Linguistic Miscellany Thread

[Linguoboy]

Don't forget English agh /ɑːx/ and ugh /ʌx/, which are words with very similar meanings and are practically sole survivors of /x/ outside of Scottish English, Hiberno-English, and recent loanwords, and are almost certainly onomatopoeic in nature.

For me ugh is an interjection with the spelling pronunciation /ʌg/ distinct from the onomatopoeic expression of disgust I mentioned earlier.

[Travis B.]

Don't forget English agh /ɑːx/ and ugh /ʌx/, which are words with very similar meanings and are practically sole survivors of /x/ outside of Scottish English, Hiberno-English, and recent loanwords, and are almost certainly onomatopoeic in nature.

For me ugh is an interjection with the spelling pronunciation /ʌg/ distinct from the onomatopoeic expression of disgust I mentioned earlier.

I have both /ʌx/ and /ʌg/ myself, and the two are not synonymous. The former is more an instinctive interjection I would make upon tasting something disgusting, while the latter is what I would generally respond to someone else with in sympathetically expressing displeasure with something they recounted.

[MacAnDàil]

Oops sorry I did not check the up-to-dateness of the source among other details. Thank you for correcting me.

[Linguoboy]

I have both /ʌx/ and /ʌg/ myself, and the two are not synonymous. The former is more an instinctive interjection I would make upon tasting something disgusting, while the latter is what I would generally respond to someone else with in sympathetically expressing displeasure with something they recounted.

Same here. Additionally, the pronunciation of the vowel in /ʌx/ shows considerable range, with [ɪ], [ɛ], [ɐ], etc. all being acceptable variants. (Yes, I have been sitting here for a minute or so making different sounds of disgust and judging their acceptability to my ear.)

[Travis B.]

I have both /ʌx/ and /ʌg/ myself, and the two are not synonymous. The former is more an instinctive interjection I would make upon tasting something disgusting, while the latter is what I would generally respond to someone else with in sympathetically expressing displeasure with something they recounted.

Same here. Additionally, the pronunciation of the vowel in /ʌx/ shows considerable range, with [ɪ], [ɛ], [ɐ], etc. all being acceptable variants. (Yes, I have been sitting here for a minute or so making different sounds of disgust and judging their acceptability to my ear.)

I'm actually the same way - for instance, I also will readily pronounce it with [ɘ], and all those other sounds you mention sound cromulent to me as well.

[dɮ the phoneme]

There is a distinctive (in the ordinary sense, not phonologically distinctive) phonetic quality to the vowels of a lot of South Asian languages, both Indo-Aryan and Dravidian, but I can't seem to figure out what it actually is. To stoop to the level of pure subjective description, the vowels feel particularly "springy" or "rubbery" to me. This is especially pronounced with the vowel usually romanized as <a> and transcribed as [ɐ], which has a similar quality across many languages of the region but sounds distinct to me from any [ɐ] I've heard in other context. This video demonstrates the pronunciations I'm talking about pretty well.

[bradrn]

There is a distinctive (in the ordinary sense, not phonologically distinctive) phonetic quality to the vowels of a lot of South Asian languages, both Indo-Aryan and Dravidian, but I can't seem to figure out what it actually is. To stoop to the level of pure subjective description, the vowels feel particularly "springy" or "rubbery" to me. This is especially pronounced with the vowel usually romanized as <a> and transcribed as [ɐ], which has a similar quality across many languages of the region but sounds distinct to me from any [ɐ] I've heard in other context. This video demonstrates the pronunciations I'm talking about pretty well.

Listening to this, the short ⟨a⟩ sounds like [ə] or perhaps [ɜ] to me, whereas the long ⟨ā⟩ sounds like [ɐː].

[zompist]

Curiously her /a/ sounds almost back to me, like [ʊ]. It doesn't sound as lax as English [ə], but that may be because she's emphasizing it.

[bradrn]

Curiously her /a/ sounds almost back to me, like [ʊ]. It doesn't sound as lax as English [ə], but that may be because she's emphasizing it.

I’m not sure about ‘back’, but listening again it could well be a bit higher than I thought, something like [ɘ].

[Creyeditor]

Shakuntala Mahanta reports in her Dissertation that none other than Peter Ladefoged mistook Assamese high back rounded RTR [ʊ] for low back rounded [ɒ]. She provides phonetic and phonological evidence that this is indeed a high vowel. So maybe height in non-front vowels is very difficult to hear in Indic languages?

[Kuchigakatai]

Talking about things difficult to hear, I find it amusing how I (as a Spanish speaker) find it very hard to hear the distinction between /p b/ /t d/ /k g/ in Indonesian intervocalically. I just hear [ b d g], e.g. Jakarta sounds like [dʒagarta] to me. Shouldn't I at least be biased towards hearing [p t k], due to speaking a language with voiceless /p t k/ with a very low Voice Onset Time? But nope, it's not what I expected. I don't know how Indonesians distinguish them (at least those from Jakarta, I heard this from videos of a YouTuber interviewing random people + careful recordings on a website for learners) but there seems to be something weird going on. Probably [±ARGH], as Nortaneus used to say.

[Creyeditor]

Are they speaking Jakarta Indonesian (lu, gue/gua) or Java Indonesian (aka medok, (a)ku, (ka)mu)? Because Java Indonesian sometimes inherits weird voicing stuff (stiff vs. slack) from Javanese plus a tendency for some pairs if stops to differ in minor place of articulation. I think medok /d/ is further back than medok /t/ for example, IIRC.

[Travis B.]

Talking about things difficult to hear, I find it amusing how I (as a Spanish speaker) find it very hard to hear the distinction between /p b/ /t d/ /k g/ in Indonesian intervocalically. I just hear [ b d g], e.g. Jakarta sounds like [dʒagarta] to me. Shouldn't I at least be biased towards hearing [p t k], due to speaking a language with voiceless /p t k/ with a very low Voice Onset Time? But nope, it's not what I expected. I don't know how Indonesians distinguish them (at least those from Jakarta, I heard this from videos of a YouTuber interviewing random people + careful recordings on a website for learners) but there seems to be something weird going on. Probably [±ARGH], as Nortaneus used to say.

In Spanish, though, don't you natively have [β ð ɣ] intervocalically for /b d g/, meaning you don't actually have a native intervocalic contrast between [p t k] and [b d g]? (And knowing NAE doesn't help either as in NAE the perceived voicing of intervocalic stops is heavily informed by preceding vowel length.)

(About Spanish, though, at second thought, wouldn't that lead you to perceive it as /p t k/ rather than the other way around?)

[WeepingElf]

In Spanish, though, don't you natively have [β ð ɣ] intervocalically for /b d g/, meaning you don't actually have a native intervocalic contrast between [p t k] and [b d g]? (And knowing NAE doesn't help either as in NAE the perceived voicing of intervocalic stops is heavily informed by preceding vowel length.)

It is also a well-known fact that many speakers of Romance languages do not perceive Germanic /b d g/ as fully voiced. Apparently, voicing is much more prominent in Romance than in Germanic; also, Germanic voiceless stops are aspirated in some positions while Romance ones are not.

[Nortaneous]

In Spanish, though, don't you natively have [β ð ɣ] intervocalically for /b d g/, meaning you don't actually have a native intervocalic contrast between [p t k] and [b d g]? (And knowing NAE doesn't help either as in NAE the perceived voicing of intervocalic stops is heavily informed by preceding vowel length.)

It is also a well-known fact that many speakers of Romance languages do not perceive Germanic /b d g/ as fully voiced. Apparently, voicing is much more prominent in Romance than in Germanic; also, Germanic voiceless stops are aspirated in some positions while Romance ones are not.

Germanic except Afrikaans, right? For example, here, "kind" sounds to me like "gunt".

[Travis B.]

In Spanish, though, don't you natively have [β ð ɣ] intervocalically for /b d g/, meaning you don't actually have a native intervocalic contrast between [p t k] and [b d g]? (And knowing NAE doesn't help either as in NAE the perceived voicing of intervocalic stops is heavily informed by preceding vowel length.)

It is also a well-known fact that many speakers of Romance languages do not perceive Germanic /b d g/ as fully voiced. Apparently, voicing is much more prominent in Romance than in Germanic; also, Germanic voiceless stops are aspirated in some positions while Romance ones are not.

Germanic except Afrikaans, right? For example, here, "kind" sounds to me like "gunt".

To my knowledge, Dutch, Afrikaans, some Upper German varieties, and Finland-Swedish lack aspiration of fortis stops in general.

[bradrn]

In Spanish, though, don't you natively have [β ð ɣ] intervocalically for /b d g/, meaning you don't actually have a native intervocalic contrast between [p t k] and [b d g]? (And knowing NAE doesn't help either as in NAE the perceived voicing of intervocalic stops is heavily informed by preceding vowel length.)

It is also a well-known fact that many speakers of Romance languages do not perceive Germanic /b d g/ as fully voiced. Apparently, voicing is much more prominent in Romance than in Germanic; also, Germanic voiceless stops are aspirated in some positions while Romance ones are not.

Germanic except Afrikaans, right? For example, here, "kind" sounds to me like "gunt".

Are you referring to the word at 1:08? It sounds like [kɨnt] to me, so unaspirated and with final devoicing — but hard to tell since they’re all singing together. (And singing in and of itself might change things.) Also, there’s another occurrence at 1:25 which sounds like it might be aspirated [kʰɨnt].

[WeepingElf]

In Spanish, though, don't you natively have [β ð ɣ] intervocalically for /b d g/, meaning you don't actually have a native intervocalic contrast between [p t k] and [b d g]? (And knowing NAE doesn't help either as in NAE the perceived voicing of intervocalic stops is heavily informed by preceding vowel length.)

It is also a well-known fact that many speakers of Romance languages do not perceive Germanic /b d g/ as fully voiced. Apparently, voicing is much more prominent in Romance than in Germanic; also, Germanic voiceless stops are aspirated in some positions while Romance ones are not.

Germanic except Afrikaans, right? For example, here, "kind" sounds to me like "gunt".

Well, I should have written "cliché" instead of "well-known fact"

[Travis B.]

Germanic except Afrikaans, right? For example, here, "kind" sounds to me like "gunt".

Are you referring to the word at 1:08? It sounds like [kɨnt] to me, so unaspirated and with final devoicing — but hard to tell since they’re all singing together. (And singing in and of itself might change things.) Also, there’s another occurrence at 1:25 which sounds like it might be aspirated [kʰɨnt].

I hear it as both [k] and [kʰ] in different places, but I don't perceive it as /g/, even though I normally perceive unaspirated initial stops as lenis (for instance, in a recording of "pasta" in Italian I heard somewhere, I don't remember where exactly, I heard it as starting with a clear /b/). As for the vowel, I perceive as akin to my native English /ɪ/, which is [ɘ]. As for the final stop, I don't perceive it as specifically /t/ or /d/, which is probably due to final unglottalized voiceless stops when not preceded by a clearly short or long vowel (which may be separated from it by a sonorant) being unspecified for lenisness versus fortisness for me.

[Nortaneous]

Germanic except Afrikaans, right? For example, here, "kind" sounds to me like "gunt".

Are you referring to the word at 1:08? It sounds like [kɨnt] to me, so unaspirated and with final devoicing — but hard to tell since they’re all singing together. (And singing in and of itself might change things.) Also, there’s another occurrence at 1:25 which sounds like it might be aspirated [kʰɨnt].

I hear it as both [k] and [kʰ] in different places, but I don't perceive it as /g/, even though I normally perceive unaspirated initial stops as lenis (for instance, in a recording of "pasta" in Italian I heard somewhere, I don't remember where exactly, I heard it as starting with a clear /b/). As for the vowel, I perceive as akin to my native English /ɪ/, which is [ɘ]. As for the final stop, I don't perceive it as specifically /t/ or /d/, which is probably due to final unglottalized voiceless stops when not preceded by a clearly short or long vowel (which may be separated from it by a sonorant) being unspecified for lenisness versus fortisness for me.

Listening again, I hear it as intermediate between my /g/ and /k/ (voiceless unaspirated?), but I feel like landing a joke about homophony with "cunt" would be a stretch. Not a prohibitive stretch, but it feels closer to /g/. The vowel maps to my /ʌ/, though - it hadn't occurred to me at all to map it to /ɪ/. I can see it now that you've mentioned it, but it didn't occur to me until then.

I queued it in a music groupchat and karch was like "oh i see you've once again queued land my cunt" but he probably saw this thread?