Zompist Bboard Again

Ser wrote: ↑Thu Jan 30, 2020 6:47 pm

bradrn wrote: ↑Thu Jan 16, 2020 4:45 am I agree: this is definitely very annoying. But now I’m thinking: can we do better? Austronesian sounds like a good candidate for replacement, given that it mixes Latin and Greek roots in a way that Austronesian doesn’t. It looks like Auster was the Roman god of the south wind, and his equivalent in Greek was Notus. So I suggest Notunesian as a replacement.

It's νότος, so Notonesian. Edumacated people's Greek is clearly slipping!

You don’t learn Greek in school these days anymore… what is the educational system coming to?

My vote for the Austroasiatic rename is either Moyan (based on a word for mother) or Noyan (based on a word for speak). Neither of these show up in every AA language, but they have a better spread than any of the words for "people" or "us." If you really want classical names, how about Peiroan/Epeirotican, from the Greek word for continent? This makes a neat distinction with the more maritime Austronesian.

As for renaming Austronesian, I agree that it wounds good as is, but you could nativize it to Kamian, a first person plural pronoun found in Malay and Tagalog, with related words appearing in Polynesia, Taiwan, and elsewhere. Or maybe Kautaian, a nuclear-Polynesian word meaning a team of sailors. If you want to keep it classical because you're just racist like that, the Greek word for a navigator supplies Ploegian, which would probably be pronounced "Pleejian" in English.

The most established near-synonym is certainly Mon-Khmer. In case Munda is not an outgroup but merely typologically divergent, as seems to be the most common opinion these days, this might well be equivalent to the entire family.

Tropylium wrote: ↑Sun Feb 02, 2020 10:56 am The most established near-synonym is certainly Mon-Khmer. In case Munda is not an outgroup but merely typologically divergent, as seems to be the most common opinion these days, this might well be equivalent to the entire family.

Oh, of course! I have indeed heard of the name Mon-Khmer before — I can’t believe I forgot it! In that case, Mon-Khmer would certainly be the best name for Austroasiatic.

More ambiguous names! The Jarawa language is of course spoken on the Andaman Islands… unless you’re talking about Jarawa, a completely unrelated language spoken in Nigeria. You should be careful not to confuse either of these with Jarawara, an Arawan language of South America noted for its unusual morphosyntactic properties.

bradrn wrote: ↑Fri Feb 28, 2020 2:24 am More ambiguous names! The Jarawa language is of course spoken on the Andaman Islands… unless you’re talking about Jarawa, a completely unrelated language spoken in Nigeria. You should be careful not to confuse either of these with Jarawara, an Arawan language of South America noted for its unusual morphosyntactic properties.

You should also not forget that the Arawan family is not the same as the Arawakan family, which also spoken in the Amazon and contains, among others, two distinct languages called Marawan and Marawá. (It has been proposed though that Arawan and Arawakan might be related.)

cedh wrote: ↑Fri Feb 28, 2020 11:24 am

bradrn wrote: ↑Fri Feb 28, 2020 2:24 am More ambiguous names! The Jarawa language is of course spoken on the Andaman Islands… unless you’re talking about Jarawa, a completely unrelated language spoken in Nigeria. You should be careful not to confuse either of these with Jarawara, an Arawan language of South America noted for its unusual morphosyntactic properties.

You should also not forget that the Arawan family is not the same as the Arawakan family, which also spoken in the Amazon and contains, among others, two distinct languages called Marawan and Marawá. (It has been proposed though that Arawan and Arawakan might be related.)

Oh yes, thanks for reminding me of that! When I first read about Arawan, I did indeed confuse it with Arawakan.

And I’ve found yet another instance of ambiguous names! Kabyle is a Berber language of Algeria, whereas Kabiye is a Niger-Congo language of Togo, while Kabie (or Khabi) is a Loloish Sino-Tibetan language. The worst thing about this is that Kabyle and Kabiye are both spoken in north-western Africa.

Apparently the endonym of the Makah language is Qʷiꞏqʷiꞏdiččaq or Qʼwidishchʼa꞉ʼtx. Now, I’m no Harry Potter fan (in fact, quite the opposite), but I can’t help feeling that anyone with even a vague knowledge of that series should find those words suspiciously familiar…

Not sure if someone has already pointed this one out, but there is a dialect in Borneo called "Highland Kenyah."

Apparently one of the (many) languages of Cameroon goes by the name of Pinyin.

I find it pretty amazing that no-one’s submitted the E language yet. (Admittedly it’s fairly obscure.)

The name Kwakiutl made us giggle when our sociology teacher brought it up in 11th grade. He pronounced it with four syllables, essentially as "quacky-ootle". The preferred name for the language, however, is now apparently Kwakʼwala.

edit: I see we mentioned that one already but with the other name

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salishan_languages lists Humptulips as the name of a language as well, which I assume means it's the name of a tribe whose language has come to be just referred to by the tribal name.

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

Yalensky wrote: ↑Wed May 06, 2020 7:17 pm 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/.

bradrn wrote: ↑Wed May 06, 2020 7:35 pm

Yalensky wrote: ↑Wed May 06, 2020 7:17 pm 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. In my head I pronounce the first vowel as stressed /ɑ/, perhaps as a gesture at foreign-sounding hypercorrection while compromising with Canada-like initial stress under the influence of the spelling.

As it turns out Wiktionary gives the very Canadian /ˈkænədə/ as an acceptable pronunciation alongside /ˈkɑːnədə/.

Wampar is a Lower Markham language. Wampur is an Upper Markham language. Mari is also an Upper Markham language, except when it's Uralic.

Nortaneous wrote: ↑Wed May 20, 2020 12:09 am Wampar is a Lower Markham language. Wampur is an Upper Markham language. Mari is also an Upper Markham language, except when it's Uralic.

Oh dear. And what makes it even worse is that (if Wikipedia is to be trusted) apparently Lower and Upper Markham are two branches of a single Markham language family…

I found another one: the Quechan language is spoken in Arizona, while the far better known Quechuan languages are spoken in South America.