I want to know more about set theory, and its relation to linguistics.

I reside in Turkey and am planning on studying linguistics at Boğaziçi University, for it being the only university in Turkey with a decent linguistics programme. Linguistics as a science is not taken very seriously in my country from what I have seen, sadly. I would like to apply for somewhere abroad for my hypothetical matser's degree. Or even as a normal university student, if that is possible. Could any of you knowledgable on the topic help an aspiring linguist out? Thanks in advance.

Hello everyone, I would like to submit for your expertise a hypothesis regarding a possible etymological connection between two similar terms:

The term “mappa” appears in two distinct cultural contexts:

In Latin, it refers to a napkin or handkerchief in Ancient Rome. It is used notably as a signal in circus games. It evolved in medieval Latin into mappale, mappula, and mappulus. It eventually gave birth to the term “mappemonde” (mappa mundi).

In Hebrew, מַפָּה (mappa) and מַפִּית (mapit) refer to a napkin or tablecloth. There is a specific use in religious context to cover bread during Shabbat. The specific term “mappa” is used for the cloth band wrapping the Torah.

So, here are my questions:

1.	Can we establish a direct connection between these two terms?
2.	Is this a borrowing from Latin to Hebrew or vice versa?
3.	Are there historical attestations allowing us to date the first appearance of these terms in each language?
4.	Are there intermediate languages that could have served as a bridge between these two linguistic traditions?

I would be particularly interested in your thoughts on the semantic convergence of these terms, both linked to the idea of “covering cloth,” and their respective evolution in distinct cultural and religious contexts.

e.g., φέρω (Ancient) -> φέρνω (modern), παίρω (Ancient) -> παίρνω (Byzantine, modern)

I'm aware of the nasal infixes in Proto Indo European, but AFAIK that was no longer productive by the Classical period.

I’m pretty new to the field and would love to hear more opinions on this. I always thought Chomsky was a major figure on this but it seems like Hinton and Hassabis(later on) both disagree with it.

Short video to the point of this post: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=urBFz6-gHGY

Full talk: https://youtu.be/Gg-w_n9NJIE

I’d love to get both an ML, CogSci, linguistics perspective on this and more sources that supports/rejects this view.

Think Arabic 'ayn, or the Swedish sj-sound. Arguably the dental fricatives in English too (considering how rare the sounds themselves are, and how popular the usage of thorn/eth is in linguistics subreddits). Any other cool examples?

Basically what steps would be necessary to verify such information?

In the imaginary scenario we have a couple books in the said language and they have similar words that may or may not be cognates with slavic languages

Now, I know there's a debate where to draw a line between a language and a dialect, I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about one group of people that talk differently depending who they're talking to.

For example, the Javanese (not Japanese,) language from Indonesian Archipelago uses different pronouns, interrogative, verbs, and other words (but not all) for the same meaning depending if you're talking to/about an older people (krama, lit. polite) or younger people (ngoko, I don't know the etymology).

I'm not talking about "cow" and "beef" where the first mean an animal where the later is a food, or "goose" and "geese" where the first is singular and the later is plural. It's also very common, especially among younger generation, to only speak ngoko fluently and not krama.

Here, I give some example:

Pronouns:

Interrogative:

Verbs and other words:

Ngoko and krama also use different affixes, but I'm not sure if I can make a table to find english equivalent of each words. A word that use prefix in ngoko can use suffix in krama to make the same meaning. So, is javanese a language or two different language (ngoko and krama)?

Based on the information in the academic articles about the Yokuts languages and Proto-Yokuts, what would be the most plausible reconstruction of the phonology, phonotactics, morphology, syntax, and grammar of Proto-Yokuts?

I first started thinking about this when I was watching a video of a linguist describing sounds in different accents, and she was able to pronounce words in languages she didn't speak with remarkable accuracy. I believe she was following the IPA? I know the IPA isn't the best tool for learning TL pronunciation, but I started wondering whether it would be possible to phonetically "read" a set text in a language one doesn't speak, and isn't trying to learn, in order to memorize it for recitation. For example, if you have to deliver a pitch or a speech, or need to narrate a video. Obviously, I don't think you could get close to native-level pronunciation, but could you at least be comprehensible? Does anyone have experience with this? Is it extremely challenging to "read" a language in IPA/etc. that you don't speak? I assume with enough practice you can memorize anything, but how much practice is needed if you have the aid of transliteration/phonetic notation?

the two spectrograms information are different, why don't they combine to distinguish clearly information of both?

As a speaker of Japanese and Korean, I realized that the two languages use a "-ne" particle with a similar function and pronunciation, in a simple summary: to soften the tone, make the sentence sound friendlier, or add a sense of mild emphasis or casual reflection...

Example in Korean: 맛있네. (This is delicious, isn’t it?)

Example in Japanese: 美味しいね。 (This is delicious, isn’t it?)

After some researches I couldn't find anything answering my question. However, I discovered that the Vietnamese language also has a particle with similar function and pronunciation "-nhỉ".

Example in Vietnamese: Cái này ngon nhỉ. (This is delicious, isn’t it?)

Are there any known shared origin between these, or is it likely to be a coincidence?

Hello I want to ask this question because I’m very curious about this topic and I know they are not related at all but I want to know if Similar words between Japanese and Arabic are just a coincidence no hate I’m just curious 😁

(Arabic) Anta (You) (Japanese) Anata (You)

Japanese and Arabic anta/anata are both informal and impolite to say to Elderly or people you don’t know

(Arabic) Tair (Bird) (Japanese) tori (Bird)

(Arabic) Samaka (Fish) (Japanese) sakana (Fish)

(Arabic) Mina (Harbor) (Japanese) minato (Harbor)

Idk if there is more but I can’t find anything else but this is unrelated but the dashes used in Japanese and Arabic is also similar

(Arabic) Tanween (ً ) (Japanese) tenten ( ﾞ )

I am starting to handcode similarity weights to IPA sounds, like this:

const RHYME_SIMILARITIES = {
  m: {
    m: 1,
    n: 0.9,
    g: 0.1,
    ...
  }
  n: {
    ...
  },
  ...
}

Has anything like this been done before so I don't need to do a cartesian-product comparision of thousands of consonants and vowels, to create such a weighted similarity mapping?

Is there a way to not have to do this by hand? Is there a free database with similar such weights or anything, or how should I go about implementing the weights for these sound pairs like this?

I am going to include comparison to aspirated/unaspirated consonants (like in Hindi), voiced/voiceless consonants (like in Icelandic), clicks, tones, etc.. So something that takes into account those as well would be greatly helfpul, but whatever partial implementations that exist of something like this would also be helpful, or any explanation of how to solve this to some subjective degree.

My goal is to use this in a rhyming dictionary, to somehow use the feature weights of the isolated phonemes to compare syllables for rhyming qualities.

I'd imagine in abjads like Hebrew/Arabic, the anagrams are composed out of the consonants, and then you fill in the vowels after the consonants have been shuffled. Is that correct? Do they ever do anagrams with the vowels filled in?

What about abugidas like Ge'ez/Devanagari, do they only pay attention to the consonants, and fill in the vowels after the permutations are created, or do they take into account only the vowels?

By this I mean, in Sanskrit you have the word devanagari (but imagine it in devanagari, देवनागरी), which ChatGPT breaks down as:

1. दे

   • द (Consonant: da)
   • े (Vowel sign: e, modifying da to make de)

2. व

   • व (Consonant: va)

3. ना

   • न (Consonant: na)
   • ा (Vowel sign: aa, modifying na to make naa)

4. ग

   • ग (Consonant: ga)

5. री

   • र (Consonant: ra)
   • ी (Vowel sign: ii, modifying ra to make ree)

There are at least 3 ways we could find anagrams for Devanagari:

1. You can start out by finding words which contain d-v-n-g-r, and then given all those words, plug in all possible vowels (regardless if they appeared in devanagari itself), to find all fleshed out forms?
2. Or does it search for words with de-va-na-ga-ri, and use those consonant/vowel pairs to find similar words?
3. Or does it use all the consonants and vowels separately, and look for words which contain a-a-a-d-e-g-i-n-v (vowels and consonants are separated, here they are sorted)?

Same with Hebrew/Arabic, do they do it in these 3 ways?

What about tonal languages where the tones are represented (like in Thai, or in Pinyin for Chinese), do the tones get ignored, or used somehow?

Basically, what are the conventions for finding anagrams in these types of languages outisde of English?

Y’all I know this is so so niche. I am looking for ANY resources on Colombian Sing Language. My final exam presentation for my ASL linguistics class requires me to draw comparisons between ASL and another country’s signed language of my choosing. I am required to find parallels between phonology, morphology (including incorporation of a number), syntax, discourse, and semantics. I am STRUGGLING to find anything published in English, and I am struggling to fact check anything as I only know ASL. Now before you ask, “hey dummy…why didn’t you pick a country with articles published in English?” Well yes, I’m currently asking myself that same question through grad school tears. But to be fair, one of my students uses LSC at home. And he acts as my little interpreter using ASL and LSC when I want to casually communicate with his mother. (Context: I work at a Deaf school. I use ASL with my students, voice off all day). So LSC was already on my mind when this assignment was posted. Anyway…I’m STUCK. I cannot pick another language this late in the game. And I would appreciate any help I can get! Thank you!!!!!❤️

What noun case would “the Starbucks” be in in the above phrase? It doesn’t fit in instrumental or comitative, which are the usual suspects when “with” is involved. Any help?

Edit: Sorry, my question was unclear. What case would it be assigned were English a case marking language? In other words, what syntactic function does “the Starbucks” play?

What causes this?

Are there any examples of words with retroflex consonants, such as from an Indian language, being rendered for a Greek or Roman audience?

Also were there retroflex consonants in any of the barbarian languages at the time (maybe an obscure Celtic or Germanic language)?

I'm curious how a retroflex like the retro D or T would sound to a Latin or ancient Greek speaker.

one of my professors made a comment on one of my papers where i talked about pluralisation in hindustani where I had transcribed the word for boy as 'laRkaa'

this was the comment: "Out of curiosity, why have you capitalized R here? (We would typically do this to indicate an archiphoneme, and your inclusion of the archiphoneme here would indeed be accurate, but this is a concept I don't expect you to know.)"

I capitalised the R because i wanted to show retroflexion. we were not taught this in class and i didnt know what an archiphoneme was till i looked it up, and im still not sure what it is.

any feedback would be appreciated, thanks!

I'm from Georgia, so most people here have an accent. But something I've noticed is that we don't always pronounce our s in some words. For example, instead of doesn't we say doen'nt, and instead of isn't we say itinit. Is this a common thing for the south?

In terms of grammar, phonology/phonotactics, etc, specifically that which makes the American varieties different from the European ones

I know someone who has American parents and was born in new Zealand, and has spent his whole life of 30+ years here save 4 years he spent in college in the US, but he had a purely American accent. Usually in that case you expect people to have a new Zealand with a slight American accent on some words. But nope, this guy never says any words in a new Zealand accent despite being born and growing up here. Any theories?

I'm interested in any papers that involve asking people to make up new metaphors.

(Adding "literature" because I'm doing worldbuilding and this started from Tolkien's statement that he liked the ME reconstructed form "dwarrow" for dwarf)

The OED gives four forms for "dwarf". What I don't understand is that although β form is always monosyllabic (duarf[1300], dwerffe[1400-1500]), forms α & γ include what seems to my untrained eye to be both monosyllabic and disyllabic forms.

α: there is dwerk[1400-1450] and dorche[1520s], but also dweruȝ (two vowels, from 1330).

γ: again both one-vowel dwarw[1325] and duerwe[1330], but also dwerowe[1440] and duorow[1500].

This makes me ask a number of questions.

-- am I reading these wrong, or missing a piece of ME phonology? It seems to me there are two patterns of sound, "dwer" and "dwerow", with one explicitly longer.

-- OE seems universally monosyllabic, duerg/dweorh. Why was the final "-ow" added? Or am I misreading the OE?

-- why does the OED choose to include what seem to be different forms into one, instead of grouping dweruȝ with dwerowe, for example?

(and tangentially,

-- would a ME adjectival form based on dwerowe/dwarrow be convincingly represented as "dwarrish"? Or would it default to including a -v sound ("dwarvish")?)

What’s the difference between /ja/ and /i̯a/? Same with /w/ and the other glides with their equal vowels

Noting I'm asking who was the first person to study the history of the study of the English language, not the history of the English language (I may be correct in also calling it the study of the history of English Philology?).

Others have studied the history of the English language in the past but at some point in time some one began to study the study of the history of the English language itself, who the pioneers of that field are, what the important dates and periods of time of that field are, etc.

Hello, for the longest time since I was a kid I’ve had a problem saying my “r’s”. I’ve always hated it so much but I never knew what to do, I could practice at home but I’m generally small talk I would always say it. Is there anyway to get rid of this, I guess, speech impediment? Thanks.

I've been reading about Uralic linguistics for a while and I've noticed that some linguists tend to see a connection (albeit very vague) between the Uralic and Yukaghir language families. However, it's considered to be a far stretch most of the time and documentation about the latter group seems pretty scarce. Does anyone know any reliable sources for this claim? I'm just kinda curious. I would really appreciate it.

“No” in Greek is “Όχι” which sounds like [oxi]. “No” in most Indo European languages start with an [n] followed by a vowel.

Why does Greek stand out?