(L&N) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here [2010-2019]

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Re: (L&N) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by shimobaatar »

Creyeditor wrote:Yes, some weird languages use word order to mark questions [:S]
Are you sure?
Spoiler:
Heh. [;)]
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Tuslaven Kukristo
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Re: (L&N) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by Tuslaven Kukristo »

Yo estoy un estudiante del español y no estoy muy bueno a esto momento (empece hace cinco meses). Uso DuoLingo estudiar pero quiero poco más, tienes suggerencias por extra material?

I am a spanish student and i am not very good at this moment (I started 5 months ago). I use DuoLingo to learn, but i want a little bit more. Do ya'll have any suggestions for extra material?
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Re: (L&N) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by thetha »

Spanish is a language with a large enough basis that you can get a decent amount of media in it. ve unos filmes wey!
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Re: (L&N) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by Thrice Xandvii »

In the effort of elucidation, I made some corrections to your Spanish, ¡espero que no te molesta!
Tuslaven Kukristo wrote:Yo estoy un estudiante de español y no estoy muy bueno en esto momento (empecé a aprender hace cinco meses). Uso 'DuoLingo' para estudiar, pero quiero algo más, ¿tiene alguien sugerencias por material extra?
(I hope it doesn't bother you.)
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Re: (L&N) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by loglorn »

Thrice Xandvii wrote:In the effort of elucidation, I made some corrections to your Spanish, ¡espero que no te molesta!
Tuslaven Kukristo wrote:Yo soy un estudiante de español y no estoy muy bueno en esto momento (empecé a aprender hace cinco meses). Uso 'DuoLingo' para estudiar, pero quiero algo más, ¿tiene alguien sugerencias por material extra?
(I hope it doesn't bother you.)
The biggest correction i see there, some copula witchcraft.
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Re: (L&N) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by Thrice Xandvii »

Dunno how I didn't see that... Maybe because it seemed more a temporary state than one typically would describe oneself? Other types of student last for decades, this may be a passing fancy, as learning a language on the 'net can often be.

No idea, but the fact remains that "ser" is a more correct choice IMO.
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Post by GrandPiano »

Does anyone know why the Cherokee syllabary has separate letters to represent the /kw/ cluster, Ꮖ quaquequiquoquuquv? It seems especially weird to me because English does a similar thing with its <qu> (which ultimately comes from the Latin use of <qu> to represent what most linguists agree was probably /kʷ/), and because those are the only letters used for specific consonant clusters rather than just a single consonant. Also, does anyone know why certain inconsistencies exist in the Cherokee syllabary? There are Ꮤ ta, Ꮦ te, and Ꮨ ti, but no letters for to, tu, or tv. There are Ꭷ ka, Ꮏ hna, and Ꮬ dla, but no other letters with those consonants. Ꮐ is romanized as <nah>; does it actually represent /nah/? If so, why is it the only letter for a syllable with a coda consonant? Does <mv> never occur, or is there another reason for its absence in the syllabary? Why is Ꮝ <s> the only letter that represents only a consonant, when I'm pretty sure I've read that other consonants can also appear without a vowel after them (I believe Cherokee uses "dummy vowels" for those other consonants)?

(For anyone who isn't familiar with Cherokee romanization, <v> represents /ə̃/.)
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Re: (L&N) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by Xonen »

GrandPiano wrote:Does anyone know why the Cherokee syllabary has [stuff]
Sequoyah might, but I wouldn't even count on that (also, I don't think he has an e-mail adress currently - and even if he does, I'm not sure if I'd feel comfortable trying to contact him). Thing is, he was an illiterate man with zero linguistic training, and the syllabary represents his personal attempt to perceive what syllables were present in the language. That he hit as close to the mark as he did with that background is fairly amazing; the fact that the script still ended up with some minor oddities is much less so.
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Post by Thrice Xandvii »

I think Xonen hit the mark.

But, I also know that the syllabary that Sequoyah designed and the one in use today are NOT the same. I think I recall reading somewhere that significant changes were made when it was first used along with moveable type and thus you may be able to blame the typesetting process of the day. I think that a lot of shapes were simplified to resemble Latin letters, as well as potentially glyph series being left by the wayside.

But, the syllabary has always been a "defective" script for Cherokee even before that time, as far as I know. And when I say defective, I don't mean as a normal adjective, but in the linguistic sense that not all glyphs existed to describe every sound in the language. You will also note an inconsistent distinction in voicing contrasts, as well as no marking whatsoever of tone, which Cherokee does possess.
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Re: (L&N) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by Canis »

Today in here we tried to teach an Irish laddie to say "dziękuję" (thank you) in Polish. Surprisingly, he pronounced particular sounds right, but has a big problem with pronouncing a tri-syllable word with no vocalic reduction. Such cases remind me of the difference between the so-called stress-type languages and syllable-type languages, a distinction I never gave a deeper thought. I don't see it even mentioned very often.
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Post by loglorn »

Some deep conlangs have info on that. And that's one of the biggest sources of foreign accent.
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Re: (L&N) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by Ahzoh »

Canis wrote:Today in here we tried to teach an Irish laddie to say "dziękuję" (thank you) in Polish. Surprisingly, he pronounced particular sounds right, but has a big problem with pronouncing a tri-syllable word with no vocalic reduction. Such cases remind me of the difference between the so-called stress-type languages and syllable-type languages, a distinction I never gave a deeper thought. I don't see it even mentioned very often.
Á, Polish, the beautiful language that always gets me when it comes to the retroflex fricatives and the consonant + i combinations...

But stress-type and syllable-type? Elaborate, I've never heard of such...
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Re: (L&N) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by Click »

He meant stress-timed and syllable-timed languages. If I recall correctly, the former is a language with an equalish amount of time between consecutive stressed syllables and the latter is a language where every syllable lasts an equalish period of time.
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Post by Ahzoh »

Click wrote:He meant stress-timed and syllable-timed languages. If I recall correctly, the former is a language with an equalish amount of time between consecutive stressed syllables and the latter is a language where every syllable lasts an equalish period of time.
I believe then, that they are both properly called "mora-timed" (as in Japanese) and "stress-timed" (as in English), inverse respectively.
At least, according to Wiki article on Morae...
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Re: (L&N) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by Click »

Aren’t mora-timed and syllable-timed languages a different thing?

Going by logic, in the former, a mora lasts a fixed amount of time; in the latter, a syllable lasts a fixed amount of time.
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Post by sangi39 »

Ahzoh wrote:
Click wrote:He meant stress-timed and syllable-timed languages. If I recall correctly, the former is a language with an equalish amount of time between consecutive stressed syllables and the latter is a language where every syllable lasts an equalish period of time.
I believe then, that they are both properly called "mora-timed" (as in Japanese) and "stress-timed" (as in English), inverse respectively.
At least, according to Wiki article on Morae...
And yet according to Wikipedia's article on isochrony, "mora-timed" and "syllable-timed" are two distinct things.
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Re: (L&N) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by Ahzoh »

Click wrote:Aren’t mora-timed and syllable-timed languages a different thing?

Going by logic, in the former, a mora lasts a fixed amount of time; in the latter, a syllable lasts a fixed amount of time.
I was under the impression a mora was a measure of a short-vowel, in such a way that CV is one mora and CVV is two. What you'd say that a syllable time language would have equalish time for CVV and CV? That CVVCV is just as long as CVCV or CVCCV?
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Re: (L&N) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by loglorn »

What you'd say that a syllable time language would have equalish time for CVV and CV? That CVVCV is just as long as CVCV or CVCCV?
That's about it.
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Re: (L&N) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by Thrice Xandvii »

Assuming of course by VV you mean V:, and not vowels in hiatus.
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Post by Prinsessa »

Canis wrote:Today in here we tried to teach an Irish laddie to say "dziękuję" (thank you) in Polish. Surprisingly, he pronounced particular sounds right, but has a big problem with pronouncing a tri-syllable word with no vocalic reduction. Such cases remind me of the difference between the so-called stress-type languages and syllable-type languages, a distinction I never gave a deeper thought. I don't see it even mentioned very often.
That's weird. I thought Gaelic was full of vowel reduction (schwa schwa schwa) all over the place. At least Scottish is. Or did you mean the opposite? He did reduce vowels even tho they shouldn't be in Polish? Sorry, you were a little ambiguous there and then while writing this I suddenly realised what you probably meant. :p
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