Question for native speakers of Finnish and Hungarian

[alice]

Do you ever find yourselves unconsciously using vowel harmony when speaking foreign languages which don't have it?

[Xonen]

Fucking laptop touchpad killed the browser and ate my reply. This new one is going to be shorter, since I can't be arsed to re-write the whole thing. Sorry.

Anyway, the answer is no, not really. Vowel harmony is no longer an absolute all-encompassing rule even within Finnish (there are loanwords and slang that don't follow it), except perhaps for some elderly and pretty much completely monolingual speakers, so there isn't really much reason to drag it over to our pronunciation of other languages. And AFAIU, this applies even more strongly to Hungarian, where there are even case endings that never follow vowel harmony.

[Tropylium⁺]

What he said, but the ɑ/æ harmony hangs on somewhat tighter than o/ø & u/y harmonies (probably because there are fewer languages around that would have a corresponding vowel contrast, and thus yield nonharmonic loans).

At least IML an English word with both of the vowels might get simplified to some degree… I can't think of a basic lexical example, but perhaps names like "Sarah" or "Angela" would be more likely to come out as [særæ] or [ændʒəlæ] than [særɑ], [ændʒəlɑ], even if final /ə/ usually gets turned into [ɑ] rather than [æ] (eg. "Hilda" [hɪldɑ]).

[Miekko]

I actually have it occasionally occurring for some words in Swedish (and I'm natively Swedish but living my life about half in Finnish)... also, "tällainen" sometimes gets harmonized for me.

OTOH, I also sometimes have a diphthong that violates vowel harmony, that I've inherited from my Finnish dad - äy -> äu

[Salmoneus]

What he said, but the ɑ/æ harmony hangs on somewhat tighter than o/ø & u/y harmonies (probably because there are fewer languages around that would have a corresponding vowel contrast, and thus yield nonharmonic loans).

At least IML an English word with both of the vowels might get simplified to some degree… I can't think of a basic lexical example, but perhaps names like "Sarah" or "Angela" would be more likely to come out as [særæ] or [ændʒəlæ] than [særɑ], [ændʒəlɑ], even if final /ə/ usually gets turned into [ɑ] rather than [æ] (eg. "Hilda" [hɪldɑ]).

NB. "Sarah" doesn't have /{/. I'd have thought an e-sound would be a closer approximation?

[Tropylium⁺]

What he said, but the ɑ/æ harmony hangs on somewhat tighter than o/ø & u/y harmonies (probably because there are fewer languages around that would have a corresponding vowel contrast, and thus yield nonharmonic loans).

At least IML an English word with both of the vowels might get simplified to some degree… I can't think of a basic lexical example, but perhaps names like "Sarah" or "Angela" would be more likely to come out as [særæ] or [ændʒəlæ] than [særɑ], [ændʒəlɑ], even if final /ə/ usually gets turned into [ɑ] rather than [æ] (eg. "Hilda" [hɪldɑ]).

NB. "Sarah" doesn't have /{/. I'd have thought an e-sound would be a closer approximation?

Might well be hypercorrection on my part, tho Wiktionary and a few other online dictionaries on a quick stroll suggest that /særə/ does exist as a variant.

[Yng]

I'm sure I've heard people say /særə/. Only Americans, but still.

[Travis B.]

I'm sure I've heard people say /særə/. Only Americans, but still.

This probably just reflects relatively free variation in the height of non-high front vowels before /r/ in NAE varieties with the Mary-merry-marry merger (i.e. most of them), as [æ], [ɛ], and [e] are not contrasted before /r/ therein. (The canonical transcription of this merged vowel is [ɛ], but there is really nothing stopping it from being more open or close than that.)

[Nortaneous]

^ and people without that merger have /særə/, I think

[Qwynegold]

Nope. But Estonian is extremely hard to pronunce because it's so similar to Finnish but lacks vowel harmony.

[Xonen]

also, "tällainen" sometimes gets harmonized for me

Yeah, in that particular word the harmonized pronunciation is actually quite common, I think. However, do we actually know how recent this innovation is? AFAICT, both variants could well have been in existence for quite a while now. Also, there's the possibility of analogy with other words in which the suffix -lainen/-läinen does follow vowel harmony.

Nope. But Estonian is extremely hard to pronunce because it's so similar to Finnish but lacks vowel harmony.

Good point; I wasn't thinking about closely related languages when I wrote my original reply. That does take some getting used to. Also, when I took a course in Hungarian a little over a year ago, I recall several people (including myself) initially having some trouble with remembering which allomorph of a suffix to use in situations where Hungarian vowel harmony works differently from the Finnish one.

[spats]

NB. "Sarah" doesn't have /{/. I'd have thought an e-sound would be a closer approximation?

Does too!

Sarah = /s{r@/ in non Mary-merry-marry merger NAE.

Another possibility is /sAr@/, if the person is trying to go for a more "ethnic" sound; either pronunciation could also be spelled "Sara" (though the "ethnic" pronunciation I think would be more likely with that spelling).

The only time I've ever heard an American say [ser@] or [sEr@] is if they had the merger.

I can't speak for non-NAE varieties, though.

[Tropylium⁺]

also, "tällainen" sometimes gets harmonized for me

Yeah, in that particular word the harmonized pronunciation is actually quite common, I think. However, do we actually know how recent this innovation is? AFAICT, both variants could well have been in existence for quite a while now. Also, there's the possibility of analogy with other words in which the suffix -lainen/-läinen does follow vowel harmony.

I'd say it's probably not related to the other -lAinen suffix, since it's this one word only — I've never encountered forms like selläinen, milläinen… (Google does find about 1300 results for each of those… but 1.7 million for tälläinen)

There's also tämmöinen but again no ˣsemmöinen, ˣmimmöinen.

[Miekko]

also, "tällainen" sometimes gets harmonized for me

Yeah, in that particular word the harmonized pronunciation is actually quite common, I think. However, do we actually know how recent this innovation is? AFAICT, both variants could well have been in existence for quite a while now. Also, there's the possibility of analogy with other words in which the suffix -lainen/-läinen does follow vowel harmony.

I'd say it's probably not related to the other -lAinen suffix, since it's this one word only — I've never encountered forms like selläinen, milläinen… (Google does find about 1300 results for each of those… but 1.7 million for tälläinen)

There's also tämmöinen but again no ˣsemmöinen, ˣmimmöinen.

AFAICT, there's pretty strong agreement that the etymology of -lAinen is "lajinen" or thereabouts.

I have heard selläne, milläne, and definitely even more semmöne (but never mimmöne, altho' that might be due to that not being a very common word at all)

[Xonen]

also, "tällainen" sometimes gets harmonized for me

Yeah, in that particular word the harmonized pronunciation is actually quite common, I think. However, do we actually know how recent this innovation is? AFAICT, both variants could well have been in existence for quite a while now. Also, there's the possibility of analogy with other words in which the suffix -lainen/-läinen does follow vowel harmony.

I'd say it's probably not related to the other -lAinen suffix, since it's this one word only — I've never encountered forms like selläinen, milläinen… (Google does find about 1300 results for each of those… but 1.7 million for tälläinen)

There's also tämmöinen but again no ˣsemmöinen, ˣmimmöinen.

Well yes, obviously the fact that tällainen violates vowel harmony (whereas the others do not) plays a role - but the very fact that sellänen and millänen do occur, even though they are much rarer, would seem to me to suggest that analogy is exactly what's going on here.

Of course, there's also the fact that it's a very common word, unlike any other word that violates the /A/ vs. /{/ harmony (in fact, at least right now I can't think of any except afääri, which is something no-one except Scrooge McDuck would ever even say). So maybe you could say that this particular part of vowel harmony is still almost fully productive. Then again, a very common word could have this kind of a simplified pronunciation even in a language where vowel harmony didn't exist in the first place. So perhaps it's better not to draw any far-reaching conclusions from this one word.

[Miekko]

Of course, there's also the fact that it's a very common word, unlike any other word that violates the /A/ vs. /{/ harmony (in fact, at least right now I can't think of any except afääri, which is something no-one except Scrooge McDuck would ever even say). So maybe you could say that this particular part of vowel harmony is still almost fully productive. Then again, a very common word could have this kind of a simplified pronunciation even in a language where vowel harmony didn't exist in the first place. So perhaps it's better not to draw any far-reaching conclusions from this one word.

Even monolingually Swedish kids in monolingually Swedish villages close to Vaasa have recently had a tendency of rendering "varför" as /v{f2r

[Ulrike Meinhof]

Even monolingually Swedish kids in monolingually Swedish villages close to Vaasa have recently had a tendency of rendering "varför" as /v{f2r

/v{rf2r/ is a common pronunciation in Stockholm too, I think primarily among young people. I don't think anyone has it exclusively though.

[Tropylium⁺]

also, "tällainen" sometimes gets harmonized for me

Yeah, in that particular word the harmonized pronunciation is actually quite common, I think. However, do we actually know how recent this innovation is? AFAICT, both variants could well have been in existence for quite a while now. Also, there's the possibility of analogy with other words in which the suffix -lainen/-läinen does follow vowel harmony.

I'd say it's probably not related to the other -lAinen suffix, since it's this one word only — I've never encountered forms like selläinen, milläinen… (Google does find about 1300 results for each of those… but 1.7 million for tälläinen)

AFAICT, there's pretty strong agreement that the etymology of -lAinen is "lajinen" or thereabouts.

There are two different suffixes. The unharmonizing -lainen (as in "viidenlainen", "sellainen") is from "lajinen". The harmonizing -lAinen (as in "viidesläinen", "sikäläinen") is -lA + -inen.

BTW Häkkinen's Nykysuomen etymologinen sanakirja tells that harmonized tälläinen is first attested 1782, nonharmonized tällainen only later.

Of course, there's also the fact that it's a very common word, unlike any other word that violates the /A/ vs. /{/ harmony (in fact, at least right now I can't think of any except afääri, which is something no-one except Scrooge McDuck would ever even say).

Atmosfääri and stratosfääri may be more common, but they still have the air of a compound … Then there's kvartääri but that's pretty rare outside of a few technical fields.