Weird phrases from real languages

alice · Post by **alice** » Wed May 11, 2005 5:46 am

Please contribute! By "weird" I mean things which look particularly strange, silly, or peculiar.

To start off with, "she will eat" in Manx is written "eeee ee".

It's pronounced the same in Scottish Gaelic, but is written differently, so this doesn't qualify as weird enough.

gear · Post by **gear** » Wed May 11, 2005 5:57 am

From Armazi.com:

Each of the four vowels in გააახლა gaaakhla ('he renewed it') is individually pronounced (ga?a?akhl?a).

This from a language famed for its consonant clusters.

The Rt. Hon. Vlad Dracula · Wed May 11, 2005 5:59 am

Japanese:

大女 ooonna "huge woman"
東欧を往々被おう。 Touou wo ouou ooou. "Let's often cover eastern Europe.", pronounced /tooooo oooo oooo/.

gear · Post by **gear** » Wed May 11, 2005 6:00 am

And that language in my 1st posting would be Georgian. Oops.

Finnish has:

Kokoo kokoon koko kokko!
Koko kokkoko?
Koko kokko.

Kokko is a word for a pile of wood that is burnt during the midsummer "juhannus" celebrations. I'll use woodpile for it:

Gather together the whole woodpile!
The whole woodpile?
The whole woodpile!

Kokoo is "kokoa" in the standard language, but diphthongs and vowel clusters often simplify.

Then:

kalastajatartansahan

his/her fisherwoman (partitive case), after all (from -han suffix)

And:

Io-aie ei ui: EU ei aio, Ii Oy ei oio

The Io-plan is not swimming (not going ahead). EU is not going to [do something, Ii Oy (company called Ii) is not straightening things out.

EDIT: added some Finnish silliness

Åge Kruger · Post by **Åge Kruger** » Wed May 11, 2005 7:09 am

Oo?
Ay oo.
Aa oo?
Ay aa oo.
Aa ae oo?
Ay aa ae oo.
Ah, ay.

Wool?
Yes, wool.
All wool?
Yes, all wool.
All one wool? (All from one sheep)
Yes, all one wool.
Oh, alright then.

The "ae oo" bit can be expanded to "e ae oo" for "the one wool".

Circeus · Post by **Circeus** » Wed May 11, 2005 7:45 am

In quebec sign language (LSQ), you say "peter collects rock one by one with peter" by repeating the same sign 5 times.

Soap · Post by **Soap** » Wed May 11, 2005 8:36 am

Dialectal Swedish:

"I ?a ? e ? ? i ?a ? e ?" = "In the river there is an island, and on the island there is a river". Standard Swedish would insert a couple of consonants here and there. The words for island (?) and river (?) were present in Old English, and if they had survived to modern English, I think both of them would have merged as /i:/.

Iomanalare · Post by **Iomanalare** » Wed May 11, 2005 8:58 am

Ofeig · Post by **Ofeig** » Wed May 11, 2005 9:05 am

Swedish:

ooologiskt - When something about eggs is not scientific, all the first vowels are pronounced individually.

"d e d d e" ("det er det det er" in bokm?l) means "that's what it is" or "it is what it is" (depending on intonation)

Same as Swedish then, but only in writing

Fully pronounced the spelling should be somewhat like: "De?dede? :-D

Or why not:
A, de?udede?u, a = Yes, that is exactly what it is, yes.

vec · Post by **vec** » Wed May 11, 2005 9:06 am

?rni ? ? ? ? ? beit vi? ? = ?rni has a sheep biting grass by a river.

Avaja · Post by **Avaja** » Wed May 11, 2005 10:34 am

Swedish:

Igloooordning (igloo-oordning) - igloo disorder

Estonian:

Kuuuurijate t???? j????rel - a moon researcher's work-night at the edge of the ice

Io · Post by Io » Wed May 11, 2005 11:33 am

The follwoing greq words contain all 5 greq vowels:

ευπαρουσίαστος
παρουσιάζομαι

And there was another one but I can't remember it right now

nebula wind phone · Post by **nebula wind phone** » Wed May 11, 2005 12:02 pm

And while we're doing repeated vowels, Homeric Greek has aaatos, meaning "inviolable." If I remember right, each a scans as its own syllable.

The first a is a negative prefix, like in "apathetic" or "apolitical." The second two a's used to have a w between them, but intervocalic w disappeared.

Io · Post by Io » Wed May 11, 2005 12:31 pm

oh, and there is ωοειδής

linguoboy · Post by **linguoboy** » Wed May 11, 2005 12:33 pm

Mercator wrote:The words for island (?) and river (?) were present in Old English, and if they had survived to modern English, I think both of them would have merged as /i:/.

Not quite. The former (OE ieγ) consitutes the first element in modern island, now pronounced /aj/. The later (OE ea) would indeed have become /ij/, so a distinction would've been maintained.

English does also have ey in place names (e.g. Lindsey, Bardsey, etc.), but this derived from Old Norse ey rather than the Anglo-Saxon reflex.

linguoboy · Post by **linguoboy** » Wed May 11, 2005 12:37 pm

/"mE:@n"Ept@"k_hle:/?
/"Ept@"mE:@n"ni:"k_hle: "Ept@"be:tn=/

Name the dialect and give the translation into Standard English.

Jashan · Post by **Jashan** » Wed May 11, 2005 12:52 pm

/dE4hE4@4E:4@4E4@4@4@t/

"Dead-headed Ed had edited it."

Swap E with @ liberally depending on speaker.

garrett · Post by **garrett** » Thu May 12, 2005 5:39 pm

I always that that this french form of the verb "louer" was crazy: loueait.

It has five different vowels in a row; this would never fly in english!

Trebor · Post by **Trebor** » Thu May 12, 2005 6:00 pm

garrett wrote:I always that that this french form of the verb "louer" was crazy: loueait.

orthographically, yes, but not phonetically. not sure how to pronounce it, though...

my two cents: this sentence is from kiribati; afaik there is no diphthongisation: iai uou aia uee ao aua aia ie 'they had two flowers and four sails'.

Nikura · Post by **Nikura** » Thu May 12, 2005 8:37 pm

-In French, the verbs "cr?er"(to create) and "agr?er"(to accept) has "cr??" as past participe. If you have to put it to feminine, it'll be "cr??e" and "agr??e". But in both cases, last E is not pronounced.
-In Romanian, the children is written "copiii" but you just pronounce two of the three I.
-A Czech sentence has any vowel: "Strč prst skrz krk" (Put a finger in your throat) Better we don't have to say this everyday... Another word, but this one is said at least once a week: "čtvrtek" (thursday). Inspired by this word, I've made "čtvrtk" in Tatzic (my conlang). The key is that in this case, [r] is considered as a vowel in Czech (as in Slovak, Slovene, Serbocroat and also Lithuanian and Sanskrit), and it can also be stressed. Some other languages also do it with L or nasals. the fact is that those consonants are very close to vowels (maybe a specialist of phonology could explain it better).
-Armenian: "tzutzutzek" (show me)
-Polish: this is maybe a very beautiful and soft language when you hear it, but when you see it written, it can scares!!! Look at these words: szczęście (happyness), szczotka (brush), książka (book), krzyczeć/krzyknąć (to shout), kształt (form), bezwględnie (immediatly), wszystko (everything), jabłko (apple), drzwi (door), chrzcić (to baptize), grzech (sin), grzyb (mushroom) etc. I've studied Polish three years and I was quite good but it's so hard to remember the words sometimes...

Matt · Post by **Matt** » Thu May 12, 2005 8:50 pm

Two tongue-twisters from Bella Coola of the Salishan Family:

xɬp?χʷɬtɬpɬɬs kʷc? 'then he had in his possession a bunchberry plant'

c?ktskʷc? 'he arrived'

Trebor · Post by **Trebor** » Thu May 12, 2005 8:53 pm

Matt wrote:Two tongue-twisters from Bella Coola of the Salishan Family

anyone know how those would be pronounced?

Matt · Post by **Matt** » Thu May 12, 2005 8:59 pm

Trebor wrote:
Matt wrote:Two tongue-twisters from Bella Coola of the Salishan Family
anyone know how those would be pronounced?

Just a guess, but probably something like /xKp_>X_wKtKpKKs k_wc_>/ and /c_>ktsk_wc_>/.

gear · Post by **gear** » Fri May 13, 2005 3:11 am

Matt wrote:
Trebor wrote:
Matt wrote:Two tongue-twisters from Bella Coola of the Salishan Family
anyone know how those would be pronounced?

Just a guess, but probably something like /xKp_>X_wKtKpKKs k_wc_>/ and /c_>ktsk_wc_>/.

That c is an affricate, so /ts)_>/, I guess. I've seen it elsewhere with t's and s'es.

Or did your notation mean that already?

Circeus · Post by **Circeus** » Fri May 13, 2005 6:42 am

Trebor wrote:
garrett wrote:I always that that this french form of the verb "louer" was crazy: loueait.
orthographically, yes, but not phonetically. not sure how to pronounce it, though...

An impossible form: it'd had to be "louerait" (conditional) or (louait)

You can have all 5 vowels with less letters: oiseau (/wazo/, bird)