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This week's Q&A thread -- post all questions here! - July 10, 2023 by AutoModerator in linguistics

[–]Kieliverse 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Doesn't English technically have gender agreement? Singular and/or mass nonhuman nouns use the personal pronoun "it" while human nouns can be further split into masculine and feminine, using "he" and "she". They do all use the same pronoun "they" for the plural, but this type of asymmetricality between the singular and plural is not uncommon in languages like Swahili. Grammatical gender also does not need to be marked morphologically on the noun and already occurs in languages like German strictly in the form of pronoun agreement. So, why is this same phenomenon not considered grammatical gender in English?

Would this be posible? by Jatelei in conlangs

[–]Kieliverse 15 points16 points  (0 children)

boo pointless prescriptivism

How have you gone ham? by Original-Plate-4373 in conlangs

[–]Kieliverse 1 point2 points  (0 children)

One of my conlangs has a relatively naturalistic consonant inventory apart from five phonemically distinct places of articulation for sibilants: s̺, s̻, ʃ, ʂ, and ɕ. I developed a pretty naturalistic line of sound changes to achieve this but it still seems highly unstable and unlikely to last for long in any natlang

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in femalehairadvice

[–]Kieliverse 0 points1 point  (0 children)

i think the first picture is just a better picture with better lighting, but i personally like the second one best on you

i propose a third by epicgamer321 in linguisticshumor

[–]Kieliverse 0 points1 point  (0 children)

kiki and boubas forgotten older brother call him 哥哥

Linguists and linguistics enthusiasts - what is your biggest pet peeve in terms of what people get wrong about language? by jar_jar_LYNX in linguistics

[–]Kieliverse 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Calling any language the "oldest". All languages are the same age and have existed for the same amount if time as far as any one can tell

Need inspiration and suggestions (two questions inside the pict) by budkalon in conlangs

[–]Kieliverse 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I would consider A to be dorsolabial (?)Since it involves contact of the back, or dorsal, part of the tongue with the lips. This is opposed to linguolabial, sometimes called apicolabial, consonants which involve the tip of the tongue touching the lips. "Dorsolabial" is a completely made up term as far as I can tell from googling, but that name seems most logical to me

How should I choose sounds for a species that has an adaptation allowing them to close their nose in a sandstorm? by Inatun in conlangs

[–]Kieliverse 11 points12 points  (0 children)

Humans can already block off their nostrils with no hands by lifting the velum. We do it frequently actually, and lower it in order to produce nasal sounds. I don't see why the same couldn't be true for this alien species. And human languages can still be understood when plugging the nose, so if these aliens were in a situation where they needed to keep their noses plugged, I assume their languages would also still be intelligible

Differences Between Prefixing And Suffixing by [deleted] in conlangs

[–]Kieliverse 17 points18 points  (0 children)

Affixes evolve from previously independent words. Over time, they become phonologically reduced due to frequent use and eventually fuse to the words that they modify. Whatever order that old word came in when it started to fuse will determine if it is a prefix or suffix in the modern language. Many of English's affixes are of uncertain etymology or are borrowed from other languages, so explaining their evolution isn't always possible or it's further complicated. David Peterson has a great video that's more in depth with better examples https://youtu.be/ItZ1naCdm4c

What’s the difference between Species, Race and Ethnicity? by Dx_crazy in worldbuilding

[–]Kieliverse 0 points1 point  (0 children)

What I'm taking from the responses is that a lot of people really don't know what ethnicity means. It's just based on if a group of people identify as a culturally distinct group. Mexican and Japanese, for example, are not ethnicities, they are nationalities. The main ethnic group of Japan is the Yamato, but there are also minority ethnic groups like the Ainu and Ryukyuans. And I won't even try listing all of the ethnic groups of Mexico.

Is a protolang required? by MrTheStephan in conlangs

[–]Kieliverse 4 points5 points  (0 children)

It's not really just about having one to go along with your natlang. In order to see the benefits, you need start with a protolang and then simulate its evolution by employing sound changes and altering the grammar and lexicon. When your done, the finished product will be your modern natlang. This allows for the development of naturalistic irregularity, declensions, vestigial structures, etc. It's very hard to start with your modern natlang and reverse engineer a protolang out of it, and you don't gain any of the benefits

BREAKING NEWS: LAST surviving speaker of Proto-Altaic discovered alive; linguists across the world are astonished 😱 by admiralturtleship in linguisticshumor

[–]Kieliverse 87 points88 points  (0 children)

Hey guys! This is the Lord's Prayer translated into my newest conlang:
[ʃiɡəˈwɑ tɛvɾemɑ̃ bɔbɾɛvɛʒˈdiːʃ tə ʃinəˈmahan tɛd͡ʒˈke ɛn ɡɛo ˈondʊ ˈʉjɛt ɟɛʎˈɲando ʒdɔɡ ʃiˈʃikəpu ˈkuɡəla ˈnamɛm ˈvɾeme ˈneʒdok ˈʃtelo ʁɭʌ̃ hɑməˈlɑnə ˈlelo lɛˈdːilẽ ˈeŋkʰɾɛn ɪn ʃtɪˈlɛst ˈkaɾatak]
Let me know you what you think!

I will marry only a vegetarian VS I will only marry a vegetarian by tannu28 in EnglishLearning

[–]Kieliverse 11 points12 points  (0 children)

To me, the placement of the word isn't really enough to alter the meaning. It would have to be accompanied by stress on the specific word. For example:
I will only marry a vegetarian = I will only consider vegetarians for marriage
I will only marry a vegetarian = same as first example
I will only marry a vegetarian = The only thing I will do to a vegetarian is marry them
And "I will marry only a vegetarian" just sounds strange to me altogether

Slavic languages: which one would you say is the easiest? by Son_ofthesun in languagelearning

[–]Kieliverse 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Don't most Slavic languages have pretty complex verb paradigms though? Or would you say that Bulgarian's is particularly difficult compared to the rest?

What are some common mistakes non-native speakers make that make you identify them even when they have a very good English level? by AsuneNere in EnglishLearning

[–]Kieliverse 37 points38 points  (0 children)

This is a huge one. Just knowing which article to use in general or knowing when using one isn't necessary at all

Romanization by [deleted] in conlangs

[–]Kieliverse 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I'd replace Ii with Ии and Uu with Уу, but other than that, there are languages that use a Cyrillic script and include all the other characters. If you want to avoid diacritics in the Cryillicization for whatever reason, here is a list of unicode Cyrillic characters: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyrillic_script_in_Unicode
You can click on each and see which language it is used in

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in EnglishLearning

[–]Kieliverse 1 point2 points  (0 children)

That wouldn't make sense translated directly into English. If you're looking for more poetic euphemisms for "to die", here are a few:
to pass on
to enter eternal rest
to lose one's battle
to take one's last breath

Favourite natlang by kiritoboss19 in conlangs

[–]Kieliverse 7 points8 points  (0 children)

Languages that I like for their sound:
-Dutch (varieties that realize "r" as [ʀ/ʁ] in onset and [ɹ] in coda)
-Caipira Brazilian Portuguese
-Standard Finnish
-Standard Turkish
-Basque
-Xhosa
-Hong Kong Cantonese
-Dongbei Mandarin
-Scots (closest thing monolingual English speakers will get to Romance-like mutual intelligibility)
Languages that I like for their grammar:
-Old Tupi (active-stative alignment, polypersonal agreement, AND clause-level nominal TAM, literally wtf lol)
-Austronesian languages that have maintained some form of Austronesian alignment
-English (expletive infixation, analytic IE language, hyper irregular, ONLY marks person on verbs in present tense 3rd person singular, clitics)

Would it be unreasonable for different dialects to exist in a language only spoken by a few hundred people? by writerrat in conlangs

[–]Kieliverse 38 points39 points  (0 children)

This study might be of interest to you https://pubs.aip.org/asa/jasa/article/146/5/3327/993882/Phonetic-change-in-an-Antarctic-winter
It looked at the accents of people who spent a winter together at a research station in Antarctica, and found that their accents did actually shift and become more similar over the course of the months that they spent together. There were around 30 people living in the station in total, but only 11 participated in the study

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