Today, we use the term transit to describe when a celestial body passes in front of another. Does any writer from the 15th century use this term to describe when a planet enters a constellation?

I don't know any agglutinative languages myself, but I was thinking that in theory one could apply focus to a specific morpheme within a word to call attention to the meaning that the morpheme adds to the word. I'm struggling to find any information on this from searching the internet, as I usually get examples of focusing a whole word.

As a contrived example, I was thinking if a language had an evidentiality affix as part of its verbal morphology, one might be able to focus that affix as a response to the question "how do you know this?".

I'm thinking that prosodic focus is probably possible, but I'm wondering if any languages exhibit other strategies as well, like fronting, that usually would apply to full words.

what are the prosodic differences between American English and British English, what caused this difference historically. and how did this difference imposed a challenge for L2 learners of the English language?

I am a daughter of immigrants. I was born and I did grow up in the United States but my parents are from Colombia. My spanish was always stronger than my english but from second grade until eighth grade I could speak and comprehend english okay. I only used english at school so during the lockdown for COVID-19 I stopped using english. Because I did not interact with any english, I forgot most english words, I forgot how to form sentences in english and I had a hard time understanding and speaking english. It took me two months to relearn english.

I know my experience is uncommon because spanish was and is my primary language and I isolated myself from english. (I did not even use the internet in english until two years ago.) ¿But did many children of immigrants worsen in the language of their community during the lockdown for COVID-19?

In the phonology of Marathi, there are two series of fricatives/affricates: an alveolar series:

[s], [t͡s], [d͡z~z], [d͡zʰ~zʰ],

and a postalveolar series:

[ʃ], [t͡ʃ], [d͡ʒ], [d͡ʒʰ].

In Prakrit-derived vocabulary (as opposed to loanwords from Sanskrit, Persian, English, etc), these follow a complimentary distribution, where the postalveolar series occurs before front vowels (/i/ and/e/) whereas the alveolar series occurs elsewhere (before /o/, /u/, /a/, /ə/, word finally). This is most clearly seen when comparing masculine and feminine forms of words, eg "how" (/kəsa/ vs /kəʃi/), "your" (/t̪uzʰa/ vs /t̪ud͡ʒʰi/), etc. On the other hand loanwords don't conform to these restrictions, phonemicising this alveolar vs postalveolar distinction, and also introducing a 9th such phoneme, /tʃʰ/.

Now my question is, given all of this, you'd expect the word for four, "चार", to be pronounced /t͡sar/. Yet, like Hindi (which like most IA languages has not undergone this splitting of alveolar and postalveolar), it's pronounced /t͡ʃar/, which is irregular for a "native" Prakrit-descended word. What's the explanation for this?

Edit: technically the the postalveolar series can exist elsewhere, but it absorbs a /j/ in doing so, eg the common grammatical suffix -च्या /t͡sja/ [t͡ʃa].

I am a singer and voice teacher, and so I often utilize different vowels to teach vocal technique. For example, vowel modification is used to adjust the pronouncation of a word to make it easier to sing, such as replacing [a] with [ɑ]. If a student found it easier/more comfortable to sing on an [o] and struggled with [ɛ], I might have them sing [ø] and slowly sing [o.ø.ɛ] back and forth to match placement.

I am aware of the lip position, tongue position, and placement of vowels in French and German. I am not familiar with many of the impure vowels in English and other languages. I am looking for examples, charts, and explanations for vowel sounds in Germanic and Romantic languages.

This video has a great explanation of the type of in-depth but accessible instructions to produce this vowel sound.

Here are some random examples of vowel charts and pronunciation explanations I have compiled. Ideally, I would like to find resources that draw a path between all the possible vowels to demonstrate how to smoothly transition between them all. This would be supremely helpful for my students with more complex issues, but alas, the resource doesn’t appear to exist in vocal technique literature.

I appreciate all of your forthcoming help and insight :)

Sorry for the oddly worded title but not sure how to make it concise. What I was trying to say was that I've seen some examples recently of American English speakers (in both music and in general speech) say [r] in lieu of a flap consonant ([ɾ]) for /t/ and /d/, such as in words like better, whatever, little, etc.

What I've noticed is multiple examples of people using the trilled [r] in words where there are no R's.

• First instance I think I noticed this in is where I live there are lots of Indian immigrants (idk from what ethnicities but I think North India based on how they look) and when talked to some of them I noticed in their speech they would often roll their r's in words there are no R's
• Second instance I came across was in music, with Mexican-American rapper That Mexican OT where he often will use the [r] trill but not in words where there are actually r's. He does it a lot in his music from what I've heard but here is an example of him saying it often in the chorus of the song where I believe he's saying "we gon' put lil' buddy down' where he says the d's in buddy with an [r].
• Third and last music example is Doechii, a Black American rapper from Florida also doing it in one of her songs Boom Bap (here) where for the word "what" she's saying the d with an [r] multiple times.
• Fourth and last example which is non-music is this interview (?) of this woman who is basically rolling every flap /t/ or /d/, such as in words dad, didn't, putting, etc.

Since this seems like it has many dialectal origins within American English I thought I'd ask the question here as to why it happens not just accidentally but seemingly intentionally, repeatedly, and as a feature of how some people speak and how it came out?

Or is there?

Looking at Xhosa consonants, they distinguish between "voiceless g" and "k", and "voiceless d" and "t".

On the k IPA page it has "voiced k" as k̬, and on the g page we have "voiceless g" as ɡ̥. We also contrast d̥ with t, etc..

What is the difference between a voiceless voiced consonant, and its corresponding voiceless consonant? Aren't they the same?

If they are not the same, mind sharing audio which clearly distinguishes between them? Or explaining how they are different in detail?

My primary interest in linguistics has largely been focused on specific languages, as opposed to general fields (eg syntax, phonology, etc). Not that I don’t have interest in general fields, but different fields of those specific languages are my primary interest.

I’m getting my MA and have been looking into PhD programs. One of them is half perfect for me as it has a strong program for the specific languages I’m interested in, but the program is also half about language documentation. That hasn’t really been one of my interests.

My MA program has a language documentation linguistic fieldwork course which I’m not taking because I’d prefer not to be, for lack of a better term, stuck with working intensively on a language I either have no interest in, or possibly am disinterested in. I’ve always related language to music, so like there are particular genres and bands/artists I like, there are some genres and bands/artists I don’t like. So I wouldn’t want to be forced to spend a semester researching and studying a genre or band/artist I don’t like, or possibly actively dislike. I’m a (very passive) heritage speaker of Spanish, but I stopped actively using it when I was about 7 because I didn’t like Spanish and thought it was boring—I then started learning some basic Egyptian because I had an interest in the language.

Needless to say that PhD program probably isn’t right for me, but it got me wondering as how those who do work on more obscure languages got into those specific languages.

Everyone in my MA language documentation linguistic fieldwork course is working on the same language, but if like there were a list of 20 obscure languages to choose from and each person could choose from that list, then looking at those languages I could imagine there would be one/some I’m interested in. If the aforementioned PhD program similarly offered options of the un(der)documented languages I would need to work on, or essentially made it free choice provided the language hasn’t been worked on too much, then it could largely be up to me to decide on which language.

How do/did/would you choose from the thousands of potential languages for language documentation purposes? Is it more from a general interest in language documentation itself and the specific language doesn’t matter to you? Maybe the language(s) has some feature you’re interested in and that’s what got you into that specific language(s)? Maybe you’re working on a well-documented language and the un(der)documented one has some connection to that one?

My main languages of interest are well known, so when I see people who are working on really obscure ones, it makes me curious how they got into working on that specific language.

Thank you.

Hello. I have been seriously condidering pursuing linguistics for a long time now. I've been doing some of my own research but I also wanted to ask around: What are some of the available research oriented careers within the field that are available outside of a university setting?

I am specifically interested in more theoretical linguistics. I've been especially interested in cognitive linguistics lately and most enjoy and anything concerning syntax, morphology, and semmantics. I also have had interest in conversation analysis a while now.

I am currently trying to consider all of my possibilities here, especially as I pursue linguistics academincally, and would greatly appreciate any answers.

I have captured 25 languages so far:

1. english (vowels and base reference point)
2. mandarin (tones)
3. hindi (retroflex consonants, long vowels, aspiration)
4. russian (palatalization)
5. polish
6. vietnamese (tones)
7. icelandic (voiceless consonants)
8. swedish (vowels)
9. finnish (gemination and long vowels)
10. hebrew (h, glottal stop)
11. arabic (pharyngealization, and h's)
12. japanese
13. french (nasals)
14. german (vowels)
15. georgian (ejectives)
16. danish (obscure vowels)
17. navajo (voiceless alveolar lateral fricative and nasals)
18. punjabi
19. irish (velarization)
20. korean (stops, tense)
21. amharic (ejectives and labialization)
22. spanish (rolled r, soft v)
23. xhosa (clicks)
24. nuxalk (unusual consonant clusters)
25. xoo (handles all clicks)

Looking to cap it at about 32 languages. What languages features am I missing from this list?

One sound I am having a hard time finding is ɮ. Should I do more to cover more tone cases as well?

Can I remove any duplicates or simplify?

I have read that Russian somewhat lacks regional variation. Russian from Minsk to Almaty to Khabarovsk is fairly standard and does not diverge greatly. I know there are some notable exceptions, in Southern Russia (like Rostov) and in Ukraine, second-language speakers in the former USSR (with stereotypical accents like that of the Tajik migrant worker or Jewish Odessan), and in some of Russia's ethnic republics. I have also noted this from trying to find sources on regional variations and accents of Russian and finding little, though I know in general that is hard, especially in English and/or in countries that try to push a central language over regional ones.

But how true is this? Do native Russian speakers in Minsk, Omsk, Yekaterinburg, Almaty etc. really sound mostly the same? I have also read this purported effect being a result of Stalin's Russification policies, with standard Russian and only standard Russian being taught across the USSR.

Thanks for your help.

Hello everyone, to get to the point my professor wants us to pick different topics about phonetics for our upcoming presentation. The thing is, we have to bring a topic that is not related to what we studied, so for example someone chose forensic linguistics, some people chose made up languages such as the sims, but then there is me, see Im not that interested in phonetics and phonology so I still can’t find an interesting topic, originally I wanted to talk about the zodiac killer since he made symbols and codes, but then Idk I felt there would be something wrong, please if anyone has any idea for a good topic that would help so much.

It's widely acceptable in speech and increasingly acceptable in formal writing to use the objective case after than or as: She's better at it than me [traditionally: I]; no one's as good as her [traditionally: she]. Does this go back to Old English and its roots, or did it coincide with the erosion of the case system? Bonus question: has this development taken place in other Germanic languages, or is it unique to English's case-lite grammar?

And if they are, then, are Czech and Ukrainian also mutually intelligible?

For ages, I've thought of the statement in the title as a fact, alongside the companion statement that (some?) other animals which can't speak also can't choke on their food. I was reminded of it just now, and I tried to google it to try and verify it, but every single thing I searched for just returned a bunch of results for dysphagia, and I couldn't get it to give me anything relevant.

For context: I'm going to be the first person EVER in my family's history to enroll in college. Everyone else in my family are blue collar workers that know nothing about college. I'm in the dark on a lot of things, and I don't have access to my school consuler anymore.

I've been considering getting into Linguistics, but my state program will only pay for a bachelor's, then I'm on my own. So can you get a 4 year degree in linguistics, or is it a PHD thing? I've heard linguists say things like "I have a PHD in linguistics", so I assume that you have to go for your PHD to be a linguists.

I apologize if this question is silly. I genuinely have no idea what I'm doing when it comes to college. I've applied for 6 of them, but all as an "undecided, so far

I am very new to the field. I am native Turkish speaker living in Romania, speaking Romanian, formerly lived in Republic of Moldova and various Balkan countries, although not proficient Ia m familiar with east and south Slavic languages. Intermediate level German speaker and took short courses (1 year and 1 term respectively ) for Spanish and French.

I don’t know where to start and currently just reading whatever I find on linguistics and relevant fields. Do you advice any must-read books, or any specific paths that I might pursue?

(Note that although not properly thought. since Turkish language has many words common with Persian and Arabic I am familiar with them, especially the religious terminology)

I want to go to graduate school for a masters in linguistics and possibly a Ph.D. I am currently studying at the undergraduate level and my school does not offer a linguistics major. What is a good undergraduate major/degree if I want to go to grad school for linguistics?

(No idea if I flared it right)

I was looking at the Wikipedia list of words that have been borrowed into English from other languages, and was wondering if there was somewhere I could find comparisons btwn UK and US borrowed words? Besides the obvious “US more Spanish, UK more French”

For example US English has a lot of Yiddish and Slavic terms thanks to Jewish migration from Slavic countries in the past century, but I assume the UK uses at least the ones that have been made more mainstream like “glitch”.

I tried to look it up but ig I couldn’t figure out how to articulate it well enough to a search engine :(

I speak Spanish and just realized that despite the crazy amount of dialectical variation, all the dialects are very consistent on stress. I know English dialects can vary (words like garage, for example), but you don't see that in Spanish. Do other romance languages vary when it comes to the stress placement of certain words?

I know French has a fixed stress pattern, but this is for the other ones whose stress is not assigned as strictly.

I've been taught that the theory of proto-Altaic has been rejected by most linguists. I blindly accepted that as truth. But when I noticed similarities between words in Turkic and Mongolic languages, it made me realize: I don't even know the reasons behind Altaic being rejected. So WHY was Altaic rejected as a language family?

You hear it in words like “cigar” and “guitar”. Instead of “tar” being the stressed syllable, people will stress “ci” and “gui”. Has this effect been observed/named?

I am no trained linguist and have no data to back up what I am saying, this is just something I noticed, so please correct me if my assumptions (or anything else) is wrong.

From the perspective of a native English speakers, certain languages are commonly considered "sing-songy" to our ears: most notably Chinese, Italian and Swedish. Other languages, like Japanese or French, on the other hand, are often considered "flat" or in general more similar to English in terms of prosody.

My question is, why do we consider certain languages sing-songy and others not? What makes a language "sing-songy" in the first place?

I thought that maybe it was something related to tonality: Chinese is tonal and Swedish has a pitch accent. But then we consider Italian sing-songy, a language that has a stress similar to that of English, while we don't do the same for Japanese, a notoriously pitch-accented language. So what it is?

I also have no idea of other languages perspective: is English considered sing-songy by Chinese or Italian speakers, because our prosody is different?

Is the use of the retroflex lateral approximant ळ /ɭ/ in certain Indo-Aryan languages (Marathi, Punjabi, Gujarati, Odia, Rajasthani, and not standard Hindi-Urdu or Bengali):

(1) inherited from Vedic Sanskrit/Old Indo-Aryan; (2) influenced by contact with Dravidian languages; and/or (3) a native internal development?

2 makes sense for Marathi and Odia, but doesn't explain the other languages unless it's based on a theory that Dravidian languages were once more widespread. 1 is confusing because ळ often appears in words that use a regular lateral approximant ल in Classical Sanskrit (but maybe it was different in Vedic?).

In Japanese I know that the ん sound is influenced by what comes after and if at the end of the world, it's pronounced differently (for example, in the word せんぱい, n is pronounced as m) but what is the rule for words that end with n but another word comes after it, like かんたんです (=it's easy)?

Hi everyone. It turns out (I found this out a couple of years ago that I love language, words, and etymology, so I'm always trying to read more. I can't believe it took me all that time to figure out there was this subreddit I could join and follow!

This question came up for me today as I was checking on something else I found interesting. I'm not sure if this applies here or if I should post it under r/languages, but that sub doesn't seem like the place for this question, as much as this one does.

I saw in the list of languages that there were Romanian and Romani. I asked my Romanian friend but all she said was, "Romanians are people coming from Romania while Romans were those from Rome..." I know what that means intellectually, but not how it explains the answer.

Does anyone here know the historical development of those two languages? I understand Romanian is a romantic language too, does that mean Romani is?

Any help would be appreciated. :-)

Some gem names that have -ine at the end of their name are actually pronounced -een like Tourmaline and Citrine, or -un like Aventurine. I just never understand why?

When people are talking the grouping of Vietnamese and Khmer (Cambodian) language or the Austroasiatic language, Khmer and some extent Mon are usually regarded as conservative, archaic Austroasiatic languages that have preserved original Austro-asiatic "characteristics", and the Vietic subgroup is viewed as the opposite, having heavily influenced by Chinese to the point that no longer resembles Austroasiatic typology.

However, it is not really the reality. There is Vietic language, Ruc, has closer origins, shares both typological, grammatically, and lexical with Vietnamese. It though retains inflectional case-marking on pronouns while Mon and Khmer don't have this feature anymore. Highly synthetic languages in Far East like Korean and Japanese don't even have case-marking. So if you counted Ruc as less the innovative state of Vietnamese, it turned out that proto-Vietic wasn't less "Austroasiatic" than Khmer and Mon as oftenly described. It seems that widespread, national languages in Mainland South East Asia tend to become analytic and isolating than small languages.

What could case-marking in Ruc tell something about the original morphological syntax of Vietnamese and mainland Austro-asiatic languages in general? Were Austroasiatic original synthetic but became analytical over time due to sprachbund, or were they already started as analytical isolating and monosyllabic types, with Ruc, Munda, Khasi, Nicobarese and others being innovative?