Search found 304 matches
- Thu Oct 22, 2015 6:01 pm
- Forum: Languages & Linguistics
- Topic: Chinese tones and tonogenesis
- Replies: 15
- Views: 6875
Re: Chinese tones and tonogenesis
Sorry for the necromancy, but as I looked through the jōyō kanji table, I noticed that MC tones probably conditioned sound changes. Specifically, while MC voiced obstruents all devoiced in Mandarin, those in the level tone became aspirated, while those in departing tone became tenuis. This may be a...
- Tue Oct 06, 2015 5:59 pm
- Forum: Languages & Linguistics
- Topic: Proto-Austronesian Phonology
- Replies: 9
- Views: 3082
Re: Proto-Austronesian Phonology
That sounds rather suspiciously like Middle Chinese.Tropylium wrote: On other other hand, if you read closely, you'll notice Sagart is actually positing [ɲʑ] and not [ɲ], which he's trying to sweep under the rug as allophony or whatever. But that seems to be relevant in explaining all the obstruent reflexes.
- Tue Jun 09, 2015 2:24 pm
- Forum: Languages & Linguistics
- Topic: Relative frequency of /oi/ vs /eu/
- Replies: 12
- Views: 3476
Re: Relative frequency of /oi/ vs /eu/
Wikipedia is correct. Look at historical orthography, e.g. 〜ませう for 〜ましょう.Sumelic wrote:Is one of these sources simply wrong, or are both changes attested (perhaps in different contexts, such as sequences within a root vs. sequences derived from the addition of grammatical endings)?
- Fri Apr 10, 2015 4:54 pm
- Forum: Languages & Linguistics
- Topic: Chinese thread
- Replies: 108
- Views: 24091
Re: Chinese thread
[aɹ] for 兒 sounds very Beijing-ese to me. [ɹ̩] (or perhaps more accurately, [ɻ̩]) for 日 is not unusual, I think. You might also hear a more vocalic off-glide.
- Tue Mar 31, 2015 3:53 pm
- Forum: Languages & Linguistics
- Topic: Ingroup versus outgroup pronouns
- Replies: 42
- Views: 8431
Re: Ingroup versus outgroup pronouns
Also! Honorific forms in -si (this is verbs we're talking about now, as in "haseyo") are often used based on the level of politeness toward the subject of the sentence, not just the listener, so it could be "3rd person politeness" or whatever you want to call it. "Often"? I was told always. I remem...
- Wed Dec 03, 2014 5:53 pm
- Forum: Languages & Linguistics
- Topic: Chinese tones and tonogenesis
- Replies: 15
- Views: 6875
Re: Chinese tones and tonogenesis
However, I can't find any sources that both a) describe the tones in a way that is meaningful to me as a non-student of Chinese and b) use these tone names. I've come across English names like "entering" and "departing" which are sort of meaningless to me as well as numbers for them, but the Chines...
- Thu Aug 14, 2014 3:20 pm
- Forum: Languages & Linguistics
- Topic: Derivation and reduplication interference
- Replies: 3
- Views: 1494
Re: Derivation and reduplication interference
Malay has (prefixal) reduplication as well as derivational prefixes. For instance, perlahan-lahan "slowly".
- Tue Aug 12, 2014 1:31 pm
- Forum: Conlangery & Conworlds
- Topic: Examples of truly unique conlang features?
- Replies: 57
- Views: 15604
Re: Examples of truly unique conlang features?
Are there any natlangs that conjugate verbs for aspect, mood, and voice, but not at all for person, number, gender, and tense? Japanese verbs conjugate for tense (past / non-past), mood (indicative, negative, imperative, conditional, hortative), and voice (active, passive, potential, causative, pas...
- Sun Aug 03, 2014 4:40 pm
- Forum: Conlangery & Conworlds
- Topic: Suggestions on "destabilizing" a sound
- Replies: 4
- Views: 1939
Re: Suggestions on "destabilizing" a sound
[nʒ̃] is not so far from one of the reconstructed pronunciations of the 日 initial in Middle Chinese, namely Karlgren's ńź (nasalised alveolopalatal affricate). This sound has many reflexes: In Mandarin, pinyin <r> (voiced retroflex fricative or approximant) In Cantonese, jyutping <j> (palatal approx...
- Thu Jun 19, 2014 1:49 pm
- Forum: Languages & Linguistics
- Topic: Regular and Irregular Languages
- Replies: 36
- Views: 8247
Re: Regular and Irregular Languages
slang expressions like 埋單 máidān "foot the bill", "take responsibility" (lit. "bury single") I am under the impression this is a borrowing from Cantonese. 單 here is surely meant in the sense of "bill", cf 菜單, 名單. The first element is somewhat more mysterious, but apparently 埋 in Cantonese has the a...
- Mon Jun 16, 2014 9:25 am
- Forum: Conlangery & Conworlds
- Topic: Writing English in Hanzi
- Replies: 8
- Views: 4013
Re: Writing English in Hanzi
Plus, you'd probably run into problems with words that have morphemes with the same semantics but different sources, like "behead" versus "decapitate", which would probably be written with (or at least start with) exactly the same characters in that scheme. This already happens in Japanese: 一日 can ...
- Sat Jun 14, 2014 12:45 pm
- Forum: Languages & Linguistics
- Topic: Looking for sound changes
- Replies: 38
- Views: 8148
Re: Looking for sound changes
is ŋ > g attested? This is just denasalisation and should be about as common. For example, Minnan, and as already mentioned, Japanese (but notably in kan-on). t k > 0 / V_V (Marathi) probably with voiced stops as intermediates, since they also became silent Latin intervocalic /t/ (and /d/) chain-sh...
- Tue Oct 08, 2013 6:24 pm
- Forum: Languages & Linguistics
- Topic: Personal pronouns genesis
- Replies: 36
- Views: 8088
Re: Personal pronouns genesis
The inherited personal pronouns (1P wa-, 2P na-, 3P si-, Q ta-, REFL ono-) from Old Japanese are more-or-less extinct. Some of the personal pronouns that appeared in the interim have fairly transparent etymologies – as already mentioned, 1P boku ← 僕 servant (a Sinitic loanword!); watakushi ← 1P 私 pr...
- Tue Oct 01, 2013 2:49 am
- Forum: Languages & Linguistics
- Topic: Most Insane Languages: Follow Up Poll
- Replies: 22
- Views: 6622
Re: Most Insane Languages: Follow Up Poll
It's not an isolated occurrence – there are other rebuses in the Man'yōshū – and although the rebuses have perhaps gone extinct, the spirit of such "creative" orthography lives on in modern Japanese, thanks to (ab)use of furigana. Try reading a light novel sometime...
- Mon Sep 30, 2013 5:02 pm
- Forum: Languages & Linguistics
- Topic: Most Insane Languages: Follow Up Poll
- Replies: 22
- Views: 6622
Re: Most Insane Languages: Follow Up Poll
Japanese should win hands down. There's no way that an orthography where 山上復有山 can spell /ide/ can be considered sane... How does that work? It's a rebus. /ide/ is normally spelled 出で, or just 出. 山上復有山 means "one 山 over another 山". But a rebus or puzzle is not the same as actually writing something...
- Fri Sep 20, 2013 3:08 pm
- Forum: Languages & Linguistics
- Topic: Most Insane Languages: Follow Up Poll
- Replies: 22
- Views: 6622
Re: Most Insane Languages: Follow Up Poll
It's a rebus. /ide/ is normally spelled 出で, or just 出. 山上復有山 means "one 山 over another 山".Nortaneous wrote:How does that work?Zhen Lin wrote:Japanese should win hands down. There's no way that an orthography where 山上復有山 can spell /ide/ can be considered sane...
- Thu Sep 05, 2013 3:14 pm
- Forum: Languages & Linguistics
- Topic: Most Insane Languages: Follow Up Poll
- Replies: 22
- Views: 6622
Re: Most Insane Languages: Follow Up Poll
Japanese should win hands down. There's no way that an orthography where 山上復有山 can spell /ide/ can be considered sane...Qwynegold wrote:It's called kanji. And it's only kanji that's ill suited for Japanese; hiragana/katakana fit perfectly.Japanese in Hiragana/Katakana/Hanji
- Wed Apr 17, 2013 1:37 pm
- Forum: Languages & Linguistics
- Topic: Non-obvious placename pronunciations
- Replies: 253
- Views: 41613
Re: Non-obvious placename pronunciations
But yeah, it would prevent foreigners from misreading it as /lɒndɒn/ or whatever. That's how the Japanese pronounce it, a complete spelling pronunciation but nobody seems to notice or care. That's exactly how my officemate says it, despite having lived there for many years and pronouncing most othe...
- Mon Apr 08, 2013 1:23 pm
- Forum: Languages & Linguistics
- Topic: Non-obvious placename pronunciations
- Replies: 253
- Views: 41613
Re: Non-obvious placename pronunciations
不忍 looks like it should be Funin but it is Shinobazu . That's a standard gikun reading. 不忍 = 忍ばず, 不知火 = 知らぬ火 etc. 神戸 is the city of Kōbe , which is famous enough that no one mispronounces it, but it looks like it should be pronounced Jinko or Kamito . 神戸 also appears in one or two other place names...
- Wed Mar 06, 2013 6:48 pm
- Forum: Languages & Linguistics
- Topic: Japanese ~tachi, and related concepts
- Replies: 15
- Views: 3885
Re: Japanese ~tachi, and related concepts
It can't be used with inanimate objects. It is essentially a suffix meant for people. It can and is used for animals, but this is a little bit cutesy or informal, because it is essentially humanizing the animals, which children do often; for example, it is extremely common for children to put -san ...
- Wed Feb 20, 2013 3:02 pm
- Forum: Languages & Linguistics
- Topic: Genitive Marker to Subject Marker.
- Replies: 23
- Views: 5192
Re: Genitive Marker to Subject Marker.
の can substitute for が sometimes in modern Japanese in relative clauses. Given that the modern predicative form (終止形) was historically the attributive form (連体形), i.e. the form used to construct relative clauses, perhaps the shift of が from "genitive" to "nominative" isn't that far-fetched.
- Thu Jul 26, 2012 3:54 am
- Forum: Languages & Linguistics
- Topic: Question about chinese dialects
- Replies: 19
- Views: 4022
Re: Question about chinese dialects
And mostly the reason why I decided to find out what dialect it was because I was VERY surprised at the way they spoke. It was so smooth that I never heard any chinese dialect even remotely like that. Because it is supposed to be comprised of more or less isolated word-syllables. What? Most Mandari...
- Wed Jul 25, 2012 4:50 am
- Forum: Languages & Linguistics
- Topic: Question about chinese dialects
- Replies: 19
- Views: 4022
Re: Question about chinese dialects
I've heard Chinese tourists speak Mandarin with all kinds of accents. Standard Mandarin isn't the only one!Karutoshika wrote:It was not mandarin, that's for sure, as I can easily distinguish mandarin.Serafín wrote:Just by probability it was most likely Mandarin, Cantonese, Min Nan or Hakka...
- Wed Jul 18, 2012 10:48 am
- Forum: None of the above
- Topic: LaTeX: How do you insert IPA characters?
- Replies: 30
- Views: 11613
Re: LaTeX: How do you insert IPA characters?
Can someone please explain to me the actual benefits, for the average writer, of doing things in *TeX rather than, saw, a word processor? I've tried and I've experimented and I've concluded that I do not have time for that shit. Why do people use it? There aren't any. It is for dorks who a) need to...
- Mon Jul 16, 2012 1:01 am
- Forum: None of the above
- Topic: LaTeX: How do you insert IPA characters?
- Replies: 30
- Views: 11613
Re: LaTeX: How do you insert IPA characters?
If you are using XeTeX or LuaTeX or any decent modern TeX engine with Unicode support, you can just insert the appropriate Unicode characters. Otherwise you can use commands like \textscr for ʀ, etc.