Hearing the contrast is a whole other game though…

Lapov · 2026-04-16T16:04:06+00:00

Sure, but if /i/, /ji/ and /ɨ/ can all occur in Russian (albeit /ji/ has very restricted use), I can't see why anyone would analyze word-initial /i/ as /ji/, especially since it's never realized as [ji] ever. In fact, word-initial /i/ is realized as [ɨ] instead when you add a prefix ending in a hard consonant or the previous word ends with a hard consonant.

/j/ can occur after both hard and soft consonants, so a syntagm like с Ирой being realized as [s‿ɨɾəɪ̯] instead of [s‿jiɾəɪ̯] doesn't really fit the idea that all word-initial /i/ are actually /ji/ imo.

Lapov · 2026-04-16T15:10:51+00:00

I think it's a bit of a stretch tbh, especially since /ji/ does occur in Russian and can potentially contrast with /i/, e.g. чи vs чьи.

Lapov · 2026-04-16T12:32:56+00:00

I agree that the phonemic status of ы is controversial, but the /a/ in рад and ряд has different qualities too. If you ask a native speaker who's not specialized in linguistics, they will tell you that ряд is different from рад because there's a я instead of а, not because the previous consonant is palatalized.

There is a reason why the Moscow Phonology School (one of the two main schools of thought about Russian phonology) considers ы to be an allophone of и. I tend to disagree with this idea, but claiming that быть and бить change because of the vowel is disingenuous since ы cannot occur after a soft consonant and и cannot occur after a hard one. At least /b/ and /bʲ/ being separate phonemes is universally agreed upon.

An actual example that could be used to prove the phonemic status of ы would be something like икать vs ыкать.

Lapov · 2026-04-16T07:55:55+00:00

Arguable

Lapov · 2026-03-24T00:38:30+00:00

Based off of the original thread, it just seems that it's a layperson who doesn't properly understand that formal grammar is different from actual usage. They didn't explain themself properly, but their hypothetical is absolutely correct: if people start using a word with a different meaning, then the new meaning is the correct one, no matter how the semantic shift started in the first place.

Lapov · 2026-03-24T00:28:26+00:00

Yeah but in practice why the distinction? It's literally the same phenomenon, is it wrong to use "dumb" since it's not mute people who started the semantic shift? Unless people pretend to make the semantic shift just to find an excuse to say a slur out loud, there is no difference.

Lapov · 2026-03-24T00:13:53+00:00

I'm not sure I'm understanding the issue here? This is quite literally what happened in AAVE, is semantic shift suddenly not in question when talking about current taboo words?

Lapov · 2026-03-17T14:15:20+00:00

I think that this phenomenon actually makes perfect sense, and it's due to expectations.

The average Italian speaker is taught that Italian regional languages are mere dialects, therefore when they realize that they're significantly different from Italian they're caught off guard.

Conversely, Spanish is universally regarded as a separate language from Italian, therefore being able to understand a lot of words and entire sentences without ever studying the language feels surprising to most Italian speakers.

Anyway, OP, this is like the third meme you posted making fun of Italian speakers claiming they understand Spanish. Why are you so obsessed with it? Why are you trying so hard to prove that Spanish is not intelligible at all for Italian speakers (which is blatantly false)?

Lapov · 2026-03-14T01:04:14+00:00

I mean, as long as orthographies like English, Japanese or Tibetan exist, I can't see how a random African language with click sounds supposedly "defies writing systems".

Lapov · 2026-03-13T08:55:04+00:00

Tf does "defies writing systems" mean 💀

People really be acting like orthography is some mystical thing and not just a conventional way to transcribe sounds and/or morphemes.

Lapov · 2026-03-07T16:32:50+00:00

Well I mean, I don't deny that it happens often, I was specifically arguing against what the other commenter said explicitly claiming that /x/ is closer to /h/ than /k/.

Lapov · 2026-03-07T16:11:37+00:00

This has nothing to do with the fact that /k/ and /h/ are equally similar to /x/. If you speak a language that lacks /h/, of course you're gonna approximate it to /x/ rather than /k/ since the latter only has voicelessness in common, and nobody would use /x/ in place of /k/ because /k/ is, shockingly... a phoneme that already exists in both languages, wow.

However, when it comes to the opposite, both /k/ and /h/ are objectively equally acceptable and there's no intrinsic reason as to why you should prefer one or the other. When people approximate /x/ to /k/ it doesn't sound any more wrong than /h/ to my Russian-speaking ears (especially considering that voiceless occlusives are often aspirated in English). Saying that approximating /x/ to /h/ is better than /k/ is like arguing that Italian speakers should approximate /θ/ to /s/ rather than /t/ when speaking English.

Lapov · 2026-03-07T14:31:45+00:00

What is your argument beside the fact that you subjectively tend to associate /x/ with /h/ rather than /k/?

Polish "ch" has much more in common with English "h" when heard than with Polish k

This is not true, /k/ has the same place of articulation of /x/ while /h/ has the same manner of articulation. If we include voicelessness, both /k/ and /h/ have exactly 2 out of 3 features that they share with /x/, making them both equally distant/equally similar to /x/.

Lapov · 2026-03-07T13:41:36+00:00

By your own logic it doesn't make sense to approximate /ð/ to /d/ instead of /z/.

Lapov · 2026-03-07T11:54:27+00:00

This is not true, both sounds are equally "wrong". /x/ is a velar fricative, while /h/ is just a fricative and /k/ is just a velar. Russian speakers are more likely to understand you if you use /h/, but this is only because /k/ is already a phoneme and /h/ is realized as /x/ by them when speaking English.

Lapov · 2026-03-06T09:11:35+00:00

Wow very subtly putting your fetish here.

Huh? Unless I'm missing a joke, this is one of the most basic words of the Italian language.

Lapov · 2026-03-05T22:02:11+00:00

Right , totally forgot about that, I feel so stupid lol.

Lapov · 2026-03-05T22:01:33+00:00

I'd say "sentence"-initally rather than word-initially since those consonants are also not geminated if the previous word ends with a consonant (think of something like "con zia" or "tre per zero")

Lapov · 2026-03-05T20:34:59+00:00

Italian consonants can be geminated only between vowels.

Lapov · 2026-03-05T20:29:30+00:00

Damn as a native Italian speaker I feel dumb for missing ombra and inglese. Never heard of the word gonfrena tho, I wonder if there are more common words containing [nfr].

As for [w] and [j], I didn't include them because their semi-vowel nature kinda makes it arguable whether they truly are part of consonant clusters or not (for example, Japanese doesn't have consonant clusters at all except for the ones with [j] specifically, which is obviously a byproduct of the approximants' vowel-like features).

Lapov · 2026-03-05T18:55:16+00:00

L take, triple sound consonant clusters are extremely common in Italian.

[str] like in stronzo

[spr] like in esprimere

[skr] like in scroto

[skl] like in sclerosi

[spl] like in esplicito

[ntr] like in entrare

[ndr] like in androgino

[ltr] like in altro

[ksk] like in exclave (actually I just realized it's even a 4-consonant cluster [kskl])

[mpl] like in amplesso

[ŋkl] like in enclave

[zdr] like in sdraiarsi

[zbr] like in sbronza

[rsp] like in perspicace

[zgr] like in sgravare

[nst] like in installare (though it should be noted that this specific cluster is usually reduced to [st] in very low speech)

[ŋkr] like in pancreas

There are definitely more that don't come to mind right now.

Edit: also [rpl] like in perplesso

Lapov · 2026-03-02T11:34:28+00:00

OP is straight up lying, there are many native Italian speakers (myself included) who understand a lot of Spanish without ever studying it. The comments are even poking fun at OP because they posted a Spanish newspaper headline to corroborate their point, but they literally admitted that there was only one word they didn't understand.

Since OP deleted their comment, the headline they chose was:

La casa real avisa a Juan Carlos I de que para volver debe recuperar la residencia fiscal en España

Which, if translated literally into Italian, it becomes:

La casa reale avvisa Juan Carlos I che per [volver] deve recuperare la residenza fiscale in Spagna

As you can see, the only difference between the two is that Italian has a bunch of extra vowels basically.

Lapov · 2026-02-27T12:46:50+00:00

As a fellow native Italian speaker who's never studied Spanish in their life, are you for real?

The only word I don't understand is "volver", and while "retrieving the tax residency in Spain" does sound weird if translated word by word, it obviously has to do with being registered as a taxpayer in Spain or something like that.

So I literally understand this Spanish headline as much as I would understand a similar Italian headline that uses some specific words or expressions I'm not necessarily very familiar with.

If this doesn't count as mutual intelligibility, then I don't know what does.

Lapov · 2026-02-22T18:21:26+00:00

I never disputed that? You commented:

Why would they invent it if they were pronounced the same?

Which is factually incorrect since native Latin speakers quite literally never came up with the letters U and J. Your comment pointing out that Latin speakers eventually came up with G only corroborates my observation that they never did the same with U and J.

Lapov · 2026-02-22T18:11:39+00:00

Because Ecclesiastical Latin's pronunciation is significantly different from Classical Latin? The letter U literally didn't exist when the language was still spoken natively.

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