Shortest words for basic concepts

[dhok]

There are some examples in Algonquian, but because of the morphological nature of Algonquian languages all examples are extremely short stems that always have affixes. E.g. in most languages you have a stem -i:k 'house' which must always be possessed (e.g. Menominee nēk 'my house'). Menominee additionally has a verb "use" with a null-morpheme stem: uah 'he uses it' (morphologically |0-ẅ-a|.

I think Iroquoian has a few examples of extremely short stems, but I don't know of any examples off the top of my head.

[Richard W]

What does “common tone” mean?

While it’s often the case that distinctions which are unmarked phonologically are also unmarked in the orthography, this can’t simply be taken for granted (even when dealing with a writing system that *isn’t* heavily influenced by being adapted for a completely unrelated language); it has to be demonstrated.

In this case the word meaning 'common, ordinary, commonplace' (สามัญ) is the distinguishing word used in Thai for the name of the tone; phonetically it is the level mid tone, and is the tone short unaccented /a/ in open syllables tends to be neutralised to. Historically, it is the unconditioned tone in the tonogenetic model ('tone A'); with the subsequent tone split, it is the tone not conditioned by the initial consonant being an old voiceless fricative or aspirated consonant. I believe it is also the commonest tone. It is the tone used for monosyllabic words borrowed from English when they don't end in an occlusive.

The Thai tone marks, adopted in the days when there was a 3-way tone contrast, make a lot of sense even for the native vocabulary - no mark for the commonest tone, a single stroke for the second commonest, and a cross (i.e. two strokes) for the least frequent. When the tone can't be partially indicated by the initial consonant, the common tone is the tone that has no written mark. (Syllables ending in an obstruent, can't have this tone.)

All in all, if Thai has an unmarked tone, it is the "common tone".

[Birdlang]

I know there’s a Malayo-Polynesian language in Indonesia or Malaysia that the word for water is just ‘aé’ (not sure if that’s the real spelling or not) or something like that.

[akam chinjir]

Turkish water is "su."

[Linguoboy]

Turkish water is "su."

Remember, the word to beat here is French /o/.

But I haven't seen a word for "meat" yet that's shorter than Turkish et.

Which reminds me:
"bread": Catalan pa
"wine": Catalan vi
"garlic": Catalan all /aʎ/, French ail /aj/
"cabbage": French chou /ʃu/

[Arzena]

I've always been a fan of Arabic badr 'full moon'

[Pabappa]

The stem of one word for urine in Russian appears to be /s:/, yielding for example /ssu/ for the 1st person present indicative: see https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/ссу#Russian

And no ... It's not onomatopoeia.... The stem apparently goes back all the way to PIE *sikʷ-.

Swahili mto "pillow". Alongside Kalmyk & Mongolian der and Ossetian baz.

[anxi]

I've always been a fan of Arabic badr 'full moon'

Polish nów /nuv/ “new moon”.

The stem of one word for urine in Russian appears to be /s:/, yielding for example /ssu/ for the 1st person present indicative: see https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/ссу#Russian

Polish ssać “to suck” has present tense stem ss-, e.g. on ssie “he sucks”, oni ssą “they suck”.

[zompist]

I dunno, using roots feels like cheating. But if we're going to go there, there's Latin d- 'give', Sanskrit i- 'go', and probably many more.

[Zju]

Turkish water is "su."

Remember, the word to beat here is French /o/.

If you want a tie, there's Guaraní /ɯ/ <y>.

Hungarian has:
új /uːj/ new
ó /oː/ old

Eastern Mari has:
у /u/ new

Edit: A quick consultation to wiktionary gives A'ou (Hongfeng) ŋ⁵⁵ water. Pretty sure it being a single consonants makes it a solid contender, albeit the language having contour tones.

[Linguoboy]

ó /oː/ old

I always thought that was just a bound prefix but a comparative óbb exists, so I guess not.

For "good" colloquial Japanese has いい ii.

[Richard W]

As one phoneme, we possibly have Tai Lue /m̥/, with four meanings: 'not', 'fruit' (classificatory prefix), 'day', prefix before names of young males. There's no tonal contrast on it.

[Pabappa]

Romanian has tei for linden tree. Not really a basic concept to me, but maybe it is to them ... also the longest word I've ever seen for love: dragoste.

[gestaltist]

Romanian has tei for linden tree. Not really a basic concept to me, but maybe it is to them ... also the longest word I've ever seen for love: dragoste.

There's plenty of monosyllabic words for trees in many languages, including English (fir, birch...) What makes "tei" special?

[Salmoneus]

In English, of course, a synonym for 'linden' is 'lime'. (It seems some species are 'lime', some are 'linden', some are 'lime' everywhere outside the US, some are 'linden' everywhere outside the UK...). Lime is only very slightly 'longer' than tei...

C.f. oak, ash, elm, plane, yew... in fact, among native trees that aren't "-nut" or "-berry", I think monosyllables are the rule in English (though of course some monosyllables are longer than others). I guess holly and hornbeam are exceptions.

[Pabappa]

Yeah I get that, and I thought of some of those words too, but the difference I see is that in English, about half of those words require the word "tree" to be comprehensible in a free context, and the other half will still use the word "tree" much of the time anyway. Whereas in my knowledge, the romance languages never do this. I could be wrong? I think everybody here knows where I got this word pair from.

[Linguoboy]

Yeah I get that, and I thought of some of those words too, but the difference I see is that in English, about half of those words require the word "tree" to be comprehensible in a free context, and the other half will still use the word "tree" much of the time anyway.

Maybe IYD but not in mine. The only words Sal listed which requires "tree" for me are "plane" and "lime" because the usual words IMD are "sycamore" and "linden" (bzw. "basswood"), respectively. Despite the homophony with "you", I don't recall ever saying "yew tree" in my life. But I'm a gardener and my father grew up on a farm, so maybe that makes a difference.

For "tree" itself, Osage has žąą. If you go by mora count, Japanese 木 /ki/ is shorter. But for "tree trunk", the Osage is hu.

[Seirios]

Mandarin, but a colloquial f word and the literary/formal word for "Sun" are both rì /ɻ̩˥˩/. Both written as 日 too. The f word is the regular result of the classical word "enter" (入), though the literary/formal pronunciation has long been rù /ɻu˥˩/ only, possibly from an alternative original pronunciation.

It actually makes for fairly easy swearing.

All of these below are perfectly colloquial:
饿 è /ɤ˥˩/ "hungry"
鹅 é /ɤ˧˥/ "goose"
屋 wū /u˥˥/ "room; house"
雾 wù /u˥˩/ "mist, fog"
捂 wǔ /u˨˩˦/ "to cover (with hand) (in a way as you might when smothering)" (also figuratvely)
误 wù /u˥˩/ "to miss, fail to (properly) carry out, make something fail to (properly) materialise, by being too late for its time" (e.g. flight, appt, activity); or, "to cause one so for something important, in a way detrimental to them" (e.g. one's child, lover, oneself)
姨 yí /i˧˥/ "mother's sister"
倚 yǐ /i˨˩˦/ "to lean back on/against"
玉 yù /y˥˩/ "jade"
迂 yū /y˥˥/ "having views out of fashion or conservative, in a stubborn way, and unwilling to or cannot adapt to current ways" (all of that at once)
雨 yǔ /y˨˩˦/ "rain"
鱼 yú /y˧˥/ "fish"

[Pabappa]

Polish miś "teddy bear", and other senses. Probably the various definitions there are all related but Wiktionary is grouping them as if they are separate words that just happen to be spelled the same.

[Tropylium]

C.f. oak, ash, elm, plane, yew... in fact, among native trees that aren't "-nut" or "-berry", I think monosyllables are the rule in English (though of course some monosyllables are longer than others). I guess holly and hornbeam are exceptions.

Maple, aspen, rowan, willow, sallow, poplar, juniper...

(is there a native synonym for juniper, actually? Swedish has the quite simple /e:n/ and the rest of Scandinavian isn't much more complex either.)