Regular and Irregular Languages

[GreenBowTie]

it's bullshit that "pay" ends up on those lists of irregular verbs. it's completely 100% regular, but because for some unknown reason the spelling is fucked up, it gets listed as "irregular". first order of business when i'm king will be ordering it spelled "payed"

[jal]

innovative Germanic ablaut

You mean umlaut?


JAL

[CaesarVincens]

You mean umlaut?


JAL

Not necessarily. I'm not very familiar with it, but I know umlaut is the front of back vowels before front vowels in the word and some strong verbs do have that, but others have an ablaut pattern that is similar to the PIE ablaut (e-o-null), but doesn't derive from a PIE ablaut pattern.

After reviewing, the wikipedia article on Germanic strong verbs, it's more just that the PIE ablaut patterns were obscured. Umlaut does play a role in some of the sound changes.

[linguoboy]

It must have non-transparent derivations, no?

In spades. Some common [Standard Mandarin] examples:

東西 dōngxi "thing [abstract or concrete]" (lit. "east-west")
馬上 mǎshàng "immediately" (lit. "horse-above")
花生 huāshēng "peanut" (lit. "flower-life")

And that's without even getting into idioms like 吃醋 chīcù "be jealous" (lit. "eat vinegar") or slang expressions like 埋單 máidān "foot the bill", "take responsibility" (lit. "bury single"), let alone Literary four-character phrases. (I saw one of these on a t-shirt the other day--一期一会--and I hadn't a clue what it meant until I looked it up just now, despite being well-acquainted with each of the characters individually.)

[Terra]

To muddle things further, Japanese has "沢山". It's pronounced "takusan", and means "many, a lot", but the characters mean "swamp" and "mountain". The etymology probably has nothing to do with swamps or mountains, but gets written with them only because it sounds like it.

Edit: Indeed, Starostin's Altaic dictionary agrees with me, saying:

the word is shaped and perceived as a kango (澤山 ‘swamps and mountains’), but is apparently not attested in Chinese sources and may represent a folk etymology.

This is all under the heading ""PJpn. *tákú-páp- to hoard, assemble""

[jal]

let alone Literary four-character phrases

Interesting, didn't know of them. Makes me think of Darmok.


JAL

[Zhen Lin]

slang expressions like 埋單 máidān "foot the bill", "take responsibility" (lit. "bury single")

I am under the impression this is a borrowing from Cantonese. 單 here is surely meant in the sense of "bill", cf 菜單, 名單. The first element is somewhat more mysterious, but apparently 埋 in Cantonese has the additional meaning of "to total up"...

[linguoboy]

slang expressions like 埋單 máidān "foot the bill", "take responsibility" (lit. "bury single")

I am under the impression this is a borrowing from Cantonese.

It is, but that's neither here nor there. I've found this expression widely understood among Mandarin-speakers who couldn't be expected to be familiar with the Cantonese meaning of each component morpheme.

[Trebor]

English requires the memorization of one form for regular verbs, and three forms for irregular verbs.

Latin requires the memorization of one form for first-conjugation verbs, two or three forms for second-conjugation verbs, three forms for third-conjugation verbs, and two(?) forms for fourth-conjugation verbs -- except for the irregular verbs, where you have to memorize three forms. (Are there any forms where the first form isn't predictable from the second?)

English requires the memorization of one form for regular nouns, and two forms for irregular nouns.

Latin has fucking i-stems.

Seri requires the memorization of two forms for every noun because plurals are completely irregular.

For Somali, learners have to memorize four forms of every noun: singular indefinite, singular definite, plural indefinite, plural definite. Fortunately, the article suffixes show the gender, or there would be yet one more thing to cram into one's poor head. It's also important, if not essential, to memorize the past, present, and imperative forms of each verb. But what makes the language so complex is all the morphophonology. Compare the regular nin 'man' -> ninkii 'the man' and naag 'woman' -> naagtii 'the woman' with the following:

- caano 'milk' -> caanihii 'the milk' (not the expected *caanokii);
- dayuurad 'airplane' -> dayuuraddii 'the airplane' (not the expected *dayuuradtii);
- libaax 'lion' -> libaaxii 'the lion' (not the expected *libaaxkii); and
- su'aal 'question' -> su'aashii 'the question' (not the expected *su'aaltii).

For Kinyarwanda (and probably Bantu in general), students have to memorize the singular and plural forms of every noun and the present and past stems of each verb. There are definitely patterns--e.g., singular nouns not referring to humans which begin in umu- change the prefix to imi- in the plural, and present verbs ending in -na change the final syllable to -nye in the past. But even if the "rules" are often or usually followed, there will still be exceptions; not having seriously begun to study this language yet, however, I can't comment on how irregular it is. Perhaps the ZBB poster who's been working on Zulu can chime in.

[clawgrip]

It must have non-transparent derivations, no?

In spades. Some common [Standard Mandarin] examples:

東西 dōngxi "thing [abstract or concrete]" (lit. "east-west")
馬上 mǎshàng "immediately" (lit. "horse-above")
花生 huāshēng "peanut" (lit. "flower-life")

And that's without even getting into idioms like 吃醋 chīcù "be jealous" (lit. "eat vinegar") or slang expressions like 埋單 máidān "foot the bill", "take responsibility" (lit. "bury single"), let alone Literary four-character phrases. (I saw one of these on a t-shirt the other day--一期一会--and I hadn't a clue what it meant until I looked it up just now, despite being well-acquainted with each of the characters individually.)

Japanese has borrowed these wholesale from Chinese, so there are tons of them in Japanese. There are probably fewer in Japanese than in Chinese that are used in regular conversation though, and I only know the most common ones. 一期一会 (ichigoichie in Japanese) happens to be one of the ones I know. Maybe it's more common in Japanese than Chinese.

While we're on the subject of opaque idiomatic expressions (kind of off topic), Japanese has a bunch of weird ones with 気 ki "qi; spirit; feeling; air"

気をつける ki o tsukeru ("attach qi") be careful
気を使う ki o tsukau ("use qi") pay attention to others' needs; worry about others
気になる ki ni naru ("become qi") be thinking about; be curious about; be worried about; be distracted by
気がする ki ga suru ("do qi; qi happens") feel; think; believe; have a hunch
気持ち kimochi ("qi-holding") feeling
気が合う ki ga au ("qi matches") get along with
気がきく ki ga kiku ("qi is effective") be thoughtful; be attentive
気が散る ki ga chiru ("qi scatters") be distracted by; be unable to pay attention

There are so many others, but these are some common ones.

[vec]

Nouns in Icelandic are incredibly unpredictable. While you're OK with weak nouns, which each have only a handful of subdeclensions, the strong nouns are incredibly diverse, especially when you go into given names, where one name can have a completely unique declension, not exhibited in any other word. Our verbs are a lot easier.

[Pole, the]

You can pretty accurately predict the inflection pattern of Polish nouns, knowing the nominative, and verbs, knowing the present 1sg and past 3sg. But still most of these exhibit at least one type of morphono alternation and irregular roots (along with their derivations) are still pretty common.