Linguistic Miscellany Thread

[Glass Half Baked]

Has anyone posted here before about this quiz? It's twenty samples of native and non-native speakers reading a story, and you have to guess where the person is from.
https://www.dialectsarchive.com/test-your-ear

[jal]

I had planned to stay out of this discussion, but I want to state that I mostly agree with this.

I originally also planned to stay out of it, but I myself can't walk free here either, as I've created a con-creole, which intentionally borrows heavily from existing CECs, which are of course famously created by the enslaved Africans that were imported to the area. So making a con-CEC may also be seen as cultural appropriation (although for me it's cultural appreciation).


JAL

[Travis B.]

I had planned to stay out of this discussion, but I want to state that I mostly agree with this.

I originally also planned to stay out of it, but I myself can't walk free here either, as I've created a con-creole, which intentionally borrows heavily from existing CECs, which are of course famously created by the enslaved Africans that were imported to the area. So making a con-CEC may also be seen as cultural appropriation (although for me it's cultural appreciation).

See, it's usages of 'cultural appropriation' in the sense that you referred to here that I particularly disagree with, i.e. things that essentially boil down to 'cultural borrowing by members of the dominant race/ethnicity/culture/etc. is bad' without requiring any good explanation as to why a particular case is notably bad. See, there is nothing actually negative about actually creating a con-CEC, but those who tend to throw around 'cultural appropriation' may see it as bad simply because you are a European who has created a conlang heavily inspired by creoles most heavily spoken by Caribbean people of African descent.

[jal]

See, it's usages of 'cultural appropriation' in the sense that you referred to here that I particularly disagree with, i.e. things that essentially boil down to 'cultural borrowing by members of the dominant race/ethnicity/culture/etc. is bad' without requiring any good explanation as to why a particular case is notably bad. See, there is nothing actually negative about actually creating a con-CEC, but those who tend to throw around 'cultural appropriation' may see it as bad simply because you are a European who has created a conlang heavily inspired by creoles most heavily spoken by Caribbean people of African descent.

Exactly, and personally I don't see this as appropriation, but I do appreciate that some people may have problems with it.


JAL

[AwfullyAmateur]

It took me a long time before I realized there are people in America who don't pronounce caught and cot the same way.

[Travis B.]

It took me a long time before I realized there are people in America who don't pronounce caught and cot the same way.

I am the opposite here*. This is complicated that to me [ɑ] is an acceptable realization for both /ɑ/ and /ɔ/ even though I don't merge them except occasionally adjacent to /w h kw gw/ and after /r/, since my mother, who is from Kenosha, like many Chicagoans commonly realizes /ɔ/ as [ɑ] except before /r/, which I also do sporadically, while for me [ɑ] is a common allophone of /ɑ/, alongside its usual realization as [a], adjacent to /r w h kw gw/.

* I originally wrote 'same here' but I had misread your post - I actually had meant the opposite.

[TomHChappell]

Note that one of the key parts of the definition of "cultural appropriation" is that the culture doing the appropriation has current or historical dominance over the culture that's being appropriated. Also, the fact that you can point to subtypes of this behaviour doesn't mean the umbrella term can never be useful.

Also note that, although I respect the idea of cultural appropriation, I think it's problematic in general, as "culture" is in most cases not something you created or own. You were handed it down, you inherited it from your parents, family, society. So basically you are claiming something that isn't yours, other than that you have grown up in it. There are exceptions of course, like rap music which is a relatively recent phenomenon, and we can point to the actual black people that started that scene, or gay pride, which nowadays may be celibrated by more non-gays than gays (to the dismay of some gays, especially those that lived through the early years of pride).

So concluding, when it's indeed one of the "highly problematic behaviours" Travis points out, we can all agree that's a bad thing. Other cases aren't that black-and-white (no pun intended), and it's wise to analyze what part, if any, is problematic and what can be done about it.


JAL

I have a problem with any one person thinking that any one incident is both “cultural appropriation” and “cultural imperialism”.
IM(NS)HO, maybe it’s one or the other, but it can’t be both.

[Raphael]

I learned recently that there are people whose surname is actually McCambridge or MacCambridge. I'm still a bit confused by that. It sounds to me as if someone combined a clearly Celtic/Gaelic morpheme - Mc or Mac - with the clearly English element Cambridge. Frankly, it feels like something invented by a poorly trained AI. The Wikipedia article on the surname is not that helpful: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McCambridge

Any explanations?

[Darren]

You don't agree with Wikipedia's suggestion that it's a hobson-jobson anglicisation of Mac Ambróis?

[Raphael]

You don't agree with Wikipedia's suggestion that it's a hobson-jobson anglicisation of Mac Ambróis?

I don't know. Possible, but I wonder how certain it is.

[Ares Land]

Does anyone have any good resources on glottochronology?
It's an area I'd like to explore for conlanging.

[Travis B.]

Does anyone have any good resources on glottochronology?
It's an area I'd like to explore for conlanging.

I don't have any references on hand... but I can assure you that it has at least a few micronylands, as shown by the famous example of English versus Icelandic.

[Zju]

Does anyone have any good resources on glottochronology?
It's an area I'd like to explore for conlanging.

I don't have any references on hand... but I can assure you that it has at least a few micronylands, as shown by the famous example of English versus Icelandic.

Surely you mean at least a few dozen millinylands? Personally, I'd estimate it at at least 150 mNL.

[Travis B.]

Does anyone have any specific sound changes that they remember occurring in their own speech that were not merely growing out of "little-kid-speak"?

E.g. when I was younger I pronounced /tr/ and /dr/ as [tʂ(ʰ)ɻ] and [tʂɻ] or even as [t(ʰ)ɻ] and [tɻ] like my parents do, but at some point in elementary school I switched to [tʃ(ʰ)ɹ̠ʁ] and [tʃɹ̠ʁ] (note that [ɹ̠ʁ] is really coarticulated here) and now find it difficult to pronounce them the former way (to the point that [ɻ] is no longer a natural speech sound for me).

[WeepingElf]

A completely different question: Are Italian surnames in -i from old genitives or from plurals? I used to think it was the former, but now consider the latter to be more likely. But I don't know.

[Travis B.]

A completely different question: Are Italian surnames in -i from old genitives or from plurals? I used to think it was the former, but now consider the latter to be more likely. But I don't know.

Teh Wiki claims they are from plurals, but of course, it's teh Wiki...

[Ares Land]

A completely different question: Are Italian surnames in -i from old genitives or from plurals? I used to think it was the former, but now consider the latter to be more likely. But I don't know.

An inherited genitive is unlikely; Italian dialects lost the morphological genitive very early on.

One theory I read, which makes sense, is that it's a reborrowed genitive.
As in, clerks would write down Marco, son of Antonio in Latin: Marco (filius) Antoni.
Se non è vero, è ben trovato.

[zompist]

An inherited genitive is unlikely; Italian dialects lost the morphological genitive very early on.

One theory I read, which makes sense, is that it's a reborrowed genitive.
As in, clerks would write down Marco, son of Antonio in Latin: Marco (filius) Antoni.
Se non è vero, è ben trovato.

I was curious about the Medici... they apparently traced their ancestry to a dude named Medico di Potrone, born in 1046. He's said to have had healing abilities, thus the name. The story seems fishy to me: if medico was a nickname, why wasn't his real name remembered? Since almost nothing is known about him, it seems more likely that the healing story was invented to make sense of the name.

Anyway, I agree, the 1000s are way too late for a Latin genitive.

I'd just note that if learned Latin is involved, medicī doesn't help at all: it's both singular genitive and plural nominative. This is pretty common in Latin. But if you're naming a family, wouldn't you use the plural genitive medicōrum?

[Ares Land]

I'd just note that if learned Latin is involved, medicī doesn't help at all: it's both singular genitive and plural nominative. This is pretty common in Latin. But if you're naming a family, wouldn't you use the plural genitive medicōrum?

I think a singular genitive makes sense if you're naming an individual, ie. if it's a patronymic: 'the son of the doctor'
This tends to fit the rest of Europe; outside Italy, family names are almost always in the singular.

Maybe both theories are true! Some clerks would use a learned genitive, others thought it was a plural.

[Travis B.]

I think a singular genitive makes sense if you're naming an individual, ie. if it's a patronymic: 'the son of the doctor'
This tends to fit the rest of Europe; outside Italy, family names are almost always in the singular.

At least in English it is common to refer to families by referring to them in the plural with the definite article (whereas it is strange to refer to a family by the singular of their surname unless family is added afterwards).