trends in foreign
language use in popular romance writing in the US. This certainly reflects
changing beliefs about language attractiveness for a particular population
group! While Italian is probably the all-time favorite for heroes from the last
twenty years or so, it has been closely followed by Greek, then Spanish and
French, with Russian, Irish, and Arabic having strong followings. My friend
Aimee Thurlo and her husband David have kept Navajo pretty much front and
center for the Native American languages, and Harlequin and other publishers
have recently released more novels containing Asian and Asian American
characters than ever before. Interestingly, I think one factor that adds to the
perception of Italian as an "attractive" language is the popular notion that
Italian speakers maintain strong traditional ideas about family and loyalty.
Plus, my favorite languages sound-wise include Basque and Cornish, and I hadn't
seen much said about them yet.
Krista C.
________________________________________
From: Constructed Languages List [conl...@listserv.brown.edu] on behalf of
Leonardo Castro [leolucas1...@gmail.com]
Sent: Wednesday, May 29, 2013 6:59 AM
To: conl...@listserv.brown.edu
Subject: Re: THEORY: How to be beautiful?
2013/5/28 H. S. Teoh <hst...@quickfur.ath.cx>:
> On Tue, May 28, 2013 at 07:36:01PM -0300, Leonardo Castro wrote:
> [...]
>> OTOH, I guess that I don't know how to appreciate tonal languages,
>> maybe because I feel that the tones are in the wrong places (for
>> instance, I feel that the Chinese interrogtive particle "ma" should
>> have a rising tone).
> [...]
>
> Hmm. I think you still haven't "gotten" the idea of tones yet. Not your
> fault, of course -- I observe that it is very difficult for native
> speakers of European languages, where pitch contour is very much a part
> of prosody and for conveying mood, to be truly free of that L1 bias to
> interpret pitch/tone in that way.
I have already read that tonal languages overlap phonemic and prosody
tones. More interesting than that is how Mandarin and Cantonese
differently deal with word tones in music, according to this site:
http://www.sinosplice.com/life/archives/2010/12/06/tones-in-chinese-songs
http://linguistics.stackexchange.com/questions/3309/how-do-tones-work-in-music-sung-in-tonal-languages-such-as-cantonese-or-mandari
So, I simply "feel" that phonemic tones mess up my parameters of
language appreciation. Searching for "beautiful chinese music",
there's a series of very beautiful songs beautifully sung by beautiful
women, but I guess that phonemic tones are lost there. Besides, with
such voices, maybe the songs would be equally beautiful in any
language:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DuHMCFYIC9E
---
Até mais!
Leonardo
Messages in this topic (28)
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1.2. Re: THEORY: How to be beautiful?
Posted by: "Ian Spolarich" mouton9...@gmail.com
Date: Thu May 30, 2013 6:28 pm ((PDT))
For whatever reason, modern Hebrew is to me one of the most "beautiful"
languages... But then again, I don't find many languages *un*-appealing,
such as Russian and Hungarian, which are usually sited as rather
unpleasant. I also *love* German, perhaps because I am actively trying to
learning it.
As for my conlang, I am trying to make it a bit more sonorous than usual,
and hopefully I'll be able to incorporate interesting rhythm/prosody into
it, which I think certainly enhances the beauty of a language, like in
Finnish or Japanese.
On 30 May 2013 14:00, Krista D. Casada <kcas...@uark.edu> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> (With various bits snipped): Lao certainly overlaps these two uses of tone
> mentioned below, and my inquiries about how singing in harmony
> (part-singing) affects tone and/or meaning tend to get answers like, "We
> don't know. There are experts for stuff like that, and we're not them."
>
> Also, it's slightly OT, but it's fun to watch changing trends in foreign
> language use in popular romance writing in the US. This certainly reflects
> changing beliefs about language attractiveness for a particular population
> group! While Italian is probably the all-time favorite for heroes from the
> last twenty years or so, it has been closely followed by Greek, then
> Spanish and French, with Russian, Irish, and Arabic having strong
> followings. My friend Aimee Thurlo and her husband David have kept Navajo
> pretty much front and center for the Native American languages, and
> Harlequin and other publishers have recently released more novels
> containing Asian and Asian American characters than ever before.
> Interestingly, I think one factor that adds to the perception of Italian as
> an "attractive" language is the popular notion that Italian speakers
> maintain strong traditional ideas about family and loyalty.
>
> Plus, my favorite languages sound-wise include Basque and Cornish, and I
> hadn't seen much said about them yet.
>
> Krista C.
> ________________________________________
> From: Constructed Languages List [conl...@listserv.brown.edu] on behalf
> of Leonardo Castro [leolucas1...@gmail.com]
> Sent: Wednesday, May 29, 2013 6:59 AM
> To: conl...@listserv.brown.edu
> Subject: Re: THEORY: How to be beautiful?
>
>
>
> 2013/5/28 H. S. Teoh <hst...@quickfur.ath.cx>:
> > On Tue, May 28, 2013 at 07:36:01PM -0300, Leonardo Castro wrote:
> > [...]
> >> OTOH, I guess that I don't know how to appreciate tonal languages,
> >> maybe because I feel that the tones are in the wrong places (for
> >> instance, I feel that the Chinese interrogtive particle "ma" should
> >> have a rising tone).
> > [...]
> >
> > Hmm. I think you still haven't "gotten" the idea of tones yet. Not your
> > fault, of course -- I observe that it is very difficult for native
> > speakers of European languages, where pitch contour is very much a part
> > of prosody and for conveying mood, to be truly free of that L1 bias to
> > interpret pitch/tone in that way.
>
> I have already read that tonal languages overlap phonemic and prosody
> tones. More interesting than that is how Mandarin and Cantonese
> differently deal with word tones in music, according to this site:
>
> http://www.sinosplice.com/life/archives/2010/12/06/tones-in-chinese-songs
>
> http://linguistics.stackexchange.com/questions/3309/how-do-tones-work-in-music-sung-in-tonal-languages-such-as-cantonese-or-mandari
>
> So, I simply "feel" that phonemic tones mess up my parameters of
> language appreciation. Searching for "beautiful chinese music",
> there's a series of very beautiful songs beautifully sung by beautiful
> women, but I guess that phonemic tones are lost there. Besides, with
> such voices, maybe the songs would be equally beautiful in any
> language:
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DuHMCFYIC9E
>
> ---
>
>
> Até mais!
>
> Leonardo
>
Messages in this topic (28)
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2a. Re: Ot: Ihilda and the Mescratchious
Posted by: "And Rosta" and.ro...@gmail.com
Date: Thu May 30, 2013 12:11 pm ((PDT))
If it were spelt like an English word, but were without etymon, it'd be
spelt <mescratchio>, which has the advantages of having an unconfusing
plural spelling <mescratchios> and of looking less like "me-scratch-you".
You might also consider the spelling <messcratchio>, which is less likely
to get a reduced vowel in the initial syllable and doesn't contain "me
scratch". Or <messcrachio>. <mescrachio> looks like it could be a word with
a real (Romance) etymon.
--And.
On Thu, May 30, 2013 at 2:45 PM, Daniel Bowman <danny.c.bow...@gmail.com>wrote:
> Yes, the pronunciation is quite different: [mɛ'skrætʃ'i'oʊ]. It rhymes
> with "mow."
>
>
> 2013/5/30 A. da Mek <a.da_m...@ufoni.cz>
>
> > someone
> >> pointed out that "mescratchiou" has a similar look as "caribou."
> >>
> >
> > But the pronunciation is different, isn't it? Which words rhyme with
> > "mescratchiou"?
>
Messages in this topic (21)
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3a. Re: Tone Morphemes and Prepositions
Posted by: "Alex Fink" 000...@gmail.com
Date: Thu May 30, 2013 12:33 pm ((PDT))
On Thu, 30 May 2013 11:29:31 -0300, Njenfalgar <njenfal...@gmail.com> wrote:
>2013/5/30 Robert Fisch <robert.fi...@rocketmail.com>
>
>> I've been making a tonal language where there are six contour tone
>> morphemes.
Have you got no level tones? That would be very unusual; contour tones imply
level tones is one of these posited implicational universals.
>> The three that end on falling tones mark verb forms/adjectives
>> and the three that end on rising ones mark noun forms. I am having
>> problems with coming up with prepositions and other words that are neither
>> verbs/adjectives nor nouns.
If your language is meant to be naturalistic, then there's no way the split is
gonna be this clean anyway!
>> I was thinking they could have consonants as
>> syllable nuclei instead of the tonal vowels, but that makes the words hard
>> to say, and there are only a limited number of words I can come up with in
>> this way. Do you have any suggestions?
>
>Well, in most natural languages prepositions descend from nouns and verbs
>that got suitably worn down, so that's one way you could go.
Indeed.
>BTW, why would a consonantal nucleus be toneless? Tones are features of
>syllables (sometimes of words), not of vowels, as far as I know.
Well, it depends on the phonology of the language in question. I can just
about conceive of a proto-language with syllable structure *CVR(...) where the
element R could either be a resonant or a glottal consonant (but not both in
the same syllable), and then historical V+resonant becomes (default-toned)
syllabic resonant while historical V+glottal undergoes tonogenesis with loss of
the glottal.
But tones càn be realised on any voiced segment, and certainly the ordinary
expectation would be that all (voiced) syllable nuclei can bear them.
Alex
Messages in this topic (5)
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3b. Re: Tone Morphemes and Prepositions
Posted by: "Garth Wallace" gwa...@gmail.com
Date: Thu May 30, 2013 4:58 pm ((PDT))
On Wed, May 29, 2013 at 10:40 PM, Robert Fisch
<robert.fi...@rocketmail.com> wrote:
> I've been making a tonal language where there are six contour tone
> morphemes. The three that end on falling tones mark verb forms/adjectives and
> the three that end on rising ones mark noun forms. I am having problems with
> coming up with prepositions and other words that are neither verbs/adjectives
> nor nouns. I was thinking they could have consonants as syllable nuclei
> instead of the tonal vowels, but that makes the words hard to say, and there
> are only a limited number of words I can come up with in this way. Do you
> have any suggestions?
You could limit which syllable shapes can be tone-bearing. For
example, checked syllables (short vowel, non-sonorant coda) may not
have inherent tone. Or tone could be limited to heavy syllables.
Messages in this topic (5)
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4a. Re: Is this a good place to present Ehenív?
Posted by: "C. Brickner" tepeyach...@embarqmail.com
Date: Thu May 30, 2013 1:50 pm ((PDT))
----- Original Message -----
--- On Wed, 5/29/13, p...@phillipdriscoll.com <p...@phillipdriscoll.com> wrote:
> How would you say, "My neighbor painted the house of the man who
> robbed the bank where I keep my money." ?
In Senjecas:
mús ȝovɱe̋e̋sus—nu—nu íðu mús pı̋sdom a̋rĸa—nesde̋mom e-ĸa̋da—ɱirűs ɱe̋e̋som
e-cı̋ɱa:
my neighbor—that—that there my money keep—bank robbed—man’s house painted.
Charlie
Messages in this topic (17)
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5a. Re: "How do you say X (in LANGUAGE)?"
Posted by: "James Kane" kane...@gmail.com
Date: Thu May 30, 2013 1:56 pm ((PDT))
There is a distinction between 'how do you say X in LANGUAGE' and 'what does
this word mean'. It looks like you are asking for the latter. The former would
be expressed in French by (I think) 'comment se dit X' as in 'comment se dit
'refrigerator' en français?' rather than 'qu'est-ce que le mot 'frigo' veut
dire en anglais?'.
James
On 31/05/2013, at 12:24 AM, George Corley <gacor...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hey, people. I'm working on a series of shorts for Conlangery on some
> simple phrasebook-style phrases, one of which will be asking for the
> definition or translation of a word. I've thought of a couple somewhat
> interesting examples from languages I know:
>
> Spanish: "Que quiere decir (X)?" lit. "What does X want to say?" (with some
> word order fun)
> Mandarin: X有什么意思？ "What meaning does X have."
>
> And of course the more mundane examples that literally translate as "What
> does X mean?" or "How do you say X?" or "What is X?"
>
> So, basically, I'm asking about interesting ways that natlangs or conlangs
> express this idiomatically, as a way to provoke some creative thinking.
> I'm also interested in how to express the "... in LANGUAGE" bit, as in,
> "How do you say simpático in English?" In the past, I have tended to use an
> instrumental for this meaning, but I'm not sure if this occurs in natural
> languages -- Mandarin might be close, as I believe you can say something
> like 用中文说, "use Chinese to say", but that may be in contexts more related
> to what language a message is conveyed in, and not more generally.
Messages in this topic (12)
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5b. Re: "How do you say X (in LANGUAGE)?"
Posted by: "Jyri Lehtinen" lehtinen.j...@gmail.com
Date: Thu May 30, 2013 2:17 pm ((PDT))
Some examples from natlangs:
First of all I'll give two examples from Finnish for your phrase book list,
Kuinka sano-taan X suome-ksi?
how say-INDEF.PERSON X Finnish-TRANSLATIVE
"How do you say X in Finnish?"
Mitä X on englanni-ksi?
what X be.SG3 English-TRANSLATIVE
"What does X mean in English?"
Apart from the grammar working differently to English, these sentences are
actually pretty direct translations of their English counterparts.
The "in LANGUAGE" bit is interesting and different languages definitely
indicate this in different ways. The use of the translative case of the
language name, as in the above Finnish examples might be one of the more
unusual choices. In Estonian you would use the inessive case as in
Mis X on eesti keele-s?
what X be.SG3 Estonian language-INE
"What is X in Estonian?", "What does X mean in Estonian?"
and in North Saami the illative case as in
Mii X lea sáme-gillii?
what X be.SG3 saami-language.ILL
"What is X in Saami?", "What does X mean in Saami?"
The Permic languages use the instrumental case, which is indeed very
logical for this use. So in Komi you find
Кыдзи X ло-ӧ коми-ӧн?
how X mean-SG3 Komi-INSTR
"What is X in Komi?", "What does X mean in Komi?"
These are all different case forms of the language name, but you can add
adpositional examples to the list equally as well. For example "in English"
and "auf Deutsch" are similar but not completely identical to each other.
You didn't ask it but an interesting side point is how to deal with
language names in the sentence "I speak X", where it's semantically an
object rather than an adverbial. Both Finnic and Saamic treat the language
name as a regular direct object (as does English). This means that in North
Saami you use the accusative case ("Mun human sámegiela", "giela" =
language.ACC) and in Finnish and Estonian the partitive case ("Puhun
suomea", "suome-a" = Finnish-PART / "Ma räägin eesti keelt", "keel-t" =
language-PART). In the Permic languages, however, you keep the language
name in the instrumental case even though it acts as a direct object of the
verb (Komi: "Сёрнита комиӧн", "коми-ӧн" = Komi-INSTR). Mari works the same
way but quite unusually uses its so called comparative case ("Марла попем",
"мар-ла" = Mari-COMPA). The basic use of this case is to indicate
similarity of action or state.
It would be interesting to know whether Mari uses its comparative case also
in the "What does X mean in Y?" sentence. That would be logical and add yet
another way to indicate the "in LANGUAGE" phrase. Sadly couldn't find any
examples of this.
I'm sorry for not being able to give any good conlang examples as even my
main project Kišta has been on slow burn for a long time. Based on my
sketches of its case system it will use instrumental for the "in LANGUAGE"
phrase. I've also been considering some of its dialects loosing the
instrumental case in which case they will probably end up snatching one of
the local cases to do the job rather than using an explicitly instrumental
postpostion.
-Jyri
2013/5/30 George Corley <gacor...@gmail.com>
> Hey, people. I'm working on a series of shorts for Conlangery on some
> simple phrasebook-style phrases, one of which will be asking for the
> definition or translation of a word. I've thought of a couple somewhat
> interesting examples from languages I know:
>
> Spanish: "Que quiere decir (X)?" lit. "What does X want to say?" (with some
> word order fun)
> Mandarin: X有什么意思？ "What meaning does X have."
>
> And of course the more mundane examples that literally translate as "What
> does X mean?" or "How do you say X?" or "What is X?"
>
> So, basically, I'm asking about interesting ways that natlangs or conlangs
> express this idiomatically, as a way to provoke some creative thinking.
> I'm also interested in how to express the "... in LANGUAGE" bit, as in,
> "How do you say simpático in English?" In the past, I have tended to use an
> instrumental for this meaning, but I'm not sure if this occurs in natural
> languages -- Mandarin might be close, as I believe you can say something
> like 用中文说, "use Chinese to say", but that may be in contexts more related
> to what language a message is conveyed in, and not more generally.
>
Messages in this topic (12)
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5c. Re: "How do you say X (in LANGUAGE)?"
Posted by: "Christophe Grandsire-Koevoets" tsela...@gmail.com
Date: Thu May 30, 2013 3:13 pm ((PDT))
On 30 May 2013 22:56, James Kane <kane...@gmail.com> wrote:
> There is a distinction between 'how do you say X in LANGUAGE' and 'what
> does this word mean'. It looks like you are asking for the latter. The
> former would be expressed in French by (I think) 'comment se dit X' as in
> 'comment se dit 'refrigerator' en français?' rather than 'qu'est-ce que le
> mot 'frigo' veut dire en anglais?'.
>
>
Quick correction: "How do you say X in LANGUAGE?" in French would be
"Comment est-ce qu'on dit X en LANGUE ?", with the impersonal "on" rather
than a reflexive. The reflexive sounds nearly like X is trying to say
itself!
On 30 May 2013 23:17, Jyri Lehtinen <lehtinen.j...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> These are all different case forms of the language name, but you can add
> adpositional examples to the list equally as well. For example "in English"
> and "auf Deutsch" are similar but not completely identical to each other.
>
>
French uses the preposition "en": "en français". Interestingly, "en" has an
instrumental meaning when used with vehicles: "en vélo": "by bike", "en
voiture": "by car".
Dutch is somewhat weird, in that it simply uses the preposition "in", as in
English, but requires the neuter article in front of the language name: "in
het Nederlands".
> You didn't ask it but an interesting side point is how to deal with
> language names in the sentence "I speak X", where it's semantically an
> object rather than an adverbial. Both Finnic and Saamic treat the language
> name as a regular direct object (as does English).
And French.
> This means that in North
> Saami you use the accusative case ("Mun human sámegiela", "giela" =
> language.ACC) and in Finnish and Estonian the partitive case ("Puhun
> suomea", "suome-a" = Finnish-PART / "Ma räägin eesti keelt", "keel-t" =
> language-PART). In the Permic languages, however, you keep the language
> name in the instrumental case even though it acts as a direct object of the
> verb (Komi: "Сёрнита комиӧн", "коми-ӧн" = Komi-INSTR). Mari works the same
> way but quite unusually uses its so called comparative case ("Марла попем",
> "мар-ла" = Mari-COMPA). The basic use of this case is to indicate
> similarity of action or state.
>
>
Be careful however not to claim that "I speak X" is semantically transitive
in *all* languages. In Basque for instance, the equivalent of "to speak" is
the expression "hitz egin": "to make word". Since the object slot is
already taken by "hitz", the resulting expression has to be semantically
intransitive. And indeed, the language spoken in such a sentence is once
again in the instrumental: "euskaraz hitz egin dut": "I speak Basque"
(literally: "I make word in Basque").
ObConlang: in my Moten, the equivalent of "to speak" is the verb _igebezi_,
which is strictly intransitive (Moten verbs are strict when it comes to
transitivity, and cannot change willy-nilly like English verbs). As in
Basque, the expression "I speak X" requires the instrumental form of the
language name: _komotenku|leju igebezi ito_: "(I) speak Moten".
--
Christophe Grandsire-Koevoets.
http://christophoronomicon.blogspot.com/
http://www.christophoronomicon.nl/
Messages in this topic (12)
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5d. Re: "How do you say X (in LANGUAGE)?"
Posted by: "Padraic Brown" elemti...@yahoo.com
Date: Thu May 30, 2013 4:15 pm ((PDT))
--- On Thu, 5/30/13, George Corley <gacor...@gmail.com> wrote:
> So, basically, I'm asking about interesting ways that natlangs or
> conlangs express this idiomatically, as a way to provoke some creative
> thinking. I'm also interested in how to express the "... in LANGUAGE"
> bit, as in, "How do you say simpático in English?" In the past, I have
> tended to use an instrumental for this meaning, but I'm not sure if this
> occurs in natural languages -- Mandarin might be close, as I believe you
> can say something like 用中文说, "use Chinese to say", but that may be in
> contexts more related to what language a message is conveyed in, and not
> more generally.
Mentolatian:
and-fomandu og-duran-inno fi-wantmanuz : qua-fomuz fi-rumuluruz og-yocandu
: cap-mn-em le-nonu he?
regarding-language LOC-use-state.of LOC-Auntimoany : concerning.TOPIC-
word LOC-Rumelia LOC-"yocandu" : possess-MID-STATE D.O.-name it
In regards to Avantimannish, and especially the Rumelian word "yocandu" :
has a name it?
In Mentolatian, "in English" becomes "concerning the language used in
England".
Avantimannish:
huw sayend ey yân Westmarkmannes that Rumisce word yocandu?
How say they yonder Westmarchers the Rumeliard word "yocandu"?
In Avantimannish, "in LANGUAGE" is transferred from the language itself
to its speakers.
As for Rumeliard itself, I know the old language just used an instrumental:
"Rumuluscon", "Icunuscon", etc.
Padraic
Messages in this topic (12)
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5e. Re: "How do you say X (in LANGUAGE)?"
Posted by: "Roger Mills" romi...@yahoo.com
Date: Thu May 30, 2013 5:49 pm ((PDT))
Unless I'm mis-remembering....
Apa kata X dalam Bahasa Indonesia? What's (the word) X in B.I.
Apa artinya kata [ini, itu]? What's the meaning of [this, that] word?
Kind of wordy but--
Apa caranya berkata "I love you" dalam B.I.?
What's the way (=How) to say ..... in B.I.?
And of course Kash:
aka kota X ri sende kaç? What's X in Kash language?
aka tacañi kota (tayu, iyu)? What's the meaning of this/that word?
kambralun makota "XXX" ri sende kaç? How do I say XXX in Kash?
Messages in this topic (12)
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6a. Re: Revising Tirelat romanization
Posted by: "C. Brickner" tepeyach...@embarqmail.com
Date: Thu May 30, 2013 2:02 pm ((PDT))
----- Original Message -----
On Tue, 28 May 2013 21:13:23 -0400, Herman Miller wrote:
>
>The obvious fix is to use <kh> for the /x/ sound. It could be mistaken for
>/k.h/ as in "backhand" or "sinkhole", but not much else, and Tirelat
>doesn't have an /h/ sound. Plus it gives me an excuse to write <gh> for
>/ɣ/. I've never much liked <ġ> or <ğ>, or any of the alternatives like
><ƣ> ("gha", U+01A3).
I've never bothered to look up the history of that curiously misnamed
character before. Blackletter hand ⟨q⟩, go figure!
--
grüess
mach
>From Wikipedia:
"Historically, it is derived from a handwritten form of the small Latin letter
q, around 1900. The majuscule is then based on the minuscule. Its use for [ɣ]
stems from the linguistic tradition of representing such sounds (and similars)
by q in Turkic languages and in transcriptions of Arabic or Persian (compare
kaf and qof).
"In alphabetical order, it comes between G and H."
The two graphemes are so similar I can't see what difference it makes which one
is used, unless one wants to put some "foreign flavor" into one's orthography.
Charlie
Messages in this topic (11)
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7a. Why does the glottal stop often replace /t/ in English?
Posted by: "Matthew George" matt....@gmail.com
Date: Thu May 30, 2013 2:14 pm ((PDT))
I've been learning about glottal stops since I decided to make a language
for a species that has no vocal cords. I was greatly surprised - and a
little horrified - to find how often glottal stops occur in English without
being recognized in our orthography.
I can see why a glottal stop is present in-between distinct vowels, like in
uh-oh. I don't quite grasp why it so often substitutes for the /t/ sound,
though. Why the sound change? And why don't we recognize the glottal stop
when we write?
Matt G.
Messages in this topic (2)
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7b. Re: Why does the glottal stop often replace /t/ in English?
Posted by: "Matthew Boutilier" bvticvlar...@gmail.com
Date: Thu May 30, 2013 2:31 pm ((PDT))
there doesn't have to be a "why," other than *sound change*. a lot of
English dialects simply replace /t/ with /ʔ/ (or, more precisely, have [ʔ]
as an allophone of /t/). in some American dialects this happens too,
although glottal reinforcement *before* a /t/ or voiceless affricate seems
to be more common (a friend of mine from the southern US pronounces my name
as [mæʔ], and I myself generally pronounce 'catch' as [kʰɛʔtʃ]). hell, at
one point in the prehistory of Hawaiian, /k/ became pronounced as the
glottal stop /ʔ/ everywhere, just 'cause. in a handful of Arabic dialects,
earlier /q/ is now pronounced /ʔ/. why did it happen? because it happened.
the back of the oral cavity is a convenient graveyard for unwanted
phonemes, i guess.
there are a ton of pronounced features that do not make it into English
orthography. sometimes it's because English spelling was fossilized before
certain developments happened (cf. the mess of a word that is <through>),
but sometimes it's because spelling is generally phonological and not
phonemic. what you hear and say as [ʔ] is fundamentally a /t/, just as we
write the word <pin> as we write it, and not as *<phin>, even though
compared to a word like 'spin' there's a lot of h-like stuff going on there
after the [p]. it's just not phonemic, which for all intents and purposes
means it's not important enough to write.
or, wasn't important enough to write 500 years ago, at which point writers
of English decided that having a reasonable orthographical system was not a
priority.
matt
On Thu, May 30, 2013 at 4:14 PM, Matthew George <matt....@gmail.com> wrote:
> I've been learning about glottal stops since I decided to make a language
> for a species that has no vocal cords. I was greatly surprised - and a
> little horrified - to find how often glottal stops occur in English without
> being recognized in our orthography.
>
> I can see why a glottal stop is present in-between distinct vowels, like in
> uh-oh. I don't quite grasp why it so often substitutes for the /t/ sound,
> though. Why the sound change? And why don't we recognize the glottal stop
> when we write?
>
> Matt G.
>
Messages in this topic (2)
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8a. Re: LAFUNI
Posted by: "Virginia Keys" virginiak...@gmail.com
Date: Thu May 30, 2013 4:42 pm ((PDT))
On Fri, 24 May 2013 19:13:08 -0400, William Mota <cambi...@gmx.com> wrote:
>I'm working on a new conlang - LAFUNI - totally designed to be easy to talk to
>and learn. Work during leisure time for pleasure. As I am planning to slowly,
>I am open to many suggestions collaborative.
>
>The site to observe and participate http://fuzuksi.site40.net/
The key question: For whom do you want it to be easy to speak and learn? If you
are designing with speakers of a particular language in mind, then selectively
incorporating elements that they would be familiar with and not piling too many
changes on too fast should be helpful.
Messages in this topic (4)
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