Linguistic Miscellany Thread

[Lērisama]

The general rule is that every time your dialect is closer to the original French, the other dialect is brutish and unsophisticated, and every time your dialect is farther from the original French, the other dialect is pretentious and cloying. For every American who rolls their eyes at "restaurauwhn," there is a Brit rolling their eyes at "erbal medicine."

Don't worry, I'd roll my eyes at /ˌɹɛstəˈrɔ̃/ too. It's notmally /ˈɹɛʃˌt͡ʃɹɔnt/ here. (For an equivalent, may I suggest /ɡaˈɹɑːʒ/)

[Starbeam]

At least if someone said /ˌpwɛrtoʊˈrikoʊ/ I would know what they meant ─ whereas if someone said /ɡɛˈrijɑ/ in English I probably wouldn't have a clue what they meant without some context.

I mean, when was the last time anyone said 'guerrilla' outside of the phrases "guerilla warfare" or "guerrilla filmmaking" (or other artmaking)?

[Raphael]

At least if someone said /ˌpwɛrtoʊˈrikoʊ/ I would know what they meant ─ whereas if someone said /ɡɛˈrijɑ/ in English I probably wouldn't have a clue what they meant without some context.

I mean, when was the last time anyone said 'guerrilla' outside of the phrases "guerilla warfare" or "guerrilla filmmaking" (or other artmaking).

Well, if I'd hear someone talk about "gorilla warfare", I'd probably assume at first that they mean something that's mainly of interest to primatologists. And if I'd hear someone say "gorilla" and mean "guerilla", but without clarifying it by adding a word like "warfare", I'd probably be even more confused.

[Travis B.]

At least if someone said /ˌpwɛrtoʊˈrikoʊ/ I would know what they meant ─ whereas if someone said /ɡɛˈrijɑ/ in English I probably wouldn't have a clue what they meant without some context.

I mean, when was the last time anyone said 'guerrilla' outside of the phrases "guerilla warfare" or "guerrilla filmmaking" (or other artmaking)?

I've definitely heard guerillas being used outside of a compound -- and to me /ɡɛˈrijɑ/ is simply not a word in English.

At least if someone said /ˌpwɛrtoʊˈrikoʊ/ I would know what they meant ─ whereas if someone said /ɡɛˈrijɑ/ in English I probably wouldn't have a clue what they meant without some context.

I mean, when was the last time anyone said 'guerrilla' outside of the phrases "guerilla warfare" or "guerrilla filmmaking" (or other artmaking).

Well, if I'd hear someone talk about "gorilla warfare", I'd probably assume at first that they mean something that's mainly of interest to primatologists. And if I'd hear someone say "gorilla" and mean "guerilla", but without clarifying it by adding a word like "warfare", I'd probably be even more confused.

If I heard "/ɡəˈrɪlə/ warfare" I would know immediately that they meant "guerilla warfare", and I would not be confused by "/ɡəˈrɪləz/" being used outside of a non-primatological context. I would be confused, though, if I heard "/ɡɔˈrɪlə/ warfare", and I indeed would wonder if one was speaking of a primatological topic.

Conversely, I would be very confused if one spoke of "/ɡɛˈrijɑz/" in any context in English.

[Travis B.]

There is a longstanding war in English between those who would prefer to pronounce the H in words like herb and hospital, but not words like hour and honour; and those who would drop the H in words like herb and hospital, but not the name Herb. Both sides accuse the other of inconsistency, which is why the war is so contentious—they're both right.

Just for the record, Americans don't drop the H in hospital.

[jal]

Mind you, only a small minority of modern Castilian Spanish-speakers, or any Spanish-speakers for that matter, would pronounce guerilla with an actual lateral consonant. Yeismo is present in most of modern Spanish.

Wikipedia seems to disagree, but regardless, it seems a fairly new trend, and the word was probably borrowed when prestigious Spanish still used /ʎ/.


JAL

[Starbeam]

To be honest, not only is <ll> commonly /j/, but i usually hear /j̃/ instead of /ɲ/.

I've definitely heard guerillas being used outside of a compound -- and to me /ɡɛˈrijɑ/ is simply not a word in English.

I'll give you credit for the plural. If it helps, i some times say the "proper" pronunciation of 'guerilla' with a slight Spanish accent. Actually, that probably doesn't help at all, but i still do it.

There is a longstanding war in English between those who would prefer to pronounce the H in words like herb and hospital, but not words like hour and honour; and those who would drop the H in words like herb and hospital, but not the name Herb. Both sides accuse the other of inconsistency, which is why the war is so contentious—they're both right.

Nobody in America drops the h in 'hospital', but you have a point. I try to say the 'h' in herb, but only in my bravest fantasies would i dare of using the h in 'hour', or 'honest'. 'heir' can kiss my ass; it's a homophone no matter what we do.

[Travis B.]

Mind you, only a small minority of modern Castilian Spanish-speakers, or any Spanish-speakers for that matter, would pronounce guerilla with an actual lateral consonant. Yeismo is present in most of modern Spanish.

Wikipedia seems to disagree, but regardless, it seems a fairly new trend, and the word was probably borrowed when prestigious Spanish still used /ʎ/.

Apparently the spread of yeismo in Spain is a new thing, but it has been both rapid and widespread. To quote the wiki:

By 1989, several traditionally non-yeísta areas, such as Bogotá and much of Spain and the Canaries, had begun rapidly adopting yeísmo, in the span of little more than a single generation. In areas where yeísmo is variable, [ʎ] is lost more often in rapid and casual speech. There is also an idiolectal correlation between yeísmo and speech rate, with fast-speaking individuals being more likely to be yeísta.[6]

and:

In Spain, most of the northern half of the country and several areas in the south, particularly in rural Huelva, Seville, Cádiz, and part of the Canaries used to retain the distinction, but yeísmo has spread throughout the country, and the distinction is now lost in most of Spain, particularly outside areas in linguistic contact with Catalan and Basque. In monolingual, urban northern Spain, a distinction between /ʝ/ and /ʎ/ only exists among the oldest age groups in the upper classes.[16][17]

[Travis B.]

Oh this is interesting -- apparently hypercorrection of wrongly-assumed yeismo explains the modern name of Mallorca in Catalan and Spanish (vis-a-vis its traditional name of Majorca in English):

A notable case is the name of the island of Mallorca: since Mallorcans tend to pronounce intervocalic /ʎ/ as /ʝ/, central Catalan scribes assumed the authentic (and correct) name Maiorca was another case of this and hypercorrected it to Mallorca. This new form ended up becoming the usual pronunciation, even for native Mallorcans.[19]

[Travis B.]

Does anyone else have words in their dialect that they simply don't know how to really spell? For instance, I have the affirmative /jɑ/ [ja(ː)] (yes, this is pronounced practically identical to StG ja) and the negative /næ/ [nɛ(ː)], and there just is no standard way of writing them in English.

The former I will write in eye dialect as yah, but that is simply my making up a spelling to capture the pronunciation rather than using a spelling that other English-speakers use (I have a coworker who will write this same word in Teams chat as ya, but the problem with that is that ya is conventionally used in informal written English for unstressed you /jə/ [jə(ː)]).

As for the latter, I have never seen anyone else even attempt to write it, with it being purely spoken.

And this is not even getting into clitics and contractions, a good number of which in my dialect simply have no agreed-upon spellings.

[zompist]

Does anyone else have words in their dialect that they simply don't know how to really spell? For instance, I have the affirmative /jɑ/ [ja(ː)] (yes, this is pronounced practically identical to StG ja) and the negative /næ/ [nɛ(ː)], and there just is no standard way of writing them in English.

The former I will write in eye dialect as yah, but that is simply my making up a spelling to capture the pronunciation rather than using a spelling that other English-speakers use

I have /ja/ too, and I'd spell it yah. It's distinct from /jæ/ yeah. It's common enough to be in Wiktionary.

Wiktionary also thinks nah can stand for either /na/ or /næ/. I don't think there's a good way to narrow it down to /næ/.

BTW, do you not have nasalization in that word? I pronounce it [næ̃].)

[Travis B.]

Does anyone else have words in their dialect that they simply don't know how to really spell? For instance, I have the affirmative /jɑ/ [ja(ː)] (yes, this is pronounced practically identical to StG ja) and the negative /næ/ [nɛ(ː)], and there just is no standard way of writing them in English.

The former I will write in eye dialect as yah, but that is simply my making up a spelling to capture the pronunciation rather than using a spelling that other English-speakers use

I have /ja/ too, and I'd spell it yah. It's distinct from /jæ/ yeah. It's common enough to be in Wiktionary.

According to Wiktionary it's more widespread than I'd thought ─ I'd always thought of it as a stereotypical German or Scandinavian-influenced Upper Midwestern word and on a more personal level as classic Milwaukee dialect. (For instance, my mother, who grew up in a Polish family in the heavily Italian Kenosha said that she only learned the word after she moved to Milwaukee, and I had coworkers from elsewhere (including other parts of Wisconsin) specifically remark on my use of /jɑ/ [ja(ː)].)

Wiktionary also thinks nah can stand for either /na/ or /næ/. I don't think there's a good way to narrow it down to /næ/.

I also have /nɑ/ [na(ː)] as a distinct word, which is what I specifically would write as nah.

BTW, do you not have nasalization in that word? I pronounce it [næ̃].)

Actually, I can pronounce it both with and without nasalization.

[bradrn]

In South Africa /jɑː/ is regularly spelled ‘Ja’, after Afrikaans.

[jal]

BTW, do you not have nasalization in that word? I pronounce it [næ̃].)

I'd associated nasalized "nah" almost exclusively with 90s girl movies like Clueless. Funny it's used more broadly.


JAL

[Travis B.]

In South Africa /jɑː/ is regularly spelled ‘Ja’, after Afrikaans.

Here in Wisconsin, though, German (outside of perhaps some Amish communities) and Norwegian are no longer living languages (excluding present-day first-generation immigrants and maybe their children), their speakers having switched to English during the 20th century. That said, however, German is still a popular choice of a foreign language here.

[Travis B.]

BTW, do you not have nasalization in that word? I pronounce it [næ̃].)

I'd associated nasalized "nah" almost exclusively with 90s girl movies like Clueless. Funny it's used more broadly.

[na]*, it's definitely prevalent here in the Upper Midwest today.

* For some reason, [nɛ̃] does not seem appropriate in this place, just like how [ja] and [jɛ] are not actually perfect synonyms.

[Man in Space]

BTW, do you not have nasalization in that word? I pronounce it [næ̃].)

I'd associated nasalized "nah" almost exclusively with 90s girl movies like Clueless. Funny it's used more broadly.

[na]*, it's definitely prevalent here in the Upper Midwest today.

* For some reason, [nɛ̃] does not seem appropriate in this place, just like how [ja] and [jɛ] are not actually perfect synonyms.

[næ̃] is for an emphatic negative response (“did the Browns win?” “nah”), [na] is for use in fuller statements (“you going to the studio or nah?”).

[jal]

Translating the Hobbit, I encounter a lot of "reversed copula" sentences, like "the last thing he remembered was X" (where the normal order would be "X was the the last thing ...") or "and the next thing was that it was raining" ("it raining was the next thing") etc., and I was wondering how other languages (not being Germanic) deal with these kinds of constructions. Is it common to just swap the two clauses around the copula? Are there other common patterns?


JAL

[Travis B.]

Translating the Hobbit, I encounter a lot of "reversed copula" sentences, like "the last thing he remembered was X" (where the normal order would be "X was the the last thing ...") or "and the next thing was that it was raining" ("it raining was the next thing") etc., and I was wondering how other languages (not being Germanic) deal with these kinds of constructions. Is it common to just swap the two clauses around the copula? Are there other common patterns?

It is interesting that these sentences stick out to you, since sentences like "the last thing he remembered was X" seem perfectly normal to me, especially in literary usage.

[jal]

It is interesting that these sentences stick out to you, since sentences like "the last thing he remembered was X" seem perfectly normal to me, especially in literary usage.

Well, they're a special type of construction, where both the subject and subject complement are clauses, and their order is reversed. It's all over the chapter I'm currently translating. E.g. "There was nothing now to be done but to tighten the belts round their empty stomachs" is a more concealed example using an existential construction, where "to tighten the belts" is the subject, and "the only thing to be done" (in negated form because of the existential and the use of "but") the complement.


JAL