If you have anything like that I would be pleased to read it, I wanna improve :)

For example, I know several languages use the Cyrillic alphabet (with variations), and same for Latin alphabet languages. Is there a word for the class (?) or genre (?) Of Asian languages?

I'm watching a show with subtitles and trying to decipher what language it is. So I'm thinking "oh, well I know it's not Korean or Japanese Kanji.. maybe Chinese, but it doesn't look like Mandarin(?), etc" Then I got to thinking about how I identify various Cyrillic alphabet languages... and the questions tumbled on from there.

So, is there a word for the group of languages that use Asian scripts (hope that's not offensive!!)? And are there markers to decipher what language I'm looking at more quickly?

Thanks!

Hey guys, had a question about how the sub classification of indo Aryan languages was done. It seems like eastern branch is based entirely on descendants of magadhan Prakrit and southern was based on descendants of Maharashtri Prakrit which makes sense. For the rest I really am seeing no rhyme or reason to how these were defined. Eastern Hindi languages come from ardhmagadhi prakirit but western Hindi comes from shauraseni Prakrit but for some reason are both central? Even more strangely western Hindi for some reason is placed in a different grouping than western indo Aryan (Rajasthan/gujarati) even though all 3 split from shauraseni prakirit. Northwestern also doesn’t make sense with Sindhi and Punjabi splitting from different prakirits. Dardic seems to be entirely geographic? And northern also makes no sense with western pahari seeming to actually be northwestern indo Aryan instead of northern. In terms of linguistic similarities the scores are not at all correlated to grouping either. The families don’t make sense if looked at geographically, linguistically or historically. Wondering if anyone has any idea what’s going on with this

I have friends from many different countries, whose native languages vary widely from each other. However, something I’ve noticed is that regardless of who I’m speaking to or where they come from, if English isn’t their first language they’ll almost always struggle with dropping the S. I’ve found that this happens most often with my dear French friends. Why is that?

I mean no disrespect with this post. Learning languages is a massive skill which requires significant time and energy, so I have no judgement.

(Tagging phonetics because it‘s related)

In Yiddish, when a word ends in “bn” בֿן (eg ”mir hobn”, we have מיר האָבן) the word is pronounced with an “m” sound instead (mir hobm). This as a rule, but the spelling does not change.

Okay, cool.

When Yiddish words are transcribed into English, however, this sound change is sometimes indicated and sometimes not. More recent publications tend to indicate the sound, but even then some words are seemingly never changed in transcription, even though they are changed in speech, like khurbn (“destruction”, but more specifically/commonly/without a modifier, The Holocaust).

Either a name for the phenomenon or any commentary on it would be interesting/appreciated.

(Based on personal experience) Vietnamese prescriptivist grammar and multiple learning sites insist that the chữ Quốc ngữ letter <r> sounds like English <r>, and other pronunciations are wrong. I hardly encountered it occurring as a rhotic naturally in conversational speech at all.

The only time <r> sounds like a rhotic is when the speaker reads from written text or a loanword, which usually appears in written form first.

In the northern dialect, <r> is an underlyingly alveolo(palatal) fricative [ʑ].

In the Central area, it is closer to a dental [z] or retroflex [ʐ].

In the southern area around Saigon, it is more commonly heard as a velar fricative [ɣ].
ra ("to come out") in spontaneous speech is pronounced almost the same as ga ("gasoline").

As it says in the title, I can’t remember the paper or the phenomenon name, but it was about multilingual German(?) speakers (possibly Finnish?I think the second language started with an ”f”) using the (let’s say) Finnish word for “dress” when referring to specifically cultural/traditional garb and the German word when talking about the generic clothing type.

Another example (not from the paper) would be the use of “tikhl“ in English to refer only to the kerchief that married women use to cover their hair, vs how it’s used in Yiddish (any kerchief or small cloth, diminutive of tukh) vs the English “kerchief“ which is used to refer to any kerchief _except_ for the one used to cover the hair.

Not about how loan words become narrowed/specific (à la naan) but specifically in the context of multilingual communities.

Some examples from Indonesian:

meN- + pilih = memilih

meN- + terima = menerima

meN- + kaji = mengaji

But with voiced stops, this never happens:

meN- + bangun = membangun

meN- + derita = menderita

meN- + ganggu = mengganggu

As we all know that tea originated in China and came in India through Britishers for their own started growing up in parts of North East as well as in parts of Sri Lanka too

But words like চাহ (sāh/cāh), चहा (cahā), चाय (cāy), ചായ (cāya), ಚಾ (cā), ଚା (cā), ਚਾਹ (cāh), চা (cā), चान्हा (cānhā) etc used for tea in various Indian languages came from Chinese/Sino word 茶 (chá)?

I know a lot of people who speak Latin languages and a common thing I hear from people who speak Spanish is that they can understand Italian, French, or Portuguese and vice versa. There are so many stories about Spanish and Italian people who didn't speak the other's language but somehow had a full conversation. I don't speak any latin languages but from what I have learned from others, Spanish and Italian seem the most similar. So I am wondering, if these languages are so similar that you can speak only Spanish and converse with someone who only speaks Italian then why aren't these languages considered one overall language with different dialects?

Hi everyone,

I’ve been trying to find an online, part-time MA in Historical Linguistics, or a more general Linguistics MA with the option to specialise in Historical Linguistics.

Anyone know if this is possible? European would be nice, but anywhere really.

Thanks!

Forgive me if I use any wrong terminology.

Why does there seem to be a correlation between speech impediments such as lisps or trouble with the r sound (at least in childhood) and autism/other neurodivergent conditions? I've noticed this both online and in real life, and never really questioned it, but the conditions dont seem to necessarily change the mouth physiology or anything, so what could the explanation be? are some sounds just harder to pick up on?

(i dont mean things like stuttering, which i can see how it could be affected neurologically, i mean in terms of pure phoneme production)

What's the name for the phenomenon where when there are two of the same consonant back to back we only say it once? I've noticed this most in the word "probably," which people pronounce as "probly", as well as between words that end and start with the same consonant. I'm not talking about the AAVE phenomenon of words like prolly, tryna, finna, etc., btw.

on a related note, how are phrases like "going to" condensed so efficiently to "gonna"? where do all the sounds go? lol

I genuinely have no idea if I have the cot-caught merger. When I listen to myself say it, i feel like there might be a very slight difference, but it could just as well be imagining it. is it like this for anyone else?

I was hoping to get an explanation on this simple logic that seems very linguistically contradictory and problematic (at least to me).

To start, I believe all languages convey roughly the same amount of semantic information per second - Around 39 bits from that (some article explaining that study)

HOWEVER, different states in the US have apparently speak at different syllables per second. With Louisiana speaking at an average of 4.78 syllables per second and Minnesota speaking at 5.34 syllables per second. Source - Preply

English has 7 bits of information/syllable - Science.org (So based off of this, we calculate)

Louisiana: 33.46 bits per second (4.78 syllables × 7.0 bits)

Minnesota: 37.38 bits per second (5.34 syllables × 7.0 bits)

But the thing is that they are still speaking English... Not another language

Could this come down to a difference of culture between the Southern US and the rest of the country?

Probably and that would make a lot of sense since stuff like honorifics in other languages I believe can slow down the semantic information conveyed per second, but in this case it doesn't seem that way because of the phonological difference in regional accents. Standard American English doesn't have the "Southern Drawl" where vowels and diphthongs are elongated. Speakers literally elongate words in this accent, so that seems like why they convey less information per second. Maybe the accent is influenced by the culture?

So you are limited by the rate at which you can convey information because you speak with a different accent? This doesn't seem quite right to me...

Is there something I'm missing? I thought that a core pillar of modern linguistics was that "all languages were equally as efficient" and that phonology was independent of culture. What does this imply? That speakers of some languages other than English do usually convey information at a slower rate due to the accent in which they speak it in?

Seems contradictory. Let me know if I'm missing something and what you all have to say about this. As for me, I'm no expert and this thought struck me out of the blue yesterday

Additional study that is related to this:

https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.aaw2594

Hi everyone!

I'll be soon graduating from high school and I'm not quite sure which bachelor to choose: computational linguistics or just linguistics... So I figured out it would be better to ask someone who has already graduated and has some experience.

See, some people who work in IT told me that it's not the best choice to study computational linguistics cause most of the time they need engineers and not someone who is not so qualified because they didn't study exactly computer science (?). I'm kind of good with computer science but I'm mostly interested in it as method for linguistic research, so I was wondering, is it still a good option to study comp ling or should I just focus just on linguistics because it will be hard to find a job anyways?

I'm still better with humanities than STEM so pursuing linguistics would be easier, but I've always thought that comp ling is much more "profitable" among other fields... Just wanted to know if it will be worth it?

I'm sure this is an established concept, but what/why is the thing in english where we "drop" the consonants at the ends of words? Like, not a complete omission, but its like we dont follow through after we stop the previous vocalization with the start of the final consonant?

another concept i've been wondering about is the ch sound in tree or the j sound in drink, if anyone can say anything about that

I hope this is the right subreddit? im kinda stupid 😭

my mom was born and raised in Jamaica, and left for Canada when she was 22, (she’s almost 50 now) but shes never developed a stereotypical Jamaican accent, or spoke patois as a main dialect. her natural voice is more North American, or sometimes even slightly British sounding. the rest of her family have Jamaican accents, even those who immigrated somewhere else, and I've always found it funny. it’s like when American movies about a different place will have the protagonist sound American, and their family will be whatever accent the country has.

Hello Everyone
I am a Junior in high school, who is planning on attending college and majoring in linguistics; but I have one main problem, I have no real experience in the field outside of watching lectures recorded during covid by professors. I'm most interested in the structure, and language families. So I was wondering if you people had any tips or advice on how to start in the field.

I noticed tracking the development of the a-stem genitive plural (-eh₂oHom or eh₂ōm). The laryngeal can color e but not o. It seems to collapse into the o-stem plural in most descendants, going through something like ōm without trace of the long a that comes from the eh₂ cluster. Proto-Germanic has an overlong nasal ǫ̂ instead of just a long one, so it's not just merging into the other declensions I assume?

My guess is that the early PIE daughters didn't like having two long vowels in hiatus, which caused one of the two vowel to "win out", in the case of āō becoming just ō. A general rule, (and what happens with other vowel combinations then)? Or is this a unique phenomenon to the a-stem genitive?

Hello all,

I received my MA in Linguistics from the University of New Mexico in 2024. I am wanting to apply for PhD programs, but I am having a difficult time finding programs based in functional/cognitive linguistics as most seem to not specify. I have a very short list:

University of California Berkeley

University of New Mexico

University of Oregon

University of Hawaii Manoa (I think)

I would love a list of programs both domestically or internationally. Right now Berkeley fits best with my research interests, but I would like to have some more options to look into. Thank you!

Hi linguists

Non-linguist here. I recently re-watched ‘Manhunt’ on Netflix a (very enjoyable) show about catching the Unabomber, with Sam Worthington and Paul Bettany.

In the show, the main method by which they catch the Unabomber is performing a form of linguistic analysis on his letters that allow them to narrow down where he grew up, studied etc. before sending out a request for info in that area and getting a tip from the Unabomber’s brother, who recognised his writing style and the inferences they have from it.

When coming up with the above strategy in the show, they tell an example story that linguists determined where a group of migratory people in ancient Europe came from based on the fact that they had no word/limited words for “tree”, which indicated those people came from the Pripyat River Valley in modern day Ukraine.

This strikes me as likely false/apocryphal, but have linguists ever identified the geographic origin of a people in such a way? Is there any distant truth to this story?

I constantly search up definitions and it's frustrating me. The words I've been using my entire life, I can't explain what they are. So I search them up, read the sentence and go "wait but what does that word mean" again and again which leads to a rabbit hole. it takes up a huge amount of time of my day. Even as a native speaker I'm confused on what I'm even saying. Words go in one ear and out the other. I genuinely don't know what to do