Linguistics thread

[nijk]

Ouklahouma

I was quite confused to see the digraph <ou> in this and many other state names. I understand that it represents the diphthong [oʊ] but I thought it was a very British sound, turns out American English has it too? Personally I can't really hear any [oʊ], to my ears what is supposed to be [oʊ] sounds more like [oə] in American English.

[vijayjohn]

What? It's precisely American English that has [oʊ]. I don't think I've ever heard of British English having it.

[Linguaphile]

Ouklahouma

I was quite confused to see the digraph <ou> in this and many other state names. I understand that it represents the diphthong [oʊ] but I thought it was a very British sound, turns out American English has it too? Personally I can't really hear any [oʊ], to my ears what is supposed to be [oʊ] sounds more like [oə] in American English.

We have it. In fact, I think a lot of American English speakers perceive /oʊ/ as a "pure" o (i.e., can't distinguish it from /o/ or /o:/ and don't realize it's a diphthong). When I hear Americans speaking other languages with strong "American" accents, /oʊ/ and /ɹ̠/ tend to stand out to me the most when they are used in place of /o/ and /r/ (etc) as sounding like an obvious "American accent" to me.

[mōdgethanc]

As a Can[eː]dian who has a "pure" [eː] and [oː], the American [oʊ] stands out to me, and my American girlfriend felt the same way about mine. (One time I joked "I don't have an accent" to her, knowing I did, and she jokingly agreed "N[oː], you d[oː]n't"). Sometimes I even hear [ɵʉ] from Midwesterners which sounds quite "country" to me.

And is there a pronunciation guide for Nunavut?

Also boring - Nunavut.
But its capital city, Iqaluit, is Ihhaluit. /ihːaluit/

Now this is interesting. I once got into an argument with my old roommate, who had a degree in linguistics, and was dating an Inuit girl, about how to say "Iqaluit". He said she and her friend said it like [iˈχɑluit]. I thought it was a plosive [q], and told him that, but he didn't believe me and thought it was just a quirk of the spelling. But then upon looking into it further we found out that it depends on the dialect. and some Inuit do have a uvular [χ] in their inventory.

[mōdgethanc]

Doubleposting because I backread (sorry).

the "soft" l (Italian migliore)

Oh, I thought Slovak and other Slavic languages just had [lʲ] like Russian.

Depends. Slavlangs tend to have a system where almost every consonant come in pairs of palatalized or not (like Russian or Bulgarian), but some almost have gotten rid of palatalization as a productive feature and the only thing left is that they have some palatal sounds like [ɲ, ʎ] but no true pairs like [p, pʲ] or [l, lʲ]. Serbo-Croatian, Czech and Slovak are like this. (Note those sounds may be technically alveolo-palatal but that's quite a nitpick - I can barely hear the difference.)

You see the same thing in other families - Irish Gaelic has [lʲ] but Scottish Gaelic has a fully palatal [ʎ].

but also the š and ž sounds are different...

Ooh!

I read a paper on this last summer because it was baffling how many kinds of postalveolar sounds that the Slavs have, and I wanted to see which have which. The gist was there are some that have the same postalveolars as English and French [ʃ, ʒ], which are kind of half-palatalized (Czech has them). Others have sounds which are often transcribed [ʂ, ʐ] but are not truly retroflex in that the tongue is not curled back that much - they are just not palatalized. These are close to the retroflexes of Mandarin. The latter sounds are found in Polish, Belarusian and Russian. And then there are some languages like Serbo-Croatian, Slovak and (I think) Ukrainian where it depends on the dialect.

(There are also the strongly palatalized [ɕ, ʑ] that are in Polish and also show up in Japanese. Oddly, not a lot of Slavlangs have them. Russian does, but they're marginal.)

(On the note of "true retroflexes", if I try to make a [ʂ] where the tip of my tongue is curled all the way up and touches the roof of my mouth, I don't get a "sh" sound but some gross slushy thing.)

Key takeaway: Slavlangs have a lot of palatal/ized sounds that can be very tricky to tell apart, but if you listen closely you can tell they're not the same thing. Sometimes I even hear native English speakers with [ʂ, ʐ] and it's noticeable.

[dEhiN]

not truly retroflex in that the tongue is not curled back that much

I know that retroflexes are a big part of Tamil phonology, but lately I've been wondering whether, for some words, native speakers produce a proper retroflex or more like an apical post-alveolar consonant. For example, in the Tamil word நெடில் 'long', the pronunciation should be /n̪eɖil/* with that last 'l' being alveolar. This means the tongue has to go from laminal** dental to retroflex post-alveolar to laminal** alveolar. For me, that's hard if I'm saying the word in regular speech. So, I've switched to making the post-alveolar apical. Unfortunately, I don't have sharp enough ears to tell if my parents or landlord (for example) do this when speaking Tamil.

*I know some say the dental and alveolar 'n' in Tamil have merged into an alveolar one, but I don't believe this is for every dialect. So, in those case, I'm assuming a traditional pronunciation.

**Those two might be apical, I'm not sure, but I think I say them more laminally.

[vijayjohn]

As a Can[eː]dian who has a "pure" [eː] and [oː]

I didn't even know that was a thing!

Now this is interesting. I once got into an argument with my old roommate, who had a degree in linguistics, and was dating an Inuit girl, about how to say "Iqaluit". He said she and her friend said it like [iˈχɑluit]. I thought it was a plosive [q], and told him that, but he didn't believe me and thought it was just a quirk of the spelling. But then upon looking into it further we found out that it depends on the dialect. and some Inuit do have a uvular [χ] in their inventory.

I think they're allophones in Quechua (at least in Cusco Quechua and probably some closely related varieties of Quechua like Ayacucho Quechua). <Q> in Lnuismk/Micmac is pronounced either [χ] (I think mostly word-finally but also word-initially in some words) or [ɣ] between voiced segments.

I know that retroflexes are a big part of Tamil phonology, but lately I've been wondering whether, for some words, native speakers produce a proper retroflex or more like an apical post-alveolar consonant.

I'm pretty sure mine is retroflex. We have words like this in Malayalam, too, like [kuˈɖil] 'hut'.

I know some say the dental and alveolar 'n' in Tamil have merged into an alveolar one, but I don't believe this is for every dialect.

I've only heard this claim at the phonemic level, where I think it is indeed true for all dialects. I've never heard of it at the phonetic level.

[dEhiN]

I know some say the dental and alveolar 'n' in Tamil have merged into an alveolar one, but I don't believe this is for every dialect.

I've only heard this claim at the phonemic level, where I think it is indeed true for all dialects. I've never heard of it at the phonetic level.

By phonemic, do you mean Tamil doesn't have any minimal pairs with dental and alveolar n? At the phonetic level, I thought this was true for some dialects. For example, I remember a poll on a Tamil learning FB page asking the native speakers if, in their dialect, they had merged ந் /n̪/ and ன் /n/.

[vijayjohn]

I know some say the dental and alveolar 'n' in Tamil have merged into an alveolar one, but I don't believe this is for every dialect.

I've only heard this claim at the phonemic level, where I think it is indeed true for all dialects. I've never heard of it at the phonetic level.

By phonemic, do you mean Tamil doesn't have any minimal pairs with dental and alveolar n?

Yes.

At the phonetic level, I thought this was true for some dialects.

According to page 8 of A Reference Grammar of Spoken Tamil by Harold F. Schiffman, "no Tamil speakers (despite claims otherwise) distinguish between these two sounds."

For example, I remember a poll on a Tamil learning FB page asking the native speakers if, in their dialect, they had merged ந் /n̪/ and ன் /n/.

How are native speakers supposed to know this? How do you even phrase this in a way that they'd understand? Native speakers are not linguists who have studied this formally for years.

[Linguaphile]

For example, I remember a poll on a Tamil learning FB page asking the native speakers if, in their dialect, they had merged ந் /n̪/ and ன் /n/.

How are native speakers supposed to know this? How do you even phrase this in a way that they'd understand?

If I'm understanding the question correctly myself, then "Do you pronounce these two letters differently?" "Do you hear a difference between these two sounds?" If there are words that are minimal pairs with these two letters, "do you pronounce these two words the same or differently", "can you hear the difference between these two words," "can you tell these two words apart by sound when they are used in isolation," etc.
If there aren't minimal pairs, then maybe "does it sound wrong/strange/foreign/normal to say X [word that historically/orthographically should be pronounced with /n̪/ instead pronounced with /n/]" and vice versa , and so on.

Native speakers are not linguists who have studied this formally for years.

Maybe I've misunderstood this particular question about merging of /n̪/ and /n/, but I think native speakers are often highly undervalued in the field of linguistics. Sure, there will be aspects they aren't aware of; native English speakers aren't usually aware of the different pronunciations of /p/, for example (and lots of other stuff). But it's still an interesting question to ask native speakers (especially on a site dedicated to learning that language) and likely to result in interesting discussion and useful information, even if the result isn't exactly the same as what a linguist might say. Most native speakers aren't linguists, but they do have very valuable insight into their own language and how they use and perceive it.

[dEhiN]

According to page 8 of A Reference Grammar of Spoken Tamil by Harold F. Schiffman, "no Tamil speakers (despite claims otherwise) distinguish between these two sounds."

Wasn't that book last written in the 60s? If so, have any studies been done since then with the various sensory technologies we now have. Also, that's a pretty bold claim. How did Mr. Schiffman arrive at that conclusion? I'm always vary of any professional text making such hard and fast claims. Particularly in terms of human beings, since everyone is different. (Though I have to admit, I'm jealous you have that Reference Grammar! I remember seeing it in the Toronto library system and waiting forever to try and get access to it, but I never did in the end. )

How are native speakers supposed to know this? How do you even phrase this in a way that they'd understand? Native speakers are not linguists who have studied this formally for years.

Leaving aside Linguaphile's response (which I add my own thoughts to below), this isn't the first time I've heard you argue in essentially a negative way against the lay person (i.e., native speakers in this case) and specifically, the possibility of them being able to contribute anything of value to a professional discourse. I think that's elitist at worst and ignorant at best.

If I'm understanding the question correctly myself, then "Do you pronounce these two letters differently?" "Do you hear a difference between these two sounds?" If there are words that are minimal pairs with these two letters, "do you pronounce these two words the same or differently", "can you hear the difference between these two words," "can you tell these two words apart by sound when they are used in isolation," etc.
If there aren't minimal pairs, then maybe "does it sound wrong/strange/foreign/normal to say X [word that historically/orthographically should be pronounced with /n̪/ instead pronounced with /n/]" and vice versa , and so on.

Even a basic question like "where do you put your tongue when you say the 'n' in this word" is likely to get responses from native speakers. Sure, they may have never thought of it before and so many in the general populace aren't likely to say 'post-dental' or 'retroflex' but they will tell you enough that you could probably figure the POA.

In fact, that very question is what enabled me to train myself to say English <r> correctly. Well, at least to be able to make it an approximant, though I think mine tends to be more post-alveolar which causes people to think I have an accent when I say 'r'. However, I used to say it as /ɰ/ and also do this weird thing with my lips where I would close them and only open the right side. I'm not sure how I came to use that pronunciation, but I believe I did it ever since I was a child. I could tell the difference in how I said 'r' at that time and others said it. I just couldn't figure out how to make (what I now know is) an alveolar approximant. (Actually, my problem was the POA but MOA - I didn't know what an approximant sound was, that is, how one made such as phone). One day I ask a friend where she put her tongue when saying the 'r' in run for example. Though her description was a little vague, based on my burgeoning knowledge of linguistics and phonology, I was able to figure out what she was doing and then emulated and practiced that.

Maybe I've misunderstood this particular question about merging of /n̪/ and /n/, but I think native speakers are often highly undervalued in the field of linguistics. Sure, there will be aspects they aren't aware of; native English speakers aren't usually aware of the different pronunciations of /p/, for example (and lots of other stuff). But it's still an interesting question to ask native speakers (especially on a site dedicated to learning that language) and likely to result in interesting discussion and useful information, even if the result isn't exactly the same as what a linguist might say. Most native speakers aren't linguists, but they do have very valuable insight into their own language and how they use and perceive it.

This exactly! If I remember correctly, the regular native speakers on that FB page, at least at that time, had some awareness if not knowledge of linguistic phenomena. I even had an argument one with one of the native speakers on intervocalic க் /k/. For me and to my understanding of Sri Lankan Tamil pronunciation, it becomes an /h/ sound. Also to my understanding, the general Indian Tamil pronunciation of intervocalic க் is /g/. I was arguing with this guy who had studied Tamil linguistics, though perhaps informally and not professionally, because he was saying that that phoneme was always said voiced intervocalically..

For those who haven't studied Tamil, a good example of this would be the word மகன் /mahən/ 'son'. In this Wiktionary entry, you'll see that they list the IPA as /maɡan/, [məɡən] but the audio sounds much more of a voiceless fricative than any voiced stop. (Also, I don't know why the IPA is written as məɡən in the square brackets. Even in the audio, the first vowel doesn't sound schwa-like at all.) I also found a forvo recording of an Indian male native speaker and his க also sounds like a voiceless fricative.

I think I vary between [h~ħ] with possibly bordering on [ɦ~ʕ] when saying க் intervocalically.

[vijayjohn]

For example, I remember a poll on a Tamil learning FB page asking the native speakers if, in their dialect, they had merged ந் /n̪/ and ன் /n/.

How are native speakers supposed to know this? How do you even phrase this in a way that they'd understand?

If I'm understanding the question correctly myself, then "Do you pronounce these two letters differently?" "Do you hear a difference between these two sounds?" If there are words that are minimal pairs with these two letters, "do you pronounce these two words the same or differently", "can you hear the difference between these two words," "can you tell these two words apart by sound when they are used in isolation," etc.
If there aren't minimal pairs, then maybe "does it sound wrong/strange/foreign/normal to say X [word that historically/orthographically should be pronounced with /n̪/ instead pronounced with /n/]" and vice versa , and so on.

But the problem is that many of these are different questions even from each other and they are not necessarily the same thing as complimentary distribution vs. phonetic contrast. There are a variety of reasons why native speakers of Tamil may be able to hear the difference between dental and alveolar nasals even if they don't actually contrast in the language itself at all.

Native speakers are not linguists who have studied this formally for years.

Maybe I've misunderstood this particular question about merging of /n̪/ and /n/, but I think native speakers are often highly undervalued in the field of linguistics. Sure, there will be aspects they aren't aware of; native English speakers aren't usually aware of the different pronunciations of /p/, for example (and lots of other stuff). But it's still an interesting question to ask native speakers (especially on a site dedicated to learning that language) and likely to result in interesting discussion and useful information, even if the result isn't exactly the same as what a linguist might say. Most native speakers aren't linguists, but they do have very valuable insight into their own language and how they use and perceive it.

I agree with all of this. That also isn't what I'm talking about at all. dEhiN said a poll asked "native speakers if, in their dialect, they had merged ந் /n̪/ and ன் /n/," but "merge" is pretty linguistics-specific jargon, and I want to know how they phrased that question so you don't have to be familiar with that jargon to answer the question and because the way questions are phrased is important and influences what the responses will be. Besides, phonemic vs. phonetic is a notoriously difficult concept for people to understand; I've seen plenty of linguistics students struggle with it both when studying linguistics and when teaching it, I've seen dEhiN struggle with it, and I myself had to struggle to understand it when I first started formally studying linguistics. It's just not that intuitive of a concept.

According to page 8 of A Reference Grammar of Spoken Tamil by Harold F. Schiffman, "no Tamil speakers (despite claims otherwise) distinguish between these two sounds."

Wasn't that book last written in the 60s?

No. It was first published in 1999. I'm having trouble telling right now when it was last published, but there is a version available on Amazon that was published in 2006.

Though I have to admit, I'm jealous you have that Reference Grammar! I remember seeing it in the Toronto library system and waiting forever to try and get access to it, but I never did in the end.

Well, I don't actually have it, but the university library does, or at least did when I visited it something like ten years ago, and I have a habit of trying to take copious notes on books I'm interested in and keeping them in notebooks in my room because I personally find that far more convenient than checking books out.

Leaving aside Linguaphile's response (which I add my own thoughts to below), this isn't the first time I've heard you argue in essentially a negative way against the lay person (i.e., native speakers in this case) and specifically, the possibility of them being able to contribute anything of value to a professional discourse. I think that's elitist at worst and ignorant at best.

Except that I never did this (or did I? Feel free to prove me wrong!), but this isn't the first time I've seen you make bad-faith accusations against me anyway, either. Now, don't get me wrong; I'm not trying to make you look bad by saying that because I think I understand why you might feel that way. It's the Internet, tone is hard to read, we're in the middle of a pandemic, there are probably lots of reasons why you might feel frustrated, there are definitely reasons why I feel frustrated, and we are literally talking about the linguistics of a language that is very closely related to my heritage language and that I started learning to read and write when I was like six years old, plus I'm a linguist, so I get unduly excited about things like this.

Hating on native speakers is not what I'm doing here, though. I'm literally asking you a question, which you still haven't actually answered. I would appreciate it if you could just tell me how they phrased the question instead of jumping to the conclusion that I must be saying native speakers have nothing to contribute just because Linguaphile apparently thought that's what I was suggesting. Of course they have something to contribute; the contributions of native speakers are the very foundation of linguistics. We cannot study what people speak without studying what people speak.

Even a basic question like "where do you put your tongue when you say the 'n' in this word" is likely to get responses from native speakers.

Wait, native speakers of what?

I'm honestly too frustrated to even read beyond this part of your post now. I am a linguist talking about a language that you say I speak better than you - that you in fact claim I speak far better than I think I really do - yet somehow I can't just ask you a question about it without apparently having done something terribly wrong and dismissing the very people my entire field gets all its data from. I mean, really, you have no idea how infuriating that is. And I really don't understand why people have such a hard time understanding that I don't appreciate being dogpiled on all the goddamn time. I have the fucking right to state a fucking opinion without being accused of doing something bad or wrong in the process, and people aren't willing to see what they did wrong by pointing fingers at me like this.

[Linguaphile]

For example, I remember a poll on a Tamil learning FB page asking the native speakers if, in their dialect, they had merged ந் /n̪/ and ன் /n/.

How are native speakers supposed to know this? How do you even phrase this in a way that they'd understand?

If I'm understanding the question correctly myself, then "Do you pronounce these two letters differently?" "Do you hear a difference between these two sounds?" If there are words that are minimal pairs with these two letters, "do you pronounce these two words the same or differently", "can you hear the difference between these two words," "can you tell these two words apart by sound when they are used in isolation," etc.
If there aren't minimal pairs, then maybe "does it sound wrong/strange/foreign/normal to say X [word that historically/orthographically should be pronounced with /n̪/ instead pronounced with /n/]" and vice versa , and so on.

But the problem is that many of these are different questions even from each other

I understood that they are different questions from each other, that was my point. I had different sets of questions for "if there are minimal pairs" and "if there aren't" and so on (and I already understood that you said there were no minimal pairs) and so on, depending on the situation and what was being asked. They were just example questions for various situations, intentionally mutually exclusive, not meant to be different ways to ask the same thing.

Leaving aside Linguaphile's response (which I add my own thoughts to below), this isn't the first time I've heard you argue in essentially a negative way against the lay person (i.e., native speakers in this case) and specifically, the possibility of them being able to contribute anything of value to a professional discourse. I think that's elitist at worst and ignorant at best.

Except that I never did this (or did I? Feel free to prove me wrong!)

Okay, I'm going to jump in here because I was not at all surprised to read dEhiN's comment there because I'd gotten the same impression. So I did a quick search for your (vijay's) posts with keywords "native" and "linguist" and didn't really look through all of them, but for example one of them was this thread here:

the native speaker seems to be the one that took offense to what I said (I pointed out that native speakers and linguists aren't the same thing, but what he apparently took away from that was that I was saying he shouldn't talk because he didn't have the expertise of a linguist or something).

When documentary linguists go out into the field and collect data from native speakers, they're basically learning the language. They don't do that by saying things like "so how many tones does your language have?" because how tf is the native speaker supposed to know that? Instead, they ask simpler questions: "How do you say this? How do you say that?" They listen, try to form sentences, ask "is this sentence okay?" That sort of thing. You have to be really careful about the kinds of things you ask native speakers or else you'll just cause a lot of unnecessary confusion or worse.

Well, my actual words were:
"Guys
Native speakers ≠ linguists
Whether a language is tonal or not is a pretty hard question even for linguists to answer and kind of a theoretical question"
and I think he took that to mean that I was getting up on my high horse and saying as a native speaker, he's not qualified to ask these questions because he's not a linguist so how dare he even touch such a question that's even hard for linguists to answer. In reality, I wasn't trying to address him at all.

So... I can see that there you were saying that wasn't your intention there either, but whether you mean to or not, I can say it's not the first time you've given that impression. When someone say "[certain class of people] won't be able to understand or answer" and the class in question knows the subject matter, it comes off that way. I think the issue is that you are seeing the "subject matter" as "linguistics" and we are seeing it as "the language".

[vijayjohn]

This is ridiculous. Always reading me in bad faith.

[Linguaphile]

This is ridiculous. Always reading me in bad faith.

Not really...

So... I can see that there you were saying that wasn't your intention there either

Also, I quoted that particular thread because you had said someone else (not on this board) had understood your words in a similar way. So you have given that impression to more than just us. I wasn't taking it in bad faith (see my quote above), but trying to point out that the way you express it gives that impression which, apparently, isn't your intention but comes off that way, and not to just us.

[vijayjohn]

You're missing the point. People are always jumping on me saying that I did something wrong, and that is not fair when I am simply trying to ask a question!

[Linguaphile]

You're missing the point. People are always jumping on me saying that I did something wrong, and that is not fair when I am simply trying to ask a question!

I just edited my post, so I'm going to add the edit here:

Also, I quoted that particular thread because you had said someone else (not on this board) had understood your words in a similar way. So you have given that impression to more than just us. I wasn't taking it in bad faith (see my quote above), but trying to point out that the way you express it gives that impression which, apparently, isn't your intention but comes off that way, and not to just us.

And I didn't mean for this to be an argument or attack. I thought it would help.

[vijayjohn]

Thanks for trying to help, but you just don't understand. You really, really don't.

People have jumped on me like this my entire life. You did this! You did that! You do one thing, it's wrong! You do the exact opposite, it's still wrong! You do exactly as I say, it's still wrong! I mean, what am I supposed to do then?

I don't think you have any idea what it's like to come from one culture, live in a country where the dominant culture is completely different and where most people do not want you to exist in the first place, and have almost no space - for most of your life, no space, at all - where you can stay without people constantly accusing you of having done wrong.

There is no solution to this problem. I have no choice but to deal with it forever anyway because I can't change my own skin color and where my entire family comes from nor can I really change how people behave towards me as a direct result. Just please, now that I've said my piece, please leave me alone and let me try to calm down.

[Yasna]

Unraveling the Mindset of Victimhood

[vijayjohn]

Yeah whatever