Linguistic Miscellany Thread

[Travis B.]

StG /eː/ also often sounds like StG /iː/ to my ears, as my native /eɪ/ is a rather open monophthong probably best described as [e̞] or even [ɛ̝].

[Ryusenshi]

Also, some people in the Northeast (notably Philly) have noticeable allophony for FACE, with an open diphthong [ɛɪ] word-finally and a closer one [eɪ ~ e:] before most consonants. Which means that, for them, days [dɛɪz] may be distinct from daze [de:z].

As for "egg", I found eye-dialect spellings like "aig" baffling for years because how else would you say this? [ɛg] sounded totally New Yawk to me, I didn't think it belonged to GA. Leg and egg don't rhyme with smeg IMD.

I find large amounts of eye-dialect spellings baffling, because they don't show any difference with standard pronunciation. What's the point of writing yer, ta in a character's bubble, in a context when everybody would use a schwa anyway?? To make the character seem uneducated with a completely unfair method???

[Travis B.]

Also, some people in the Northeast (notably Philly) have noticeable allophony for FACE, with an open diphthong [ɛɪ] word-finally and a closer one [eɪ ~ e:] before most consonants. Which means that, for them, days [dɛɪz] may be distinct from daze [de:z].

I notice this with /oʊ/ here, which when final or before a vowel, particularly utterance-finally, is often a strongly diphthongal [ou] if given some stress (but [ɵ] if fully unstressed), but before a consonantis normally a monophthongal [o].

[Travis B.]

I find large amounts of eye-dialect spellings baffling, because they don't show any difference with standard pronunciation. What's the point of writing yer, ta in a character's bubble, in a context when everybody would use a schwa anyway?? To make the character seem uneducated with a completely unfair method???

This baffles me too, for that very reason.

[Vijay]

Hmm, I don't always use schwa in those contexts.

[Travis B.]

Hmm, I don't always use schwa in those contexts.

Same here - but my reduced pronunciations are so frequent that I would say they are the default pronunciations for me.

[Salmoneus]

I certainly don't have BIRD in "your" or a low vowel in "to", no matter how destressed the words are. But some people do. Some people do even when the words are not strongly destressed. So to me, weird spellings like "yer" and "ta" do indicate a non-standard dialect.

[Nortaneous]

German /eː/ sound almost indistiguishable from /iː/ to me

same

As for "egg", I found eye-dialect spellings like "aig" baffling for years because how else would you say this? [ɛg] sounded totally New Yawk to me, I didn't think it belonged to GA. Leg and egg don't rhyme with smeg IMD.

It's also a completed sound change for me - p/ej/nguin, G/e/nghis.

[Travis B.]

I certainly don't have BIRD in "your" or a low vowel in "to", no matter how destressed the words are. But some people do. Some people do even when the words are not strongly destressed. So to me, weird spellings like "yer" and "ta" do indicate a non-standard dialect.

I don't have a low vowel in unstressed to either - the vowel is [ə], not, say, [ɐ], but normally eye-dialect word-final unstressed <a> indicates [ə] to me.

[missals]

I find large amounts of eye-dialect spellings baffling, because they don't show any difference with standard pronunciation. What's the point of writing yer, ta in a character's bubble, in a context when everybody would use a schwa anyway?? To make the character seem uneducated with a completely unfair method???

Some Spanish speakers use eye-"dialect" spellings like "estoy aki" that are literally identical to the standard pronunciation, just to suggest that the speaker is uneducated.

[mae]

-

[Vijay]

Not really the same thing, but in some varieties of Romani (the one that comes to mind for me instantly is French Kalderash (Vlax) Romani), the 3SG form has been generalized to an infinitive after the complementizer te.

Most varieties of Romani have the typical structure of languages spoken in the Balkans, e.g. mangav te dikhav 'I want to see', literally meaning 'I want that I see'.

But in these varieties, they instead say mangav te dikhel for 'I want to see' even though that literally means 'I want that [3SG subject] sees'.

[KathTheDragon]

The past tense in the entire Germanic family is an example, also due to phonological change. Here it was apocope of non-high vowels, the 1sg being *-a < *h₂e, the 3sg being *-e.

[Travis B.]

As for "egg", I found eye-dialect spellings like "aig" baffling for years because how else would you say this? [ɛg] sounded totally New Yawk to me, I didn't think it belonged to GA. Leg and egg don't rhyme with smeg IMD.

It's also a completed sound change for me - p/ej/nguin, G/e/nghis.

I personally only have raising of /æŋ/ and, in just length and strength (but not penguin or Genghis), /ɛŋ/. (I honestly am not sure what people here have overall, but I know some people have raising of /æg/ and/or /ɛg/ in some words.)

[Pabappa]

Is in "capitalist", in the English language, someone who politically supports capitalism, or someone who practices capitalism by running a business?

Either, or both, depending on which axe you have to grind. You can also equivocate between the two, if you need a bad argument.

https://www.msnbc.com/morning-joe/watch ... 4566467734 <--- back in the news

[Linguoboy]

How does this sentence read to y'all?

Italian authorities ordered that the ship was seized and launched an investigation into the alleged aiding of clandestine immigration.

[akam chinjir]

How does this sentence read to y'all?

Italian authorities ordered that the ship was seized and launched an investigation into the alleged aiding of clandestine immigration.

"was" definitely seems wrong to me. "be" is fine, maybe a bit fancy. "ordered the ship to be seized"?

[Zaarin]

It should read "ship be seized"; the sentence as it stands is completely ungrammatical to my ear. Akam chinjir's suggestion "to be seized" wouldn't be grammatically incorrect but still sounds off to me, especially in a journalistic context.

[akam chinjir]

Some googling suggests that "ordered that the ship was to be seized" is the most common variant (that I can think of, anyway).

[Salmoneus]

"Ordered that the ship be seized"

Or, perhaps better,

"Ordered the ship seized"