The alphabet has a secret and has been found

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Re: The alphabet has a secret and has been found

Post by Vlürch »

Shemtov wrote: 18 Sep 2019 21:59
sangi39 wrote: 17 Sep 2019 19:11 I'd prefer to hear more from thevietguy, especially regarding this claim:

"In Nature there are 19 consonants and more than 50 vowels"

...made over on Quora (where it would seem they've been posting a link to their site a lot since last Friday).
Arabic has 28 consonants in my. Biblical Hebrew had at least 22, depending on what reconstruction you're using. So apparently, Semitic languages are not "in nature".
And Ubykh had 84 consonants and only two vowels, so obviously it was a conlang.

But most importantly considering it's the language this discussion is being had in, by that criteria even English is "unnatural". So I guess the theory that it originated as an auxiliary language invented by Norman monks was true all along! It all makes sense now! :mrgreen: [xP]

EDIT: Ninja'd by Sangi.

Considering the vowel issue, I think tones are probably included in the "more than 50" claim. Here's one possible vowel inventory using just five basic qualities that results in more than fifty vowels that a natural language could probably have developed:

/á é í ó ú/
/à è ì ò ù/
/ǎ ě ǐ ǒ ǔ/
/â ê î ô û/
/á̰ ḛ́ ḭ́ ó̰ ṵ́/
/à̰ ḛ̀ ḭ̀ ò̰ ṵ̀/
/áː éː íː óː úː/
/àː èː ìː òː ùː/
/ǎː ěː ǐː ǒː ǔː/
/âː êː îː ôː ûː/
/á̰ː ḛ́ː ḭ́ː ó̰ː ṵ́ː/
/à̰ː ḛ̀ː ḭ̀ː ò̰ː ṵ̀ː/

...but does any language actually have a vowel inventory like that? Probably not, at least not phonemically.
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Re: The alphabet has a secret and has been found

Post by Shemtov »

sangi39 wrote: 18 Sep 2019 22:32
Shemtov wrote: 18 Sep 2019 21:59
sangi39 wrote: 17 Sep 2019 19:11 I'd prefer to hear more from thevietguy, especially regarding this claim:

"In Nature there are 19 consonants and more than 50 vowels"

...made over on Quora (where it would seem they've been posting a link to their site a lot since last Friday).
Arabic has 28 consonants in my. Biblical Hebrew had at least 22, depending on what reconstruction you're using. So apparently, Semitic languages are not "in nature".
That's not to mention languages like !Xoo or Ubykh, hence the question. 50 vowels, I think, is pushing the limits on what a language might have in its inventory (I've seen it argued that some dialects of English, assuming diphthongs and triphthongs are counted as well, as upwards of 40 vowels), but 19 consonants seems downright tiny.
My point was, you don't need to learn minority languages or have a knowledge of linguistics enough to number the consonant phonemes in English to show how it's wrong; All you need is to have studied a language with an Abjad.
Many children make up, or begin to make up, imaginary languages. I have been at it since I could write.
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Re: The alphabet has a secret and has been found

Post by sangi39 »

Shemtov wrote: 18 Sep 2019 22:45
sangi39 wrote: 18 Sep 2019 22:32
Shemtov wrote: 18 Sep 2019 21:59
sangi39 wrote: 17 Sep 2019 19:11 I'd prefer to hear more from thevietguy, especially regarding this claim:

"In Nature there are 19 consonants and more than 50 vowels"

...made over on Quora (where it would seem they've been posting a link to their site a lot since last Friday).
Arabic has 28 consonants in my. Biblical Hebrew had at least 22, depending on what reconstruction you're using. So apparently, Semitic languages are not "in nature".
That's not to mention languages like !Xoo or Ubykh, hence the question. 50 vowels, I think, is pushing the limits on what a language might have in its inventory (I've seen it argued that some dialects of English, assuming diphthongs and triphthongs are counted as well, as upwards of 40 vowels), but 19 consonants seems downright tiny.
My point was, you don't need to learn minority languages or have a knowledge of linguistics enough to number the consonant phonemes in English to show how it's wrong; All you need is to have studied a language with an Abjad.
Well the other point that probably should be made is that the OP's presumed native language (and which seems to be the basis of their entire idea) also has 22 consonants, or at least in some dialects, so it's not even a question of "looking further".
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.
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Re: The alphabet has a secret and has been found

Post by thevietguy »

Hello to everyone, Even though having no great knowledge at all about linguistics, with due respect to all the authorities in this field of science who has much more talent and intelligent than me, but for somehow somewhere that this secret of nature happened to be sent to me. I am hoping to be able to explain this to you successful and gain your trust.

One thing leads to another just so that the Latin Script becomes the Chữ Quốc Ngữ. So from there I have discovered the secret of nature for the human being speech sounds aphabet. You see, the wisdom pass on like seeds in the winds and thats how one thing become another just like the alphabets have been dispersing and growing. So there are 19 consonants and over 50(more than) vowels of nature, what this means is that in nature there is this law for the human being speech sounds. Which that means is that all variants arise from the there, those nature given speech sounds, and thus this is why there can be more than one alphabet. In this field of linguistics people are still divided about stuffs, which to me look like a snow storm.
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Re: The alphabet has a secret and has been found

Post by Vlürch »

thevietguy wrote: 18 Sep 2019 23:18Hello to everyone, Even though having no great knowledge at all about linguistics, with due respect to all the authorities in this field of science who has much more talent and intelligent than me, but for somehow somewhere that this secret of nature happened to be sent to me. I am hoping to be able to explain this to you successful and gain your trust.

One thing leads to another just so that the Latin Script becomes the Chữ Quốc Ngữ. So from there I have discovered the secret of nature for the human being speech sounds aphabet. You see, the wisdom pass on like seeds in the winds and thats how one thing become another just like the alphabets have been dispersing and growing. So there are 19 consonants and over 50(more than) vowels of nature, what this means is that in nature there is this law for the human being speech sounds. Which that means is that all variants arise from the there, those nature given speech sounds, and thus this is why there can be more than one alphabet. In this field of linguistics people are still divided about stuffs, which to me look like a snow storm.
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Re: The alphabet has a secret and has been found

Post by Shemtov »

Sorry, Elidin, but while psuedoscientific BS, the Timecube guy managed to make his little conspiracy a bit more sensible within the world of psuedoscientific BS. At least you could tell what the psuedoscientific BS was.
Many children make up, or begin to make up, imaginary languages. I have been at it since I could write.
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Re: The alphabet has a secret and has been found

Post by Shemtov »

sangi39 wrote: 18 Sep 2019 23:13
Shemtov wrote: 18 Sep 2019 22:45
sangi39 wrote: 18 Sep 2019 22:32
Shemtov wrote: 18 Sep 2019 21:59
sangi39 wrote: 17 Sep 2019 19:11 I'd prefer to hear more from thevietguy, especially regarding this claim:

"In Nature there are 19 consonants and more than 50 vowels"

...made over on Quora (where it would seem they've been posting a link to their site a lot since last Friday).
Arabic has 28 consonants in my. Biblical Hebrew had at least 22, depending on what reconstruction you're using. So apparently, Semitic languages are not "in nature".
That's not to mention languages like !Xoo or Ubykh, hence the question. 50 vowels, I think, is pushing the limits on what a language might have in its inventory (I've seen it argued that some dialects of English, assuming diphthongs and triphthongs are counted as well, as upwards of 40 vowels), but 19 consonants seems downright tiny.
My point was, you don't need to learn minority languages or have a knowledge of linguistics enough to number the consonant phonemes in English to show how it's wrong; All you need is to have studied a language with an Abjad.
Well the other point that probably should be made is that the OP's presumed native language (and which seems to be the basis of their entire idea) also has 22 consonants, or at least in some dialects, so it's not even a question of "looking further".
My point has to do with, given that the OP's "theory" has to be based on graphemes instead of phonemes, I think from that point of view, most English or Vietnamese speakers would say that <ch> is two consonants that make one sound, which, while it is the definition of a digraph, I think they're saying that graphemes are primary,and digraphs don't count, so it's like based on a graphemic perspective, English has 21 consonants (still more then 18, but still far less monographemic consonants than, say, MSA), so digraphs like <ch> <sh> <ng> or <th> are thrown out the window, as are things like <x>. I know before I started reading about linguistics, I thought /ʃ/ was the natural fusion of /s/+/h/, so I made a conscript where the monograph for /ʃ/ was the graph for /h/ attached to the graph for /s/.So if they're looking at it graphemicly, as I suspect, the existence of the Arabic Abjad, which has a one-to-one Phoneme to Grapheme correspondence in MSA, would be enough to disprove it. Though I guess the Devanagari abugida for Sanskrit would work just as well.
Many children make up, or begin to make up, imaginary languages. I have been at it since I could write.
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Re: The alphabet has a secret and has been found

Post by thevietguy »

Shemtov wrote: 19 Sep 2019 03:55
sangi39 wrote: 18 Sep 2019 23:13
Shemtov wrote: 18 Sep 2019 22:45
sangi39 wrote: 18 Sep 2019 22:32
Shemtov wrote: 18 Sep 2019 21:59
sangi39 wrote: 17 Sep 2019 19:11 I'd prefer to hear more from thevietguy, especially regarding this claim:

"In Nature there are 19 consonants and more than 50 vowels"

...made over on Quora (where it would seem they've been posting a link to their site a lot since last Friday).
Arabic has 28 consonants in my. Biblical Hebrew had at least 22, depending on what reconstruction you're using. So apparently, Semitic languages are not "in nature".
That's not to mention languages like !Xoo or Ubykh, hence the question. 50 vowels, I think, is pushing the limits on what a language might have in its inventory (I've seen it argued that some dialects of English, assuming diphthongs and triphthongs are counted as well, as upwards of 40 vowels), but 19 consonants seems downright tiny.
My point was, you don't need to learn minority languages or have a knowledge of linguistics enough to number the consonant phonemes in English to show how it's wrong; All you need is to have studied a language with an Abjad.
Well the other point that probably should be made is that the OP's presumed native language (and which seems to be the basis of their entire idea) also has 22 consonants, or at least in some dialects, so it's not even a question of "looking further".
My point has to do with, given that the OP's "theory" has to be based on graphemes instead of phonemes, I think from that point of view, most English or Vietnamese speakers would say that <ch> is two consonants that make one sound, which, while it is the definition of a digraph, I think they're saying that graphemes are primary,and digraphs don't count, so it's like based on a graphemic perspective, English has 21 consonants (still more then 18, but still far less monographemic consonants than, say, MSA), so digraphs like <ch> <sh> <ng> or <th> are thrown out the window, as are things like <x>. I know before I started reading about linguistics, I thought /ʃ/ was the natural fusion of /s/+/h/, so I made a conscript where the monograph for /ʃ/ was the graph for /h/ attached to the graph for /s/.So if they're looking at it graphemicly, as I suspect, the existence of the Arabic Abjad, which has a one-to-one Phoneme to Grapheme correspondence in MSA, would be enough to disprove it. Though I guess the Devanagari abugida for Sanskrit would work just as well.
BH=ph p is a variant of b NV=m KR=j BL=d TS=z
So the 19 consonants of nature are ( H, TH, BH, KH, NH ) , ( T, B, K, N ) , ( NG, NV, KR, BL, TS) , ( G, V, L, S, R) .
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Re: The alphabet has a secret and has been found

Post by sangi39 »

thevietguy wrote: 19 Sep 2019 07:47
Shemtov wrote: 19 Sep 2019 03:55
sangi39 wrote: 18 Sep 2019 23:13
Shemtov wrote: 18 Sep 2019 22:45
sangi39 wrote: 18 Sep 2019 22:32
Shemtov wrote: 18 Sep 2019 21:59
sangi39 wrote: 17 Sep 2019 19:11 I'd prefer to hear more from thevietguy, especially regarding this claim:

"In Nature there are 19 consonants and more than 50 vowels"

...made over on Quora (where it would seem they've been posting a link to their site a lot since last Friday).
Arabic has 28 consonants in my. Biblical Hebrew had at least 22, depending on what reconstruction you're using. So apparently, Semitic languages are not "in nature".
That's not to mention languages like !Xoo or Ubykh, hence the question. 50 vowels, I think, is pushing the limits on what a language might have in its inventory (I've seen it argued that some dialects of English, assuming diphthongs and triphthongs are counted as well, as upwards of 40 vowels), but 19 consonants seems downright tiny.
My point was, you don't need to learn minority languages or have a knowledge of linguistics enough to number the consonant phonemes in English to show how it's wrong; All you need is to have studied a language with an Abjad.
Well the other point that probably should be made is that the OP's presumed native language (and which seems to be the basis of their entire idea) also has 22 consonants, or at least in some dialects, so it's not even a question of "looking further".
My point has to do with, given that the OP's "theory" has to be based on graphemes instead of phonemes, I think from that point of view, most English or Vietnamese speakers would say that <ch> is two consonants that make one sound, which, while it is the definition of a digraph, I think they're saying that graphemes are primary,and digraphs don't count, so it's like based on a graphemic perspective, English has 21 consonants (still more then 18, but still far less monographemic consonants than, say, MSA), so digraphs like <ch> <sh> <ng> or <th> are thrown out the window, as are things like <x>. I know before I started reading about linguistics, I thought /ʃ/ was the natural fusion of /s/+/h/, so I made a conscript where the monograph for /ʃ/ was the graph for /h/ attached to the graph for /s/.So if they're looking at it graphemicly, as I suspect, the existence of the Arabic Abjad, which has a one-to-one Phoneme to Grapheme correspondence in MSA, would be enough to disprove it. Though I guess the Devanagari abugida for Sanskrit would work just as well.
BH=ph p is a variant of b NV=m KR=j BL=d TS=z
So the 19 consonants of nature are ( H, TH, BH, KH, NH ) , ( T, B, K, N ) , ( NG, NV, KR, BL, TS) , ( G, V, L, S, R) .
Well now... that certainly makes either my of Shemtov's guesses wrong as to what you meant.

Would you care to explain further as to why you believe this is the case?
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.
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Re: The alphabet has a secret and has been found

Post by sangi39 »

Shemtov wrote: 19 Sep 2019 03:45 Sorry, Elidin, but while psuedoscientific BS, the Timecube guy managed to make his little conspiracy a bit more sensible within the world of psuedoscientific BS. At least you could tell what the psuedoscientific BS was.
I try to meet what could be called "quackery" as if it's come from a genuine misunderstanding, and challenge it as reasonably as possible (I mean, the entire concept might be worthless, or there might be a hint of something useful in there*). There's always a chance that, when presented with data and sources that a more reasonable conclusion comes out.

*Tienzen's view on written Chinese, for example, utterly ignore reconstructions of Middle and Old Chinese, and he believes that written Chinese is 100% ideographic on nature rather than (historically more so) ideophonetic. However, I don't have anything against learning Chinese characters through mnemonics, which his ideas could be useful for.
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.
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Re: The alphabet has a secret and has been found

Post by Vlürch »

Shemtov wrote: 19 Sep 2019 03:55I know before I started reading about linguistics, I thought /ʃ/ was the natural fusion of /s/+/h/
Same, but because I also knew that <š> exists, I was certain that the /ʃ/ of English and the /ʃ/ of Finnish must be different sounds; when I learned that Turkish uses <ş> for /ʃ/, I thought that was yet another sound. I tried to "defend" that totally absurd grapheme-based way of thinking by rationalising that they must have been /ʃ ʃʲ ʃˑ/, either <š ş sh> or <ş š sh> respectively, but also by using vague terms like "one /ʃ/ can be softer than another /ʃ/". :roll:

In hindsight, what might have contributed to that train of thought was that phonetically there actually can be some subtle differences. But I didn't even know the difference between a phoneme and an allophone until embarrassingly late.
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Re: The alphabet has a secret and has been found

Post by masako »

This thread is absolutely awesome.

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Re: The alphabet has a secret and has been found

Post by thevietguy »

sangi39 wrote: 19 Sep 2019 09:34
thevietguy wrote: 19 Sep 2019 07:47
Shemtov wrote: 19 Sep 2019 03:55
sangi39 wrote: 18 Sep 2019 23:13
Shemtov wrote: 18 Sep 2019 22:45
sangi39 wrote: 18 Sep 2019 22:32
Shemtov wrote: 18 Sep 2019 21:59
sangi39 wrote: 17 Sep 2019 19:11 I'd prefer to hear more from thevietguy, especially regarding this claim:

"In Nature there are 19 consonants and more than 50 vowels"

...made over on Quora (where it would seem they've been posting a link to their site a lot since last Friday).
Arabic has 28 consonants in my. Biblical Hebrew had at least 22, depending on what reconstruction you're using. So apparently, Semitic languages are not "in nature".
That's not to mention languages like !Xoo or Ubykh, hence the question. 50 vowels, I think, is pushing the limits on what a language might have in its inventory (I've seen it argued that some dialects of English, assuming diphthongs and triphthongs are counted as well, as upwards of 40 vowels), but 19 consonants seems downright tiny.
My point was, you don't need to learn minority languages or have a knowledge of linguistics enough to number the consonant phonemes in English to show how it's wrong; All you need is to have studied a language with an Abjad.
Well the other point that probably should be made is that the OP's presumed native language (and which seems to be the basis of their entire idea) also has 22 consonants, or at least in some dialects, so it's not even a question of "looking further".
My point has to do with, given that the OP's "theory" has to be based on graphemes instead of phonemes, I think from that point of view, most English or Vietnamese speakers would say that <ch> is two consonants that make one sound, which, while it is the definition of a digraph, I think they're saying that graphemes are primary,and digraphs don't count, so it's like based on a graphemic perspective, English has 21 consonants (still more then 18, but still far less monographemic consonants than, say, MSA), so digraphs like <ch> <sh> <ng> or <th> are thrown out the window, as are things like <x>. I know before I started reading about linguistics, I thought /ʃ/ was the natural fusion of /s/+/h/, so I made a conscript where the monograph for /ʃ/ was the graph for /h/ attached to the graph for /s/.So if they're looking at it graphemicly, as I suspect, the existence of the Arabic Abjad, which has a one-to-one Phoneme to Grapheme correspondence in MSA, would be enough to disprove it. Though I guess the Devanagari abugida for Sanskrit would work just as well.
BH=ph p is a variant of b NV=m KR=j BL=d TS=z
So the 19 consonants of nature are ( H, TH, BH, KH, NH ) , ( T, B, K, N ) , ( NG, NV, KR, BL, TS) , ( G, V, L, S, R) .
Well now... that certainly makes either my of Shemtov's guesses wrong as to what you meant.

Would you care to explain further as to why you believe this is the case?
If you have already saw the drawing of the consonant alphabet of nature on my website (that got blocked worldwideweb) then you may figure out that about half of it already answered by the ancestors. What I then figure out was the other half, including Z= TS, M = NV, J= KR......Which mean that the speech sounds that those represented are actually not a single sound but a double consonant sound after all.
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Re: The alphabet has a secret and has been found

Post by sangi39 »

thevietguy wrote: 20 Sep 2019 06:11
sangi39 wrote: 19 Sep 2019 09:34
thevietguy wrote: 19 Sep 2019 07:47
Shemtov wrote: 19 Sep 2019 03:55
sangi39 wrote: 18 Sep 2019 23:13
Shemtov wrote: 18 Sep 2019 22:45
sangi39 wrote: 18 Sep 2019 22:32
Shemtov wrote: 18 Sep 2019 21:59
sangi39 wrote: 17 Sep 2019 19:11 I'd prefer to hear more from thevietguy, especially regarding this claim:

"In Nature there are 19 consonants and more than 50 vowels"

...made over on Quora (where it would seem they've been posting a link to their site a lot since last Friday).
Arabic has 28 consonants in my. Biblical Hebrew had at least 22, depending on what reconstruction you're using. So apparently, Semitic languages are not "in nature".
That's not to mention languages like !Xoo or Ubykh, hence the question. 50 vowels, I think, is pushing the limits on what a language might have in its inventory (I've seen it argued that some dialects of English, assuming diphthongs and triphthongs are counted as well, as upwards of 40 vowels), but 19 consonants seems downright tiny.
My point was, you don't need to learn minority languages or have a knowledge of linguistics enough to number the consonant phonemes in English to show how it's wrong; All you need is to have studied a language with an Abjad.
Well the other point that probably should be made is that the OP's presumed native language (and which seems to be the basis of their entire idea) also has 22 consonants, or at least in some dialects, so it's not even a question of "looking further".
My point has to do with, given that the OP's "theory" has to be based on graphemes instead of phonemes, I think from that point of view, most English or Vietnamese speakers would say that <ch> is two consonants that make one sound, which, while it is the definition of a digraph, I think they're saying that graphemes are primary,and digraphs don't count, so it's like based on a graphemic perspective, English has 21 consonants (still more then 18, but still far less monographemic consonants than, say, MSA), so digraphs like <ch> <sh> <ng> or <th> are thrown out the window, as are things like <x>. I know before I started reading about linguistics, I thought /ʃ/ was the natural fusion of /s/+/h/, so I made a conscript where the monograph for /ʃ/ was the graph for /h/ attached to the graph for /s/.So if they're looking at it graphemicly, as I suspect, the existence of the Arabic Abjad, which has a one-to-one Phoneme to Grapheme correspondence in MSA, would be enough to disprove it. Though I guess the Devanagari abugida for Sanskrit would work just as well.
BH=ph p is a variant of b NV=m KR=j BL=d TS=z
So the 19 consonants of nature are ( H, TH, BH, KH, NH ) , ( T, B, K, N ) , ( NG, NV, KR, BL, TS) , ( G, V, L, S, R) .
Well now... that certainly makes either my of Shemtov's guesses wrong as to what you meant.

Would you care to explain further as to why you believe this is the case?
If you have already saw the drawing of the consonant alphabet of nature on my website (that got blocked worldwideweb) then you may figure out that about half of it already answered by the ancestors. What I then figure out was the other half, including Z= TS, M = NV, J= KR......Which mean that the speech sounds that those represented are actually not a single sound but a double consonant sound after all.
This is most certainly nonsense when you take into account the history of these letters, which "the ancestors" had never written as combinations of letters in this fashion.

<j>, for instance, is a graphical variant of <i> which arose as Latin /j/ began to undergo fortition on the Romance languages (if I remember that rightly). Similarly <v> and <u> are graphical variants of each other arising, IIRC, as a result of the same process.

I would suggest looking a bit further back that the current state in Vietnamese, and take a look at Etruscan, Greek, Phoenician, etc. and how the Latin alphabet developed historically from older sources.
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.
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Re: The alphabet has a secret and has been found

Post by spanick »

Guess who showed up in r/badlinguistics?
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Re: The alphabet has a secret and has been found

Post by Shemtov »

spanick wrote: 20 Sep 2019 18:20 r/badlinguistics?
Thanks for letting me know that exists. There's a post pointing out that someone advanced the theory "The Origin of Indo-European is not Sanskrit, as linguists claim, it is Serbian, and thus I suspect that "linguistics" is a pseudoscience created by Indian supremacists who want to genocide Serbians." [O.O] [O.o] [o.O]
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Re: The alphabet has a secret and has been found

Post by sangi39 »

spanick wrote: 20 Sep 2019 18:20 Guess who showed up in r/badlinguistics?
Unfortunately, none of thevietguy's other reddit posts regarding this really go much deeper into the proposal than we've seen so far. Personally I'm willing to bet that some of this is down to their translation attempts (I'd rather not assume, but it would seem that English is their second language, and while definitely proficient, I would assume that they're not necessarily at the level of fluency that some members of the board are, which likely hampers their ability to respond quickly in English, which, further, could be why they haven't replied as quickly as other members).

Aaaaaanyway, it does seem, thevietguy, that you're attributing tone directly to the vowel (I mean, it's not an outlandish thought, given that, for instance, vowel length in some languages is disputed, is it one long vowel, or two short vowels in succession, probably depends on the language), but given that tone can also... "float" (tone in and of itself in some languages acts as a grammatical marker and moves around a bit. Interesting feature worth reading up on), and that tones are also subject to their own allophony independent of vowel quality, length, stress, etc. (see Mandarin as the go-to example of this, but I think Vietnamese has tone sandhi as well), tone is generally considered an independent feature, affecting the syllable, mora, or word, depending, again, on the language (so in Vietnamese, you have the six tones, ngang, huyền, sắc, nặng, hỏi, and ngã, and then 33(?) vowels, if you count the various diphthongs and triphthongs independently, 11 if you don't, rather than, say 198 or 66 independent vowels*). Cantonse, for example, has 13 vowels and 6 tones (yes, some people say 9, but that includes the closed syllables separately and personally there doesn't seem to be much of a synchronic reason to do so), rather than 78 vowels. And so on.

I'd be interested to know why you might conflate vowel quality/length with tone into a single category (which you appear to label simply as "vowel"), yet appear to be content to divide consonants (presumably according to some idea regarding how they are written, rather than their nature as sounds). I admit I'm ignorant as to how Vietnamese is taught in schools, especially in Vietnam (although you also mention having moved to the USA?). Are vowels and tone taught as "inseparable" when learning to write Vietnamese? I'm not even sure how a Vietnamese dictionary might be arranged. Are tone diacritics ignored or are they treated, in combination with their vowel, as a single unit?



*I'm interested to know how you came to the conclusion that Vietnamese has 56 vowels. 56, of course, falls short of a multiple of 6 (or goes over). Are there some vowels which don't take certain tones?
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.
thevietguy
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Re: The alphabet has a secret and has been found

Post by thevietguy »

sangi39 wrote: 21 Sep 2019 03:01
spanick wrote: 20 Sep 2019 18:20 Guess who showed up in r/badlinguistics?
Unfortunately, none of thevietguy's other reddit posts regarding this really go much deeper into the proposal than we've seen so far. Personally I'm willing to bet that some of this is down to their translation attempts (I'd rather not assume, but it would seem that English is their second language, and while definitely proficient, I would assume that they're not necessarily at the level of fluency that some members of the board are, which likely hampers their ability to respond quickly in English, which, further, could be why they haven't replied as quickly as other members).

Aaaaaanyway, it does seem, thevietguy, that you're attributing tone directly to the vowel (I mean, it's not an outlandish thought, given that, for instance, vowel length in some languages is disputed, is it one long vowel, or two short vowels in succession, probably depends on the language), but given that tone can also... "float" (tone in and of itself in some languages acts as a grammatical marker and moves around a bit. Interesting feature worth reading up on), and that tones are also subject to their own allophony independent of vowel quality, length, stress, etc. (see Mandarin as the go-to example of this, but I think Vietnamese has tone sandhi as well), tone is generally considered an independent feature, affecting the syllable, mora, or word, depending, again, on the language (so in Vietnamese, you have the six tones, ngang, huyền, sắc, nặng, hỏi, and ngã, and then 33(?) vowels, if you count the various diphthongs and triphthongs independently, 11 if you don't, rather than, say 198 or 66 independent vowels*). Cantonse, for example, has 13 vowels and 6 tones (yes, some people say 9, but that includes the closed syllables separately and personally there doesn't seem to be much of a synchronic reason to do so), rather than 78 vowels. And so on.

I'd be interested to know why you might conflate vowel quality/length with tone into a single category (which you appear to label simply as "vowel"), yet appear to be content to divide consonants (presumably according to some idea regarding how they are written, rather than their nature as sounds). I admit I'm ignorant as to how Vietnamese is taught in schools, especially in Vietnam (although you also mention having moved to the USA?). Are vowels and tone taught as "inseparable" when learning to write Vietnamese? I'm not even sure how a Vietnamese dictionary might be arranged. Are tone diacritics ignored or are they treated, in combination with their vowel, as a single unit?



*I'm interested to know how you came to the conclusion that Vietnamese has 56 vowels. 56, of course, falls short of a multiple of 6 (or goes over). Are there some vowels which don't take certain tones?
Thank you for your curiosity. Yes, it is true that I did not do very well at school while I was growing up. So it is as slow as a turtle for me to me to say my thoughts out. Because Linguistics has not found this natural law of the human being speech sound, it is therefore still holding on to some wrong ideas. (https://www.the-scientist.com/features/ ... ial--64351).
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Re: The alphabet has a secret and has been found

Post by sangi39 »

thevietguy wrote: 21 Sep 2019 05:54
sangi39 wrote: 21 Sep 2019 03:01
spanick wrote: 20 Sep 2019 18:20 Guess who showed up in r/badlinguistics?
Unfortunately, none of thevietguy's other reddit posts regarding this really go much deeper into the proposal than we've seen so far. Personally I'm willing to bet that some of this is down to their translation attempts (I'd rather not assume, but it would seem that English is their second language, and while definitely proficient, I would assume that they're not necessarily at the level of fluency that some members of the board are, which likely hampers their ability to respond quickly in English, which, further, could be why they haven't replied as quickly as other members).

Aaaaaanyway, it does seem, thevietguy, that you're attributing tone directly to the vowel (I mean, it's not an outlandish thought, given that, for instance, vowel length in some languages is disputed, is it one long vowel, or two short vowels in succession, probably depends on the language), but given that tone can also... "float" (tone in and of itself in some languages acts as a grammatical marker and moves around a bit. Interesting feature worth reading up on), and that tones are also subject to their own allophony independent of vowel quality, length, stress, etc. (see Mandarin as the go-to example of this, but I think Vietnamese has tone sandhi as well), tone is generally considered an independent feature, affecting the syllable, mora, or word, depending, again, on the language (so in Vietnamese, you have the six tones, ngang, huyền, sắc, nặng, hỏi, and ngã, and then 33(?) vowels, if you count the various diphthongs and triphthongs independently, 11 if you don't, rather than, say 198 or 66 independent vowels*). Cantonse, for example, has 13 vowels and 6 tones (yes, some people say 9, but that includes the closed syllables separately and personally there doesn't seem to be much of a synchronic reason to do so), rather than 78 vowels. And so on.

I'd be interested to know why you might conflate vowel quality/length with tone into a single category (which you appear to label simply as "vowel"), yet appear to be content to divide consonants (presumably according to some idea regarding how they are written, rather than their nature as sounds). I admit I'm ignorant as to how Vietnamese is taught in schools, especially in Vietnam (although you also mention having moved to the USA?). Are vowels and tone taught as "inseparable" when learning to write Vietnamese? I'm not even sure how a Vietnamese dictionary might be arranged. Are tone diacritics ignored or are they treated, in combination with their vowel, as a single unit?



*I'm interested to know how you came to the conclusion that Vietnamese has 56 vowels. 56, of course, falls short of a multiple of 6 (or goes over). Are there some vowels which don't take certain tones?
Thank you for your curiosity. Yes, it is true that I did not do very well at school while I was growing up. So it is as slow as a turtle for me to me to say my thoughts out. Because Linguistics has not found this natural law of the human being speech sound, it is therefore still holding on to some wrong ideas. (https://www.the-scientist.com/features/ ... ial--64351).
The site you cite has nothing to do with your claim...
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.
masako
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Re: The alphabet has a secret and has been found

Post by masako »

sangi39 wrote: 21 Sep 2019 06:02 The site you cite has nothing to do with your claim...
Nothing has anything to do with his claim. It's absurd and has absolutely no merit. But, hey, it's amusing as heck to watch him try to explain it.
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