Linguistic Struggles Thread

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Re: Linguistic Struggles Thread

Post by masako »

sirdanilot wrote:Another teacher I had was Egyptian and the th and dh become /s/ and /z/, which is even more confusing.
Why? Because you have trouble parsing word boundaries? Or because you're lazy?

I ask because these variations are not consistent across morphemes. One of the most common words spoken, ماذا, has /ð/ across dialects and regions.

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Re: Linguistic Struggles Thread

Post by sirdanilot »

I think that's also /z/ in egyptian or not?

It's been a while since I took arabic.

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Re: Linguistic Struggles Thread

Post by masako »

sirdanilot wrote:I think that's also /z/ in egyptian or not?
masako wrote:these variations are not consistent
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Last edited by masako on Sun Apr 26, 2015 12:44 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: Linguistic Struggles Thread

Post by sirdanilot »

K mate I'll take your word for it

I heard a /s/ and /z/ for every th and dh from her but okay

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Re: Linguistic Struggles Thread

Post by ol bofosh »

Another teacher I had was Egyptian and the th and dh become /s/ and /z/, which is even more confusing.
That's not confusing for me. I grew up hearing exagerrated French accents on 'Allo 'Allo! It's all too natural. :mrgreen:
I heard a /s/ and /z/ for every th and dh from her but okay
Was she a French speaker?
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Re: Linguistic Struggles Thread

Post by sirdanilot »

ol bofosh wrote:
I heard a /s/ and /z/ for every th and dh from her but okay
Was she a French speaker?
Native Egyptian Arabic, but I think she lived in (dutch-speaking) Belgium for a while judging from her flemish accent in Dutch.

She even said explicitly that th and dh become s and z in Egyptian Arabic and that she was aware of this. Also that q becomes glottal stop but she tried to avoid doing that as much as possible.

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Re: Linguistic Struggles Thread

Post by Benturi »

In the Arabic dialects where ق is pronounced as a uvular [q] or [ɢ], what is the pronunciation of i, ī when adjacent to qāf, for example in the word ʿirāqī?

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Re: Linguistic Struggles Thread

Post by sirdanilot »

In my experience short i becomes more like [ɪ] like qitar [qɪtɑːr] but the long i stays an i. It's not impossible to pronounce, just slightly harder than normal.

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Re: Linguistic Struggles Thread

Post by Risla »

I keep accidentallying Ojibwe words into my Japanese. I don't know how many times my brain is going to spit out 'miinawaa' (ミーナワー!) when I'm trying to construct some Japanese sentence.

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Re: Linguistic Struggles Thread

Post by Viktor77 »

Risla wrote:accidentallying
Where did you get this word? Can I borrow it?
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Re: Linguistic Struggles Thread

Post by marconatrix »

Gulliver wrote:I'm learning Welsh by audio course in the car during my commutes, and I have real problems differentiating ff /f/ and th /θ/ and between f /v/ and dd /ð/.

I come from the Souf East of England and perhaps I've got more of a "suvvern" accent than I thought I had. I'm aware that they occasionally slip into free variation (three variation?) in my speech, but it's making it harder to learn Welsh than it needs to be.
Not to worry, /v, D/ often drop out in speech, especially word-finally ;-)

I read Welsh quite well but don't often hear it. When I do I tend to hear Welsh 'll' as [T] and so often fail to recognise even very common words, so e.g. _pell_ 'distant' sounds like _peth_ 'thing' to me.
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Re: Linguistic Struggles Thread

Post by Imralu »

Irish spelling ... I get it now ... mostly, but I don't always know how to work out the vowel's pronunciation when there's a front vowel and a back vowel. In a word like seaicéad (Jacket), it's pretty easy.

These vowels, seaicéad, are there to mark the s and the c as "slender", leaving the a in the first syllable to only conceivably be there because it is pronounced. Then in the second syllable, the accent over the e means it's long, meaning that, odds are, it is pronounced and that final a is just there to make the d hard.

But in a word like anois (now), I look at it and think "Do I pronounce the "o" or the "i"?" I assumed the o and that the "i" was there to make the "s" slender, but it's pronounced [əˈn̪ˠɪʃ] in most dialects, meaning the "i" is pronounced and the "o" is just there to show that the "n" is broad.

Also, in the Connemara dialect, it's [əˈnʲɪʃ], meaning it would better be spelt ainis, but I can deal with simple irregularity.

I know that, for example, the letter combination "aoi" is pronounced /i:/ and indicates a preceding broad consonant and a following hard consonant, which doesn't make much intuitive sense to me ... but do I have to remember every pair or triplet of written vowels. For example, is "oi" usually /ɪ/ preceded by hard and followed by soft ... or can it also represent an "o" sound?

For people unfamiliar with Irish, broad = velarised (indicated by being surrounded by back vowels) and slender = palatalised (indicated by surrounding front vowels).
Glossing Abbreviations: COMP = comparative, C = complementiser, ACS / ICS = accessible / inaccessible, GDV = gerundive, SPEC / NSPC = specific / non-specific
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Re: Linguistic Struggles Thread

Post by linguoboy »

Imralu wrote:Then in the second syllable, the accent over the e means it's long, meaning that, odds are, it is pronounced and that final a is just there to make the d hard.
Not "odds are". A vowel with a síneadh fada is always pronounced. I can't think of any exceptions.
Imralu wrote:But in a word like anois (now), I look at it and think "Do I pronounce the "o" or the "i"?" I assumed the o and that the "i" was there to make the "s" slender, but it's pronounced [əˈn̪ˠɪʃ] in most dialects, meaning the "i" is pronounced and the "o" is just there to show that the "n" is broad.
Anois is exceptional, plain and simple. One of the chief criticisms I kept hearing of a recent learners dictionary is that, in the interests of regularity, they gave the pronunciation as /əˈnɔʃ/, which is one not found in any dialect. I'm not sure what the rules are for Connemara, but in West Cork, there are about a dozen words where oi is /ɔ/ and for the rest it's /ɪ/. Ó Siadhail even posits a single phoneme, which he represents /o̶/, whose exact value depends on the quality and POA of the surrounding consonants.
Imralu wrote:I know that, for example, the letter combination "aoi" is pronounced /i:/ and indicates a preceding broad consonant and a following hard consonant, which doesn't make much intuitive sense to me ...
I think you must be confusing ao and aoi. Ao is flanked by broad consonants; aoi is proceeded by broad and followed by slender. Same goes for ae and aei, respectively.
Imralu wrote:but do I have to remember every pair or triplet of written vowels. For example, is "oi" usually /ɪ/ preceded by hard and followed by soft ... or can it also represent an "o" sound?
As I said, oi is probably the most problematic digraph. Most of the others are pretty consistent--certainly moreso than English digraphs.

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Re: Linguistic Struggles Thread

Post by Bristel »

I struggle with Irish as well, sometimes I forget that an is the definite article, and there are no indefinite articles. The spelling, the pronunciation, basically everything.
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Yo te pongo en tu lugar...
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Re: Linguistic Struggles Thread

Post by Imralu »

linguoboy wrote:
Imralu wrote:I know that, for example, the letter combination "aoi" is pronounced /i:/ and indicates a preceding broad consonant and a following hard consonant, which doesn't make much intuitive sense to me ...
I think you must be confusing ao and aoi. Ao is flanked by broad consonants; aoi is proceeded by broad and followed by slender. Same goes for ae and aei, respectively.
Oops. When I said "hard" I meant "slender". Wrong word, wrong language!
But wait ... is ae really followed by a broad consonant?
Linguoboy wrote:As I said, oi is probably the most problematic digraph. Most of the others are pretty consistent--certainly moreso than English digraphs.
Cool, but where can I find the rules for the pronunciation of digraphs? I've found very long explanations of how to pronounce the surrounding consonants based on the written vowels, and that's pretty easy to learn, but there's so much information about that and so far, I've seen nothing about how the written vowels represent the pronunciation of ... the vowels.

For example, "Ó Siadhail" ... are the 'a's there to make the 'dh' hard or are the 'i's there to make the 's' and the 'l' soft. OK, clearly both ... but then that leaves me having no idea which vowels give the actual vowel sounds ... is it something like [ʃɪɣɪlʲ], [ʃɑɣɑlʲ], [ʃɪɣɑlʲ] or [ʃɑɣɪlʲ]? And of course, the unstressed vowel might be a schwa. So, I'm going to just take a stab in the dark and say [ʃɑɣəlʲ]. Oh, wait ... I've just rememberd that is 'ia' is something like [iə] in some words, so [ʃiəɣəlʲ]?
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Re: Linguistic Struggles Thread

Post by linguoboy »

Imralu wrote:But wait ... is ae really followed by a broad consonant?
Yes, it is. Gael is pronounced [ɡeːlˠ]. If you palatalise the final consonant, it's the plural, Gaeil.

E is used to indicate a preceding consonant is slender, but before a slender consonant, it's always ei, e.g. teideal /tʹedʹəl/.
Imralu wrote:Cool, but where can I find the rules for the pronunciation of digraphs?
Thing is, they vary by dialect. Ao, for example, is only /iː/ in Ulster and Connacht. In Munster, it's /eː/. Aoi is /iː/ everywhere, but there are some words spelled with aoi in the standard but which in Munster are pronounced as if ao or even é (e.g. naoi /nʹeː/).

That said, here's a guide to a sort of idealised pseudo-Connacht pronounciation (the so-called Lárchanúint): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irish_ort ... _trigraphs. Note, for instance, how they give the rule that oi is [ɔ] before s, which leads right to the bogus pronunciation of anois I mentioned earlier.

If you know what dialect you're studying, I recommend investing in a description of that dialect. If you want a pandialectal overview, you need a copy of Ó Siadhail's Modern Irish. (I'd argue any serious student of Irish needs a copy anyway, but I realise it doesn't come cheap. Worth its weight in Waterford crystal, though.)
Imralu wrote:For example, "Ó Siadhail"
Okay, the thing about names is that--as with other languages--they often represent pre-reform spellings. Such is the case here. The dh is basically there for no reason; thus a post-reform spelling would be Ó Siail, but I don't know anyone who spells it like this. As you can see from this article, the conventional pronunciation is (broadly) transcribed [oːˈʃiːəlʲ] and the name is anglicised Sheel or even Shields.

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Re: Linguistic Struggles Thread

Post by marconatrix »

Lots of sound files on this site. You look up the word in one of the dictionaries and then hit the 'Pronunciation' tag :

http://www.teanglann.ie/en/fuaim/anois

This on illustrates the stress/length differences across the dialects :

http://www.teanglann.ie/en/fuaim/seaic%C3%A9ad

In Ulster the second historically long vowel is unstressed and short, but not obscure.
In Connacht the stress sound fairly even between the syllables to me, with the second vowel long.
In Munster the long vowel has attracted the main stress, and has also broken /e/ > /iə/.
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Re: Linguistic Struggles Thread

Post by linguoboy »

marconatrix wrote:In Munster the long vowel has attracted the main stress, and has also broken /e/ > /iə/.
According to Ó Cuív, at least, the result of the breaking of /eː/ before broad consonants in Munster doesn't fall together with the diphthong /iə/. He transcribes it /ia/.

Compare, for instance, the recorded pronunciations of dian and déanta.

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Re: Linguistic Struggles Thread

Post by marconatrix »

linguoboy wrote:
marconatrix wrote:In Munster the long vowel has attracted the main stress, and has also broken /e/ > /iə/.
According to Ó Cuív, at least, the result of the breaking of /eː/ before broad consonants in Munster doesn't fall together with the diphthong /iə/. He transcribes it /ia/.

Compare, for instance, the recorded pronunciations of dian and déanta.
Probably correct, I know some dialects distinguish historical (< OI) ia, ua from the products of later 'breaking' of é, ó, but I couldn't remember which had /a/ and which /ə/ as the final element. Above I wrote what I seemed to hear, but I'll yield to anyone with a better ear, or better training :-)

The distinction seems to be as you describe for Scots Gaelic too. Try looking up "sgian","dèan" and "sgeul" here :

http://www.faclair.info/

[Some days the sound files don't work, and today seems to one of them. The IPA is quite clear though].

-------------

Here are those words in the three main Irish dialects, phoneticians, what do you hear?

http://www.teanglann.ie/en/fuaim/scian
http://www.teanglann.ie/en/fuaim/d%C3%A9an
http://www.teanglann.ie/en/fuaim/sc%C3%A9al
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Re: Linguistic Struggles Thread

Post by linguoboy »

It is weird to me the phonological coincidences between Munster and Scottish Gaelic despite their being on opposite ends of the dialect continuum. See also their treatment of short vowels before tense liquids and nasals.

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Re: Linguistic Struggles Thread

Post by marconatrix »

linguoboy wrote:It is weird to me the phonological coincidences between Munster and Scottish Gaelic despite their being on opposite ends of the dialect continuum. See also their treatment of short vowels before tense liquids and nasals.
Yep, and the breaking of the long mid vowels is more marked, that is it occurs in more words, the further north you go in Scotland. And believe it or not there's a part of Cork where becomes Thá !
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Re: Linguistic Struggles Thread

Post by Salmoneus »

Do the traditional dialect distinctions actually have any relevance for real, living Irish? That is, is the 'Munster' dialect just what's spoken by twenty guys out in Dingle, or is it still reflected in the speech of ordinary young speakers in, say, Waterford?
[And given that most Irish speakers live in Dublin, which isn't in Ulster, Munster or Connacht, what dialect do they speak?]

*checks wikipedia*
So am I right in thinking that what people speak now is a standardised form derived from the Connacht dialect? Or is that only in Dublin (ie do people in Waterford still speak Munster?)
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Re: Linguistic Struggles Thread

Post by linguoboy »

Salmoneus wrote:*checks wikipedia*
So am I right in thinking that what people speak now is a standardised form derived from the Connacht dialect? Or is that only in Dublin (ie do people in Waterford still speak Munster?)
Depends what people you mean. There's still a Gaeltacht in Waterford (An Rinn) and people there speak a traditional Munster dialect. People in Waterford City (to the degree that they speak Irish at all, which very few do outside of school classes) are more likely to speak the kind of modern koiné you describe.

IME, the majority of those who have learned the koiné are semi-speakers at best. The fluent habitual speakers I know speak traditional dialects, either having grown up with one or having spent sufficient time in a Gaeltacht or with Gaeltacht speakers to acquire one.

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Re: Linguistic Struggles Thread

Post by marconatrix »

Just a note to say that the Scots Gaelic sound files are working again (today at least) here :

http://faclair.com/

Hover over the icon or the IPA and wait a second or two ...
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Re: Linguistic Struggles Thread

Post by ol bofosh »

One thing I struggle with is I think I spend so much time with non-native English speakers, I think my grip on my mother tongue loosens a bit every day. :roll:
It was about time I changed this.

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