Clicks in Berber

Discussion of natural languages, or language in general.
User avatar
jal
Sumerul
Sumerul
Posts: 2633
Joined: Tue Feb 06, 2007 12:03 am
Location: Netherlands
Contact:

Re: Clicks in Berber

Post by jal »

Arzena wrote:Second, languages with extensive consonant clusters tend to simplify the clusters.
Tell that to the Georgians.
For example, in recordings of the Bible in languages of the Pacific Northwest, I have heard more schwas than were written in the accompanying text.
It's like Arabic, there's much more vowels than written in the text! ;)


JAL

Vijay
Smeric
Smeric
Posts: 2244
Joined: Sat Feb 06, 2016 3:25 pm
Location: Austin, TX, USA

Re: Clicks in Berber

Post by Vijay »

Arzena wrote:For example, in recordings of the Bible in languages of the Pacific Northwest, I have heard more schwas than were written in the accompanying text.
Are those recordings made by native speakers of those languages?

----
Smeric
Smeric
Posts: 1418
Joined: Tue Feb 15, 2011 11:15 pm

Re: Clicks in Berber

Post by ---- »

I don't think there's any reason to doubt they were--epenthetic schwa insertion is extremely common in those languages in certain contexts such as song and instances where careful enunciation is important (like reading religious texts)
jal wrote:
Arzena wrote:Second, languages with extensive consonant clusters tend to simplify the clusters.
Tell that to the Georgians.
actually georgian is a pretty good example: /v/ in clusters often surfaces as labialization of the preceding consonant (if there is one), and epenthetic schwas abound.

Vijay
Smeric
Smeric
Posts: 2244
Joined: Sat Feb 06, 2016 3:25 pm
Location: Austin, TX, USA

Re: Clicks in Berber

Post by Vijay »

thetha wrote:I don't think there's any reason to doubt they were--epenthetic schwa insertion is extremely common in those languages in certain contexts such as song and instances where careful enunciation is important (like reading religious texts)
Kind of like Hindi then!

Sumelic
Avisaru
Avisaru
Posts: 385
Joined: Sat Mar 28, 2015 7:05 pm

Re: Clicks in Berber

Post by Sumelic »

Vijay wrote:
Arzena wrote:For example, in recordings of the Bible in languages of the Pacific Northwest, I have heard more schwas than were written in the accompanying text.
Are those recordings made by native speakers of those languages?
Another thing--is the presence of literal "schwa" vowels established by phonetic analysis of the recordings, or is is just something that you hear with your bare ears? Native speakers of languages that don't allow certain clusters will often hear schwas, or other kinds of epenthetic vowels, that aren't phonetically there. E.g. Japanese speakers not being able to hear the difference between "pr" and "pur", etc. John Wells's' blog has a post about this phenomenon with English speakers and "Gdańsk". My understanding is that there's a difference between schwa and mere audible release (e.g. in a contemporary Parisian accent, a word like "goutte" will rarely be pronounced with word-final schwa, but the /t/ will generally have an audible release, unlike the /t/ in a typical English realization of "boot"). English consonant clusters tend to be highly coarticulated with masked release for all but the last consonant, but this is not so much the case in all languages.

User avatar
Arzena
Lebom
Lebom
Posts: 240
Joined: Sat Jun 14, 2008 1:19 pm
Location: ¡California, Tejas, Marruecos!

Re: Clicks in Berber

Post by Arzena »

jal wrote:
Arzena wrote:Second, languages with extensive consonant clusters tend to simplify the clusters.
Tell that to the Georgians.
COSMIC BRAIN: Clusters in Georgian are actually one consonant
A New Yorker wrote:Isn't it sort of a relief to talk about the English Premier League instead of the sad state of publishing?
Abi wrote:At this point it seems pretty apparent that PIE was simply an ancient esperanto gone awry.
Shtåså, Empotle7á, Neire Wippwo

Post Reply