Talk:Motu language

r
The following is apparent nonsense, so moved here:
 * All [consonants] are pronounced approximately as in English except r, which is a "flipped" r (ɹ), and the velar fricative. 

— kwami (talk) 11:30, 15 August 2012 (UTC)


 * When I did linguistics at uni they called this a "flapped r" - it is of course very common (i.e. lots of languages use it) - hence a Chinese or Japanese person in an old-fashioned movie might say "velly good" or "Learly tellible". The "trilled r" of French (or Scots!) goes to the other extreme - English "r" is somewhere in between. Point is that apart from a possible typo between "flap" and "flip" the sentence is far from nonsense. --Soundofmusicals (talk) 15:06, 15 August 2012 (UTC)


 * Also removing
 * The letter "r" is "flapped" (in effect this means it is closer in sound to "l" than in English). 
 * These things are nonsensical because is not a flapped ar, it's an approximant, and because a flapped ar has nothing to do with people confusing el and ar. When the article says these things, it clearly means something other than what it's saying.
 * I assumed "flipped" meant that the letter was flipped, not that it was a flap, but if the IPA letter is 'flipped' ar, then that would be the English value, and therefore not an exception.
 * Since you appear to know something of the language, could you add in the IPA for the ar? Assuming the other consonants have their IPA values (and I notice there's an el in there as well!), that should solve the problem.
 * If the ar is both flapped and el-like, then it might be an alveolar lateral flap. — kwami (talk) 21:35, 20 August 2012 (UTC)


 * Yes it is in effect an alveolar lateral flap, its IPA symbol is [ɺ] - closely resembling [ɹ] in both form and sound, of course. "Flipped" seems to have either been a typo for "flapped", or the result of confusion on the part of another editor between the form and the sound of the IPA synbol. The letters "r" and "l" in Motu form a single phoneme, a feature that is very common in Austronesian (and East Asian) languages. This means that native speakers do not hear a difference between them - so that the words "lead" and "read" (for instance) sound the same - or at the very least they are less clearly distinguished than they would be to a native English speaker. Will change the article so that this is clearer - please ask here rather than delete sentences at random because you do not understand what they mean. --Soundofmusicals (talk) 01:26, 21 August 2012 (UTC)


 * It's not a matter of not understanding them, it's a matter of understanding them and them being nonsense.
 * [ɺ] is nothing like [ɹ], so I'm still worried. I don't have access to the journals, which are not linked as you say.
 * Also, the diphthongs are described as not being diphthongs. Are they each two vowels in hiatus? — kwami (talk) 01:55, 21 August 2012 (UTC)


 * Maybe they've changed the terminology since I was at university? A "pure" vowel is another way of describing a monophthong (will add the link in the article now - the dipthongs enumerated are decidedly dipthongs in Motu - the English vowel sounds described as "approximating" them may be considered as vowels in hiatus (?) - otherwise I'm afraid you've got me there. The nearest thing to a vowel in hiatus in Motu would be in words like "Noho", "Kahana" and "Kahirakahira", where the "h" is very lightly aspirated, giving the impression in rapid speech of the vowels divided by the "h" being in hiatus (in fact in Hiri Motu, where an "h" between vowels is to all intents and purposes mute, "ahi" is pretty much indistinuishable from the dipthong "ai"). The letters "r" and "l" are both used in the conventional "dictionary" spelling of Motu - it should be noted that the "dictionary" in question was of course not compiled by native speakers and inconsistencies like this are probably inevitable. Forget [ɹ], since what was meant was clearly [ɺ]. I would be very surprised if most English speakers could hear the difference between these two sounds, although a word pronounced with one rather than the other might sound a little odd, so I am intrigued by your idea that they are "nothing like". I suppose it depends how picky we want to be. --Soundofmusicals (talk) 02:52, 21 August 2012 (UTC)


 * "Pure vowel" still works, but a diphthong is a single vowel with a contour in it, not a sequence of pure vowels. A diphthong is like a glissando in music, as opposed to just a sequence of notes. I was confused by the wording that suggested they might be something other than diphthongs. If they are just diphthongs, and since diphthong says what that means, can we let the link handle the explanation? But when you say that ahi and ai are nearly indistinguishable, are you saying they're both two syllables? Does what we have at Hawaiian language sound like what we might have with Motu?
 * I accept that an English speaker might not be able to hear the diff between [ɾ] and [ɺ], but since [ɹ] is found in English, it seems unlikely that would sound alike to them. Maybe I'm wrong, but to me they sound about as close to me as a tap and a trill. — kwami (talk) 04:42, 21 August 2012 (UTC)

Rumu motu english dictionary
http://www.sil.org/pacific/png/pubs/928474531307/Rumu_English_Motu_dict.pdf

Rajmaan (talk) 20:09, 17 December 2012 (UTC)

A Rumu word list with English and very basic [Hiri] Motu equivalents. --Soundofmusicals (talk) 20:45, 17 December 2012 (UTC)

Grammar?
Can someone explain why there is a section called “Grammar” which has not a word about grammar? The entire section is about phonology...! Ptilinopus (talk) 14:38, 2 January 2019 (UTC)