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

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

Post by GrandPiano »

yangfiretiger121 wrote: 06 Sep 2018 23:36 I listened to delta's Greek pronunciation (/ˈðelta/) several times on Google translate. However, I couldn't tell if /ð/ was closer to [th] (this) or [dɦ]. Is Greek /ð/ closer to [th] or [dɦ]?
Since it’s voiced, it’s more similar to [dɦ], but it’s not really similar to either of those... I’m not sure you’re using the IPA correctly, because the word “this” has [ð], not [th].
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Post by sangi39 »

GrandPiano wrote: 20 Sep 2018 04:17
yangfiretiger121 wrote: 06 Sep 2018 23:36 I listened to delta's Greek pronunciation (/ˈðelta/) several times on Google translate. However, I couldn't tell if /ð/ was closer to [th] (this) or [dɦ]. Is Greek /ð/ closer to [th] or [dɦ]?
Since it’s voiced, it’s more similar to [dɦ], but it’s not really similar to either of those... I’m not sure you’re using the IPA correctly, because the word “this” has [ð], not [th].
I'm similarly confused. The [dɦ] would be a voiced alveolar plosive followed by a voiced glottal fricative, while /th/ would be its voiceless equivalent. /ð/, however, is a voiced dental fricative. So strictly speaking, while it is closer to /dɦ/ in being voiced, the <th> in "this" is, in most "standard" accents, /ð/, not /th/ (this would be a consonant cluster and on that, as far as I know, only occurs at syllable boundaries).
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Re: (L&N) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by Axiem »

Salmoneus wrote: 17 Sep 2018 22:55 It's some American comedian's routine that is parroted as a meme by internet people, mostly by Americans, as gospel despite having forgotten its origin.
When was this comedy routine you're referring to (that I've never heard of) done? Because I heard people (primarily women) expressing distaste with the word "moist" when I was a child, and I'm incredibly skeptical that they got it, pre-Internet, from a memetic comedy routine.
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Post by Creyeditor »

[:D] I feel like pre-Internet popculture mainly consisted of memetic comedy routines (at least in Germany and maybe only IMHO).
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Re: (L&N) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by yangfiretiger121 »

Wikipedia lists all of the back unrounded vowels as acoustically back-central. If this is true, what's back-central mean?
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Re: (L&N) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by shimobaatar »

yangfiretiger121 wrote: 22 Sep 2018 03:28 Wikipedia lists all of the back unrounded vowels as acoustically back-central. If this is true, what's back-central mean?
Under the "Features" section of the page for /ɯ/, it says (sans links):

"Unrounded back vowels tend to be centralized, which means that often they are in fact near-back."
egency
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Re: (L&N) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by egency »

I've found a list of phonetic features for (most of) the IPA characters in Bruce Hayes' book. However I cannot find same for the click consonants /anywhere/. The diacritics are also somewhat iffy from the book. He gives examples, but I'm having some trouble reversing the actual features of the diacritics from his examples.

The other list I found is Riggle's and his also doesn't contain the clicks apart from the fact that it differs significantly for Hayes' list.

Hayes has a spreadsheet on his site which apparently is more complete, but I cannot work out the character encoding and thus cannot read it. :/

Incidentally I'd prefer something that uses the same features as Hayes does as I've already done the work for that and it would suck to have to redo all of that...

Thanks! :)
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Post by Omzinesý »

Hungarian SG1 pronoun is NOM én, ACC eng-em. What's its etymology?
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Post by Porphyrogenitos »

Does anyone know anything about phenomena similar to consonant gradation in non-Uralic languages?
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Post by Omzinesý »

Porphyrogenitos wrote: 27 Sep 2018 05:27 Does anyone know anything about phenomena similar to consonant gradation in non-Uralic languages?
Google Werner's law in Germanic.
Turkish has t/k -> ğ in some case forms.

These came to my mind quickly. There must be more.
In Uralic consont gradation is quite limited to Finnic and Saami. Nganasan has something.
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Post by gach »

Porphyrogenitos wrote: 27 Sep 2018 05:27 Does anyone know anything about phenomena similar to consonant gradation in non-Uralic languages?
At least Central Alaskan Yupik has rhythmic lengthening of vowels which triggers consonant gemination under certain conditions. It's not quite consonant gradation but it plays with similar underlying phenomena.
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Post by Xonen »

Omzinesý wrote: 27 Sep 2018 10:56
Porphyrogenitos wrote: 27 Sep 2018 05:27 Does anyone know anything about phenomena similar to consonant gradation in non-Uralic languages?
Google Werner's law in Germanic.
Yeah, Verner's law is often mentioned in connection with Finnic gradation, because Lauri Posti once proposed a connection, and challenging the Great Finno-Ugricists of Old is kind of taboo in our field. However, he was writing at a time when the tradition in linguistics still seems to have been that every sound change must have an explanation (and for Finnic languages specifically: when in doubt, postulate Germanic influence), which... would now perhaps count as less of a reason to start constructing far-reaching theories, maybe?

Now, I'm not saying he was wrong, necessarily; there may well have been influence one way or the other! But all we can know for certain is that a somewhat similar (the exact extent depending on what exactly Verner's law did and whether it preceded or followed Grimm's) sound change took place, and partially under the same condition, namely following an unstressed syllable. And even then, the situation would have been a bit different, in that accent in pre-Germanic was mobile while for Proto-Finnic it was fixed.

For Finnic gradation conditioned by the openness/closedness of the following syllable, in turn, the parallel is much less exact at best.
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Re: (L&N) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by Lambuzhao »

I recently wondered.

There is a word in English (and other natlangs) for premonition or 'an inkling beforehand'.

Is there a word in English or another natlang for 'something realized too late afterward'?
Something in an epimethean sort of vein.

I suppose something 'in hindsight' may work. 'Afterthought' does not fit, IMHO
Suggestions???

:wat:

Wow -
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/staircase_wit

Looks like there's a phrase for it!

Thnx NYT crossword!

https://newyorktimescrossword.net/cleve ... te-to-use/

Good thing I wasn't too late in finding it before this pluibund day came to pluition!
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Post by Lambuzhao »

eldin raigmore wrote: 08 Sep 2018 18:43
Reyzadren wrote: 08 Sep 2018 00:09 Does anyone know of any multilingual news or social media/general info site that display similar translations?

For example, I could easily browse bbc, msn or wikipedia, but their webpages in other languages don't actually correspond to the content in English, at least not down to the paragraph level, if there is an equivalent article at all.
There are actually bilingual newspapers in USAmerica in certain communities. English/Spanish, English/Chinese, English/Korean, and English/VietNamese , for example. I’ve only seen hard copies, but I bet some are also online now. I believe (on the basis of evidence I’ve forgotten) that for the most part articles are directly translated from one language to the other.
I receive an English/Polish magazine, Zgoda, in a largely-unsuccessful attempt to learn a bit of Polish.
Their website is www.pna-znp.org .
There is a free Spanish/English newspaper El Sol Latino which is in the Philadelphia-NJ-Delaware area. For decades, it has published a bilingual Editorial/Opinion section with side by side :eng: \ :esp: translations.

I use it from time to time in my Spanish 2 classes for students to see how current events are treated in the Spanish-speaking community, without having a bear of a translation assignment beyond most of their skills.

Fortunately, they're online now:
http://elsoln1.com/news/opinion/

Every now and again, Al Día Latino newspaper also publishes bilingual editorials. They don't always appear every week though. [:S]

The Philadelphia Ukrainian newspaper The Way/ШЛЯХ has bilingual articles :eng: and :ukr: .
ШЛЯХ has an online blog here:
http://thewayukrainian.blogspot.com/2018/09/

I don't remember if there's an Italian-American community newspaper out of South Philly that has bilingual articles.
More later…
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Re: (L&N) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by Lambuzhao »

BTW,

I don't think I've ever seen bilingual articles in any of the (free) Viet or Chinese newspapers I've picked up hither and yon 'round town.
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Post by Omzinesý »

I read an Wikipedia article on Old High German declension. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_High_ ... declension
Does anybody know what the alternate forms (?) tages (-as), tage (-a) etc. are? orthographic differences, dialectal differences, a real sub-declension?
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Tristan Radicz
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Post by Tristan Radicz »

Omzinesý wrote: 08 Oct 2018 23:08 I read an Wikipedia article on Old High German declension. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_High_ ... declension
Does anybody know what the alternate forms (?) tages (-as), tage (-a) etc. are? orthographic differences, dialectal differences, a real sub-declension?
The latter endings are sparsely attested prior to 9th century. They might be influenced by Old Low German - there, e and a merged into a (or sometimes e) in final syllables. It's also the regular development in the Bavarian version of OHG, iirc.
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Post by CarsonDaConlanger »

Could anyone link me to a resource on Proto Norse and/or Proto Germanic language? I need phonology, grammar and lexicon if they're available.
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Re: (L&N) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by shimobaatar »

CarsonDaConlanger wrote: 09 Oct 2018 23:40 Could anyone link me to a resource on Proto Norse and/or Proto Germanic language? I need phonology, grammar and lexicon if they're available.
I honestly just look at Wikipedia and Wiktionary for the most part.
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