Zompist Bboard Again

Posted: **Fri Nov 15, 2019 3:26 am**

Apparently there’s a language called Feʼfeʼ, otherwise known as Feʼefeʼe. This isn’t quite as impressive as e.g. Kwakwa̱ka̱ʼwakw, but I found it pretty amusing nonetheless.

Posted: **Fri Nov 15, 2019 5:40 am**

It's actually a boring reduplication of "fe'e".

On the other hand, it's quite amusing how anglophone calls a national language of Indonesia. Since the full name is "Bahasa Indonesia" (Indonesian language), they just shorten it to... "Bahasa", which just means language. Do you speak Language, anyway?

Posted: **Fri Nov 15, 2019 5:59 am**

Xwtek wrote: ↑Fri Nov 15, 2019 5:40 am It's actually a boring reduplication of "fe'e".

On the other hand, it's quite amusing how anglophone calls a national language of Indonesia. Since the full name is "Bahasa Indonesia" (Indonesian language), they just shorten it to... "Bahasa", which just means language. Do you speak Language, anyway?

I have never heard anyone refer to Bahasa Indonesia as ‘Bahasa’. In Australia, where I live, it is universally called ‘Indonesian’.

Posted: **Fri Nov 15, 2019 7:46 am**

I’ve definitely come across “Bahasa” before. In fact, it’s common enough in the USA (or was at one time) that I saw it in a book of errors to avoid once.

Posted: **Fri Nov 15, 2019 3:17 pm**

bradrn wrote: ↑Fri Nov 15, 2019 5:59 amI have never heard anyone refer to Bahasa Indonesia as ‘Bahasa’. In Australia, where I live, it is universally called ‘Indonesian’.

I once saw a clip of Barack Obama (who you'd expect to know better!) calling it just "Bahasa" like that.

Posted: **Fri Nov 15, 2019 3:46 pm**

Linguoboy wrote: ↑Fri Nov 15, 2019 7:46 am I’ve definitely come across “Bahasa” before. In fact, it’s common enough in the USA (or was at one time) that I saw it in a book of errors to avoid once.

Ser wrote: ↑Fri Nov 15, 2019 3:17 pm I once saw a clip of Barack Obama (who you'd expect to know better!) calling it just "Bahasa" like that.

I’m always impressed by English speakers’ talent for mangling foreign words. This only proves to me that no matter how low I set my expectations, people will always find a way to do worse…

(As for the fact that I’ve never heard anyone say this in real life, this may be because I haven’t yet heard any spoken conversation which did need to refer to Bahasa Indonesia, and printed sources are usually careful enough to avoid this error.)

Posted: **Sun Nov 17, 2019 6:51 am**

bradrn wrote: ↑Fri Nov 15, 2019 3:46 pm I’m always impressed by English speakers’ talent for mangling foreign words.

How are English speakers particularly bad at this? Have you heard the insane things that come out of some Chinese people's mouths when speaking "english"?

Posted: **Sun Nov 17, 2019 8:26 am**

OK everyone, let's calm down about the whole Bahasa thing. First, using "Bahasa" as short hand for "Bahasa Indonesia" or "Bahasa Melayu" is not recent, and not limited to English. It's actually very common for expats living in Indonesia to call it simply Bahasa. That's not as confusing as it sounds, since language names in their native environment are often underspecified like that (i.e. "kokugo" in Japan and "kukeo" in Korea are semantically identical names for completely different languages but it's perfectly fine). You could say that foreigners visiting a country have no right to treat their neologisms as legitimate words, but no one would say that if the shoe were on the other foot. Latinos in the US have all kinds of names for Vicks Vaporub (because it's apparently a mouthful when you're L1 is Spanish), but no one is going to tell them they're idiots for not saying it the way God intended. Bahasa Indonesia > Bahasa is a fascinating cross-linguistic phenomenon, and this board of all places should be able to cast a descriptivist eye on it, rather than complain about The Rectification of Names.

Posted: **Sun Nov 17, 2019 12:37 pm**

Moose-tache wrote: ↑Sun Nov 17, 2019 8:26 amLatinos in the US have all kinds of names for Vicks Vaporub (because it's apparently a mouthful when you're L1 is Spanish), but no one is going to tell them they're idiots for not saying it the way God intended. Bahasa Indonesia > Bahasa is a fascinating cross-linguistic phenomenon, and this board of all places should be able to cast a descriptivist eye on it, rather than complain about The Rectification of Names.

I think that what happens is that Vicks Vaporub is well-known in Latin America, so it has a standard pronunciation in Spanish: "vic vaporú(b)" [ˈbiɣ βapoˈɾu(β)], a pronunciation that doesn't come from the original being a mouthful, but rather from simply reading the product's name as if it were Spanish. You do hear this on TV advertisements there. Then in the US, this pronunciation gets adapted to the standard English one to different extents. If the product didn't have a standard pronunciation in Spanish, I'm sure US latinos would generally say something very close to English.

Posted: **Thu Nov 21, 2019 9:50 am**

Moose-tache wrote: ↑Sun Nov 17, 2019 8:26 am since language names in their native environment are often underspecified like that

Except that it's not. Indonesia is an area where bilingualism is widespread. Indonesian is actually a minority for L1 speakers (Most Indonesian speakers are L2, though). Javanese has the most L1 speaker in Indonesia (although probably not the majority). And is speech, no, the name is mostly pronounced in full in Indonesian. It's not shortened. And probably the word "bahasa" may be dropped instead. Or instead, if it refers to a school course, it's shortened to BI.

Posted: **Thu Nov 21, 2019 9:59 am**

Ser wrote: ↑Sun Nov 17, 2019 12:37 pm
Moose-tache wrote: ↑Sun Nov 17, 2019 8:26 amLatinos in the US have all kinds of names for Vicks Vaporub (because it's apparently a mouthful when you're L1 is Spanish), but no one is going to tell them they're idiots for not saying it the way God intended. Bahasa Indonesia > Bahasa is a fascinating cross-linguistic phenomenon, and this board of all places should be able to cast a descriptivist eye on it, rather than complain about The Rectification of Names.
I think that what happens is that Vicks Vaporub is well-known in Latin America, so it has a standard pronunciation in Spanish: "vic vaporú(b)" [ˈbiɣ βapoˈɾu(β)], a pronunciation that doesn't come from the original being a mouthful, but rather from simply reading the product's name as if it were Spanish. You do hear this on TV advertisements there. Then in the US, this pronunciation gets adapted to the standard English one to different extents. If the product didn't have a standard pronunciation in Spanish, I'm sure US latinos would generally say something very close to English.

And it's France, it's [viks vapoʀyb]. (Or was. I think it's not used that much anymore) and as a kid, I used to think it was Vicks Vaporhume [viks vapoʀym] ("Vicks Vapocold").

Posted: **Thu Nov 21, 2019 10:33 am**

Ars Lande wrote: ↑Thu Nov 21, 2019 9:59 amAnd it's France, it's [viks vapoʀyb]. (Or was. I think it's not used that much anymore) and as a kid, I used to think it was Vicks Vaporhume [viks vapoʀym] ("Vicks Vapocold").

It's not used much in North America anymore either, to the point I've even seen some (young) latinos on YouTube making fun of it as a weird thing that mostly just latinos who are middle-aged or older like in the US.

Posted: **Wed Jan 15, 2020 4:43 pm**

Tableland Lamalama

Posted: **Thu Jan 16, 2020 2:57 am**

Xwtek wrote: ↑Sat Jun 15, 2019 9:59 am I think the conlanger of this world is a smartass. Why do you have two language family with similar names? Austronesian vs Austroasiatic. Even worse that there is Palauan (an Austronesian language) and Palaungic languages (an Austroasiatic subfamily)

Posted: **Thu Jan 16, 2020 4:45 am**

Xwtek wrote: ↑Thu Jan 16, 2020 2:57 am I think the conlanger of this world is a smartass. Why do you have two language family with similar names? Austronesian vs Austroasiatic. Even worse that there is Palauan (an Austronesian language) and Palaungic languages (an Austroasiatic subfamily)

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.

On the other hand, I think that ‘Austronesian’ sounds quite lovely as a name, but I quite dislike the sound of ‘Austroasiatic’. So why not find a replacement for that instead? I suggest either South Asiatic (a literal translation of austro-asiatic), or the geographically-motivated Munda-Vietic or Mekongic.

As for Palauan/Palaungic, I don’t think there’s any good solution for that, mainly because the main Palaungic language is called Palaung. So it won’t be possible to remove the confusion unless we’re allowed to rename languages — and I’m pretty sure we can’t do that. So Palauan and Palaungic they will have to remain — for now at least.

Posted: **Fri Jan 17, 2020 11:53 am**

Paha, which was posted about in the other thread.

It means bad or evil in Finnish.

Posted: **Sat Jan 18, 2020 3:19 am**

Qwynegold wrote: ↑Fri Jan 17, 2020 11:53 am Paha, which was posted about in the other thread. It means bad or evil in Finnish.

It means hip in my own language (Indonesian).

Posted: **Sat Jan 18, 2020 5:47 am**

Xwtek wrote: ↑Sat Jan 18, 2020 3:19 am
Qwynegold wrote: ↑Fri Jan 17, 2020 11:53 am Paha, which was posted about in the other thread. It means bad or evil in Finnish.
It means hip in my own language (Indonesian).

Haha, that could be semantic drift (like with the word "wicked" in English).

Posted: **Wed Jan 29, 2020 7:20 pm**

There are no less than four languages called ‘Tonga’, so you would be forgiven for assuming that at least one of them is spoken on the island of Tonga. Alas, this is not so: three of them are Bantu languages, and the fourth is spoken in Thailand. Out of those, the closest language to the island of Tonga is 10,000km away!

Posted: **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!

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Amusing Language Names

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