2017 blog - księżyc

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IpseDixit
Re: 2016-2017 blog - księżyc

Postby IpseDixit » 2017-02-14, 16:18

And what about books, TV and other means of communication? Are they in the standards or the dialects or both?

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Since księżyc doesn't mind his thread being derailed, I'm gonna ask here a question I've been having in my mind for quite some time now: do you think that the course of Irish after Irish Independence would've been different if the language of the colonizers had not been English but some other minor national language of Europe lacking the scope of English, like say Norwegian? Is it fair to assume that, in that case, there would've been more serious efforts to get rid of it and make Irish the true and only national language of all Irish people? I know we're in the realm of "linguistic fiction" here, but if someone has some hypotheses in this respect, I'd be glad if they shared them here.

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Re: 2016-2017 blog - księżyc

Postby linguoboy » 2017-02-14, 16:31

IpseDixit wrote:And what about books, TV and other means of communication? Are they in the standards or the dialects or both?

Mostly CO. Native speakers will use their own dialects when speaking on radio or television and in their own literary production. But these days most publications are authored by non-natives.

IpseDixit wrote:Since księżyc doesn't mind his thread being derailed, I'm gonna ask here a question I've been having in my mind for quite some time now: do you think that the course of Irish after Irish Independence would've been different if the language of the colonizers had not been English but some other minor national language of Europe lacking the scope of English, like say Norwegian? Is it fair to assume that, in that case, there would've been more serious efforts to get rid of it and make Irish the true and only national language of all Irish people? I know we're in the realm of "linguistic fiction" here, but if someone has some hypotheses in this respect, I'd be glad if they shared them here.

It's an interesting question and one I hadn't considered before. I wonder if reading the debates on the language question from the early days of the Republic would shine any light on it.

I tend to think not. Language prestige works on a very local level: You don't switch to another language because of the prestige it has across the globe but because of the prestige it has in the nearest large town.
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Re: 2016-2017 blog - księżyc

Postby Car » 2017-02-14, 16:40

kevin wrote:
księżycowy wrote:Essentially what happened is that in the North, they gave up their local dialects in favour of a more prestigious Southern written language, but didn't really know how things were pronounced in the South, so they used some kind of spelling pronunciation, except with a different interpretation of the spelling. And then this pronunciation ended up becoming the standard, so it matches neither the original Northern dialects nor the Southern ones.

It's not a Southern written language, actually.

► Show Spoiler


From: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standarddeutsch

Not that it actually represented those pronunciations well and people's pronunciation did indeed differ from the way it was written anyway.

The book I finished yesterday, Lingo: A Language Spotter's Guide to Europe by Gaston Dorren (based on his Dutch original, but adapted for English speakers), has a nice chapter about it.
Please correct my mistakes!

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Re: 2016-2017 blog - księżyc

Postby kevin » 2017-02-14, 17:09

księżycowy wrote:It seems it is based on one prestigious dialect historically, no? At least that's what I got from your reply.

Well, if you ignore pronunciation and that they weren't really drawing from a single dialect, but just in general from the dialects of Central and South Germany, then probably yes.

linguoboy wrote:/gno:higˊ/ (Der Strich ist nicht unwichitig!) I would also indicate stress placement here, since even though it's predictable, speakers of other varieties won't know the rules.

But, but... there's an i next to it, of course it's slender!

Okay, I guess I was really a bit too sloppy. ;)

linguoboy wrote:
IpseDixit wrote:And what about books, TV and other means of communication? Are they in the standards or the dialects or both?

Mostly CO. Native speakers will use their own dialects when speaking on radio or television and in their own literary production. But these days most publications are authored by non-natives.

Well, on radio and TV they have to use some pronunciation and the CO is only a written standard. It's probably often not a very thick dialect that is used, but at least you get a mix of accents.

księżycowy

Re: 2016-2017 blog - księżyc

Postby księżycowy » 2017-02-14, 17:14

By the time that some languages are "standardised", do they usually follow pronunciation? I'm thinking French and English here.

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Re: 2016-2017 blog - księżyc

Postby linguoboy » 2017-02-14, 18:16

księżycowy wrote:By the time that some languages are "standardised", do they usually follow pronunciation? I'm thinking French and English here.

I'm not sure what you're asking, but the question of having a standard dialect and the question of having a normative pronunciation are technically separate. This is something I learned from the Catalan case, where (IIRC) there was some debate over whether to adopt Barcelonese pronunciation as normative. I believe it was rejected, but de facto the pronunciation included in paedagogical works aimed at L2 speakers takes as its basis an Eastern Catalan norm essentially identical to educated Barcelonese.

In the German case, Standarddeutsch was in widespread use for centuries before Theodor Siebs came along with his Deutsche Bühnenaussprache in 1898. As far as I know, there's never been something similar for American English. Webster's was influential in spreading certain pronunciations, but if there's anything like a manual of "General American" out there, I haven't seen it, so it can't be all that well known.
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Re: 2016-2017 blog - księżyc

Postby księżycowy » 2017-02-14, 18:29

You basically made a similar case to what I was making, that pronunciation is separate from the formation of a standard language. You just said it better, and backed it up.

I was basically saying that by the time a language is standardized, it doesn't necessarily follow the pronunciation. Even if it does, it doesn't mean it stay that way.
Last edited by księżycowy on 2017-02-14, 21:30, edited 2 times in total.

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Re: 2016-2017 blog - księżyc

Postby linguoboy » 2017-02-14, 18:49

księżycowy wrote:I was basically saying that by the time a language is standardised, it doesn't nessicarily follow the pronunciation. Even if it does, it doesn't mean it stay that way.

What's interesting to me is how pronunciation often ends up following the standard. As kevin says, the German norm is the result of L2 speakers from the North treating a purely written variety as a living language and concocting their own pronunciation for it. This is an extreme example, but something like this happens with all normative varieties. Just yesterday, we were discussing the pronunciation of solder on a friend's wall and I discovered that there are varieties in English in which the l is pronounced--despite the fact that it was only reinserted during the Latinising craze of the Enlightenment.

Modern Irish is actually less subject to this than most European vernaculars since illiteracy was so widespread until recently. I suspect, though, that a lot of dialectal variant pronunciations listed in Ó Cuív's work (the basis for the pronunciations given in TY Irish) are under threat if not already replaced by closer approximations to the CO forms. I'd be interested to find out, for instance, whether people in Muskerry today still say /pəilˊəkaːn/ like their predecessors or if they've adopted a Munsterised version of féileacán instead.
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Re: 2016-2017 blog - księżyc

Postby dEhiN » 2017-02-14, 19:05

I don't know about the specific case of Irish, but I would imagine that in general, due to the proliferation of audio media due to technology, most major and even some minor languages have essentially a standardised or normative pronunciation that accompanies the written standard. Linguoboy can correct me if I'm wrong, but for example, news reports would need to be understandable by L1 speakers of all dialects. And is it not this normative pronunciation that is generally taught to L2 speakers, at least in resources like TY and such where you are learning on your own?
Native: (en-ca)
Active: (fr)(es)(pt-br)(ta-lk)(mi)(sq)(tl)
Inactive: (de)(ja)(yue)(oj)(id)(hu)(pl)(tr)(hi)(zh)(sv)(ko)(no)(it)(haw)(fy)(nl)(nah)(gl)(ro)(cy)(oc)(an)(sr)(en_old)(got)(sux)(grc)(la)(sgn-us)

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Re: 2016-2017 blog - księżyc

Postby linguoboy » 2017-02-14, 19:16

dEhiN wrote:Linguoboy can correct me if I'm wrong, but for example, news reports would need to be understandable by L1 speakers of all dialects. And is it not this normative pronunciation that is generally taught to L2 speakers, at least in resources like TY and such where you are learning on your own?

Okay; you're wrong. :D

Seriously, as I understand the policy of Raidió na Gaeltachta, everyone uses their native accents on air. In fact, more than once I've heard of people turning it off when it starts broadcasting from another Gaeltacht because they can't understand the presenters.

News reports, incidentally, are where this is least likely to happen. They're going to be written in CO, after all, which the presenters will just read in their accents. So you avoid all of the really knotty problems of lexical and grammatical variation. It's shows where they have a couple of people chatting casually in the studio where the intelligibility breaks down--if they're using the same dialectal variety, that is. When it's a mix, everyone will make more of an effort to avoid regionalisms.

This all works much better in Welsh, where the native-speaking community is more compact and there's more interregional contact. Recognition of which common words and constructions are specific to one region seems rather widespread, so there's something of a nascent koine under development. It was hoped this would happen with Irish as well, but it doesn't seem to have.

There was an attempt to develop an artificial norm in the form of the Lárchanúint ("central dialect"), but even learners I know don't use it. Ciarán (if you remember him), like most L2 speakers, had teachers from a variety of dialectal backgrounds, so what he speaks is an idiosyncratic mix--Munster pronunciation for some words, Connacht for others, plus a few Ulsterisms (which in its own way mirrors the formation of the CO).

The old TY Irish that księżyc is using teaches straight-up Munster (West Muskerry, to be exact, despite the fact that the highest concentration of Munster speakers is in Kerry). I'm not sure what the new one uses. All my audiovisual materials teach dialect. Pimsleur is Kerry (Munster) and Speaking Irish has speakers from all around the Isle plus North America.
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Re: 2016-2017 blog - księżyc

Postby linguoboy » 2017-02-14, 19:25

dEhiN wrote:due to the proliferation of audio media due to technology, most major and even some minor languages have essentially a standardised or normative pronunciation that accompanies the written standard.

So where can I learn the normative pronunciation of English?
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Re: 2016-2017 blog - księżyc

Postby kevin » 2017-02-14, 19:29

linguoboy wrote:There was an attempt to develop an artificial norm in the form of the Lárchanúint ("central dialect"), but even learners I know don't use it.

Actually, I once tried to find out what sounds the Lárchanúint even uses and could barely find anything about it on the internet except that it allegedly exists (and that it's inferior to dialects of course - no discussion about anything related to Irish without this). Is it really that obscure or did I just do something wrong with my search?

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Re: 2016-2017 blog - księżyc

Postby linguoboy » 2017-02-14, 20:18

kevin wrote:
linguoboy wrote:There was an attempt to develop an artificial norm in the form of the Lárchanúint ("central dialect"), but even learners I know don't use it.

Actually, I once tried to find out what sounds the Lárchanúint even uses and could barely find anything about it on the internet except that it allegedly exists (and that it's inferior to dialects of course - no discussion about anything related to Irish without this). Is it really that obscure or did I just do something wrong with my search?

Perhaps I'm misremembering, but I could've sworn that this Wikipedia page used to state that the pronunciations given were taken from the Lárchanúint. Certainly, they look rather "neutral" (i.e. close to but not identical to Connacht, with no notable dialect-specific features).

The authoritative source is Lárchanúint don Ghaeilge (Institiúid Teangeolaíochta Éireann, 1986). Although other normative works (notably the Graiméar na mBráithre Críostaí and the de Bhaldraithe and Ó Dónaill dictionaries) have been made available for free online, that doesn't seem to be the case with this one. I think most people's source for the Lárchanúint is actually the Foclóir Poca, the only commonly-used Irish dictionary to include pronunciation information.
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Re: 2016-2017 blog - księżyc

Postby kevin » 2017-02-14, 21:12

linguoboy wrote:Perhaps I'm misremembering, but I could've sworn that this Wikipedia page used to state that the pronunciations given were taken from the Lárchanúint. Certainly, they look rather "neutral" (i.e. close to but not identical to Connacht, with no notable dialect-specific features).

The current version of the article says "The pronunciations in this article reflect Connacht Irish pronunciation; other accents may differ."

The authoritative source is Lárchanúint don Ghaeilge (Institiúid Teangeolaíochta Éireann, 1986). Although other normative works (notably the Graiméar na mBráithre Críostaí and the de Bhaldraithe and Ó Dónaill dictionaries) have been made available for free online, that doesn't seem to be the case with this one. I think most people's source for the Lárchanúint is actually the Foclóir Poca, the only commonly-used Irish dictionary to include pronunciation information.

Ok, thanks. Then I guess no Lárchanúint for me. I mean I wasn't planning to actually use it (well, me actually speaking Irish is unlikely enough...), it was pure curiosity anyway.

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Re: 2016-2017 blog - księżyc

Postby linguoboy » 2017-02-14, 21:16

kevin wrote:Ok, thanks. Then I guess no Lárchanúint for me. I mean I wasn't planning to actually use it (well, me actually speaking Irish is unlikely enough...), it was pure curiosity anyway.

I found the Fócloir Póca on Amazon.de for less than €4: https://www.amazon.de/s/ref=nb_sb_noss/253-4514372-6473838?__mk_de_DE=%C3%85M%C3%85%C5%BD%C3%95%C3%91&url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=focloir+poca. Might be worth satisfying your curiosity for that little.
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Re: 2016-2017 blog - księżyc

Postby księżycowy » 2017-02-14, 21:28

linguoboy wrote:What's interesting to me is how pronunciation often ends up following the standard. As kevin says, the German norm is the result of L2 speakers from the North treating a purely written variety as a living language and concocting their own pronunciation for it. This is an extreme example, but something like this happens with all normative varieties. Just yesterday, we were discussing the pronunciation of solder on a friend's wall and I discovered that there are varieties in English in which the l is pronounced--despite the fact that it was only reinserted during the Latinising craze of the Enlightenment.

And that makes sense to me.

Modern Irish is actually less subject to this than most European vernaculars since illiteracy was so widespread until recently. I suspect, though, that a lot of dialectal variant pronunciations listed in Ó Cuív's work (the basis for the pronunciations given in TY Irish) are under threat if not already replaced by closer approximations to the CO forms. I'd be interested to find out, for instance, whether people in Muskerry today still say /pəilˊəkaːn/ like their predecessors or if they've adopted a Munsterised version of féileacán instead.

Now that is an interesting thought. And, based on what we've discussed so far, it wouldn't shock me if this process was at least starting with Irish.

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Re: 2016-2017 blog - księżyc

Postby vijayjohn » 2017-02-15, 2:11

linguoboy wrote:Just yesterday, we were discussing the pronunciation of solder on a friend's wall and I discovered that there are varieties in English in which the l is pronounced--despite the fact that it was only reinserted during the Latinising craze of the Enlightenment.

I didn't even know the l was supposed to be dropped until now.
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Re: 2016-2017 blog - księżyc

Postby eskandar » 2017-02-15, 2:58

vijayjohn wrote:
linguoboy wrote:Just yesterday, we were discussing the pronunciation of solder on a friend's wall and I discovered that there are varieties in English in which the l is pronounced--despite the fact that it was only reinserted during the Latinising craze of the Enlightenment.

I didn't even know the l was supposed to be dropped until now.

I've never heard 'solder' pronounced with an L! Vijay, don't tell me you pronounce the L in 'salmon', too - I've heard this before from desis :lol:
Please correct my mistakes in any language.

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Re: 2016-2017 blog - księżyc

Postby linguoboy » 2017-02-15, 3:37

vijayjohn wrote:
linguoboy wrote:Just yesterday, we were discussing the pronunciation of solder on a friend's wall and I discovered that there are varieties in English in which the l is pronounced--despite the fact that it was only reinserted during the Latinising craze of the Enlightenment.

I didn't even know the l was supposed to be dropped until now.

Solder was one of those words that it took me a long time to connect to the spoken form. Like I knew that solder was something used in metalworking and I knew that my father had a "soddering arn", but I didn't realise what the relationship was.
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Re: 2016-2017 blog - księżyc

Postby vijayjohn » 2017-02-15, 3:54

eskandar wrote:
vijayjohn wrote:
linguoboy wrote:Just yesterday, we were discussing the pronunciation of solder on a friend's wall and I discovered that there are varieties in English in which the l is pronounced--despite the fact that it was only reinserted during the Latinising craze of the Enlightenment.

I didn't even know the l was supposed to be dropped until now.

I've never heard 'solder' pronounced with an L! Vijay, don't tell me you pronounce the L in 'salmon', too - I've heard this before from desis :lol:

I don't now, but I used to! My parents still do. :P
linguoboy wrote:
vijayjohn wrote:
linguoboy wrote:Just yesterday, we were discussing the pronunciation of solder on a friend's wall and I discovered that there are varieties in English in which the l is pronounced--despite the fact that it was only reinserted during the Latinising craze of the Enlightenment.

I didn't even know the l was supposed to be dropped until now.

Solder was one of those words that it took me a long time to connect to the spoken form. Like I knew that solder was something used in metalworking and I knew that my father had a "soddering arn", but I didn't realise what the relationship was.

Yeah, that sounds about right to me. It's probably a word that my dad would pronounce with the l but Americans (generally :silly:) wouldn't.


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