zompist bboard

All the rumors dude!, including this wonderfull mess of a vowel system (this only includes phonemic vowels according to Nina Grønnum, most of them come both long and short, and with/without "stød" (creaky voice ([ʔ] i some dialects)). In total Diederichsen has counted up more than 40 vowel phonemes! This is of course violent and unstable.

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Languages i speak fluently: Dansk, English
Languages i am studying: Deutsch, Español

So more like 64 vowels. And Danish is the only language to have a low front rounded vowel.

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Hello there. Chirp chirp chirp.

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Siöö jandeng raiglin zåbei tandiüłåd;
nää džunnfin kukuch vklaivei sivei tåd.
Chei. Chei. Chei. Chei. Chei. Chei. Chei.

Well not 64 phonemes due to reduction and rules for the distribution of stød based on vowel length, following consonants, placement of syllabic stress, ... Also stød can be interpreted as a prosodic feature rather than a property of the vowels which leaves one with "only" ~32 vowel phonemes.
With regars to /ɶ/ danish is the only language I know has one and when looking at the WALS page for front rounded vowels it seems plausible that it is very rare or even restricted to danish but do you have any source for that. If yes, then i would really like to see it.

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Languages i speak fluently: Dansk, English
Languages i am studying: Deutsch, Español

Does Danish distinguish between /ɶ/ and other front rounded phonemes?

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The conlanger formerly known as “the conlanger formerly known as Pole, the”.

If we don't study the mistakes of the future we're doomed to repeat them for the first time.

Kalaallisut is the only language with a uvular nasal.

(There are four languages with one in PHOIBLE, but the 'uvular nasal' in Japanese [and Burmese, which isn't listed] is a convention of notation, the Kusunda uvular nasal is probably a /ŋʕ/ cluster, and the fourth is Kinyarwanda, which doesn't have one.)

Some rGyalrongic languages have contrastive velarization on vowels. (IIRC Japhug turned velarization into a preceding ɣ, but I could be wrong.) In Showu Rgyalrong, velarized vowels contrast with Vɣ ɣV sequences. Velarized vowels could show up elsewhere in Sino-Tibetan -- I wonder if that's what distinguishes Yi <y u> from <yr ur>.

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Siöö jandeng raiglin zåbei tandiüłåd;
nää džunnfin kukuch vklaivei sivei tåd.
Chei. Chei. Chei. Chei. Chei. Chei. Chei.

Colloquial Indonesian, and (formal Indonesian to some level) distinguish gender in 2nd person pronoun but not in 3rd (or 1st).

But then again, I think this is mostly true for many languages in Asia.

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Mongolic aspiration processes are triggered by /s ʃ/.

Dissimilation in Chahar:
*tʰatʰa > tatʰ
*tʃʰikʰin > tʃix
*kʰitʰat > kitʰat
*tʰosun > tɔs
*tʃʰisun > tʃʊs

Leftward aspiration jump in Monguor:
*totʰara > tʰutor
*tøtʃʰin > tʰitʃin
*pitʃʰi > pʰutʃi
*kasihun > xaʃin
*pyse > pʰusee
*ykʰy > xuku

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Aspirated fricatives in Chumashan derived from either Fh clusters or degemination of F:. Aspirated fricatives from degemination also in Southern Subanen.

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Siöö jandeng raiglin zåbei tandiüłåd;
nää džunnfin kukuch vklaivei sivei tåd.
Chei. Chei. Chei. Chei. Chei. Chei. Chei.

This is also true for Iraqw (Cushitic, Tanzania)

I was having a look around PHOIBLE and discovered that Mwotlap/Motlav is listed as having /m̃ʷ/. That's right, a nasalized nasal.

Am... am I missing something?

Either way, I think it definitely qualifies as "odd".

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I generally forget to say, so if it's relevant and I don't mention it--I'm from Southern Michigan and speak Inland North American English. Yes, I have the Northern Cities Vowel Shift; no, I don't have the cot-caught merger; and it is called pop.

Somebody fucked up. My guess is that whoever added the data saw that /ŋmʷ/ (not /mʷ/) is written <m̃> and got confused. They also left out /k/, and wrote the prenasalized stops with tildes, which is retarded and obviously against convention.

These inventory databases can be statistically useful, because the inevitable data-entry fuckups won't generate *that* much noise, but they can't be trusted about any individual language. Mwotlap is a fairly normal language for its area -- the only thing odd about its phoneme inventory is the (non-contrastively) labialized labial-velars, and I wonder how common the phonetic detail of labialization is...

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Siöö jandeng raiglin zåbei tandiüłåd;
nää džunnfin kukuch vklaivei sivei tåd.
Chei. Chei. Chei. Chei. Chei. Chei. Chei.

Well, that certainly makes a great deal more sense. I was wondering if something like that was going on. Serves as an excellent lesson to not just blindly trust your resources!

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I generally forget to say, so if it's relevant and I don't mention it--I'm from Southern Michigan and speak Inland North American English. Yes, I have the Northern Cities Vowel Shift; no, I don't have the cot-caught merger; and it is called pop.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aAb1-ZnipoQ

those sure are some fricated vowels

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Siöö jandeng raiglin zåbei tandiüłåd;
nää džunnfin kukuch vklaivei sivei tåd.
Chei. Chei. Chei. Chei. Chei. Chei. Chei.

Is there any way to contact them about the mix-up?

I just checked that site, and their Finnish page was also odd. It reported vowels /ɛ e: o o: a a: e̯/. There are no quality differences between long and short vowels; the mid vowels are mid and not mid-high or mid-low, so it's odd that they wrote /ɛ e:/. The /a a:/ are supposed to be back. First I thought that they were just not being that detailed, but the vowel chart showed all vowels in their cardinal positions, so that was wrong. And I checked and saw that for example Maori reportedly had /ɑ ɑ:/ with no /a a:/. And what on Earth is that /e̯/??

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My most recent quiz:
Eurovision Song Contest 2018

It looks like that's how whoever entered the data has chosen to represent /j/ (which is absent from the inventory given). It's definitely a weird way of representing it

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You can tell the same lie a thousand times,
But it never gets any more true,
So close your eyes once more and once more believe
That they all still believe in you.
Just one time.

Oh, I see. And yeah, then why not /i̯/? I mean, it's not lowered somehow.

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My most recent quiz:
Eurovision Song Contest 2018

Mussau has quadral number. (only in the pronouns, as is typical for number distinction in Oceania)

Quadral number? What a weird term. Just say it distinguishes singular, dualis, trialis and plural please. We don't call sg-du-pl systems 'trial number' either do we? ( in fact in english the -is endings are usually dropped, giving dual and trial, though trial sounds a bit confusing to me).

And having a trialis is unusual cross-linguistically, but it occurs in many languages in Oceania and some traces of it are found in the Bislama pidgin language of vanuatu.

How about you read the fucking paper before you make assumptions about the terminology. The section on Mussau is on page 8.

I think it's less weird when you figure out that the dual-trial-quadral distinction in oceanic language is basically pronoun + numeral.

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Well that depends a lot on dialect (a vowel system of that caliber is, of course, unstable). In the way i speak it does not, [ɶ] simply being an allophone of /œ/. In my neighbours dialect however /ɛ/ becomes rounded to varying degree when reduced which means that we have a minimal set consisting of something like:
<dyr> /dyˀr/ (animal)
<dør> /døˀr/ (die(s))
<der> /dœ̜ˀr/ (there) (/dɛˀr/)
<dør> /dɶˀr/ (door)

Edit: DISCLAIMER: This is the way I personally analyze it. This is a relatively heavily discussed subject though.

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Languages i speak fluently: Dansk, English
Languages i am studying: Deutsch, Español

From https://www.uni-jena.de/unijenamedia/Downloads/faculties/phil/kaukasiologie/Svan%5Bslightlyrevised%5D.pdf, emphasis in original:

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Blog: http://thehousecarpenter.wordpress.com

https://www.academia.edu/214115/Adjaria ... n_Armenian

word-initial voiced consonants front following back vowels in some Armenian dialects

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Siöö jandeng raiglin zåbei tandiüłåd;
nää džunnfin kukuch vklaivei sivei tåd.
Chei. Chei. Chei. Chei. Chei. Chei. Chei.

The vowel system of Zizhiluo Nusu:

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Siöö jandeng raiglin zåbei tandiüłåd;
nää džunnfin kukuch vklaivei sivei tåd.
Chei. Chei. Chei. Chei. Chei. Chei. Chei.