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

A forum for discussing linguistics or just languages in general.
User avatar
Vlürch
greek
greek
Posts: 452
Joined: 09 Mar 2016 21:19
Location: Finland
Contact:

Re: (L&N) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by Vlürch »

Ser wrote: 26 Sep 2019 06:33陽 (Mandarin: yáng, Cantonese: yeung4) is the side of a mountain that receives sunlight, and by extension it's the Sun, heat, light and the male principle.
Ah, that mountain thing is really interesting, I had no idea. I knew it's the yang of yin and yang, of course, though, but somehow I never even thought to think about or look up its etymology and whether it was related to the "sun" meaning; it's kinda obvious in hindsight that they're etymologically connected since they even use the same character, but I didn't know that 陰 can mean "moon" so it just never occurred to me. I also tend to not make etymological connections even in Finnish, or any language, unless it's for pseudoscientific language comparison...

When was it extended to mean the sun itself? Wiktionary seems to imply that the original meaning was simply something to do with light, but also mentions "sun shining on a hill" in regards to its graphical origin. I didn't know that just 昜 was a thing, but if Wiktionary is to be trusted and I'm not misunderstanding anything from it or your post, presumably the addition of the hill radical was to narrow the meaning down? And then it was later re-broadened while 昜 became less common? Or something like that?
Ser wrote: 26 Sep 2019 06:33小陽 (M: xiǎoyáng, C: siu2yeung4) would just mean 'little Sun' if it existed.
Oh. Would it still make sense for conlanging purposes to have it mean "moon" or would that be absolutely moronic. It'd be absolutely moronic, wouldn't it? Or what about some kind of weather/time/whatever-related distinction, like meaning the sun when it's seen only barely from behind clouds or before noon or something?
Ser wrote: 26 Sep 2019 06:33The counterpart of 太陽 (M: tàiyáng, C: taai3yeung4) would be 太陰 (M: tàiyīn, C: taai3yam1), using 陰 (M: yīn, C: yam1), the side of a mountain with shade that stands for the Moon, cold, darkness and the female principle. This word does exist and it means "moon", but is a word closely associated with Taoism. It isn't used in regular language.
Cool, and it even exists in Japanese! [:O] So, did it originate in Taoism, or has it just become associated with it over time?

Anyway, thanks!

EDIT: What about *小陰? Everything on Google is genitals.
Ælfwine
roman
roman
Posts: 940
Joined: 21 Sep 2015 01:28
Location: New Jersey

Re: (L&N) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by Ælfwine »

Khemehekis wrote: 21 Sep 2019 03:28
sangi39 wrote: 21 Sep 2019 02:37 I can't find anything through Google (any attempt I make at a search always tries to correct to Welsh "dydd", meaning "day"), but is this a thing in Finnish?
In The Language Instinct, Steven Pinker says that to people living through the Great Vowel Shift, it must have sounded "like that strange surfer dialect" in which "dude" sounds something like [dɪːuːd].

Native Finnish words don't begin with [d], so "dyyd" is almost certainly something borrowed -- I'd say it's quite likely "dude".
Keep in mind the standard American English /u/ is already quite front, perhaps closer to [ʉ] than to [.u]. It's possible the Finns took in [ʉ] as /y/ here, no need for diphthongization (which Finnish has as ⟨iu⟩ [iu̯].)

Edit: Dang BBCode
My Blog

A-posteriori, alternative history nerd
User avatar
Vlürch
greek
greek
Posts: 452
Joined: 09 Mar 2016 21:19
Location: Finland
Contact:

Re: (L&N) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by Vlürch »

Ælfwine wrote: 30 Sep 2019 15:59Keep in mind the standard American English /u/ is already quite front, perhaps closer to [ʉ] than to [.u]. It's possible the Finns took in [ʉ] as /y/ here, no need for diphthongization (which Finnish has as ⟨iu⟩ [iu̯].)
Yeah, especially since Finnish /y/ isn't actually a full-blown [y] but rather [y̠~ʉ̟], at least for most people even if there's the "UGH NO THAT'S A SWEDISH PRONUNCIATION" crowd that insist it's an [y] all the way even though Swedish /y/ is even more centralised so it makes no sense. I'd say the long /yː/ tends to be slightly more front (but still not a full-blown [y] if [y] is taken to be as front as [i​], though) but that may just be an illusion. Anyway, personally I've definitely seen/heard duud more than dyyd; most famously there's Duudsonit (the Dudesons). Maybe the reason both exist is that the American dude vowel is between Finnish /uː/ and /yː/, as in it's clearly long but neither clearly back nor clearly front.

Or maybe I'm propagating my speech impediments again... which have never resulted in misunderstandings or even been pointed out and are shared by other people, but are 100% certainly still speech impediments because they're not 100% uniform pronunciations by the magical One Letter - One Sound formula. In case it's not obvious, I'm just trying to be funny again. But that doesn't mean it's not true, though...
Ælfwine wrote: 30 Sep 2019 15:59Edit: Dang BBCode
You almost certainly already know this, but the zero-width space exists.
Ælfwine
roman
roman
Posts: 940
Joined: 21 Sep 2015 01:28
Location: New Jersey

Re: (L&N) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by Ælfwine »

Vlürch wrote: 01 Oct 2019 02:13
Ælfwine wrote: 30 Sep 2019 15:59Keep in mind the standard American English /u/ is already quite front, perhaps closer to [ʉ] than to [.u]. It's possible the Finns took in [ʉ] as /y/ here, no need for diphthongization (which Finnish has as ⟨iu⟩ [iu̯].)
Yeah, especially since Finnish /y/ isn't actually a full-blown [y] but rather [y̠~ʉ̟], at least for most people even if there's the "UGH NO THAT'S A SWEDISH PRONUNCIATION" crowd that insist it's an [y] all the way even though Swedish /y/ is even more centralised so it makes no sense. I'd say the long /yː/ tends to be slightly more front (but still not a full-blown [y] if [y] is taken to be as front as [i​], though) but that may just be an illusion. Anyway, personally I've definitely seen/heard duud more than dyyd; most famously there's Duudsonit (the Dudesons). Maybe the reason both exist is that the American dude vowel is between Finnish /uː/ and /yː/, as in it's clearly long but neither clearly back nor clearly front.

Or maybe I'm propagating my speech impediments again... which have never resulted in misunderstandings or even been pointed out and are shared by other people, but are 100% certainly still speech impediments because they're not 100% uniform pronunciations by the magical One Letter - One Sound formula. In case it's not obvious, I'm just trying to be funny again. But that doesn't mean it's not true, though...
Ælfwine wrote: 30 Sep 2019 15:59Edit: Dang BBCode
You almost certainly already know this, but the zero-width space exists.
Interesting.

No, I did not. Thanks.
My Blog

A-posteriori, alternative history nerd
User avatar
KaiTheHomoSapien
greek
greek
Posts: 641
Joined: 15 Feb 2016 06:10
Location: Northern California

Re: (L&N) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by KaiTheHomoSapien »

Anyone know the etymology of the Latin nēnia meaning "funeral song; dirge"?
Image
User avatar
Xonen
moderator
moderator
Posts: 1080
Joined: 16 May 2010 00:25

Re: (L&N) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by Xonen »

Vlürch wrote: 01 Oct 2019 02:13
Ælfwine wrote: 30 Sep 2019 15:59Keep in mind the standard American English /u/ is already quite front, perhaps closer to [ʉ] than to [.u]. It's possible the Finns took in [ʉ] as /y/ here, no need for diphthongization (which Finnish has as ⟨iu⟩ [iu̯].)
Yeah, especially since Finnish /y/ isn't actually a full-blown [y] but rather [y̠~ʉ̟], at least for most people even if there's the "UGH NO THAT'S A SWEDISH PRONUNCIATION" crowd that insist it's an [y] all the way even though Swedish /y/ is even more centralised so it makes no sense.
Hmm, I'm not an expert on phonetics, but all the vowel charts I'm able to find for (Standard Central) Swedish look approximately like this:
Spoiler:
Image
That is, /y/ (and /Y/) should both be, if anything, more frontal than in Finnish. Of course, Finland Swedish is a different matter, but at least here in Helsinki, I can't really say I hear a difference between Swedish and Finnish vowel qualities - apart from /ʉ/, which doesn't exist in Finnish. And again, if there is a subtle difference between Swedish and Finnish /y/, I'd sort of expect the existence of a contrasting /ʉ/ in Swedish to push /y/ towards the front to maintain the distinction (or for the vowels to merge, but that doesn't seem to be happening).

As for why English /u:/ can be borrowed either as /y:/ or as /u:/, I suppose there are plenty of plausible explanations. My guess would be that yes, the exact quality being somewhere between said Finnish vowels plays a role, but which approximation gets used in a word like dude probably depends on what impression you're going for. /y:/ is a hypercorrection, but if it's clear you're doing it on purpose and, like, ironically (or whatever), it kinda sounds kewl (or indeed, /khy:l/). By contrast, /u:/ just sounds like you're not even trying - but that can also be done quite deliberately, if you're just going for an honest, down-to-earth Finnish accent with no need for your fancy front vowels, city boy.
User avatar
Vlürch
greek
greek
Posts: 452
Joined: 09 Mar 2016 21:19
Location: Finland
Contact:

Re: (L&N) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by Vlürch »

Xonen wrote: 06 Oct 2019 16:01That is, /y/ (and /Y/) should both be, if anything, more frontal than in Finnish. Of course, Finland Swedish is a different matter, but at least here in Helsinki, I can't really say I hear a difference between Swedish and Finnish vowel qualities - apart from /ʉ/, which doesn't exist in Finnish. And again, if there is a subtle difference between Swedish and Finnish /y/, I'd sort of expect the existence of a contrasting /ʉ/ in Swedish to push /y/ towards the front to maintain the distinction (or for the vowels to merge, but that doesn't seem to be happening).
Oh, yeah, in that case I was talking about /ʉ/ thinking it was /y/. Huh. I thought it had /y/ [ʉ] and /yː/ [yː].

Learning that Swedish has a three-way contrast between /ʏ/, /yː/ and /ʉː/ just made me realise that I had zero clue how vowel length works in Swedish. Using the examples from Wikipedia, listening to this recording, I would've thought it had the phonemically short /y/ and was just allophonically lengthened for some reason. I would've thought that this was phonemically the same vowel. Also, I'd have assumed that both this one and the long one were phonemically long but the former was allophonically shortened for some reason... I guess I thought the geminate consonants had a shortening effect on Swedish vowels while single consonants had a lengthening effect, similarly to English and German orthographic doubled consonants? And maybe it being like 1% more frontal than Finnish /y/ made me think it had to be the long one because I knew the long one was more frontal? I'm an idiot. :roll:

Honestly, this one sounds like [ʉ] to my ears, between /y/ and /u/ but leaning closer to /u/. The supposedly identical vowel in Kazakh, though, sounds like [ɵ], between /ø/ and /o/ but leaning significantly closer to /ø/. [:S]

My knowledge of Swedish is close to non-existent, admittedly. It's because I always slept through the Swedish classes at school and have never had any real interest in learning it for political reasons; mandatory Swedish annoys me and I dislike how Finland follows Sweden in everything, and hate how even leftists push for "united Nordic identity" and shit. With all other languages, it's possible to keep politics away (even Russian (even if it's hard)), but...
User avatar
Sequor
sinic
sinic
Posts: 438
Joined: 30 Jun 2012 06:13

Re: (L&N) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by Sequor »

Vlürch wrote: 06 Oct 2019 22:09My knowledge of Swedish is close to non-existent, admittedly. It's because I always slept through the Swedish classes at school and have never had any real interest in learning it for political reasons; mandatory Swedish annoys me and I dislike how Finland follows Sweden in everything, and hate how even leftists push for "united Nordic identity" and shit. With all other languages, it's possible to keep politics away (even Russian (even if it's hard)), but...
What do you do if you need to talk to someone who doesn't know Finnish? Do you simply resort to English?
hīc sunt linguificēs. hēr bēoþ tungemakeras.
User avatar
Vlürch
greek
greek
Posts: 452
Joined: 09 Mar 2016 21:19
Location: Finland
Contact:

Re: (L&N) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by Vlürch »

Ser wrote: 07 Oct 2019 00:36What do you do if you need to talk to someone who doesn't know Finnish? Do you simply resort to English?
Obviously. Most Finns don't speak Swedish, even in Helsinki, and most immigrants primarily learn Finnish; the immigrants who don't learn Finnish tend to speak English, so if both parties speak English and neither speak Swedish... well, you know?

EDIT: Removed venting...
Last edited by Vlürch on 08 Oct 2019 01:31, edited 1 time in total.
User avatar
Xonen
moderator
moderator
Posts: 1080
Joined: 16 May 2010 00:25

Re: (L&N) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by Xonen »

Reminder on board rules: Try to keep a calm, civil tone and stick to the facts, avoiding value judgements and sweeping generalizations, especially ones concerning other people's thoughts and motives, and especially when discussing inherently sensitive issues such as politics and (linguistic) minority rights. If a topic infuriates you to the point where you find this not possible, and it's only tangentially related to the main subject of discussion anyway, then maybe just don't bring it up.
yangfiretiger121
sinic
sinic
Posts: 337
Joined: 17 Jun 2018 03:04

Re: (L&N) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by yangfiretiger121 »

As [ŋ] is just [n] further back (as opposed to having an inherent [g]), would it be more appropriate to analyze the [ŋ] of most languages as a prenasalized velar plosive, [ᵑg]? Same goes for [nk, ng] as [ᵑk, ᵑgg.]
Alien conlangs (Font may be needed for Vai symbols)
shimobaatar
korean
korean
Posts: 10373
Joined: 12 Jul 2013 23:09
Location: UTC-04:00

Re: (L&N) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by shimobaatar »

yangfiretiger121 wrote: 07 Oct 2019 18:54 As [ŋ] is just [n] further back (as opposed to having an inherent [g]), would it be more appropriate to analyze the [ŋ] of most languages as a prenasalized velar plosive, [ᵑg]? Same goes for [nk, ng] as [ᵑk, ᵑgg.]
If I understand what you're saying correctly, no. Nasal stops are not the same as prenasalized oral stops.
yangfiretiger121
sinic
sinic
Posts: 337
Joined: 17 Jun 2018 03:04

Re: (L&N) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by yangfiretiger121 »

shimobaatar wrote: 07 Oct 2019 19:10
yangfiretiger121 wrote: 07 Oct 2019 18:54 As [ŋ] is just [n] further back (as opposed to having an inherent [g]), would it be more appropriate to analyze the [ŋ] of most languages as a prenasalized velar plosive, [ᵑg]? Same goes for [nk, ng] as [ᵑk, ᵑgg.]
If I understand what you're saying correctly, no. Nasal stops are not the same as prenasalized oral stops.
Okay. I pronounce ring, for example, as [ɹɪŋᵍ~ɹiŋᵍ], not [ɹɪŋ~ɹiŋ]. Without the offglide, the [ŋ] would be pronounced like that of [ŋwiən].
Alien conlangs (Font may be needed for Vai symbols)
Salmoneus
MVP
MVP
Posts: 3030
Joined: 19 Sep 2011 19:37

Re: (L&N) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by Salmoneus »

yangfiretiger121 wrote: 07 Oct 2019 19:38
shimobaatar wrote: 07 Oct 2019 19:10
yangfiretiger121 wrote: 07 Oct 2019 18:54 As [ŋ] is just [n] further back (as opposed to having an inherent [g]), would it be more appropriate to analyze the [ŋ] of most languages as a prenasalized velar plosive, [ᵑg]? Same goes for [nk, ng] as [ᵑk, ᵑgg.]
If I understand what you're saying correctly, no. Nasal stops are not the same as prenasalized oral stops.
Okay. I pronounce ring, for example, as [ɹɪŋᵍ~ɹiŋᵍ], not [ɹɪŋ~ɹiŋ].
So either you speak a strange, archaic dialect from Up North, or you're not a native speaker.
User avatar
Vlürch
greek
greek
Posts: 452
Joined: 09 Mar 2016 21:19
Location: Finland
Contact:

Re: (L&N) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by Vlürch »

Xonen wrote: 07 Oct 2019 17:50Reminder on board rules: Try to keep a calm, civil tone and stick to the facts, avoiding value judgements and sweeping generalizations, especially ones concerning other people's thoughts and motives, and especially when discussing inherently sensitive issues such as politics and (linguistic) minority rights. If a topic infuriates you to the point where you find this not possible, and it's only tangentially related to the main subject of discussion anyway, then maybe just don't bring it up.
Eh, I guess I'll edit the venting out of the post, then... I just hate how much what's at times literal Neo-Nazi propaganda influences people's views of Finland. [>_<]

~

But anyway, actually on topic, I have two questions:

1) Has any language that lost vowel harmony later regained it? And if so, has any language that regained it only regained it in inflections and new derivations, as in the words that came about during the disharmonic period did not become harmonised when vowel harmony redeveloped?

2) Does any language have a vowel that can allophonically become every other vowel? I don't mean developing into new vowels or completely merging into other vowels, but only under some conditions merging with any one of the other vowels while also remaining distinct under some other conditions?
User avatar
Sequor
sinic
sinic
Posts: 438
Joined: 30 Jun 2012 06:13

Re: (L&N) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by Sequor »

Vlürch wrote: 08 Oct 2019 01:272) Does any language have a vowel that can allophonically become every other vowel? I don't mean developing into new vowels or completely merging into other vowels, but only under some conditions merging with any one of the other vowels while also remaining distinct under some other conditions?
The Halkomelem schwa has a very wide range, both in terms of its conditional environments and also simply as free variation.

The current version of the Wikipedia article says:
English Wikipedia wrote:When stressed, the schwa /ə/ appears in most environments as a mid-central, but it is fronted and raised before /x/, approaching [ɪ]; before /j/ it is also fronted, approaching [ɛ]; before /w/ it is lower and back, approaching [ɑ]; and before rounded velars it is mid-back, close to [o]. Unstressed /ə/ can be as high as [ i] before /x/ and /j/, and before labialized velars it is realized as [o] or [ u]. This phoneme can also be assimilated to a stressed /e/ or a stressed /a/ in an adjacent syllable, by vowel harmony.
And this is in a language whose vowel phonemes are otherwise basically /ɪ ɛ ɑ o/ plus or minus length.

Several suns ago, I was reading a paper where the author (I don't remember who) mentioned and quoted an account of some linguistics researcher doing fieldwork with a Halkomelem speaker (in the early or mid 20th century? I don't remember). The researcher published what contained a complaint at some point about the high free variation of the Halkomelem schwa. His consultants apparently would happily pronounce the same word with [ɪ] or [ə] or [ʊ], even repeatedly in a sequence, explaining that the exact vowel sound "didn't matter much"...
hīc sunt linguificēs. hēr bēoþ tungemakeras.
User avatar
Xonen
moderator
moderator
Posts: 1080
Joined: 16 May 2010 00:25

Re: (L&N) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by Xonen »

Vlürch wrote: 08 Oct 2019 01:27
Xonen wrote: 07 Oct 2019 17:50Reminder on board rules: Try to keep a calm, civil tone and stick to the facts, avoiding value judgements and sweeping generalizations, especially ones concerning other people's thoughts and motives, and especially when discussing inherently sensitive issues such as politics and (linguistic) minority rights. If a topic infuriates you to the point where you find this not possible, and it's only tangentially related to the main subject of discussion anyway, then maybe just don't bring it up.
Eh, I guess I'll edit the venting out of the post, then... I just hate how much what's at times literal Neo-Nazi propaganda influences people's views of Finland. [>_<]
Yeah okay, but a lot of this stuff (such as those outdated dialect area maps and the idea of Nordic cooperation) is quite well established and has been in use since Hitler was nothing but a failed artist, so broadly painting it as Neo-Nazi propaganda because... what, some tiny little Neo-Nazi club has recently also started using it in their propaganda?... is still not exactly cool. [:S]

In any case:
1) Has any language that lost vowel harmony later regained it? And if so, has any language that regained it only regained it in inflections and new derivations, as in the words that came about during the disharmonic period did not become harmonised when vowel harmony redeveloped?
Well, Inari Saami has developed a kind of partial harmony, especially between /a/ and /A/, which has nothing to do with any earlier Finno-Ugric harmony - and yes, this applies to any words acquired during the Proto-Saamic period. I can't immediately think of examples with a more well-developed harmony, though.

However, I would note that in, say, Finnic, vowel harmony systems are considerably more extensive than in earlier stages of Finno-Ugric, which tended to have highly limited vowel inventories in unstressed syllables. They're also highly varied; no two Finnic languages, with the possible exception of Finnish and Karelian, seem to have exactly the same system. Vowels in general tend to change quite a lot, so I would sort of expect that any changes radical enough to first erase and then redevelop vowel harmony would also pretty much harmonize any words acquired in the interim - but the new system of harmony is unlikely to be exactly identical to the old one.
User avatar
Vlürch
greek
greek
Posts: 452
Joined: 09 Mar 2016 21:19
Location: Finland
Contact:

Re: (L&N) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by Vlürch »

Ser wrote: 08 Oct 2019 07:40The Halkomelem schwa has a very wide range, both in terms of its conditional environments and also simply as free variation.
Thanks! That's exactly what I wondered about existing, good to know that it's a real thing. [:)]
Ser wrote: 08 Oct 2019 07:40The researcher published what contained a complaint at some point about the high free variation of the Halkomelem schwa. His consultants apparently would happily pronounce the same word with [ɪ] or [ə] or [ʊ], even repeatedly in a sequence, explaining that the exact vowel sound "didn't matter much"...
Heh, that does sound like a pretty confusing and interesting situation. I kind of wonder how that influences their accents in English... although due to colonialism, there probably aren't any kids growing up monolingual until an old enough age where their accent in English wouldn't be indistinguishable from monolingual English-speakers?
Xonen wrote: 08 Oct 2019 12:40Yeah okay, but a lot of this stuff (such as those outdated dialect area maps and the idea of Nordic cooperation) is quite well established and has been in use since Hitler was nothing but a failed artist, so broadly painting it as Neo-Nazi propaganda because... what, some tiny little Neo-Nazi club has recently also started using it in their propaganda?... is still not exactly cool. [:S]
I guess, but many of the alt-right types I used to talk to (online, during a period when I was paranoid about radical Islamism, before I realised they don't actually care about freedom of speech, LGBT and women's rights, etc.) were regurgitating it and other shit that painted Finland as Nazi utopia, mostly Swedish-speaking Finns and Swedes who considered Finland identical to Sweden but "pure" or whatever. I know it's just bias from a small sample size and they're not representative of all Swedish-speakers, and there have been Swedes from Sweden I've talked to who haven't been anything like that... and that statistically it'd probably be true that just as many Finnish-speakers are like that... but... [:x]
Xonen wrote: 08 Oct 2019 12:40Well, Inari Saami has developed a kind of partial harmony, especially between /a/ and /A/, which has nothing to do with any earlier Finno-Ugric harmony - and yes, this applies to any words acquired during the Proto-Saamic period. I can't immediately think of examples with a more well-developed harmony, though.
Interesting, and it being something with just one or two harmonic vowels is actually more like what I was wondering about than whether a more extensive system had redeveloped. For some reason I expected a more limited type of harmony redeveloping to be less likely than full-blown reharmonisation.
Xonen wrote: 08 Oct 2019 12:40However, I would note that in, say, Finnic, vowel harmony systems are considerably more extensive than in earlier stages of Finno-Ugric, which tended to have highly limited vowel inventories in unstressed syllables. They're also highly varied; no two Finnic languages, with the possible exception of Finnish and Karelian, seem to have exactly the same system.
Mmh, that's definitely something to consider while conlanging... the problem is that every agglutinative conlang I start making ends up having a vowel harmony system very similar to Finnish and Turkish, and part of the reason I decided the one I'm currently working on should only have /ɑ e i o u/ in the first place was to prevent that; I'm deriving a lot of vocabulary from Proto-Uralic and Proto-Altaic, so not having /ø y/ has had some nice results (and tbh at times I've discarded regular sound changes in favour of cuteness and/or "commonism", if that's a word), but the "NEEDS FRONT ROUNDED VOWELS"-itch is starting again because the homophones are starting to pile up. [>_<]

One of the reasons I'd like to add /ə/ with extensive allophony, or /*ə/ that phonemically merged into every other vowel under different circumstances but remained /ə/ under very limited conditions is that it could be used as a loophole to allow disharmony even in ancient words before the main disharmonisation and in spite of possible reharmonisation (by being perceived as distinct until then?), but if I added /ø y/, that would amost certainly be highly unrealistic no matter what justification I tried to come up with... eh.
Xonen wrote: 08 Oct 2019 12:40Vowels in general tend to change quite a lot, so I would sort of expect that any changes radical enough to first erase and then redevelop vowel harmony would also pretty much harmonize any words acquired in the interim - but the new system of harmony is unlikely to be exactly identical to the old one.
Hmm, maybe "the new system is different from the old one" could be exactly the "justification" needed for the conlang, if I end up adding /ø y/ after all; even though I really like them, it'd make the phonology less similar to Japanese, and even more importantly more like the SAUAL (Standard Average Ural-Altaic language) which would be pretty boring... not that it's not a boring SAUAL anyway, but... I guess I'll just keep resisting the urge to add /ø y/ for as long as I can, haha.

And now it's entirely off-topic, because the implied follow-up questions that I don't even want to ask are all about conlanging... not that this is the first time in this thread's history that that has happened by any means, but well.
Salmoneus
MVP
MVP
Posts: 3030
Joined: 19 Sep 2011 19:37

Re: (L&N) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by Salmoneus »

Vlürch wrote: 08 Oct 2019 18:22
I guess, but many of the alt-right types I used to talk to [...] but... [:x]
A quick hint: you probably don't need to tell us you 'used to' talk to a lot of alt-right people. The fact that you're demonising a minority in your country by concocting conspiracy theories and generalising about them being Nazis kind of already gives us that insight into your thought processes.
And perhaps, given that a moderator's already asked you to tone down the racist political ranting in this very thread, maybe you could try to make your one "not a right-wing political screed" post be the one in which you reply to him? I'm not a moderator, so I don't know, maybe that's cool, but from one non-moderator to another, I would suggest that it's not the best tack to take.
User avatar
sangi39
moderator
moderator
Posts: 3024
Joined: 12 Aug 2010 01:53
Location: North Yorkshire, UK

Re: (L&N) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by sangi39 »

I suggest everyone drop the alt-right/Neo-Nazi topic around about now. It doesn't need responding to.

EDIT: After some PMing with Vlürch, I would like to pass on a message to he would like to apologise for the comments he made regarding Swedish people and for any offence that he may have caused in their previous few posts.

Hopefully with that, this thread can get back to normal.
You can tell the same lie a thousand times,
But it never gets any more true,
So close your eyes once more and once more believe
That they all still believe in you.
Just one time.
Locked