Amusing Language Names

[bradrn]

Return of the confusingly close names! Namely:

• Kanuri, Kinauri, Kiranti and Kutenai, which are all annoyingly close; the first is Nilo-Saharan, while the second two are Sino-Tibetan, and the last is a North American isolate.
• Cocama and Caquinte are both South American languages with lots of second-position clitics; it’s just too bad that the former is Tupian and the latter is Arawakan.
• Oh, and speaking of the Campan Arawakan languages, those have both Nomatsiguenga and Matsigenka, as well as both Asháninka and Ashéninka. (They’re all part of a dialect continuum, I believe, though apparently that doesn’t stop Peru from classifying them as different languages.)

[Vijay]

O Kannada! our home and native land language...

Interesting! I was born in Canada, and I never noticed this — I’ve always mentally pronounced Kannada as /kəˈnɑːdɐ/, which is pretty different to /ˈkænədə/.

Your post made me realize I've actually had no idea how Kannada is intended to be pronounced.

At least in Malayalam, it's [ˈkənnəɖa]. That's my best guess for Kannada itself as well.

[Yalensky]

At least in Malayalam, it's [ˈkənnəɖa]. That's my best guess for Kannada itself as well.

I sincerely hope they pronounce Canada the same way and make jokes about it.

[Vijay]

At least in Malayalam, it's [ˈkənnəɖa]. That's my best guess for Kannada itself as well.

I sincerely hope they pronounce Canada the same way and make jokes about it.

I'm sorry, but I'm pretty sure they don't. Canada in Malayalam is [ˈkæːnəɖa]. In Kannada, too, it's /kaːnaɖa/.

We do have a joke about Uganda, though, supposedly because it sounds like the name of a fruit except it doesn't. We also have a joke about America! We say Columbus named it "America" when he invited his mom over and said, "[əmˈmeː jiˈɾikʲɯ]" 'have a seat, Mom'.

[WeepingElf]

Of course, the name America wasn't even coined by Columbus - who had no idea that he was not in "India", as everything east of Persia was called those days.

[Vijay]

Yes, but a lot of Malayalees are apparently unaware. *shrug*

[Pabappa]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blabla_language

[bradrn]

Mende (Sepik, Papuan) is not to be confused with Mende (Mande, African). I know this because the people who organised the Grammar Pile did manage to confuse the two languages, and consequently I ended up finding a grammar of Mende (Sepik, Papuan) when I was looking for a grammar of Mende (Mande, African). I shall now look for a grammar of Mende (Mande, African) somewhere else, bearing in mind of course that I should not confuse it with Mende (Sepik, Papuan).

[Vijay]

There was a time that I was a research assistant working on a project involving Malagasy where it was constantly abbreviated "mal," so I did the same thing, only to be told that I shouldn't do that because that's the ISO code for a Dravidian language from South India called Malayalam. Gee, it's not like I ever heard of that language and its ISO code and have heard it spoken around me at home every day of my entire life! Nope, not at all!
EDIT: I used to have a friend who always called Malayalam "Palindrome."

[WeepingElf]

EDIT: I used to have a friend who always called Malayalam "Palindrome."

Which it of course isn't actually - the third a is long and the second l retroflex.

[Vijay]

EDIT: I used to have a friend who always called Malayalam "Palindrome."

Which it of course isn't actually - the third a is long and the second l retroflex.

I don't think palindromes work based on sounds.
But for that matter, it's only a palindrome in languages that use the Roman alphabet anyway.

[Richard W]

Also in Serbian Cyrillic.

[Vijay]

Ah, yes, and also in Macedonian Cyrillic at least.

But definitely not in Malayalam itself!

[bradrn]

One-letter languages: E, U. The latter has been mentioned, but I’m not sure if the former has.

[zompist]

(re Malayalam)

But for that matter, it's only a palindrome in languages that use the Roman alphabet anyway.

Which leads to the question— which languages have names that would be palindromic in an Indic script? That is, which are palindromic at the syllable level?

Despite CV-only patterns being very common in language names, this turns out to be quite rare.

Boringly, there are two-syllable reduplications: Fefe, Bebe, Gogo, Mimi, Sisi, Roro...

I think these count— Bembe, Mesme, Khalkha— as the middle consonant would have to be represented with a virama (vowel-canceling diacritic).

I was about to give up when I found one nice three-syllable name: Saposa. But I may have missed some!

[dɮ the phoneme]

I think these count— Bembe, Mesme, Khalkha— as the middle consonant would have to be represented with a virama (vowel-canceling diacritic).

I think this depends on whether conjuncts are considered single graphemes or not. My intuition is to say that they are, but I'm not sure what the consensus in the Indic-script-using world is.

[zompist]

I think these count— Bembe, Mesme, Khalkha— as the middle consonant would have to be represented with a virama (vowel-canceling diacritic).

I think this depends on whether conjuncts are considered single graphemes or not. My intuition is to say that they are, but I'm not sure what the consensus in the Indic-script-using world is.

There actually are syllable palindromes in Sanskrit literature; the example I have at hand, however, only has CV syllables.

I was thinking about writing e.g. Mesme as मे स् मे <me s me> but yeah, you would probably write मेस्मे <me sme>. But these are hard enough to find that I still feel like counting them.

[Richard W]

I think these count— Bembe, Mesme, Khalkha— as the middle consonant would have to be represented with a virama (vowel-canceling diacritic).

I think this depends on whether conjuncts are considered single graphemes or not. My intuition is to say that they are, but I'm not sure what the consensus in the Indic-script-using world is.

There actually are syllable palindromes in Sanskrit literature; the example I have at hand, however, only has CV syllables.

I was thinking about writing e.g. Mesme as मे स् मे <me s me> but yeah, you would probably write मेस्मे <me sme>. But these are hard enough to find that I still feel like counting them.

Well, if one can write 'Bembe' as ബെൔബെ , that might give you a Malayalam palindrome. And a Hindi spelling of Mesme might have a silent implicit vowel in the middle, so no need for a virama. Not all Indic scripts are weird like Devanagari.

[bradrn]

Not all Indic scripts are weird like Devanagari.

What’s weird about Devanāgarī?

[Richard W]

Not all Indic scripts are weird like Devanagari.

What’s weird about Devanāgarī?

Half forms, and making their use or non-use a matter of spelling. Most Brahmic scripts subordinate the subsequent consonants of the cluster, with the exception of a couple of light-weight letters that float to the top and allow the next consonant to take the base position.

Similarly, most Brahmic scripts are open to the idea of multiple vowels in an akshara, though perhaps the ill effects should be blamed on the ISCII perpetrators, who clearly thought in transliteration. (The encoding was finally forced to accept multiple vowels so as to accommodate the three prishthamatra vowels, though their separateness is a crime against plain text.)

It also doesn't help that Devanagari has no notion of general CVC aksharas, which show up in late Brahmi and can be found from Tocharian to at least Khmer. Standard Devanagari is also weird in only having one vowel that is at least in part preposed, though that sort of weirdness does crop up elsewhere.