Talk:Archi language

Phonology (consonants)
What are the (and similar phonemes with this  supposed to be? I know that several Dagestanian languages – to my knowledge also Archi – include a  (hence, derivatives of ) phoneme, but  looks to me like a voiceless and raised velar lateral approximant, rather than a voiceless alveolar lateral fricative, as in languages like Tsez, Bezhta, Hinukh or Avar. I'm interested in the source of this... I'll put a  tag on it, but I'd like to discuss the matter here. — N-true 00:07, 22 August 2007 (UTC)


 * They're velar lateral affricates and fricatives — basically except velar POA.  is used because there's no convenient IPA symbol for them. Sounds of the World's Languages (ISBN 0-631-19815-6) transcribes them in IPA using  (with both diacritics on the bottom), and additionally describes them more accurately as pre-velar (so if you wanted to be really accurate you could add the + diacritic,  (ugh)). --Ptcamn 00:47, 22 August 2007 (UTC)


 * Very interesting! Didn't know... I'll try to read more about that. — N-true 01:09, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

Red
Hopefully this doesn't get too contentious, but I don't like the shade of red used for the letters. It's too close to the redlinks color. I figured the shade of red at Abkhaz phonology was appropriate. It seems distinct enough from other colors on my computer. JorisvS, what color is that shade of red not very distinct from for you? — Æµ§œš¹  [aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi] 01:36, 26 December 2009 (UTC)
 * I want to begin by saying that I perfectly understand your objection, I have it too. The red you used, however, is a very dark shade of red, making it insufficiently distinct from black here. When looking at the table with the colors you put in, only the green and blue stand out without having to consciously look for them. The red ones only come out at closer inspection, making it that much harder to find them all. Strangely, the redded phonemes on the Abkhaz phonology are much easier for me to spot, I think possibly because they are clustered there, contrary to the redded Archi phonemes.
 * If you can find another color that does automatically stand out from the others and doesn't look like a redlink, then please be my guest (possibly a shade of purple?). I hope I have know better explained my objection. --JorisvS (talk) 00:06, 29 December 2009 (UTC)


 * I was under the impression that red green and blue were used because they were the colors of the Flag of Dagestan. We could make the cells highlighted with the relevant colors like this:
 * {| class="wikitable"

! red ! green ! blue
 * style="background:#E4525C"| red
 * style="background:#008000"| green
 * style="background:#007CC3"| blue
 * }
 * — Æµ§œš¹  [aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi] 00:34, 29 December 2009 (UTC)
 * No, the colors haven't got the slightest thing to do with the Flag of Dagestan! When I was collecting sounds from the Dictionary and the Tutorial, I had to indicate the various instances of the sounds, and I happened to have selected these colors, completely ignorant of the Flag of Dagestan.
 * The colors issue doesn't appear to be as simple as it may look at first sight. First, we have to take into account perceptual ease (select colors that are sufficiently distinct from the others for automatic (=without conscious effort) processing). Second, we must also try not to break the table too much, into a hotchpotch. The latter is, I think, what happens when we color the entire cells instead of just the letters. To show you I included the table as it appears with the entire cells colored. It does look a bit artistic, but artistic considerations are not something for a language article on Wikipedia.
 * I also looked more closely at other colors. Purple would suffer the same problem as the dark red. Orange may be worth considering, though. I'm not familiar with the color codes you use, so I haven't looked at those possibilities yet. --JorisvS (talk) 12:13, 29 December 2009 (UTC)
 * I also looked more closely at other colors. Purple would suffer the same problem as the dark red. Orange may be worth considering, though. I'm not familiar with the color codes you use, so I haven't looked at those possibilities yet. --JorisvS (talk) 12:13, 29 December 2009 (UTC)


 * Well, we could use pink, though orange seems to work as well as long as it's not too light. — Æµ§œš¹  [aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi] 19:07, 29 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Let´s have a look... orange (using the name instead of the code would yield orange, which would be still a bit light). Yes, DE7B1A looks suited for the job to me. This way the reddish is also more in line with the bit bleakish blue and green tints. I´ll change it immediately. --JorisvS (talk) 21:05, 29 December 2009 (UTC)

Order of modifier letters
Aeusoes1, you changed the order of the modifier letters in the table. I like this one better, since it makes more sense logically. However, I put them in in the previous order because the sources use that order (and I think because I've also seen that one elsewhere). Do you have any idea if there is an "official" or preferred order in IPA? --JorisvS (talk) 13:51, 29 December 2009 (UTC)
 * I'm not sure if there's a prescription on it, though the way I've always seen it at, for example, Journal of the International Phonetic Association articles is that laryngeal settings (ejective, aspiration, etc) are marked last. I'm certain, though, that there is no phonetic difference between  and .  — Æµ§œš¹  [aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]  18:58, 29 December 2009 (UTC)
 * No, great. Then the way will be the way I´ll use in other articles. --JorisvS (talk) 21:12, 29 December 2009 (UTC)
 * The only instances I wouldn't change the order was in the dictionary citations. — Æµ§œš¹  [aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi] 22:03, 29 December 2009 (UTC)
 * If this about that one instance I changed; I think it shouldn´t matter as long as the link points to the right page.. --JorisvS (talk) 22:27, 29 December 2009 (UTC)

Which epiglottals?
The consonant table says Archi has /ʡ/, the epiglottal stop, and /ʜ/, the voiceless epiglottal fricative. The orthography table explained гӀ as /ʢ/, the voiced epiglottal fricative, and хӀ as /ʜ/; /ʡ/ didn't occur in the orthography table, and /ʢ/ didn't occur in the phonology table.

The dictionary transcribes гӀ as ʕ, the voiced pharyngeal fricative. However, few people know epiglottal consonants even exist; [ʕ] is then the closest thing to both [ʢ] and [ʡ].

The epiglottal stop occurs in other Dagestanian languages like Aghul. I have therefore assumed that the consonant table is right and have changed the entry for гӀ in the orthography table from /ʢ/ to /ʡ/. I hope this is correct.

BTW, /ʔ/ is in the consonant table but not the orthography table. Is it not written?

David Marjanović (talk) 14:58, 7 April 2013 (UTC)
 * Thanks for catching those things. The Archi Dictionary seems to write /ʔ/ as ъ. I've added it to the bottom of the table. --JorisvS (talk) 18:39, 7 April 2013 (UTC)


 * The consonant table called the epiglottal consonants "pharyngeal", as the dictionary & website does. However, there's no such thing as a pharyngeal plosive! I happen to have an older source, the 242-page "preface" of the North Caucasian Etymological Dictionary, which considers epiglottal consonants a lot more common in North Caucasian languages in general and Lezgic languages in particular (unless I've overlooked something, pharyngeals are limited to Agul, which also has epiglottals); funnily, however, it claims that Archi has neither epiglottal nor pharyngeal consonants, but instead pharyngealized glottal ones, [ʔˁ] and [hˁ]!
 * So I listened to a bunch of soundfiles in the online Archi dictionary.
 * What the dictionary & website transcribes as ħ is clearly epiglottal. I mean, just listen. :-) Here are soundfiles where the same person pronounces pharyngeal and epiglottal consonants in different Agul words. So, the symbol ʜ in the table is correct, and the headline "pharyngeal" was not.
 * What the dictionary & website transcribes as ʕ is epiglottal at least some of the time, and it's a plosive at least some of the time. It might be a pharyngeal approximant, actual [ʕ], if followed by /e/. It might also be an epiglottal trill, or plosive + trill, in front of /o/ and /u/. At yet other times, it might be an epiglottal approximant, [ʢ]. In sum, I concluded that the symbol ʡ was correct at least some of the time, that its placement in the "plosive" line (both here and on the website) was correct at least some of the time, and that its placement in the same column as [ʜ] is correct at least some of the time.
 * So, all I did was to change "Pharyngeal" to "Epiglottal". (My very tentative comments above on the possible allophony of /ʡ/ would be original "research"; I hope somebody does actual research on them at some point.)
 * Take-home messages: never trust any source that claims the existence of a pharyngeal plosive; never trust any source that claims the existence of pharyngeal consonants in any language without explicitly stating that they aren't epiglottal; and even if a source states that some "laryngeal" consonants or other are not epiglottal, they can still be epiglottal.
 * David Marjanović (talk) 21:23, 23 January 2016 (UTC)

External links modified
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Use of colours in the table
@Fdom5997 please re-read MOS:COLOR, specifically the section regarding the use of colour to indicate information, although you should already know it considering our discussion last year at Talk:Dargwa language. The use of colours as the sole method for indicating information in the phonology table goes against MOS, and your claim that "if they were so bad why would they be there in the first place" is an incomprehensible argument (and a typical example of circular reasoning). In addition, the use of IPAlinks in the table is an objective improvement, as it allows users to easily go to the pages of specific phonemes, check their exact names, etc etc. Please refrain from reverting the addition of IPAlinks or removal of colours from this phoneme table (and any others). Stan traynor (talk) 08:42, 2 June 2023 (UTC)