Weird natlang phonologies

Discussion of natural languages, or language in general.
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Skomakar'n
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Post by Skomakar'n »

Nortaneous wrote:
Skomakar'n wrote:
Nortaneous wrote:
Skomakar'n wrote:såg - /so:g/ - [s&:g] - søg - a saw
snön - /sn2n:/ - [sJ&n] - snjø(e)n - the snow
holy shit, you have [&]? I always figured that didn't really show up in natlangs for whatever reason
Unless this symbol doesn't represent the sound I think it does, I do. I'll record it later.
It's a low front rounded vowel. (rounded /a/)
I'm thinking of something /ø/-like.
rickardspaghetti wrote:
Nortaneous wrote:
Nortaneous wrote:anyway where the fuck did all those [l`] come from?
As far as I know, not one single l coming out of my mouth isn't retroflex. I am pretty sure they all are.
awesome
Skomakar'n, this is a speech impediment, not an idiolect. Visit a speech pedagog.
Don't come here and tell me you've never heard a Swedish/Norwegian dialect with only retroflex l.
I don't mean that I can't pronounce an l that isn't retroflex. I obviously don't speak English with them retroflex, and I don't imitate people from Stockholm with them retroflex, and I don't speak Icelandic with them retroflex, and so on.

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Xonen
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Post by Xonen »

Mbwa wrote:nasal vowels are susceptible to lowering.
Sez who?

Well yes, the French obviously do, but they've had quite a bit of other sound changes that aren't exactly universal as well. And AFAIK, it's quite common for languages to raise vowels before nasals - and a higher allophone before a nasal could easily turn into a higher nasal vowel.
Skomakar'n wrote:
Nortaneous wrote:
Skomakar'n wrote:
Nortaneous wrote:
Skomakar'n wrote:såg - /so:g/ - [s&:g] - søg - a saw
snön - /sn2n:/ - [sJ&n] - snjø(e)n - the snow
holy shit, you have [&]? I always figured that didn't really show up in natlangs for whatever reason
Unless this symbol doesn't represent the sound I think it does, I do. I'll record it later.
It's a low front rounded vowel. (rounded /a/)
I'm thinking of something /ø/-like.
I could imagine you having the rounded counterpart of [{]; at least that one occurs as an allophone of /2/ in F-Swedish. However, there's no X-SAMPA symbol specifically for that sound. The symbol /&/ may be used in phonemic analysis, since it's reasonably close - and no phonology will ever be crazy enough to contrast a truly open [&] with a near-open one. But if you want to transcribe the sound more precisely, you could use [&_r] or [9_o].
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Post by Mbwa »

Xonen wrote:
Mbwa wrote:nasal vowels are susceptible to lowering.
Sez who?
Lyle Campbell.

I wasn't saying they are extremely likely to, I was just saying [i~] > [e~] is a plausible change. I think I could come up with an example of a language with a roughly /a e i o u/ oral vowel system with roughly /e~ o~ a~/.
p_>-ts_>k_>-k_>k_>-pSSSSS

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Åge Kruger
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Post by Åge Kruger »

Can we just clear one thing up here and now: Skomaker'n doesn't speak like he claims to. The majority of his "oddities" are affectations.

That is all.

HAND.
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Skomakar'n
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Post by Skomakar'n »

Åge Kruger wrote:Can we just clear one thing up here and now: Skomaker'n doesn't speak like he claims to. The majority of his "oddities" are affectations.

That is all.

HAND.
I've claimed to have a pronunciation different from the standard one. In Sweden, just about everybody does.
I've claimed to differentiate three genders. Still nothing uncommon at all in Sweden or Norway.
I have also claimed that I speak like I do partially because I want to. I don't say ulv or ramn because I've grown up hearing people say it, but because I want to. Because varg and korp are crap words to me.
I have dropped my /x\/ in favour of /S/ because I like it better that way. So has my aunt. My mother has change her dialect intentionally since she was young because she didn't like it. My father changed his dialect into a less archaic one when he became a teacher, but that dialect is still the basis of mine.
I meet a lot of people with very different dialects (or they speak Norwegian dialects) and I know and use related languages such as Norwegian and Icelandic a lot, and this has had big influence on me. I quickly got used to saying "ka?" instead of "va?", and I have said "ha?" all my life, because it's common here. Same for diphtongs. If I like these changes, I obviously allow them to come.

You are right, though. Very often, I don't speak like this, because I tend to adapt myself differently to different people. The better I know them, the less I adapt myself to them. This is definitely the way my girlfriend hears me speak. Something we both remember particularly well was when I said [Ej fry:s_j Ym tE:rA], which she seems to quote quite often, and her friends from Stockholm find it particularly fun to ask me things like "kvad tycker du om kvit kvispgrädde?", and obviously get a lot of their imitations wrong too.

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Post by Nortaneous »

Tsakonian: /p/ palatalized to /c/ before a front vowel
Siöö jandeng raiglin zåbei tandiüłåd;
nää džunnfin kukuch vklaivei sivei tåd.
Chei. Chei. Chei. Chei. Chei. Chei. Chei.

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Post by Qwynegold »

Skomakar'n wrote:
Nortaneous wrote:
Skomakar'n wrote:
Nortaneous wrote:
Skomakar'n wrote:såg - /so:g/ - [s&:g] - søg - a saw
snön - /sn2n:/ - [sJ&n] - snjø(e)n - the snow
holy shit, you have [&]? I always figured that didn't really show up in natlangs for whatever reason
Unless this symbol doesn't represent the sound I think it does, I do. I'll record it later.
It's a low front rounded vowel. (rounded /a/)
I'm thinking of something /ø/-like.
Maybe it's /9/?
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Skomakar'n
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Post by Skomakar'n »

Qwynegold wrote:
Skomakar'n wrote:
Nortaneous wrote:
Skomakar'n wrote:
Nortaneous wrote: holy shit, you have [&]? I always figured that didn't really show up in natlangs for whatever reason
Unless this symbol doesn't represent the sound I think it does, I do. I'll record it later.
It's a low front rounded vowel. (rounded /a/)
I'm thinking of something /ø/-like.
Maybe it's /9/?
Possibly.

I recorded it: http://host-a.net/Skomakarn/oe.mp3

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Post by Magb »

Not to hijack this thread, but I'd love to hear a longer recording of you speaking in your full-blown idiolect, Skomakar'n. Your descriptions make it sound so much more Norwegian than Swedish, and I'm curious to find out how my brain will categorize it.

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Skomakar'n
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Post by Skomakar'n »

Magb wrote:Not to hijack this thread, but I'd love to hear a longer recording of you speaking in your full-blown idiolect, Skomakar'n. Your descriptions make it sound so much more Norwegian than Swedish, and I'm curious to find out how my brain will categorize it.
I'll try to write a good example down, and then record it.

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Mbwa
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Post by Mbwa »

Åge Kruger wrote:Can we just clear one thing up here and now: Skomaker'n doesn't speak like he claims to. The majority of his "oddities" are affectations.

That is all.

HAND.
Don't be such a square, my English dialect has biconsonantal roots and only 10 consonants.

Yes, it was a bad joke. I'll come across another weird phonology soon, don't have a cow.
p_>-ts_>k_>-k_>k_>-pSSSSS

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rickardspaghetti
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Post by rickardspaghetti »

Tanacross has "semi-voiced" fricatives? WTF is that?
そうだ。死んでいる人も勃起することが出来る。
俺はその証だ。

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Post by Nortaneous »

rickardspaghetti wrote:Tanacross has "semi-voiced" fricatives? WTF is that?
Damned if I know, but Ju|'hoan has semi-voiced stops.
Siöö jandeng raiglin zåbei tandiüłåd;
nää džunnfin kukuch vklaivei sivei tåd.
Chei. Chei. Chei. Chei. Chei. Chei. Chei.

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Post by Skomakar'n »

Recording done.
Can be fetched here: http://host-a.net/Skomakarn/tt.zip

Contains two files:

Tgf.mp3 is the idiolect at it's full... uh... "power". The way I mostly talk to my girlfriend.
Ttr.mp3 is more adapted to other people, and it can get even closer to standard than this. Especially when talking to teachers or complete strangers.

Here is what I'm saying, in Standard Swedish orthography:

Hej. Jag heter Adam, och är svensk. Jag kommer från Göteborg, och där är det mycket vatten, för det ligger vid havet. Vad gott det är att bo vid havet. Man är ju alltid ren. Det är gott.

Meaning:

Hi. My name is Adam, and I am Swedish. I come from Gothenburg, and there is a lot of water there, because it is by the sea. It is so good to live by the sea. You are always clean. It is good.

Just some random crap, of course. I have not bathed in the sea in several years. Not since I was twelve or something, I think.

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Post by Nortaneous »

Tsou has batshit phonotactics and a phoneme that varies between /d_</ and /l/.
Siöö jandeng raiglin zåbei tandiüłåd;
nää džunnfin kukuch vklaivei sivei tåd.
Chei. Chei. Chei. Chei. Chei. Chei. Chei.

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Post by Qwynegold »

Hän has ejectives, retroflexes, prenasalized consonants, and five interdentals. It has voicing distinction only in some nasals, fricatives and approximants, but not in plosives.
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Post by Nortaneous »

^ not that weird, if you group the unvoiced plosives with the voiced fricatives and the aspirated plosives with the voiced fricatives (eh) and group the affricates together with the plosives (pretty standard crosslinguistically)

that first grouping is pretty iffy though, since there are four phonations on plosives but a maximum of two on fricatives, and I wouldn't analyze it like that unless there's evidence from the grammar

it's still weird though, since it's a perfect example of most of the "if there's going to be a bit missing in the series, it's going to be this bit" rules - the most fortis bits are missing in the labials and the most lenis bits are missing in the velars, and there aren't any labial fricatives (although I'd be surprised if /w w_0/ are actually [w w_0] and not [B p\] or something). also, the /s` z` r\` r\`_0/ contrast is fucking insane, and there's that random /n_0/
Siöö jandeng raiglin zåbei tandiüłåd;
nää džunnfin kukuch vklaivei sivei tåd.
Chei. Chei. Chei. Chei. Chei. Chei. Chei.

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Post by TaylorS »

Qwynegold wrote:Hän has ejectives, retroflexes, prenasalized consonants, and five interdentals. It has voicing distinction only in some nasals, fricatives and approximants, but not in plosives.
Pacific Northwest languages are just phonologically wonky. I mean EJECTIVE FRICATIVES? REALLY?

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rickardspaghetti
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Post by rickardspaghetti »

Isn't the thing with ejectives to pronounce a sound without any airflow? How can fricatives be articulated in this way?
そうだ。死んでいる人も勃起することが出来る。
俺はその証だ。

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Post by Travis B. »

rickardspaghetti wrote:Isn't the thing with ejectives to pronounce a sound without any airflow? How can fricatives be articulated in this way?
By increasing air pressure through raising the glottis faster than air can escape through the space allowed by the tongue.
Dibotahamdn duthma jallni agaynni ra hgitn lakrhmi.
Amuhawr jalla vowa vta hlakrhi hdm duthmi xaja.
Irdro. Irdro. Irdro. Irdro. Irdro. Irdro. Irdro.

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Post by Nortaneous »

rickardspaghetti wrote:Isn't the thing with ejectives to pronounce a sound without any airflow? How can fricatives be articulated in this way?
Not *no* airflow; I think there's some African language that does that, and whatever language that is needs to be in this thread but I can't remember what it is. Ejectives are glottal airflow. The tongue doesn't really have to do anything to make an ejective, so ejective fricatives are possible.
Siöö jandeng raiglin zåbei tandiüłåd;
nää džunnfin kukuch vklaivei sivei tåd.
Chei. Chei. Chei. Chei. Chei. Chei. Chei.

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Post by Nortaneous »

Example of some fun historical development.

Also, some subdialects of Nias Seletan affricate and labiodentalize /t d/ before /u/: /adudu/ [adz_Pudz_Pu]. Labiodentalization there is more common than affrication. Some speakers apparently even have [pf bv] for those /t d/.
Siöö jandeng raiglin zåbei tandiüłåd;
nää džunnfin kukuch vklaivei sivei tåd.
Chei. Chei. Chei. Chei. Chei. Chei. Chei.

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Post by Nortaneous »

More Nias: /mb/ > /B\/. Also apparently their /u/ is something like [v\=].

Jalapa Mazatec distinguishes modal, creaky, and breathy voiced vowels, with a nasalization distinction on top of that. And it's tonal. And it has a length distinction, possibly three-way.
Ikwere has nonexplosive stops, which correspond to either implosives or labial-velars in other members of its language family. (edit: this is the lang that I was talking about two posts up)
One reported allophone of the Swedish sje-sound is a velarized dentolabial (lower teeth and upper lip) fricative.
Iwaidja has a palatal lateral flap.
Okanagan has an uvular flap for word-initial /?/.
Supyire has an uvular flap for /g/ in unstressed syllables.
I probably already posted Melpa, but it has a velar lateral flap as an allophone of /L\/.
Inor has contrastive labialization only on labials, velars besides /N/, and the glottal stop, and is thought to have developed nasal vowels through rhinoglottophilia.
Siöö jandeng raiglin zåbei tandiüłåd;
nää džunnfin kukuch vklaivei sivei tåd.
Chei. Chei. Chei. Chei. Chei. Chei. Chei.

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Post by The Unseen »

Has http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hmong_language been posted? Cause, damn.

I guess it's less weird than very large and pretty well filled out.
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Post by Gaxa »

Fur has [z] as an allophone of /j/
Last edited by Gaxa on Sun Feb 14, 2010 9:08 am, edited 1 time in total.

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