Are there any languages that have both /ts/ & /tɕ/ phonemes?

[Drydic]

...

and I wonder why I try

[Travis B.]

The title of the thread should be edited to say "that are not Slavic languages" after the current text, just so people will stop bringing them up, again and again.

[Izambri]

As the title says, are there any languages that have both /ts/ and /tɕ/ as distinct phonemes (or anything similar to this)?

Catalan has both /ts/ and /tɕ/:

gotets [gu'tɛts] vs. goteig [gu'tɛtɕ]
mats [mats] vs. maig [matɕ]
peuets [pə'wɛts] vs. peueig [pə'wɛtɕ]
fats [fats] vs. faig [fatɕ]
puts [puts] vs. puig [putɕ]
etc.

[Qwynegold]

They have much greater trouble distinguishing si and shi, and I'm partly convinced that katakana has something to do with this (because there's no スィ in general use).

That would be something like /swi/. /si/ is katakanized セィ (when people bother, which is basically never).

[Drydic]

Guys

I think Polish might distinguish these

But I'm not sure

[clawgrip]

They have much greater trouble distinguishing si and shi, and I'm partly convinced that katakana has something to do with this (because there's no スィ in general use).

That would be something like /swi/. /si/ is katakanized セィ (when people bother, which is basically never).

Pretty sure スィ is the standard for that, but I would guess many Japanese speakers would not necessarily be particularly familiar with it anyway. I also get the impression that Japanese monolinguals who have no ability/interest in other languages are not even necessarily aware that these sounds, <si> and <shi>, and <zi> and <ji>, are distinct at all. This awareness is only beginning to be realized for /ʦɯ/ vs. /tɯ/, though it will still take a while to gain universal currency. For example, Twitter, which is less than 10 years old, is still rendered ツイッター [ʦɯitːaː], but on the other hand, KAT-TUN, a boy band founded in 2001, is written and pronounced カトゥーン [katɯːɴ]. I am pretty sure /t/ vs. /ʦ/ will become more accepted over the next couple decades, just as /ti/ vs. /ʨi/ and /d/ vs. /ʥi/ already have.

[finlay]

I saw one of my teenage students using ズィ in an ad-hoc mnemonic for the pronunciation of "opposite". I think the younger ones are sometimes a bit more aware of it.

[Ser]

Finlay, why do you believe it's because of Katakana and not simply Japanese phonology? It seems obvious to me they would have problems with [si] vs. [ʃi].

[clawgrip]

I have had similar thoughts on why Katakana is counterproductive. Students learn early on to use katakana to gloss English pronunciation when they start learning English, but Katakana is woefully inadequate for the task. When students learn the word "right" and mark the pronunciation as "ライト" raito, and then later learn "light" and mark the pronunciation as "ライト" raito, they are effectively eliminating the distinction, and merging the two words in their memory, because most students beginning in English will rely more on Katakana (and a lot of people learn English from Japanese teachers who have the same problem). The result is that even after people learn to distinguish l and r in their own pronunciation, they still can't remember which one was which, and have to just take a wild guess, resulting in in monstrosities such as "plobrem."

Similarly, when people gloss "she" as シー shī and later "sea" as シー shī, they are reinforcing an artificial uniformity that does not reflect actual English. A separate spelling (such as スィ in question here), will allow the words to retain at least some kind of distinction that may help to jog people's memories later on if/when they become able to pronounce them properly. It is very hard to unlearn this, and I (and I assume finlay) believe that the notorious l/r and s/sh confusion is as much learned as it is natural.

It can also happen for learners of Japanese who don't bother to learn the pitch contour of the words they are learning (and they almost universally don't). Even after you learn how to pronounce words with the proper pitch accent, it can be difficult to look at words you have already learned, say 紙 kami "paper" and 神 kami "god", and try to figure out which one has which accent (in the case of these these two-mora words, there are three possibilities).

[Ser]

What about just using IPA? Even with its own bag of problems (what dialect would be used?), it'd still be an improvement over Katakana. See also: respellings.

[clawgrip]

IPA is good (and is sometimes used, will get to that), but as it is a specialized subset of the Roman alphabet, it is not necessarily appropriate for students who may very well not know the Roman alphabet at all. It is much easier for us to learn because it is based on our native writing system, but most Japanese students are going to want to choose the path of least resistance, which for them is katakana. Since the people testing them, as I said, probably have the same problems, it tends to work out okay for them. By the time they become adults and decide they want to study seriously, they already have at least 6 years of faulty pronunciation to unlearn, and many cannot ever fix it entirely.

The pronunciation is often a weird mix of British and American pronunciation too. It is based these days entirely on American English, but still has non-American holdovers from 100 years ago, such as "your" taught as yua and "news" taught as nyūsu.

On the subject of Japanese IPA for English, it sucks. I often see dictionaries that mark what you would expect to be written /ɪ i ɛ e ʊ u/ etc. as /i iː e eː u uː/. It is artificially similar to Japanese and probably based on the fact that the vowels are traditionally described as being either long and short. I don't recall if dictionaries tend to differentiate /ɑ/ and /ɔ/, but the model dialect is unquestionably General American.

[finlay]

Finlay, why do you believe it's because of Katakana and not simply Japanese phonology? It seems obvious to me they would have problems with [si] vs. [ʃi].

It's a combination, to be honest. There's what clawgrip said, plus the tendency of Japanese people to assume that English spelling doesn't make any sense, at least with the vowels, so I'm pretty sure many of them just learn the spelling as an arbitrary series of letters and remember pronunciation by their gloss in katakana, which is a terrible way to do it. Later they seem to view this as the "correct" pronunciation, somehow.

I've also heard stories of kids who learn the correct pronunciation and have it corrected by a teacher with the wrong pronunciation – one of my managers said his wife saw this happening, but felt she couldn't do anything about it because of Japanese seniority complexes.

[Pole, the]

There's what clawgrip said, plus the tendency of Japanese people to assume that English spelling doesn't make any sense,

& their write.

[Drydic]

There's what clawgrip said, plus the tendency of Japanese people to assume that English spelling doesn't make any sense,

& their write.

Terrible. It makes quite a bit of sense, historically. Just not enough to justify not reforming it drastically. Unfortunately the RAAAR NO CHANGE and Myriad Englishes factors prevent this.

[Boşkoventi]

There's what clawgrip said, plus the tendency of Japanese people to assume that English spelling doesn't make any sense,

& their write.

Know there naught.

(Yes, it has problems, but it's really not that bad. Also it seems to me that most languages that have been written for any length of time tend to have fairly conservative spelling systems -- English is not unique. Also also, changes do happen, even in English. We have things like "tho", "thru", and "nite" which are already widespread and may eventually become standard.)

[jal]

Catalan has both /ts/ and /tɕ/:

gotets [gu'tɛts] vs. goteig [gu'tɛtɕ]
mats [mats] vs. maig [matɕ]
peuets [pə'wɛts] vs. peueig [pə'wɛtɕ]
fats [fats] vs. faig [fatɕ]
puts [puts] vs. puig [putɕ]
etc.

I doubt whether /tɕ/ is a phoneme there, rather than a devoiced /dʑ/.


JAL

[Izambri]

Catalan has both /ts/ and /tɕ/:

gotets [gu'tɛts] vs. goteig [gu'tɛtɕ]
mats [mats] vs. maig [matɕ]
peuets [pə'wɛts] vs. peueig [pə'wɛtɕ]
fats [fats] vs. faig [fatɕ]
puts [puts] vs. puig [putɕ]
etc.

I doubt whether /tɕ/ is a phoneme there, rather than a devoiced /dʑ/.


JAL

No, the other way.
They are at the end of a word, so the sound is clearly unvoiced, and becomes voiced when followed by a vowel: faig [fatɕ] vs. faig alt ['fadʑˌaɫ].

[jal]

No, the other way.
They are at the end of a word, so the sound is clearly unvoiced, and becomes voiced when followed by a vowel: faig [fatɕ] vs. faig alt ['fadʑˌaɫ].

Ok, but phonemes that only occur at the end of a word? I wouldn't think it impossible, but highly unlikely at best. Suspicious, I'd say.


JAL

[Izambri]

No, the other way.
They are at the end of a word, so the sound is clearly unvoiced, and becomes voiced when followed by a vowel: faig [fatɕ] vs. faig alt ['fadʑˌaɫ].

Ok, but phonemes that only occur at the end of a word? I wouldn't think it impossible, but highly unlikely at best. Suspicious, I'd say.


JAL

No, in Catalan /tɕ/ doesn't occur only at the end of a word.

[2+3 clusivity]

I think everyone missed the low hanging fruit--i.e. almost the entire northwestern caucasian family:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ubykh_phonology
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abkhaz_phonology
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abaza_language

I'm sure a few of the northeastern ones do this too.

[Nortaneous]

!XU (141) dZ-, dZh, dz-, dzh, tS, tS-, tSh, ts, ts-, tsh 7.09%
AGHEM (35) bv, dZ, dz, tS, ts 14.29%
AHTNA (35) dlF, dz, tlFh, tsh 11.43%
ALBANIAN (35) "dz, "ts, cC, dZ, djjF, tS 17.14%
AMO (35) dZ, tS, ts 8.57%
AMUESHA (26) t.sh, tSJh, tSh, tsh 15.38%
AMUZGO (37) tS, ts 5.41%
ARCHI (91) "tlFWh, "tlFh, "tsWh, "tsh, qX, qX9, qXW, qXW9, tSWh, tSh 10.99%
ARMENIAN (36) tDs, tDsh, tS, tSh 11.11%
ASHUSLAY (28) "ts, "ts*, tS, tS* 14.29%
AVAR (49) "tlF:, "ts:, "tsh, kx:, qX:, tS:, tSh 14.29%
AWIYA (35) "dz, "ts, dZ, tS 11.43%
BASHKIR (38) tS, ts 5.26%
BASQUE (28) "ts, t.s, tS 10.71%
BATS (45) dDz, dZ, tDsh, tSh 8.89%
BRIBRI (27) "ts, tS 7.41%
BULGARIAN (42) dZ, tDs, tDsJ, tS 9.52%
BURUSHASKI (43) "ts, "tsh, d.z, dZ, t.s, t.sh, tS, tSh 18.60%
CACUA (22) tS 4.55%
CADDO (23) "ts, tS 8.70%
CAMPA (19) tS, ts 10.53%
CAMSA (28) t.s, tS, ts 10.71%
CAYAPA (28) tS, ts 7.14%
CHIPEWYAN (52) "tlF, "tlFh, "ts, "tsh, kxWh, kxh, tD0, tD0h, tS, tSh 19.23%
CHUVASH (30) "ts, tS 6.67%
DAHALO (59) "dlF, "tlF, dZ, dz, ndZ, ndz, tS, ts 13.56%
EYAK (45) "dlF, "dz, "tlFh, "tsh, dZ, tSh 13.33%
GEORGIAN (34) tS, tSh, ts, tsh 11.76%
GUAMBIANO (24) t.s, tS, ts 12.50%
HADZA (62) dZ, dz, ndZ, ndz, tS, tSh, tlF, tlFh, ts, tsh 16.13%
HMONG (56) nt.s, nt.sh, ntDs, ntDsh, ntS, ntSh, t.s, t.sh, tDs, tDsh, tS, tSh 21.43%
HUARI (32) "dz, "ts, dZ, tS 12.50%
HUASTECO (26) tS, ts 7.69%
HUPA (35) tS, tSWh, ts, tsh 11.43%
IK (44) dZ, dz, tS, ts 9.09%
JACALTEC (32) t.sh, tSh, tsh 9.38%
JAQARU (39) t.s, t.sh, tS, tSh, ts, tsh 15.38%
JINGPHO (30) "dz, "ts, dZ, tS, tSh 16.67%
JIVARO (23) "ts, tS 8.70%
K'EKCHI (26) tS, ts 7.69%
KASHMIRI (55) dZJ, dz, tSJ, tSJh, ts, tsh 10.91%
KHALKHA (33) "dz, "tsh, dZ, tSh 12.12%
KIRGHIZ (30) tS, ts 6.67%
KULLO (29) "ts, dZ, tS 10.34%
LAK (69) "ts:, "tsW:, "tsWh, "tsh, tS:, tSW:, tSWh, tSh 11.59%
LITHUANIAN (52) "dz, "ts, "tsJ, dZ, tS 9.62%
LUSHOOTSEED (37) dZ, dz, tS, ts 10.81%
MARGI (34) dZ, dz, tS, ts 11.76%
MARI (33) "ts, tS 6.06%
MAZAHUA (60) "ts, "tsh, tS, tSh 6.67%
MAZATEC (33) nd.z, ndZ, ndz, t.s, tS, ts 18.18%
MOXO (25) tS, ts 8.00%
NAHUATL (20) tS, tlF, ts 15.00%
NAVAJO (47) "dlF, "tlF, "ts, "tsh, tS, tSh 12.77%
OCAINA (34) dz, tS, ts 8.82%
ORMURI (31) "dz, "ts, dZ, tS 12.90%
PAEZ (37) tS, ts 5.41%
PANARE (25) "ts, tS 8.00%
PASHTO (38) dDz, dZ, tDs, tS 10.53%
QUECHUA (36) tS, tSh 5.56%
QUILEUTE (37) tS, tlF, ts 8.11%
RESIGARO (35) dZ, dz, tS, tSh, ts, tsh 17.14%
ROMANIAN (32) dZ, tDs, tS 9.38%
RUSSIAN (38) tS, ts 5.26%
RUTUL (64) "dz, "tsWh, "tsh, dZ, dZW, tSh 9.38%
SAAMI (45) "dz, "dzJ, "ts, "tsJ, dZ, tS 13.33%
SUI (54) tS, tSh, ts, tsh 7.41%
TACANA (22) t.s, tS 9.09%
TARASCAN (39) tS, tSh, ts, tsh 10.26%
TEHUELCHE (35) cC,, tDs, tS 8.57%
TLAPANEC (30) dZ, tS, ts 10.00%
TLINGIT (48) "dlF, "dz, "tlF, "ts, dZ, tS 12.50%
TOTONAC (22) tS, ts 9.09%
TSESHAHT (42) "tlF, tS, ts 7.14%
TUVA (29) dDz, dZ, tDs, tS 13.79%
TZELTAL (28) tDs, ts 7.14%
UPPER CHEHALIS (34) tS, ts 5.88%
WAPPO (35) "ts, tS 5.71%
WIYOT (29) "ts, "tsh, tS, tSh 13.79%
XIAMEN (25) "dz, "ts, "tsh, dZ 16.00%
YAGUA (23) tS, ts 8.70%
YUCATEC (30) tS, ts 6.67%
YUCHI (46) "dz, "ts, "tsh, dZ, tS, tSh 13.04%
ZUNI (25) "tsh, tSh 8.00%

[Drydic]

I don't see Polish on there, I wonder if it has these sounds

[cromulant]

I think everyone missed the low hanging fruit--i.e. almost the entire northwestern caucasian family:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ubykh_phonology
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abkhaz_phonology
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abaza_language

Second-best contribution to the thread so far. This one is first.

[Buran]

According to Wikipedia, Romansh contrasts ts and tɕ.

[Melteor]

I don't see Polish on there, I wonder if it has these sounds

I think everyone missed the low hanging fruit--i.e. almost the entire northwestern caucasian family:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ubykh_phonology
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abkhaz_phonology
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abaza_language

Second-best contribution to the thread so far. This one is first.

Most (all?) Slavic languages besides Russian that have /tɕ/ have /tʃ/ too. I think.