Search found 383 matches

by Sumelic
Wed Jun 27, 2018 1:48 am
Forum: Languages & Linguistics
Topic: Which -an adjective based on "Rousseau" do you prefer?
Replies: 6
Views: 7355

Which -an adjective based on "Rousseau" do you prefer?

From most to least frequent according to the Google Ngram Viewer : Rousseauian, Rousseauan, Rousseauvian, Rousseaunian. The following forms are not frequent enough to show up on the Ngram Viewer, but I gather from Google search results that they do exist: Roussonian, Rousseavian, Roussevian. If you ...
by Sumelic
Sat Jun 23, 2018 10:11 pm
Forum: Languages & Linguistics
Topic: The "How do You Pronounce X" Thread
Replies: 3108
Views: 636747

Re: The "How do You Pronounce X" Thread

Vengaboys - We're Going To Ibiza https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gfwNvfX5Aic Why do they say "Ibiza" as "eebeetsa" in the song? Isn't "Ibiza" pronounce "eebeetha"? Probably just confusion between the pronunciation of "z" in Spanish and in other Romance languages like Italian. You can find a lot of ...
by Sumelic
Thu May 24, 2018 7:22 pm
Forum: Languages & Linguistics
Topic: The "How do You Pronounce X" Thread
Replies: 3108
Views: 636747

Re: The "How do You Pronounce X" Thread

does anyone say english with an /i/ and not an /ɪ/?? If I remember correctly, David J. Peterson does. (I forget where he wrote about it, though.) A pronunciation with /i/ would be expected from any speaker who has the sound change ɪ → i / _ŋ, which seems to occur for certain speakers in the West an...
by Sumelic
Wed May 23, 2018 9:44 pm
Forum: Languages & Linguistics
Topic: The "How do You Pronounce X" Thread
Replies: 3108
Views: 636747

Re: The "How do You Pronounce X" Thread

indo-european /ˌɪndoˌjɜrəˈpiən/ [ˈɪndoˌjəɹʷəˈpʰiən] algonquian /ælˈgɑŋkwiən/ [aɫˈgɑŋkwiən] japonic /dʒəˈpɑnək/ [dʒəˈpʰɑnɪʔk] korean /kəˈriən/ [kʰəˈɹʷiən] xhosa /ˈkosʌ/ [ˈkʰoʊsʌ~ə~ɐ] cherokee /ˈtʃerəˌki/ [ˈtʃeɹʷəˌki] klingon /ˈklɪŋən/ [ˈkʰlɪŋən] cad'inor /ˈkæðəˌnor/ [ˈkʰæðəˌnoɹ] or maybe [ˈkʰæðn̩oɹ]?...
by Sumelic
Sun May 13, 2018 1:10 am
Forum: Languages & Linguistics
Topic: Incorrect pronunciations you have (or have had) to unlearn
Replies: 669
Views: 148860

Re: Incorrect pronunciations you have (or have had) to unlea

Undine is apparently pronounced to rhyme with "mean", not "mine". I don't think I will change my pronunciation, but I haven't said the word out loud in 20 years and probably won't within the next 20. Ah, that's news to me as well. Words ending in "-ine" have fairly unpredictable pronunciations (e.g...
by Sumelic
Sun May 06, 2018 3:09 pm
Forum: Languages & Linguistics
Topic: Is it better to say "for you and me" than "for me and you"?
Replies: 7
Views: 6032

Re: Is it better to say "for you and me" than "for me and yo

"Better" and "bad" are such vague terms that it's not really possible to answer this without context and a description of what your goals are ... "for you and me" is the more common word order.
by Sumelic
Sat Apr 21, 2018 9:19 pm
Forum: Languages & Linguistics
Topic: A sixth pronunciation for the letter "x".
Replies: 33
Views: 17661

Re: A sixth pronunciation for the letter "x".

Kind of painful to read someone talking about pronunciation with apparently no understanding of allophony or phonetic environment. E.g. you can't have <ia> = [ajej] at the end of a word, and I'm pretty sure four of those x's are allophonic. Hmm, I wouldn't say that any of /ks/ /gz/ /kʃ/ /gʒ/ are ju...
by Sumelic
Sat Apr 21, 2018 9:02 pm
Forum: Languages & Linguistics
Topic: A sixth pronunciation for the letter "x".
Replies: 33
Views: 17661

Re: A sixth pronunciation for the letter "x".

GZH as in "luxurious" ..."luxurious" has /kʃ/ for me. Also, apparently I've been completely mispronouncing alexithymia , which I assumed was [əˌɫɛksəˈθimiə]. I'm not sure if the /eː/ or the /ai/ is more counterintuitive here. As I said in my previous post, the author is wrong about the first syllab...
by Sumelic
Sat Apr 21, 2018 8:50 pm
Forum: Languages & Linguistics
Topic: A sixth pronunciation for the letter "x".
Replies: 33
Views: 17661

Re: A sixth pronunciation for the letter "x".

That's an interesting one. Apparently the author, like me, has a perceptually salient allophone of /eɪ/ before tautosyllabic /l/, which is described as a "flat-A sound". I would write the sound for me as something like [eə]. I wonder from that wording if the author has merged it with some other phon...
by Sumelic
Sat Apr 14, 2018 5:40 pm
Forum: Languages & Linguistics
Topic: The "How do You Pronounce X" Thread
Replies: 3108
Views: 636747

Re: The "How do You Pronounce X" Thread

Traditionally it is pronounced /krApi/ [citation needed] I also wonder about that, but it does seem to be the most common pronunciation given in dictionaries. I've never used the word much, but I thought of it as having /æ/. It seems to come from French "crapet", used by Canadian speakers. Based on...
by Sumelic
Sat Mar 24, 2018 6:36 pm
Forum: Languages & Linguistics
Topic: Incorrect pronunciations you have (or have had) to unlearn
Replies: 669
Views: 148860

Re: Incorrect pronunciations you have (or have had) to unlea

I only learned a while ago that "courier" doesn't rhyme with "warrior". And I thought "carapace" ended in /əs/--maybe I was comparing it to "populace--but it seems like the typical pronunciation is actually with /eɪs/. Also, "chaparral" is from Spanish, not from French, so I think /tʃ/ really makes ...
by Sumelic
Thu Mar 22, 2018 11:32 am
Forum: Languages & Linguistics
Topic: /ɑ/ /ɛː/ in Quebec / Belgian French: inflectional paradigm?
Replies: 3
Views: 3955

Re: /ɑ/ /ɛː/ in Quebec / Belgian French: inflectional paradi

Actually, the distinction between /a/ and /ɑ/ seems to be generally neutralized in favor of /ɑ/ in word-final phonetically open syllables in Quebec French. (I'm saying "phonetically" open just to clarify that I'm not talking about some kind of SPE-esque morpho-phonological analysis of French where a...
by Sumelic
Sat Feb 17, 2018 3:29 pm
Forum: Languages & Linguistics
Topic: Are the h and ng sounds allophones?
Replies: 31
Views: 16894

Re: Are the h and ng sounds allophones?

"moss-eyed" and "maw-side" How would anyone make a difference between these two? I distinguish them by vowel quality, /ɒ/ against /ɔː/, though I doubt that's what you were asking. Well, most people of course have totally different vowels in these words. Earlier in the paragraph, I wrote "in General...
by Sumelic
Fri Feb 16, 2018 9:46 pm
Forum: Languages & Linguistics
Topic: Occurrence of spelling pronunciations
Replies: 35
Views: 15281

Re: Occurrence of spelling pronunciations

One interesting case where it doesn't seem that the use of /-stl/ for "-stle" could be due to influence from a related word ending in /-st/ is "pestle" (unsurprisingly, it's not etymologically related to "pest", and I doubt that a significant number of speakers think of the words as being related). ...
by Sumelic
Fri Feb 16, 2018 9:19 pm
Forum: Languages & Linguistics
Topic: Are the h and ng sounds allophones?
Replies: 31
Views: 16894

Re: Are the h and ng sounds allophones?

People usually don't perceive the latter to be a sound at all due to an extremely orthography-centric approach to consonants in English language education. It is usually thought of as n + g. The common perception of [ŋ] as n + g (or at least, the perception that it is similar to this) may not be ju...
by Sumelic
Tue Jan 30, 2018 7:33 pm
Forum: Languages & Linguistics
Topic: Questions about inflected prepositions
Replies: 12
Views: 7961

Re: Questions about inflected prepositions

As another 2p in the pot, German appears to be at an earlier stage of this development. Inflected prepositions are pretty clearly contractions of conjunction + article , where the inflection comes from the article. Examples include zur in zur Tur ("to the door", dative feminine) = zu + dative femin...
by Sumelic
Fri Jan 26, 2018 6:16 pm
Forum: Languages & Linguistics
Topic: Will singular "they" be as acceptable as "you" in formal Eng
Replies: 44
Views: 18356

Re: Will singular "they" be as acceptable as "you" in formal

*yes, I know some people think 'they' is inherently sexist. But they're a minority. I'd be interested in an explanation of this--I haven't heard that one before. There's no widespread misconception -- singular "they" doesn't exist, except among the people who insist that it does. There is a generic...
by Sumelic
Wed Jan 24, 2018 11:04 pm
Forum: Languages & Linguistics
Topic: The "How do You Pronounce X" Thread
Replies: 3108
Views: 636747

Re: The "How do You Pronounce X" Thread

[p] in /mf/ definitely seems possible for me, but I'm not sure how often it is present.

How do you pronounce:
quaff
waft
waffle

Jungian
diphthongal


?
by Sumelic
Sat Jan 20, 2018 10:29 pm
Forum: Languages & Linguistics
Topic: 16th C Spanish and Nahuatl
Replies: 7
Views: 3201

Re: 16th C Spanish and Nahuatl

Not all [s]'s are actually the same. I don't remember the phonetic details or which types of [s] Nahuatl and Spanish have, but e.g. in present-day Basque the letters "s" and "z" are used to write two different kinds of [s]-like sounds.
by Sumelic
Wed Jan 17, 2018 5:33 am
Forum: Languages & Linguistics
Topic: /ç/ vs. /x/ in German
Replies: 22
Views: 6253

Re: /ç/ vs. /x/ in German

>I don't know where you get that information From spending time in Austria, talking and listening to Austrians. When discussing recipes with the mother of my friend i said Essig with ç and she replied "ah, that's such a German pronunciation, we say ['ɛsɪk]" I would interpret that statement as sayin...
by Sumelic
Mon Jan 15, 2018 4:59 pm
Forum: Languages & Linguistics
Topic: Affricates
Replies: 10
Views: 3976

Re: Affricates

How does something like [tʙ] feature into this homorganicism? [tʙ] seems to be very rare. I don't know much about the languages where it occurs, but " Linguistics: An Introduction (William B. McGregor, 2015) describes it as an " unusual coarticulated phone ". The Wikipedia article " bilabial trill ...
by Sumelic
Wed Jan 03, 2018 11:20 am
Forum: Languages & Linguistics
Topic: /ç/ vs. /x/ in German
Replies: 22
Views: 6253

Re: /ç/ vs. /x/ in German

I don't see /ˈaɪxˌmɑn/ anywhere on that page, actually. The /x/ consonant appears when you press the "IPA" button next to the "kh" entry. Oh, I see! I missed that button. Yeah, that seems like it's just a mistake then. (The separate entry with /ç/ is from a separate source--the Random-House-based e...
by Sumelic
Wed Jan 03, 2018 10:46 am
Forum: Languages & Linguistics
Topic: Something interesting about West Coast American English
Replies: 44
Views: 10671

Re: Something interesting about West Coast American English

As far as I know, the historical development in standard English is as follows: /l/ lost in -alk words resulting in /ɔːk/, which makes sense if we assume it was some kind of vocalization of /l/ to [w] in this context that occured before the change of [au] (=[aw]) to /ɔː/. (I don't know if we actuall...
by Sumelic
Tue Jan 02, 2018 5:03 pm
Forum: Languages & Linguistics
Topic: /ç/ vs. /x/ in German
Replies: 22
Views: 6253

Re: /ç/ vs. /x/ in German

The British definition from Collins given on the linked page (which uses IPA) does give the transcription /ˈaiçman/. I don't see /ˈaɪxˌmɑn/ anywhere on that page, actually. The Random-House-based transcription is " ahy kh -mahn"; presumably whoever designed Dictionary.com's non-IPA transcription sys...
by Sumelic
Mon Jan 01, 2018 4:48 pm
Forum: Languages & Linguistics
Topic: Quick question about French
Replies: 7
Views: 3009

Re: Quick question about French

Among the vowels of French: - /a i ɛ ɑ ɔ œ u/ can readily appear before a final /j/ ( maille, fille, paye, bâille, momoï, feuille, bouille ). - /o e ə ø/ can't, but that's not very surprising since they rarely appear before a final consonant. Are there any cases at all where /e/ or /ə/ occurs befor...