The Most Batshit Natlang Competition!

[----]

Yeah, I'd like to learn Mohawk since it has no labials and labials are my least favorite consonants.

[marconatrix]

Yeah, I'd like to learn Mohawk since it has no labials and labials are my least favorite consonants.

I guess it makes lip-reading difficult?

[Xephyr]

Yeah, I'd like to learn Mohawk since it has no labials and labials are my least favorite consonants.

I guess it makes lip-reading difficult?

But makes ventriloquism easy.

[marconatrix]

Yeah, I'd like to learn Mohawk since it has no labials and labials are my least favorite consonants.

I guess it makes lip-reading difficult?

But makes ventriloquism easy.

Good point! I didn't think of that, hmm ...

[Chuma]

Literally everything weird in English orthography can be explained by simple sound changes and historical preservation of spelling

Sure, more or less, but so what? Most of us don't know the etymology and historical pronunciations of every single word, so we're not helped.

But from my limited experience of all of them, these all at least seem to be in the same "league":
Japanese, Chinese, Burmese, Thai, Tibetan, French, Gaelic in all its flavours (Irish, Scottish, maybe Manx), Swedish, Danish, Norwegian

I could be biased, but it seems to me that the Nordic languages are significantly less strangely spelled than English. Somewhat strange, but not that strange. Gaelic I don't know but it sure look weird to me. French would have been my first choice on the list of weird spellings. Chinese, like you said, is a different matter, but it's certainly complicated.

Swedish's consonants seem very complex to me, particularly that sj-sound which has a lot of different ways of spelling it.

Some different ways, yes (sj, sk, sh, sch - any more?), so it's difficult to predict the spelling from the pronunciation, but the other way is usually easy enough (compare "th" in English, among many others). Perhaps more importantly, it's a very peculiar sound.

Well they're all pretty similar and it's pronounced the same as <rs> in Northern dialects I believe.

Only in some of them, I don't think it's even that common. The only one I can think of is a pretentious Stockholm sociolect. I admit I don't know all that much about northern dialects, but I do know it's far from universal.

Speaking of Germanic langs, V2 word order seems pretty weird.

I can think of various isolated pieces of weirdness that occur in different languages, such as huge phoneme inventories, or crazy polypersonal agreement, or those languages which have literally free word order (as opposed to free constituent order) so that you have to have agreement on absolutely everything. But few languages have more than one such weirdness.

Did anyone mention Dyirbal? That has quite a few peculiarities, doesn't it?

[----]

Literally everything weird in English orthography can be explained by simple sound changes and historical preservation of spelling

Sure, more or less, but so what? Most of us don't know the etymology and historical pronunciations of every single word, so we're not helped.

Well sure, but that was more of a response to how some people are always saying 'Oh this is English, you know, no actual spelling or grammar rules everything is just random hurr'
That kind of thing certainly doesn't happen on here, at least I haven't seen it except maybe once or twice, but I do hear it all the time in school and other places. Kind of just one of those things that grind my gears I guess.

[Viktor77]

Literally everything weird in English orthography can be explained by simple sound changes and historical preservation of spelling

Sure, more or less, but so what? Most of us don't know the etymology and historical pronunciations of every single word, so we're not helped.

Well sure, but that was more of a response to how some people are always saying 'Oh this is English, you know, no actual spelling or grammar rules everything is just random hurr'
That kind of thing certainly doesn't happen on here, at least I haven't seen it except maybe once or twice, but I do hear it all the time in school and other places. Kind of just one of those things that grind my gears I guess.

But then there are words which seem completely discrete from sound changes and historical preservation and all that jazz and are simply bizarre like loose vs. lose. The one with two vowels has a short vowel and the one with one vowel has a long vowel. How do you possibly explain that?

[Chuma]

Short vowel? What dialect is that?

[Grimalkin]

Hmm yeah, isn't it just a difference between /s/ and /z/ in pretty much every English dialect?

[Viktor77]

Hmm yeah, isn't it just a difference between /s/ and /z/ in pretty much every English dialect?

[lus] vs. [lu:z]
Loose vs. Lose

[Astraios]

Hmm yeah, isn't it just a difference between /s/ and /z/ in pretty much every English dialect?

Yep, compare <noose> /nus/ <news> /n(j)u:z/.

It's not just before /s/ and /z/, I think, it's before (un)voiced consonants in general, like <bat> /bat/ <bad> /ba:d/. But then <fat> /fat/ <fad> /fad/...

[Grimalkin]

Hmm yeah, isn't it just a difference between /s/ and /z/ in pretty much every English dialect?

[lus] vs. [lu:z]
Loose vs. Lose

The difference is merely allophonic, though. So-called 'long vowels' are always shorter before a voiceless obstruent - e.g. /s/ - than before a voiced obstruent, such as /z/. The thing that is weird about 'loose' and 'lose' is the fact that the value of the consonant following the vowel is indicated by a difference in the spelling of the vowel, not the consonant.

It's not just before /s/ and /z/, I think, it's before (un)voiced consonants in general, like <bat> /bat/ <bad> /ba:d/. But then <fat> /fat/ <fad> /fad/...

Ah, the good old bad-lad split. Now that's another complication...

[finlay]

Hmm yeah, isn't it just a difference between /s/ and /z/ in pretty much every English dialect?

Yep, compare <noose> /nus/ <news> /n(j)u:z/.

It's not just before /s/ and /z/, I think, it's before (un)voiced consonants in general, like <bat> /bat/ <bad> /ba:d/. But then <fat> /fat/ <fad> /fad/...

you weirdo

Scottish accents tend to have it before voiced fricatives, /r/ and morpheme boundaries. But not voiced plosives. hence brood [brud] /brud/ and brewed [bruːd] /bru#d/. Before you mention, yes it's very fucking loose interpretations of the symbols which don't necessarily imply a trill, although that is infinitely more likely in Scotland than most of the rest of the anglosphere, nor a back vowel for /u/, nor fully voiced plosives.

[Astraios]

you weirdo

[cromulant]

So is the contest still going? Noone's cast a vote in six days.

[Grimalkin]

Ok ok I vote Piraha.

[Chuma]

The difference is merely allophonic, though. So-called 'long vowels' are always shorter before a voiceless obstruent - e.g. /s/ - than before a voiced obstruent, such as /z/. The thing that is weird about 'loose' and 'lose' is the fact that the value of the consonant following the vowel is indicated by a difference in the spelling of the vowel, not the consonant.

Indeed indeed.

So is the contest still going? Noone's cast a vote in six days.

Perhaps it's the road that's the goal? Or at least we need to present the candidates first.

[Zumir]

Anyone for Shapsug? it has a voiceless bidental fricative!

Edit: Nah, the contest's off.

[Bristel]

Anyone for Shapsug? it has a voiceless bidental fricative!

Edit: Nah, the contest's off.

Don't start a competition, demand to label the votes, then call it off just because the discussion was getting a little off track...

[Cedh]

Speaking of Germanic langs, V2 word order seems pretty weird.

Unusual maybe, but not all that weird if you think of it as VSO with mandatory fronting of exactly one constituent, usually the topic or subject (but sometimes a focused object or adjunct instead).

[cromulant]

Speaking of Germanic langs, V2 word order seems pretty weird.

Unusual maybe, but not all that weird if you think of it as VSO with mandatory fronting of exactly one constituent, usually the topic or subject (but sometimes a focused object or adjunct instead).

Wat?! You mean SOV, right? AIUI, that's what German is said to "underlyingly" be.

[Nortaneous]

Anyone for Shapsug? it has a voiceless bidental fricative!

Edit: Nah, the contest's off.

Source?

[Cedh]

Speaking of Germanic langs, V2 word order seems pretty weird.

Unusual maybe, but not all that weird if you think of it as VSO with mandatory fronting of exactly one constituent, usually the topic or subject (but sometimes a focused object or adjunct instead).

Wat?! You mean SOV, right? AIUI, that's what German is said to "underlyingly" be.

I do mean VSO.

Yes, German is SOV in most subclauses, and broadly head-final in most types of phrases, and the Germanic V2 order developed from SOV in all likelihood, so saying German is "underlyingly SOV" is definitely closer to the truth than saying it was "underlyingly VSO". However, synchronically speaking, V2 order, and especially the way that different elements can be highlighted by placing them before the verb in V2 clauses, feels very similar to what topic-prominent languages do with topic fronting. And if you analyse the preverbal constituent in a German V2 clause as a topic (which is often (but not always) its pragmatic role), the rest of the clause is typically ordered VSO.

[TomHChappell]

But from my limited experience of all of them, these all at least seem to be in the same "league":
Japanese, Chinese, Burmese, Thai, Tibetan, French, Gaelic in all its flavours (Irish, Scottish, maybe Manx), Swedish, Danish, Norwegian

You left out French and Hindi.

[Qwynegold]

But from my limited experience of all of them, these all at least seem to be in the same "league":
Japanese, Chinese, Burmese, Thai, Tibetan, French, Gaelic in all its flavours (Irish, Scottish, maybe Manx), Swedish, Danish, Norwegian

You left out French and Hindi.

French is there.