Wede:i ŋg vs ŋ

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Exez
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Wede:i ŋg vs ŋ

Post by Exez »

In several Wede:i sources I have found variants of the same word regarding the sound 'ng'

The sound can be written either as ng, ŋg or just ŋ. For example, the name Ge:ŋgun is also to be found as Ge:ŋun

It's easy to dismiss the spelling "ng" as a simplification of the latter, however a distinction between ŋg or ŋ is still confusing

The sound occurs usually when the ending -gu is suffixed to a root ending in -n or -m. For example mo:m- "young" + -gu > mo:ngu "young person". However the Comparative Lexicon spells the word also as mo:ŋu

So I was wondering of Zompist had not made up his mind about how to spell and standardize this sound

It would be tempting to assume that ŋg eventually simplified into ŋ. So we could freely update all the -ngu and -ŋgu words as -ŋu.

I wish it was that simple: I have found at least one case where a ŋ-word is different than the ŋg-word! These words are ruŋu "govern" and ruŋgu "governor", So if we update the sound, these words would merge.

So, my thought is that ŋg is not one sound, but g is distinct. Perhaps the person-words that end in -ŋu in the Comparative Lexicon (Źoŋu, ma:ŋu, mo:ŋu) should be corrected to -ŋgu

Yæd
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Re: Wede:i ŋg vs ŋ

Post by Yæd »

The phonology section of the Wede:i language page says <ng> to be taken as <ŋg> internally, so we could perhaps (PERHAPS) say that m,n + g = ng [ŋg], and ŋ + g = ŋg [ŋg]... But until Zomp decides to make this clear...
(The Axunashin lexicon has <ng> as <ŋ> (ex. <yokring> for <yokriŋ>), mantaining the old ortography; I always took it as an error)
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Re: Wede:i ŋg vs ŋ

Post by zompist »

It's nothing exciting, just typos. When Unicoding the document, I accidentally changed some n + g combos into ŋ. The three instances you mentioned in the comparative lexicon are fixed— tell me if you find more.

Ge:ŋgun was misspelled on the map, and I fixed that. Where did you see Ge:ŋuŋ?

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Re: Wede:i ŋg vs ŋ

Post by zompist »

I updated the Axunašin lexicon too, both to get the ŋ's right and to include new words. For some reason I left out the Xurnese and Ṭeôši columns before; they're now included.

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Re: Wede:i ŋg vs ŋ

Post by Yæd »

Fantastic. :-D
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