Random language thread 6

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Ciarán12
Re: Random language thread 6

Postby Ciarán12 » 2019-05-12, 19:40

Prowler wrote:I could see people developing an accent if they move to England or USA,but people who have either never been to those countries or only been there for a few days as tourists?


Yeah, most (if not all) of the people I've come across who sound convincingly native lived for some time in countries where English is spoken.

Prowler wrote:I think having an accent is fine as long as people understand you. I'd personally hate to sound American or English.


I think it's fine too. The point wasn't whether or not it's desirable, just whether or not it's possible.

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Re: Random language thread 6

Postby Prowler » 2019-05-12, 20:06

Ciarán12 wrote:
Prowler wrote:I could see people developing an accent if they move to England or USA,but people who have either never been to those countries or only been there for a few days as tourists?


Yeah, most (if not all) of the people I've come across who sound convincingly native lived for some time in countries where English is spoken.

Prowler wrote:I think having an accent is fine as long as people understand you. I'd personally hate to sound American or English.


I think it's fine too. The point wasn't whether or not it's desirable, just whether or not it's possible.

I know, I was just saying. Plus, it would make things more boring and more disturbing if people now began sounding American. I actually found it kinda sad when you told us that some young Irish people nowadays sound American.

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Re: Random language thread 6

Postby Ciarán12 » 2019-05-12, 20:14

Prowler wrote:I know, I was just saying. Plus, it would make things more boring and more disturbing if people now began sounding American. I actually found it kinda sad when you told us that some young Irish people nowadays sound American.


It is kind of sad, yes. It's also an understandable result of pseudo-immersion in American culture via TV, film and the internet. I was reminded of this phenomenon again today, actually. I was eating at a restaurant and there was a birthday party for a 13 year old girl going on at the table next to us. The girls accents sounded profoundly Americanised to my ears.

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Re: Random language thread 6

Postby Prowler » 2019-05-12, 20:16

Ciarán12 wrote:
Prowler wrote:I know, I was just saying. Plus, it would make things more boring and more disturbing if people now began sounding American. I actually found it kinda sad when you told us that some young Irish people nowadays sound American.


It is kind of sad, yes. It's also an understandable result of pseudo-immersion in American culture via TV, film and the internet.

Sure, but why does that seem to happen in the Republic of Ireland but not in, let's say, Australia, New Zealand, the UK or even Canada? Although the Canadian accent is a bit subtle and some Americans who live close to the border might have similar accents as well.

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Re: Random language thread 6

Postby Ciarán12 » 2019-05-12, 20:30

Prowler wrote:Sure, but why does that seem to happen in the Republic of Ireland but not in, let's say, Australia, New Zealand, the UK or even Canada? Although the Canadian accent is a bit subtle and some Americans who live close to the border might have similar accents as well.


Well, firstly I diaagree that it isn't happening elsewhere. But even if it's not happening to the same extent, that can be explained by Ireland not having as large a population as the other Anglophone nations. Smaller population means less home-grown media to compete for Irish people's attention than foreign media, meaning we consume a lot more American media than, for example, the Brits do*, mainly because they make plenty of their own.
In the case of New Zealand, which has a similar population to Ireland, it's probably a case of what you mentioned about Canada having a subtley different accent from America, except swap out Canada for New Zealand and America for Australia.

*To clarify, I mean that a much larger proportion of our media diet is composed of American (and other non-Irish) media than native media.
Last edited by Ciarán12 on 2019-05-12, 20:35, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: Random language thread 6

Postby Prowler » 2019-05-12, 20:33

Ciarán12 wrote:
Prowler wrote:Sure, but why does that seem to happen in the Republic of Ireland but not in, let's say, Australia, New Zealand, the UK or even Canada? Although the Canadian accent is a bit subtle and some Americans who live close to the border might have similar accents as well.


Well, firstly I diaagree that it isn't happening elsewhere. But even if it's not happening to the same extent, that can be explained by Ireland not having as large a population as the other Anglophone nations. Smaller population means less home-grown media to compete for Irish people's attention than foreign media, meaning we consume a lot more American media than, for example, the Brits do, mainly because they make plenty of their own.
In the case of New Zealand, which has a similar population to Ireland, it's probably a case of what you mentioned about Canada having a subtley different accent from America, except swap out Canada for New Zealand and America for Australia.

What about in other smaller English speaking nations such as Jamaica and Belize? Does such a phenomenon happen as well? Now I wonder.

Ciarán12

Re: Random language thread 6

Postby Ciarán12 » 2019-05-12, 20:41

Prowler wrote:What about in other smaller English speaking nations such as Jamaica and Belize? Does such a phenomenon happen as well? Now I wonder.


I've never met any speakers from those countries, so I'm not totally sure if it's happening there. In those cases though, there are creoles spoken there which sets the starting point for the shift to American English further away, so they'll probably continue to sound less American than us for longer (though decreolisation could still be happening, again, I'm not sure).
The tendency for dialects in English to standardise isn't all that new, the traditional dialects of various parts of Britain have been declining in use and getting more influenced by major southern dialects for quite a while.

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Re: Random language thread 6

Postby JackFrost » 2019-05-12, 23:59

Prowler wrote:[...]even Canada? Although the Canadian accent is a bit subtle and some Americans who live close to the border might have similar accents as well.

Because Canada has a law that requires at least 50% Canadian content. You know, just to avoid getting swamped with American products. Even Netflix has to play along.

Furthermore, Canadian English is part of the North American dialectal area. Like, the Canadian phonology is often in line with other dialects spoken down south. Even some or many Americans have some sort of the famous "Canadian" raising. Irish English however is in many ways not in line with British English, so it doesn't really form part of it(?).
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Re: Random language thread 6

Postby Prowler » 2019-05-13, 3:54

JackFrost wrote:
Prowler wrote:[...]even Canada? Although the Canadian accent is a bit subtle and some Americans who live close to the border might have similar accents as well.

Because Canada has a law that requires at least 50% Canadian content. You know, just to avoid getting swamped with American products. Even Netflix has to play along.

Furthermore, Canadian English is part of the North American dialectal area. Like, the Canadian phonology is often in line with other dialects spoken down south. Even some or many Americans have some sort of the famous "Canadian" raising. Irish English however is in many ways not in line with British English, so it doesn't really form part of it(?).

I see. I wonder what other countries have similar laws like that.

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Re: Random language thread 6

Postby md0 » 2019-05-13, 4:08

France for one.
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Re: Random language thread 6

Postby Luís » 2019-05-13, 8:40

Ciarán12 wrote:I'm going to Portugal for a week next week and oddly enough, I don't know whether or not I should speak Portuguese while I'm there.
My reasoning is this: I've heard there's quite a bit of anti-Brazilian sentiment in Portugal (or parts of it, at least). If I speak to someone and have trouble understanding them (which some PT-BR speakers do occasionally, and if even natives do than I'm certainly even more likely to have these problems), then the person is not likely to know I'm a non-native, they'll think I'm a Brazilian and therefore think I should be able to understand, and that maybe I'm actually mocking their Portuguese by intentionally misunderstanding/exaggerating the extent to which I find them difficult to understand, and I'd end up insulting them.
There are a few Portuguese in my office, I don't have any trouble communicating with them, but I'm pretty sure they change their Portuguese a bit when they talk to me because when I catch them talking to each other it's somewhat harder to follow their conversation.


You're overthinking this too much. Just go ahead and speak Portuguese if you want to.
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Re: Random language thread 6

Postby vijayjohn » 2019-05-14, 5:43

Vlürch wrote:That's kinda true, although I didn't even think about it. :o But isn't the distinction in Korean between "strong articulation", "weak articulation" and aspirated rather than anything to do with voicing?

That kind of has to do with voicing...and no, it's between "plain," "tense," and "aspirated."
Or is voicing a part of it?

The plain ones can be voiced. The tense ones involve constriction of the glottis FWICT.
The part whose naturalism I'm wondering is the existence of a phoneme with "variable voicing" in contrast to a voiced and voiceless one with the same POA and MOA

Oh, is that all? Well, Malayalam has that. [kʰ] is always voiceless, and [g] is always voiced, but /k/ (and in fact also /gʱ/) can be either voiceless or voiced (depending on phonetic environment in the case of /k/ and on speaker variation in the case of [gʱ]. Most speakers pronounce the breathy voiced stops as just plain voiceless while insisting they don't, though :P). Same goes for all other plosives in Malayalam. The only problem is that the aspirates and voiced consonants are borrowed from Sanskrit, so it might be hard to argue that they're actually phonemes. Also, some speakers may have [g] corresponding to other speakers' [kʰ] in some environments (not sure whether anyone replaces [g] with [k], though).

Did that make any sense? :lol:
Do you aim to use the American R or intentionally avoid it?

Is there anything particularly American about it? Isn't that the R most native speakers of English use? (Except maybe in Scotland or something).
Last edited by vijayjohn on 2019-05-19, 0:08, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: Random language thread 6

Postby Vlürch » 2019-05-15, 15:04

vijayjohn wrote:That kind of has to do with voicing...and no, it's between "plain," "tense," and "aspirated."

vijayjohn wrote:The plain ones can be voiced. The tense ones involve constriction of the glottis FWICT.

Alright, so it's definitely naturalistic enough to have something kinda similar in a conlang. :P Thanks. Maybe I was subconsciously influenced by Korean coming up with that, although the whole "need" for that three-way distinction came from wanting to use certain digraphs and having to come up with some "logical" phonemes to go with them... :lol:
vijayjohn wrote:Oh, is that all? Well, Malayalam has that. [kʰ] is always voiceless, and [g] is always voiced, but /k/ (and in fact also /gʱ/) can be either voiceless or voiced (depending on phonetic environment in the case of /k/ and on speaker variation in the case of /gʱ/. Most speakers pronounce the breathy voiced stops as just plain voiceless while insisting they don't, though :P). Same goes for all other plosives in Malayalam. The only problem is that the aspirates and voiced consonants are borrowed from Sanskrit, so it might be hard to argue that they're actually phonemes. Also, some speakers may have [g] corresponding to other speakers' [kʰ] in some environments (not sure whether anyone replaces [g] with [k], though).

Interesting, especially the last part since [g] and [kʰ] seem like the most different out of those. If both the aspirated and voiced ones only occur in Sanskrit loanwords, does that mean Malayalam originally had only /k/?
vijayjohn wrote:Is there anything particularly American about it? Isn't that the R most native speakers of English use? (Except maybe in Scotland or something).

I guess it's the default in most varieties if it's just [ɻ] or something, but if it's [ɻʷˤ] with R-colouration on adjacent vowels, AFAIK that's something that happens only in (some) American English? Maybe in a lot of British English it's labialised [ɹ̠ʷ~ɻʷ], but I don't think it sounds pharyngealised/whateverised like the stereotypically American one or even as far back most of the time? Also, maybe I'm totally wrong, but "darkening" is at least typically not a thing in Irish English, right? Because I really like the Irish R, which to my ears sounds like [ɹ̠~ɻ], at least usually without any kind of secondary articulation? Maybe even fricated [ɹ̠̝~ɻ̝] and/or devoiced in some contexts? :hmm:

~

Random thing: my brother and me went to get pizzas from the local pizzeria last Sunday and while we were waiting, at one of the tables there was a group of people who spoke some language that we couldn't recognise with certainty but was obviously some Iranian language. It sounded more like Kurdish than anything else, but that impression could've been influenced by them looking so much like Kurds. Seems like at least the language couldn't have been Kurdish, though, because they definitely said [dær~d̪æɾ] a lot, but apparently it doesn't exist as a preposition in Kurdish like it does in Persian. :?

I guess it could've literally just been Persian, even though I'm kinda sceptical about that since it sounded so much like Kurdish except for the [dær~d̪æɾ] thing. Is there some Iranian language that sounds more like Kurdish but uses that preposition? Or is there some word in Kurdish that it could've been, if it wasn't a preposition after all? Or maybe it really was just Persian, if the speakers were Kurds so it sounded more like Kurdish somehow...? But why would Kurds be speaking Persian? :hmm:

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Re: Random language thread 6

Postby Osias » 2019-05-15, 18:48

Luís wrote:
Ciarán12 wrote:I'm going to Portugal for a week next week and oddly enough, I don't know whether or not I should speak Portuguese while I'm there.
My reasoning is this: I've heard there's quite a bit of anti-Brazilian sentiment in Portugal (or parts of it, at least). If I speak to someone and have trouble understanding them (which some PT-BR speakers do occasionally, and if even natives do than I'm certainly even more likely to have these problems), then the person is not likely to know I'm a non-native, they'll think I'm a Brazilian and therefore think I should be able to understand, and that maybe I'm actually mocking their Portuguese by intentionally misunderstanding/exaggerating the extent to which I find them difficult to understand, and I'd end up insulting them.
There are a few Portuguese in my office, I don't have any trouble communicating with them, but I'm pretty sure they change their Portuguese a bit when they talk to me because when I catch them talking to each other it's somewhat harder to follow their conversation.


You're overthinking this too much. Just go ahead and speak Portuguese if you want to.

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Re: Random language thread 6

Postby Ciarán12 » 2019-05-15, 19:29

Osias wrote:
Luís wrote:You're overthinking this too much. Just go ahead and speak Portuguese if you want to.

Isso! Vai que vai!


Bom, já tô aqui falando em português e até agora não tivemos nenhum problema. O sotaque é às vezes um pouco difícil mas nunca a ponto de impedir uma conversa. Pode ser só a minha impressão, mas o povo em Lisboa (tô em Algarve atualmente mas passei por lá hoje de manhã) tendem a ter um sotaque mais forte (ou mais estereotipicamente "Português")...?

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Re: Random language thread 6

Postby Osias » 2019-05-16, 11:15

Não faço ideia... No dia que eu for milionário faço um tour pela Europa.
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Re: Random language thread 6

Postby OldBoring » 2019-05-16, 17:17

Osias wrote:Não faço ideia... No dia que eu for milionário faço um tour pela Europa.

I thought it was easy to travel from one side to the other of the Portuguese Empire... :para:

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Re: Random language thread 6

Postby Osias » 2019-05-16, 18:13

Eu não tenho dinheiro nem pra ir no Rio de Janeiro...
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Re: Random language thread 6

Postby Luís » 2019-05-17, 8:21

Ciarán12 wrote: o povo em Lisboa (tô em Algarve atualmente mas passei por lá hoje de manhã) tendem a ter um sotaque mais forte (ou mais estereotipicamente "Português")...?


Curioso, porque a maior parte dos lisboetas diria que "não tem sotaque", simplesmente porque falam semelhante à norma padrão (ou ao que se ouve nos meios de comunicação). Já no Algarve, a pronúncia é algo diferente.
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Ciarán12

Re: Random language thread 6

Postby Ciarán12 » 2019-05-17, 14:16

Luís wrote:
Ciarán12 wrote: o povo em Lisboa (tô em Algarve atualmente mas passei por lá hoje de manhã) tendem a ter um sotaque mais forte (ou mais estereotipicamente "Português")...?


Curioso, porque a maior parte dos lisboetas diria que "não tem sotaque", simplesmente porque falam semelhante à norma padrão (ou ao que se ouve nos meios de comunicação). Já no Algarve, a pronúncia é algo diferente.


Bom, o estereótipo que eu tenho do sotaque português é provavelmente baseado na padrão, então faz sentido que eu ache o sotaque de Lisboa mais "português". Nem falei muito com pessoas lá no Algarve, então não posso dizer se foi notadamente diferenciado dos outros pra mim. Gostaria de saber mais à respeito dos dialetos de Português Europeu...


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