Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2009 June 24

= June 24 =

Bernolakish
It says here in page 94 that Anton Bernolak's Slovak failed to cement in Slovakia for a number of reasons, but does not provide any footnotes/primary sources. Can anyone give citations?174.3.103.39 (talk) 01:44, 24 June 2009 (UTC)174.3.103.39 (talk) 02:25, 24 June 2009 (UTC)

It says on page 91-92 "he completed a Grammatica slavica (Slavic grammar), based on a 1746 Czech grammar ...." (no citation)

I presume the Grammatic slavica is

".... In the introduction, he indicates that he thought that the literary language ought to be based on Central Slovak dialects, but did not believe that it was useful to stray too far from what was already in existence." Page xvii? The text is in Latin, so maybe someone can translate?174.3.103.39 (talk) 02:16, 24 June 2009 (UTC)

Informal Chilean Spanish, video/audio
Anyone know where I can hear some? Movies, TV shows, websites...If there's a transcript too, that would be even better. Alternatively, if you know another dialect of Spanish that's spoken really fast, that would be fine too.

Thank you, Jeff 74.105.130.203 (talk) 04:56, 24 June 2009 (UTC)


 * (Disclaimer: I'm not Chilean and don't know if there's a "right answer" that every Chilean knows offhand.)  A good place to start for websites broadcasting Chilean video might be our article List of television stations in Chile; most of the listed stations have their own Wikipedia articles, and most of those Wikipedia articles have an "Official Site" link.  I tried one at random and found Chilevision which has a "Señal On Line" button in the upper left.  This brought me to a page asking me to subscribe for under $10 per month, but below that were some big buttons advertising individual shows, and I ended up at this page which has many, many Spanish-language TV show snippets.  (I can't guarantee they're Chilean.)  Try the other stations, too, to see what they offer.  Tempshill (talk) 05:38, 24 June 2009 (UTC)
 * TVN is the biggest broadcaster in Chile. I suggest looking up youtube snips of some of their telenovelas. I recommend Corazón Pirata, Iorana, Romané and Santo Ladrón, some of my favourites when I live there. For unscripted speech, Buenos Dias a Todos is a morning chat show and 24 Horas is good for news. Chilean Spanish is fast, but there can be a lot of dropped speech. Columbian Spanish is also very fast, but has clearer pronunciation. For Columbian, try Betty La Fea (the original Ugly Betty). Steewi (talk) 01:01, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

Why are some sounds considered phonemes, but others not?
I fiddled with the German phonology and have a question about the phonemes.

Why are... - ... /ts/ and /pf/ always judged phonemes, but... - ... /tʃ/ (and /dʒ/) only sometimes, and... - ... /ks/, /kv/ and /ps/ never judged to be phonemes?

And why are some sounds that only appear in loanwords judged phonemes and part of the language, others not? - /ʒ/ and /dʒ/ are judged phonemes usually, but they nearly onyl appear in words of French, English and Italian origin. Often they are pronounced /ʃ/ and /tʃ/. - /θ/ and /w/ also appear in a number of words of English origin. And often they are pronounced /s/ and /v/. But what's the difference between the former and latter pairs? Why is the former pair judged part of the language, why the latter one is denied? Is it just because /θ/ and /w/ only appear in English words, and those words are new in the language, while /ʒ/ appears in French words which came into the German language some hundred years ago? Or is there a "real" reason?

I'm confused. --88.73.68.195 (talk) 13:50, 24 June 2009 (UTC)


 * Hmm. The phoneme article isn't very good, is it! Part of the answer is that the identification of phonemes in a particular language is sometimes controversial. You haven't said who it is who is making the judgments you describe, but it may be that other authorities would disagree on some of them. --ColinFine (talk) 23:05, 24 June 2009 (UTC)


 * Have you already seen German phonology? It talks a bit about this controversy. Indeterminate (talk) 23:53, 24 June 2009 (UTC)


 * Your first question is confusing: although /ts/ and /pf/ appear in German, /t/, /s/, /p/, and /f/ also appear by themselves. /ts/ and /pf/ are consonant clusters (for my lack of a better term), but /t/, /s/, /p/, and /f/ are phonemes.174.3.103.39 (talk) 07:45, 25 June 2009 (UTC)
 * The better term for /ts/ and /pf/ is affricate, and affricates can certainly be phonemes on their own. /ks/, /kv/ and /ps/ aren't considered affricates because the stop portion and the fricative portion have different places of articulation. /tʃ/ and /dʒ/ aren't always considered phonemes in German because of their distribution: /dʒ/ occurs only in loanwords, and /tʃ/ occurs only (1) in loanwords and (2) in positions in native words (such as deutsch) where it could just as easily be a sequence of /t/ + /ʃ/. On the other hand, /ts/ and /pf/ occur in positions, such as the beginning of a word, where stop + fricative clusters are not normally allowed (except for /ks/ and /ps/, again only in loanwords, and /kv/, which behaves as if it were a stop + approximant cluster). +Angr 12:19, 25 June 2009 (UTC)


 * It has a lot to with how speakers of the language perceive the sound or sound cluster. For example, English has many long vowels which are actually diphthongs; in other languages such sound clusters would be considered seperate phonemes, but in English they are a single "sound-meaning-unit".  One of the classic examples from the consonant world is the English "hard-CH" cluster (opening consonantal sound in "chance" or "chunk"); English considers this sound a single phoneme, but in languages like French, which lack a native "hard-CH" phoneme treats the sound as two seperate phonemes, what in English would be "t-sh".  --Jayron32. talk . contribs  12:12, 25 June 2009 (UTC)


 * I guess there are historical reasons to consider /ts/ and /pf/ as phonemes, since they have developed from /t/ and /p/ by the High German consonant shift. If you opt for a purely synchronical view, I can't think of a reason do treat e.g. /pf/ and /kv/ differently.
 * As for the non-native phonemes, /ʒ/ and /dʒ/ are rather marginal, as they occur only in loanwords, nevertheless they are a fixed part of a language. No speaker of German would pronounce Journalist or Dschungel with /ʃ/ or /tʃ/. In the case of /θ/ and /w/ (you could name /ɹ/ as well), on the other hand, the exact pronounciation will depend on the speaker's skills in English. --BishkekRocks (talk) 12:26, 25 June 2009 (UTC)
 * As an aside, some speakers of German certainly would and do replace /ʒ/ and /dʒ/ with /ʃ/ or /tʃ/. Baranxtu (talk) 21:54, 26 June 2009 (UTC)
 * P.S. On a more general basis, you can consider items that would seem to be consonant clusters as phonemes, if they have features that other clusters do not exhibit. For example in Latin prosody, /kw/ (which is a single phoneme) is treated the same way as a single consonant. --BishkekRocks (talk) 12:34, 25 June 2009 (UTC)
 * One synchronic reason to treat /pf/ and /kv/ differently is that /pf/ can occur in both syllable-initial (Pferd) and syllable-final (Topf) position, but /kv/ can occur only syllable-initially (Quelle), but not syllable-finally (*[tɔkv]). +Angr 12:45, 25 June 2009 (UTC)
 * That's a good point. Though on the other hand, German is quite liberal with consonant clusters. If you consider /st/ and /ʃt/ allophones, you could argue as well that they can occur in both syllable-initial (stehen) and syllable-final (fast) positions. --BishkekRocks (talk) 22:14, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

So, a possible reason to me is (as already said) that /ts/ and /pf/ have the same pronunciation places and can stand on every position in the syllable. So they are relatively certain to be considered phonemes. /tʃ/ is also an affricate where both parts have the same pronuciation place. So it is more likely to be a phoneme. But on the other hand it cannot appear syllable-initial (only in words like Tschad or Tschechien). So this is arguable, but I would rather say it's none. I myself would also consider /ks/ to be a phoneme, because it can appear in every position and is represented by its own letter combination (chs or x). But I think that /kv/ and /ps/ are no real phonemes. As said, /kv/ there limited to syllable-initial positions. And /ps/ only appears in loanwords, the only other word to come in my mind now is "Raps", but just because it's an affricate/consonant cluster it doesn't need to be a phoneme. I heard that /ʒ/ and /dʒ/ are often pronounced /ʃ/ and /tʃ/, but maybe this applies only to the southern dialects that don't have voiced consonants? To /θ/: I agree that this depends on the speaker's English knowledge. I think most people don't learn this sound as a child as it only appears in a handful of (rather unimportant) words. But I think that /w/ is no problem to pronounce. The reason that it's often pronounced /v/ could be that they are both written "W". So the person sees a "w" and says [v]. Just like the people normally don't use the English pronunciation of R. --88.74.24.173 (talk) 14:52, 25 June 2009 (UTC)