Language Overflow

Anonymous

19:00

Sometimes I feel like using this quote as a comment: You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

Anonymous

But of course that would be snarky, so I don't. :-)

Damkerng T.

Now I wonder what that word is. :D

Anonymous

Vocalization!

Damkerng T.

Oh!

Anonymous

Yes, native English speakers clearly distinguish between 'l' and 'r'.The difference in vocalization between 'r' and 'l' is that when vocalizing an 'r' the tongue is in a relaxed position in the middle of the mouth, while in the vocalization of 'l' the tongue touches the roof of the mouth just behind the teeth. One can change an 'r' vocalization to an 'l' vocalization simply by moving the tongue upwards to touch the roof of the mouth. — Bob Jarvis 7 hours ago

Anonymous

19:05

It's really hard to fit a description of how /l/ and /r/ are physically articulated into a comment.

Damkerng T.

nods -- Considering that we have many /l/'s and many /r/'s, even!

Anonymous

Right!

CopperKettle

@snailboat o rly? (0:

Anonymous

There's a lot of variation in both sounds from region to region and from speaker to speaker, not to mention from phonetic context to phonetic context.

Anonymous

@CopperKettle I believe the appropriate answer is yarly.

CopperKettle

19:06

(0:

Damkerng T.

:D

It's unfortunate that this question is on ELL and not linguistics.SE, as you'd get a much better answer there. I am positive I can give a better answer than the 10(!) existing answers, but unfortunately the question is protected and I have no rep on this site, so I cannot. — BlueRaja - Danny Pflughoeft 2 hours ago

CopperKettle

I'll lurk a little; still translating..

Anonymous

I couldn't write an accurate description of /l/ and /r/ even if I had all the space in the world.

Damkerng T.

I wonder if Linguistics.SE is a solution.

Anonymous

Let alone in the space of a comment.

Anonymous

19:07

@DamkerngT. Dunno, but the answers on ELL are pretty ehh.

Anonymous

The top answer has a shocking number of upvotes.

Damkerng T.

Ah, right

Anonymous

I temporarily unprotected it, which might actually make things worse, but if BlueRaja thinks he can do better, why not? Most of the existing answers are misleading in one way or another.

Anonymous

Unfortunately the Hot Network Questions thingy has inflated their scores . . .

Anonymous

@CopperKettle Have fun translating! :-)

Damkerng T.

19:09

I think for native English speakers, a more challenging task in another language would be distinguishing between aspirated-unaspirated pairs.

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. That is in fact a more challenging task in an absolute sense.

Anonymous

If you spoke a language which had neither distinction, the /l/-/r/ distinction would be easier to learn.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

I've observed that many of the SE features don't function well on ELL because of the nature of the answers and the answerers and askers.

Damkerng T.

@inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M I think I agree.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

Why get to the more obscure feature of HNQ when accepting an answer doesn't mean anything on ELL?

On SO, you can paste the code in the answer and see if it worked.

Damkerng T.

19:12

@snailboat I mean the task "s in sauce" and "s in measure" is not a very good example.

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. Oh.

Anonymous

That's a terrible example.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

What can you do on ELL to see if an answer is what you should accept?

Anonymous

Actually, it's a great example!

Damkerng T.

Eh?

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

19:12

Many of the querents have no other way than looking at upvotes.

Anonymous

It's a great example of how native speakers who haven't studied language allow orthography to influence the way they think about sounds.

Damkerng T.

Ahh

Anonymous

Of course they can distinguish the sounds in question, but the fact that they think that can't is just fascinating! They've been confused by the writing system.

Anonymous

It's just like those folks I mentioned who think English has one "th" sound.

Damkerng T.

@inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M Precisely.

@snailboat Ah, you told me that once!

It was very weird! (I think it still is.)

Anonymous

19:14

The writing system has a profound effect on how we think about language, and that's a challenge we need to move beyond if we want to try to describe the sounds of a language.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

Indeed.

Damkerng T.

Imagining what if I didn't post my comment as a comment...

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

I thought the system of phonemes was less sophisticated in Persian, but I see it's just as weird.

Anonymous

Like, everyone knows a(n) has two allomorphs. They might not phrase it that way, of course, but they know that both a and an exist.

Anonymous

But most don't know about the (almost) parallel situation with the allomorphs of the, ði and ðə!

Damkerng T.

19:16

It might've bonsai'ed the question, and the question might've not gone network wide...

Anonymous

Why don't they? Because the writing system distinguishes a from an but not the from the!

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

@snailboat I think they know it by heart, but can't use it in words. Like, if you tell them that, they'll say "Oh man! You're right!"

Anonymous

@inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M I've surprised countless native speakers with the and the. :-)

Damkerng T.

@inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M Maybe or maybe not.

Anonymous

It's like the world's worst party trick.

Damkerng T.

19:18

I think it's like the glottal stop in Thai. We use it like almost all the time, but virtually nobody knows about it.

Anonymous

Yeah, we don't write down glottal stops in English, so most of us don't realize when we use them.

Damkerng T.

nods -- It's the same in English too.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

@DamkerngT. I face these things a lot when I'm studying chem. I look at what I'm reading and say hey, that's nothing new! I thought I'd learn something actually new. and Oh wow, I never put it that way. at the same time.

Anonymous

I mean, unless you count the dash in the middle of 'Uh-oh!' :-)

Damkerng T.

:24684967 You strengthened your message by posting it twice!

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

19:20

@DamkerngT. This reminds me I should add — and – to porkchat's list.

Anonymous

Someone upvote this :-)

Anonymous

Just take the S paragraph out!!!!!!!!!!!!! Pleeeeaaaaaaaasssssseeeee :-) — Araucaria 11 hours ago

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

@DamkerngT. Or rather, chat did. .__________.

Damkerng T.

@snailboat Makes sense!

Anonymous

We just need to get it to +3 so it'll show up on the unexpanded view.

Anonymous

19:21

Thanks :-)

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

Hmm, this is a better question: "Do native speakers realize the difference between /t/ and schwa?"

Anonymous

Most native speakers don't know what a schwa is.

Damkerng T.

Eh? If they know the schwa.

I think a confusion between a vowel and a consonant is much less likely.

Anonymous

Again, because we don't have a letter dedicated to the schwa in normal writing.

Anonymous

@inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M John Lawler prefers your original spelling of shwa if I recall correctly.

Anonymous

19:23

But most people do write schwa.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

@snailboat Eh? (Japanese)

I'm right even when I misspell. ᕙ(⇀‸↼‶)ᕗ

Damkerng T.

LOL

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

dilbert.com/strip/2015-09-16

Gee, I have no ways of making that image show up other than saving it.

Damkerng T.

English speakers often have a hard time distinguishing Japanese ぬ(nu) from にゅ(nyu), because they are allophones in English. Which is strange, since む(mu) and みゅ(myu) are distinct in English (compare: music vs. *moosic) — BlueRaja - Danny Pflughoeft yesterday

That's interesting!

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. Wow, we do? I had no idea!

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

19:26

Manure vs. manoore?

Damkerng T.

I can't recall anyone pronouncing it "nyu" in American English.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

Tenure vs. tenoore?

Damkerng T.

Oh, many "tenure"s sound a lot like "ten-year"!

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

Hmm.

Anonymous

@inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M My mother pronounced mature /məˈtʊər/ instead of /məˈtʃʊr/.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

19:28

O.O I don't pronounce mature either way.

Anonymous

How do you pronounce it?

Anonymous

/məˈtʃʊə(r)/?

Damkerng T.

"mah-sure", I suppose?

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. Ack!

Damkerng T.

I was just guessing! :P

Anonymous

19:29

That sounds like a drunken pronunciation :-)

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. Oh, I see! I think I suppose expresses evidential modality, which is to say, a conclusion based on evidence rather than just a guess.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

m-schwa/shwa-tʃ-something between ʊ and shwa/schwa-r

Damkerng T.

@snailboat Yes.

Oh, it's the vowel?

Wait, isn't that /məˈtʊər/?

Or perhaps, /məˈtʃʊr/.

Hmm... but that is just one of the /məˈtʊər/ and /məˈtʃʊr/.

Anonymous

/məˈtʃʊər/ and /məˈtʃʊr/ both sound normal to me, but /məˈtʊər/ sounds funny to me.

Anonymous

I say /məˈtʃʊr/ personally.

Anonymous

19:34

Of course, I talk a little funny :-)

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

/məˈtʊər/ reminds me of maneuver.

Anonymous

The official IPA handbook spells it schwa, by the way.

Damkerng T.

@snailboat I'm sure that I'm funnier: I pronounce it /məˈtʃʊr/, but /məˈtʊərɪti/.

(The second /t/ is a flap one.)

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

@snailboat Pfft, IUPAC thinks phenol isn't an alcohol.

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. Oh, I'm not used to saying things like the second one!

Damkerng T.

19:37

@snailboat Ah, maturity is a word I use often enough.

Anonymous

I use the word, I just don't say it like that :-)

Damkerng T.

Oh, I see. :D

Anonymous

10

A: What exactly is the "schwa" sound?

First, it's "shwa". It's a Hebrew word, not a German one, so there's no reason for SCH. Second, it's both a phone [ə] in IPA, and a phoneme /ə/ in English. As a phone, it's got the sound of the final vowel in German Danke, of the first vowel in French Le Mans, or the first vowel in English the m...

Anonymous

> First, it's "shwa". It's a Hebrew word, not a German one, so there's no reason for SCH.

Damkerng T.

Argh! I pronounced that "often" with a "t"!

Still haven't heard enough "often"s this week.

Anonymous

19:38

So there you go. A reason to spell it ‹shwa› instead of ‹schwa›!

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. As long as that /t/ doesn't spread to the other words in the poem, I think you'll be okay :-)

Anonymous

I personally never pronounce it with a /t/, though.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

That's a decent reason.

I always despise modifying originality for "comfiness" sake.

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. I don't actually know that that's true, but it's true that we don't just recognize sounds out of context, we recognize them in specific contexts where they're allowed.

Anonymous

And we tend to apply our L1 phonotactics to our L2.

Damkerng T.

19:41

nods

Anonymous

And when an L2 string is invalid in our L1, we tend to "repair" it so that it's valid.

Anonymous

I'll take an example I think is more likely.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

@snailboat And I believe learning L2 in a young age is beneficial exactly due to this reason; when we're young the phonotactics haven't "solidified" in our brain.

Damkerng T.

@inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M Quite likely.

Anonymous

キュート /kyuuto/ 'cute'

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

19:44

I think I can completely draw a line between the way I'm pronouncing stuff in English and the way I'm doing so in Persian, and the way I pronounce stuff in Turkish.

@snailboat kyuuto is the name for one of our kicks in kung fu. :)

Anonymous

English speakers can hear this pretty easily because we have something much like Japanese /kyu/, although it's common in English to write that glide as /j/ instead.

Anonymous

So we have English cute /kjut/.

Anonymous

But now let's take an example like 東京 /tookyoo/ 'Tōkyō'.

Anonymous

We don't have /kjo/ in English.

Anonymous

(And we don't have phonemic vowel length either.)

Anonymous

19:45

So we hear it as something like /tokio/.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

Hmm, the English me is finer with /kyo/ than the Turkish me. Weird.

Anonymous

And it makes sense, since /i/ and /y/ are phonetically very close to being the same thing.

Anonymous

Well, in transcriptions of English most people would write /i/ and /j/.

Anonymous

I should have just gone with phonetic transcriptions the whole time :-)

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

Yeah, it's hopeless. But American dictionary makers think Americans are too stupid to learn IPA. And I have to admit it seems they're correct. — John Lawler Mar 6 '13 at 14:35

AHAHHAHAHHHA

Anonymous

19:47

Phonemic transcriptions are language-specific, so that added an unnecessary complication . . .

Anonymous

But the key point here is, we have /k/ and /j/ and /u/ and /o/ in English.

Anonymous

But even so, we only have the combination /kju/, not the combination /kjo/.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

Yes.

Anonymous

So it's not just about which sounds we have, but which combinations of those sounds we have.

Damkerng T.

@inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M I kinda like the transcriptions in American dictionaries, though.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

19:49

Well I think I have seen 1k modifications to the standard IPA (if any such thing exists). Why can't they just stick to the main one?

Damkerng T.

@snailboat I wonder how English speakers think of /u/ and /o/ in Japanese (or other Far East languages).

Anonymous

And because we don't have that combination of sounds, we can't hear it properly.

Damkerng T.

Because the vowels are so straight.

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. You mean in that they're monophthongs?

Damkerng T.

Even the monophthongs in FE langs are more straight, I think.

Anonymous

19:50

English speakers mostly don't notice that they're monophthongs at first. We can usually hear them both okay because we have enough corresponding phonemic buckets to keep them distinct.

Damkerng T.

Oh, right! You have more buckets!

Anonymous

When English speakers start learning foreign languages, they tend to diphthongize all the vowels, especially long ones, and they apply English rules for selecting allophones―they flap /t/s for example―and of course they reduce vowels all over the place, and so on.

Anonymous

Basically, and this shouldn't come as a surprise, most of us start out pronouncing every other language like it's English.

Anonymous

There are some people who have a gift for picking up sounds and others who don't, and I don't mean to imply that it's the same for everyone. But everyone has to learn all that stuff bit by bit, no matter what speed they do it at.

Anonymous

It's hard for most people to figure out what's different unless you show them.

Damkerng T.

19:53

nods -- On the other hand, I think it's easier to go from more buckets to fewer than fewer to more.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

I wonder how English speakers studying Arabic will bear "madd".

Anonymous

Right

Anonymous

It's very hard to add new phonemic buckets. Starting with more is always good.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

In fact, it's non-existent in the modern Arabic, but it's necessary to recite Quran.

Anonymous

Japanese has only a few phonemes, and English speakers can map all of them to existing phonemic buckets.

Damkerng T.

19:55

How would you pronounce that "dd"?

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

"madd" is something vowels obtain in certain circumstances and become long. It's like turning long vowel A into a vowel that lasts 5 seconds.

@DamkerngT. With more pressure.

Damkerng T.

Interesting! I think it makes sense.

Oh, you meant "madd" as a thing, not a word.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

"بما شاء" -> "bimaa shaaaaaaaaa(shwa)"

Anonymous

I think learning an aspiration distinction is kind of hard for English speakers.

Anonymous

It's confusing in part because some of our "voiced" stops are actually phonetically voiceless unaspirated stops.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

19:59

stackoverflow.com/questions/7948170/… O.O

Damkerng T.

Wow at the question too!

Damkerng T.

20:11

"madd" reminds me of กาพย์เห่เรือ (a kind of poem; it's quite rare now)

กาพย์เห่เรือ

►

For example, at 0:12 there is only one word สัตว์ (read "sat", meaning animals), but it's quite long. (Not as long as 5 seconds, though!)

I think most cultures would have a similar recital as an art form.

Ah, we have something that long, too!

แล้วสอนว่าอย่าไว้ใจมนุษย์

►

0:22-0:40

Hello, @StoneyB!

StoneyB

Hi guys!

Damkerng T.

Ah, snailboat just left.

StoneyB

Alas :(

What exciting has happened in Chat today? ... I don't feel like scrolling through the whole two rooms.

Damkerng T.

in ELL's Cabin, 9 hours ago, by Mamta D

It was nice to be visiting you Can this qualify?

This one, perhaps.

Can we use to be visiting you to refer to something just happened in the past?

(as opposed to It was nice to meet/visit you)

And, of course, the /r/ vs. /l/ in English!

0

Q: The possibilitis of what someone meant

Imagine person A and person B are talking to each other.A tells B about what person C said to A. A uses the same sentences what C said but A could not understand what C meant exactly.Now B knows what C said to A. B have some idea or guess what C meant but B is not sure either.So B makes some gue...

sentence-construction

StoneyB

Heavily phonetic, then, right down your alley. And multitensual analysis, which is getting onerous (:

Damkerng T.

20:25

I ran out of my breath after the first two sentences!

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

@DamkerngT. The punctuation is on my nerves, even in the onebox here.

Damkerng T.

@StoneyB nods -- The question was about can (or how well can) native speakers hear the difference. So I decided to step aside.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

What's with the "hello .how are you ?" type punctuation Indian posts choose to have?

Damkerng T.

@inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M It looks a little random as it is. Some have spaces, some don't.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

@DamkerngT. Note that the Turkish have an inherent problem with /r/.

Damkerng T.

20:28

Oh? Because there is only /l/ in Turkish?

StoneyB

@inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M Perhaps Devanagri writing follows different conventions.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

@DamkerngT. There is no /r/ in Maraghei accent.

StoneyB

Wikipedia says "The end of a sentence or half-verse may be marked with a dot known as a pūrṇa virām or a vertical line danda: ।. The end of a full verse may be marked with two vertical lines: ॥. A comma, or alpa virām, is used to denote a natural pause in speech", but it says nothng about spaces.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

But Tabrizians tend to pronounce /r/ in words.

@StoneyB Or, it could be that they just don't care about the pronunciation.

I somehow also find it funny that they tend to use "sir".

Damkerng T.

Better not to stereotyping things.

StoneyB

20:32

@inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M They may observe more formality in their own languages; or it may be a hangover from 19th century British.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

Hmm, definitely it's not formality:

StoneyB

In speech I myself use "sir" much more often than most people today, because I'm from the South and because I'm from an older generation.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

> hi guys i have a programming problme haha wait i misspelled that so good sir how can i part i mean parse lol rofl html with regex the browser doesnt seem to work sir

@StoneyB But you, sir, are not equal to those homework dumper, sir sir. :)

Hehe I got reminded of my Persian Literature teacher again. @Stoney @TCh you two remind me of him. :)

StoneyB

I had in mind more formality in addressing strangers.

I don't look like any of those guys.

The caption reads: "Detail from "Ferdowsi encounters the court poets of Ghazna," from the Shahnameh of Shah Tahmasp, ca. 1532, attributed to Aqa Mirak (Aga Khan Trust for Culture)."

@LGL, it appears to be Persian -- @inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M will know better than I whether the nation was called Iran at that time.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

20:48

@StoneyB Was called by who? I think Europeans never accepted us as Iranians till the 19th century.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

22:25

@Dam please-move-messages-to-the-cabin

2 hours ago, by LGL

is this right way to say this?

Starting from there. ^

Damkerng T.

22:45

→ 76 messages moved to ELL's Cabin

Done!

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