(L&N) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here [2010-2019]

[Dormouse559]

Sadly, Ithkuil has been taken over by a bunch of post-Soviet crackpots.

Something irrelevant that stood out to me:

the quietly aloof Quijada stuck out like an umlaut in English. …

coördinates … reëstablishment

[Sumelic]

Sadly, Ithkuil has been taken over by a bunch of post-Soviet crackpots.

Something irrelevant that stood out to me:

the quietly aloof Quijada stuck out like an umlaut in English. …

coördinates … reëstablishment

Those are diereses. There are examples of umlaut in that article, though, such as "men."

It's interesting to see that the New Yorker doesn't have ļ, ř, ţ in its usual font, but rather than transcribing all of the Ithkuil passages in a substitute font, they only replace those three letters. It's better than just dropping the diacritics, but it doesn't look very good.

[Isfendil]

Those are diereses. There are examples of umlaut in that article, though, such as "men."

It's interesting to see that the New Yorker doesn't have ļ, ř, ţ in its usual font, but rather than transcribing all of the Ithkuil passages in a substitute font, they only replace those three letters. It's better than just dropping the diacritics, but it doesn't look very good.

Oh! Oh! Here's a question I've been meaning to ask for a while! Is there a list of IPA friendly fonts? (Or at least semiticist friendly ones? with ž, š, č and so on.)

[Dormouse559]

Those are diereses.

Also commonly known as "umlauts" because of their association with Germanic umlaut (see "metal umlaut" or just the diaeresis Wikipedia page). I can almost guarantee you that the reporter is using the diacritic meaning.

[Lao Kou]

A little late, but...

If Suzhou Chinese sounds like this then I find that to be a lot nicer-sounding than most Chinese dialects I've heard (which pretty much = Mandarin and Cantonese, although I might have heard Shanghainese or Taiwanese a couple of times).

The old adage is that it's more pleasant to listen to two beggars fighting over a piece of discarded fish in Suzhou dialect than it is to listen to two lovers bill and coo in Cantonese. While I do like the Wu dialects, I don't find Suzhou dialect to be significantly more mellifluous than Shanghainese (a personal fave). I do think Cantonese gets a bum rap; Taiwanese is by far my least favorite on the aurally aesthetic side.

[Xonen]

A little late, but...

If Suzhou Chinese sounds like this then I find that to be a lot nicer-sounding than most Chinese dialects I've heard (which pretty much = Mandarin and Cantonese, although I might have heard Shanghainese or Taiwanese a couple of times).

The old adage is that it's more pleasant to listen to two beggars fighting over a piece of discarded fish in Suzhou dialect than it is to listen to two lovers bill and coo in Cantonese.

Then again, it tends to be more pleasant to listen to nails on chalkboard than to two lovers bill and coo in any language, so that's not saying much. Of course, not understanding what they're saying might help.

[Lao Kou]

Then again, it tends to be more pleasant to listen to nails on chalkboard than to two lovers bill and coo in any language, so that's not saying much.

A wee bit cynical, that.

[HoskhMatriarch]

Is it possible for a language to be tense- and mood-prominent? Tense- and mood-prominent languages seemed to be characterized pretty oppositely from the snippets I read in that one book but it doesn't seem like it's impossible to me for a language to prominently mark both.

Then again, it tends to be more pleasant to listen to nails on chalkboard than to two lovers bill and coo in any language, so that's not saying much. Of course, not understanding what they're saying might help.

Have you even heard romantic (not to be confused with Romantic although there is frequently overlap) poetry? But then, that's not two lovers cooing, just one lover cooing.

[Keenir]

Is it possible for a language to be tense- and mood-prominent? Tense- and mood-prominent languages seemed to be characterized pretty oppositely from the snippets I read in that one book but it doesn't seem like it's impossible to me for a language to prominently mark both.

then yes, it is very possible.

[Aleks]

Why is it that English has the /eɪ/ diphtong yet we have the /ɛ/ vowel and not /e/?

[Frislander]

Why is it that English has the /eɪ/ diphtong yet we have the /ɛ/ vowel and not /e/?

Because weird stuff happens.

[qwed117]

The symbol /o/ is not used by itself in the most common phonemic transcriptions of English. It's used to transcribe the first element of the "goat" diphthong /oʊ/ in General American (in British English, this vowel is usually fronted, so it's transcribed /əʊ/ instead). When transcribing North American English, some people treat the diphthongization of "goat" and "face" as a secondary detail and just transcribe them using /o/ and /e/.

[GrandPiano]

Why is it that English has the /eɪ/ diphtong yet we have the /ɛ/ vowel and not /e/?

/eː/ diphthongized to /eɪ̯/.

(Also, for some people, such as me, /eɪ̯/ is phonetically [ɛɪ̯])

[Isfendil]

Those are diereses. There are examples of umlaut in that article, though, such as "men."

It's interesting to see that the New Yorker doesn't have ļ, ř, ţ in its usual font, but rather than transcribing all of the Ithkuil passages in a substitute font, they only replace those three letters. It's better than just dropping the diacritics, but it doesn't look very good.

Oh! Oh! Here's a question I've been meaning to ask for a while! Is there a list of IPA friendly fonts? (Or at least semiticist friendly ones? with ž, š, č and so on.)

I believe that this got buried, or people are ignoring it.

[loglorn]

Those are diereses. There are examples of umlaut in that article, though, such as "men."

It's interesting to see that the New Yorker doesn't have ļ, ř, ţ in its usual font, but rather than transcribing all of the Ithkuil passages in a substitute font, they only replace those three letters. It's better than just dropping the diacritics, but it doesn't look very good.

Oh! Oh! Here's a question I've been meaning to ask for a while! Is there a list of IPA friendly fonts? (Or at least semiticist friendly ones? with ž, š, č and so on.)

I believe that this got buried, or people are ignoring it.

Buried it got. I am fairly certain Segoe UI, Cambria, Calibri, Arial, Times New Roman and Tahoma support IPA fully, and most likely all those diacritics too.

[HoskhMatriarch]

Why is it that English has the /eɪ/ diphtong yet we have the /ɛ/ vowel and not /e/?

Well, I consider English to have /e/ and /ɛ/, since [eɪ] never contrasts with [eː]. /e/ also seems to have a decent number of allophones besides [eɪ] but always including something like [e] or [ɛ]. The same is true for /o/ as well. On the other hand, some languages actually do have contrastive /eɪ/ and /e/ or /eː/.

[Isfendil]

Those are diereses. There are examples of umlaut in that article, though, such as "men."

It's interesting to see that the New Yorker doesn't have ļ, ř, ţ in its usual font, but rather than transcribing all of the Ithkuil passages in a substitute font, they only replace those three letters. It's better than just dropping the diacritics, but it doesn't look very good.

Oh! Oh! Here's a question I've been meaning to ask for a while! Is there a list of IPA friendly fonts? (Or at least semiticist friendly ones? with ž, š, č and so on.)

I believe that this got buried, or people are ignoring it.

Buried it got. I am fairly certain Segoe UI, Cambria, Calibri, Arial, Times New Roman and Tahoma support IPA fully, and most likely all those diacritics too.

Thank you!

[Aleks]

Different question but I am wondering about the origin of German using <eu> and <ei> to represent the diphtongs they represent. Why not <ai> instead of <ei>?

[sangi39]

Different question but I am wondering about the origin of German using <eu> and <ei> to represent the diphtongs they represent. Why not <ai> instead of <ei>?

From what I can tell, it's a historical spelling. Some instances of /aɪ/ come from /ei/, which was spelt <ei> and some instances of /ɔʏ/ come from /eu/, written <eu>. Later instances of /aɪ/ come from /i:/, and likewise later instances of /ɔʏ/ come from /y:/ (maybe? I'm a little uncertain on this one), but there was no orthographic pressure to adopt, say, <ai> over <ei> (in the sense that there was no /ai/ <ei> for /ei/ <ei> to merge into), so <ei> stuck around for /aɪ/ < /ei/ and this spelling convention was adopted in turn for /aɪ/ < /i:/.

That's about it as for as I can tell. Old diphthong shifted, but nothing caused any pressure for the spelling to change and that spelling was adopted to represent diphthongs arising from another sound shift.

[mira]

I'm not sure how quick of a question this will be, but could someone briefly explain how tenses and aspects work in a general fashion, and then give a few examples? I think I probably struggle so much with this as I only know minimal linguistics jargon.