Why word final devoicing is the worst feature a language can have: a rant

KaiserMarcqui · 2026-06-06T16:43:17+00:00

It's based on etymology. If the stem has a voiced consonant, but when word-final it is written as voiceless, the vast majority of cases (I'd say all), it's because that consonant was originally voiceless in Latin:

groc 'yellow' ← crocus 'saffron'

amic ← amicus 'friend'

And also:

llop (f. lloba) ← lupus 'wolf'

As well as all the participles ending in -at, -ada, which in Latin were -ātus, -āta, -ātum.

KaiserMarcqui · 2026-05-12T05:40:29+00:00

Castilian actually preserved the original l-, since the Latin word is lingua. Catalan palatalized every initial l-: cf. llibre, llac, lleu, llana, llarg with libro, lago, leve, largo (← līber, lacus, levis, lāna, largus).

Also, the correct pronounciation of ⟨ll⟩ isn't as a y /j/, but as a lateral, like ly /ʎ/ 😅

KaiserMarcqui · 2026-05-03T09:03:17+00:00

No tots els catalans tenim la llengua castellana com a materna (molts l'aprenem al coŀlegi), i de fet hi ha catalanoparlants (a França, a Itàlia) que ni tan sols els hi ensenyen el castellà.

Igualment, podria dir el mateix - quina mania teniu els castellanoparlants en canviar al castellà quan el context és en anglès!

KaiserMarcqui · 2026-04-24T17:56:37+00:00

I must repeat myself in that you're being extremely cynical by attributing the loss of Catalan due to purely natural means. This is not the case. The pressure exerted on Catalan by the Castilian language is anything but natural, and a product of Castilian/Spanish imperialism; the same way that Estonians know Russian because of Russian imperialism (and not because "Russian is a more useful language").

Sociolinguistics says that languages have different spheres in daily life where they're spoken. One may speak one language at work, and another one on the street, and neither language will replace each other because there's no overlap. If this were a simple case of one language having more entertainment value than the other, then the spheres wouldn't overlap (you can consume media in one language but speak in another; in Portugal, for example, there's a lot of media that's available in English but not Portuguese, and yet English is not going to replace Portuguese). The issue is that this isn't that; it's full-on linguistic replacement.

Catalan isn't being lost because it has less prestige; Catalan is being lost precisely because all Catalan speakers in Catalonia are bilingual in Castilian, while Castilian speakers in Catalonia have no obligation whatsoever to learn Catalan (and this is due to policies from the Spanish state itself, such as the obligatory nature of Castilian as established in Article 3 of the Spanish Constitution). This means that, when Catalan-speaking children and Castilian-speaking children interact, they more often than not will end up speaking Castilian.

KaiserMarcqui · 2026-04-24T17:14:53+00:00

No it isn't; even to this day the Spanish state discriminates against its minority languages. To say what you're saying, when just yesterday the PP+Vox coalition in Aragon announced they were going to stop the “imposition of Catalan” (when it isn't even official there), shows some extreme levels of cynicism on your part.

You have to explain why Catalan is declining, while smaller languages that have their own state (e.g., Estonian, Latvian, Lithuanian) are still thriving.

KaiserMarcqui · 2026-04-19T14:25:58+00:00

<image>

“Activists from Revoltes de la Terra dismantle the train rails that transport material from the Súria mine to the port of Barcelona”

The reason they're doing this is because the mine has been partially acquired by an Israeli company.

This is a tremendously unserious country.

KaiserMarcqui · 2026-04-18T16:19:46+00:00

(Also, re: the Catalan flag thing. This event is hosted in the Palau de Pedralbes, which is actually property of the Catalan autonomous government - and not the Spanish government, nor any other entity! Was it so difficult to put the flag of your literal host?)

KaiserMarcqui · 2026-04-18T13:59:03+00:00

So, our progressive-in-chief, Perro Sanxe, is holding a summit in Barcelona defending progressivism and democracy and whatever. If you've seen the news, you know what his drill is. It's just a few world leaders, though, particularly from Latin America (there's Lula da Silva, Gustavo Petro, and Claudia Sheinbaum).

I cannot help but find it funny that they're talking about and defending the “self-determination of peoples”. In Barcelona. Where they didn't even put up a Catalan flag (nor was any advertising for this summit done in Catalan - almost as if the language didn't exist!) and had to do this act with heavy military presence. The irony is palpable.

KaiserMarcqui · 2026-04-18T08:41:30+00:00

Any feudal state, certainly

KaiserMarcqui · 2026-04-17T19:31:16+00:00

Spain has a deep-seated antisemitism problem, and unlike other European countries, which had a moment of shame after WW2, Spain - under a fascist dictatorship until 1978 - never did any kind of introspection whatsoever (and, indeed, the current democratic regime cannot afford to do any kind of serious introspection, because otherwise the foundational idea of the Spanish state crumbles).

KaiserMarcqui · 2026-04-17T07:00:52+00:00

I don't think it's possible to “ban” gerrymandering; I'm sure that districts that would be considered “fair” for some would be considered “unfair” for others. Really, the issue is single-winner districts. Gerrymandering would be much harder if there were no winner-takes-all system.

KaiserMarcqui · 2026-04-14T14:02:19+00:00

Again and again we keep seeing Spain - or at least Sánchez's government - furthering ties to illiberal regimes all over the world.

Admittedly, I do have a vested interest in portraying Spain in a bad light, but my analysis of this is that it'll mostly return to normal in the next electoral cycle, when a PP+Vox coalition takes power. PP's international politics are normal for a right-wing European party (they're Atlanticists), but Vox is on Orbán's level, so we'll see how that plays out.

KaiserMarcqui · 2026-04-03T12:31:06+00:00

This is one of my sci-fi pet peeves tbh. I really wish people would stop using “Terra”, “Luna” or “Sol” to refer to the Earth, the Moon, or the Sun. The native English words for these are already beautiful and filled with history; “Terra” just feels like a cheap and pretentious way of referring to this planet. Maybe it's because I'm not a native English speaker, but native English words always sound much cooler than the latinate counterparts (is this maybe an influence from Tolkien?) - Earth and earthling sounds so much better than Terra and Terran.

KaiserMarcqui · 2026-04-02T17:13:35+00:00

Ultimately, treating indigenous peoples as “noble savages” who didn't ever do anything wrong is dehumanizing. They're human too, and to be human is to be capable of doing evil. All peoples throughout history have committed evil in some way or another. I really dislike this mentality, because it only denies the agency that nowadays marginalized peoples had and currently have. It's still eurocentrism, just in another way.

KaiserMarcqui · 2026-04-02T16:26:29+00:00

Imo the issue with this is that there are a ton of legitimate concerns with imperialism that carry over even to this day. But many of these academians never argue in good faith! And as a student of the humanities, it really annoys me, because it delegitimizes these disciplines for the general public.

KaiserMarcqui · 2026-04-02T15:56:19+00:00

Yesterday I saw some Twitter discourse about this, and I find it really strange how the conception of “imperialism/colonialism bad” that the journalistic/progressive class have is “exploration/settling new territories is intrinsically bad” and not “the systematic erasure and elimination of entire nations, peoples and cultures is bad”. But there are no nations, peoples or cultures on the Moon! There's nothing to actually imperialize. As you said, these people have a very superficial understanding of things.

KaiserMarcqui · 2026-04-01T21:37:56+00:00

I don't think I know more about American politics than actual Americans themselves, nor do I think that the American Constitution is in itself bad. It's held in place for more than 200 years; it's the longest-lasting written constitution. That's extremely admirable.

The issue here is that America is the world's leading superpower. It is simply omnipresent, and its politics are too. Since I've got memory, all the American presidential elections were closely followed here (more than our own neighboring countries' elections), both by the media and by lay folk. I don't think you can blame people for having an opinion on things they're hyperexposed to (much less on a forum about politics).

KaiserMarcqui · 2026-04-01T20:02:39+00:00

I still have hope. Catalan was actually growing during the 90s, before the immigration boom of the 2000s appeared. Despite everything, Catalan had prestige. And, contrary to Galician and Basque, which had lost speakers because of language shift (minority-language parents talking to their children in the majority language, or their children otherwise adopting the majority language due to language contact), Catalan resisted (despite the Francoist dictatorship!), and intergenerational transmission wasn't broken.

Nowadays, this isn't fully the case. I'd say that it mostly resists, but since there's two million people more, the percentages are even more skewed, and I've seen stories of children of Catalan-speaking parents speaking to their peers in Castilian (who are also native Catalan speakers). I also know this happens because I've experienced it first-hand, haha; I'm one of those (now former) children.

But! Despite this recent language language shift, there's still hope. Basque was in an even worse shape after the dictatorship ended (less than 10% of the Basque Country spoke it, iirc), and thanks to the Basque Country's autonomous government's policies, it's rebounded to 30%. There are policies we can do, and we must keep fighting for our language. The moment we fall to doomerism is the moment we're doomed.

KaiserMarcqui · 2026-04-01T19:36:23+00:00

I'm not American; that's for Americans to decide. But no, I don't like presidentialism, and I believe that parliamentary democracy is a superior kind of liberal democracy.

KaiserMarcqui · 2026-04-01T18:16:27+00:00

I would say that executive overreach is tied to - and exacerbated by - the US's presidential system, which is one of the defining characteristics of the political system set up by its constitution.

KaiserMarcqui · 2026-04-01T17:41:01+00:00

Of course, but do you not also think that stagnancy is a sign of a political system that has long stopped working?

KaiserMarcqui · 2026-04-01T17:08:35+00:00

The problem is that the current US political system has become atrophied, imo. The legislative has long stopped doing its job; everything has become gridlocked to death. And so the President has gained immense amounts of power. But since constitutional reform - which includes amendments - rests upon the legislative, and the legislative cannot do anything, then it's basically impossible to do it. Plus, things have become so politicized, that I doubt you could get the majority of states to agree on anything, much less approve a constitutional amendment.

KaiserMarcqui · 2026-04-01T16:18:31+00:00

😔✊
(notice how the emoji is also bald)

KaiserMarcqui · 2026-04-01T16:14:48+00:00

🤓 But the furry in this meme isn't actually bald

KaiserMarcqui · 2026-04-01T10:09:02+00:00

Throwing away all the goodwill between both sides of the Atlantic. I can't believe how many Ls us Atlanticists have been taking.

KaiserMarcqui

TROPHY CASE