Random language thread 6

[linguoboy]

You could also have mentioned Jonathan Toews (who's Canadian, though).

But extremely well known here as the captain of the Blackhawks (a team so popular, even my niece-in-law in Oregon asks us for swag). Miriam Toews, a Canadian Mennonite author and actor, pronounces her name the same way.

So at a birthday party on Friday, I ran into someone who studied linguistics at Stanford. He's of Native heritage (Coosan, if I heard correctly) and his masters thesis was a dictionary of Miluk, an extinct language of the Oregon coast, compiled from existing textual sources and perhaps a few recordings from the the 60s. I'm really looking forward to getting together with him again sometime and geeking out.

[vijayjohn]

Interesting! Did he mention anything about having a personal connection to the language? If he's of Coosan heritage, then maybe it's his ancestral language, too.

[Luís]

I definitely should stay away from reddit language learning subs...

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[Ciarán12]

Eu o que você com isso dizer quer não sei...

[Saim]

A minha primeira reação foi que provávelmente leu algo sobre os enclíticos e confundiu-se... mas isso faz aínda menos sentido.

[Osias]

Ele está estudando com um mestre chamado Yoda.

[Ciarán12]

Eu sei que às vezes se usa uma sintaxe com o verbo no final, tipo "Alguns brasileiros têm nome que nem nome é!", talvez esteja se referindo a isso.

[linguoboy]

Update! Here's a link to his page: http://www.miluk.org/. The speaker who made these recordings of Miluk words and sentences is his great-great-grandmother, "Lolly". He told me that the medial l is actually long so he prefers the spelling "Milluk" but that this caused a conflict with "mill.uk". Also, for some reason, "Miluk" is more common in the literature.

He also showed me some of the historical fieldwork he's trying to transcribe in his spare time in order to complete the dictionary. Unfortunately, he can only afford to do it as a hobby.

[Osias]

Eu sei que às vezes se usa uma sintaxe com o verbo no final, tipo "Alguns brasileiros têm nome que nem nome é!", talvez esteja se referindo a isso.

Deve ter sido um erro de digitação. Essas coisas assim são pra dar ênfase. Isso que é.

[Osias]

A minha primeira reação foi que provavelmente leu algo sobre os enclíticos e confundiu-se... mas isso faz ainda menos sentido.

[Linguaphile]

Update! Here's a link to his page: http://www.miluk.org/. The speaker who made these recordings of Miluk words and sentences is his great-great-grandmother, "Lolly". He told me that the medial l is actually long so he prefers the spelling "Milluk" but that this caused a conflict with "mill.uk". Also, for some reason, "Miluk" is more common in the literature.

He also showed me some of the historical fieldwork he's trying to transcribe in his spare time in order to complete the dictionary. Unfortunately, he can only afford to do it as a hobby.

Years ago I spent many summers near Coos Bay. Your post takes me back there - bright orange salmonberries, enormous banana slugs, trips to dusty bookstores in the rain. While there I came across some information about the Hanis language in a used book store, but nothing about Milluk. Thanks for the link!

[linguoboy]

Years ago I spent many summers near Coos Bay. Your post takes me back there - bright orange salmonberries, enormous banana slugs, trips to dusty bookstores in the rain. While there I came across some information about the Hanis language in a used book store, but nothing about Milluk. Thanks for the link!

My pleasure! He also mentioned having some files and doing some work on Hanis as well, but I don't know the details.

I know you probably have way too much on your plate as it is, but he's looking for help with transcription. I can get you his contact info if you're interested.

[vijayjohn]

I'm curious: If he's been working on Coosan languages that much, does he speak some Milluk and/or Hanis?

[Vlürch]

So, last week, through social services me and my mum got professional cleaners to clean our apartment and throw a lot of stuff out. The reason this is language-related and random is that they spoke a language neither of us recognised, and eventually my mum couldn't resist the temptation to ask. I'd have never figured it out, which is probably kind of embarrassing.

In terms of phonology it sounded very close to Turkish but was clearly not a Turkic language; it had several words that sounded extremely Slavic, too. In fact, at first (when they spoke just a couple of words together, kinda quietly) both me and my mum though it was Russian... but that was because Russian would be a common language to hear, and because the one who could speak Finnish had an accent that sounded similar to a Russian accent (the others only spoke to each other in their own language, and to us in English). The language had tons of [ʃ] and [æ]. A couple of times, I heard them say something like [kʲærdɑ], which sounded similar to the Persian verb meaning "to do", and some other stuff that sounded Indo-European... and one of them also said something like [librɑ] to another one several times, clearly referring to books.

I was confused, I had no idea what language could have that as the word for book but sound so close to Turkish in its phonology (I didn't hear a single sound that doesn't exist in Turkish AFAICT), and overall seem Indo-European. The languages I narrowed it down to in my mind were Romani or Kurdish, or that maybe they were code-switching between different languages... but I didn't think it was actually either Romani or Kurdish, because of different reasons; I figured it probably wasn't Romani because it didn't sound like it had aspirated consonants and because one of them got excited when he saw that I have a Koran (and we briefly discussed religion (in English) lol), and I figured it probably wasn't Kurdish because it had so many words that sounded Slavic and because of the Romance-like word for book.

Well, turned out it was Albanian. What this confirmed is that Albanian sounds nice, cool and is probably pretty weird (in a good way). If I wasn't feeling unable to focus on anything language-related at the moment, I'd want to learn at least a little bit of it.

[Osias]

overall seem Indo-European

How can one tell that?

[Vlürch]

overall seem Indo-European

How can one tell that?

In this case, the reason I got that impression was mainly from the consonant clusters and it just somehow sounding a little bit like various Indo-European languages. Really vague, I know, but I don't know, even though it sounded phonologically so much like Turkish, it just had that Indo-European vibe to it somehow?

[Osias]

I have no idea. My knowledge of non-IE languages is very basic. Maybe this year I'll put more effort on Japanese.

[vijayjohn]

Albanian would be a pretty interesting language for me to study; a few years ago, at least, a certain user was very actively studying it here. I don't have any print resources for it, though, unless you count the Berlitz Eastern European languages phrasebook.

[linguoboy]

https://ygdp.yale.edu/

What a fascinating roundup of (chiefly North American) syntactical diversity. I had not idea that "all the further" was so restricted in its distribution.

[Ciarán12]

This is both Random Language thread- and Random Thing I learned thread-worthy:

I just learned that Hiligaynon is a language that exists.
My company has just onboarded some Hiligaynon linguists and I was asked to set them up in the system.