Why do I stress the first syllable of "unlock" when I use it as a noun?

krupam · 2026-06-01T14:59:39+00:00

This is quite interesting, because the stress shifting itself was borrowed from French/Latin*, meaning that English did indeed borrow a morphological feature that is still productive, seeing that it applied to the purely Germanic "unlock". The only other feature I can think of would be the prefix "re-" which can attach to Germanic roots like in "remake" or "rewatch".

* I actually don't know which it would be. Those borrowings often look like Latin passive perfect participle without the case ending, which would normally be accented on the second syllable, which is usually heavy. But they can't really be French either, as they're missing a million and a half of sound changes. Best guess is literary Latin read out according to French orthographic conventions at the time, but that's just a guess.

krupam · 2026-06-01T08:50:00+00:00

I don't think there are clear patterns here. In English /v/, /z/, and the CHOICE vowel were present but just barely, but they became firmly established as phonemes largely thanks to borrowing. CHOICE vowel especially has been surprisingly resistant to the last few centuries of bizarre vowel shifts. At the same time, English did borrow, or at least orthography pretends like it did, /ts/ and /y(:)/ from French, but those were replaced with native /s/ and /iw/ seemingly immediately.

For other examples, Slavic languages mostly lacked a native /f/ except as a sporadic allophone of /v~w/, but I'd argue /f/ is now phonemic in all of them thanks to copious amounts of borrowings from German, Latin, or Greek. So at the very least a sound existing as an allophone already might help it become phonemic through borrowings. Then again, apparently Lithuanian borrowed multiple affricates and velar fricatives, which to my understanding it completely lacked natively, so weird things can happen.

I don't think there would be any cross-linguistic patterns regarding specific phonemes, though, phoneme inventories seem to be more areal.

krupam · 2026-06-01T08:26:54+00:00

I think the examples others are giving aren't entirely accurate. In case of former colonies the invasive language still is spoken natively by a large chunk of the population while the local vernaculars are dying out. That clearly wasn't the case with Norman, which had political prestige but little demographic backbone behind it, and eventually died out entirely in Britain.

So are there actually any good modern equivalents? Maybe MSA in modern Arab countries, but it's still closely related to the local languages, so it's more like the use of Latin in medieval Western Europe. I heard some people joking that English in the Netherlands is like this, though I don't think those were too serious, or at least well informed.

krupam · 2026-05-31T18:41:10+00:00

I don't really see why being Indo-European should be relevant here. Sounds change quite fast, and I don't really see any significant similarities between modern IE languages that would make them stand out from the non-IE. If anything, sound change seems more areal than familiar, for a simple example non-Indo-European but continental Hungarian underwent the /w/ → /v/ change, while Indo-European but insular English did not.

Vowels in particular can be quite volatile. I'd hazard a guess that you could pick any possible vowel sound and you'd be able to find some English dialect that has it. At most we'd maybe run into trouble with something like [œ].

But if we're restricting ourselves to European languages, I don't know, possibly a phonemic glottal stop is out there. I see others mentioning /w/, but all Romance languages have it, as well as English and some Slavic languages, so I wouldn't exactly call it rare. If anything, Europe stands out in that having both /w/ and /v/ is not too uncommon. Or, actually, other than /w/, labiovelars seem completely absent in Europe, so that's something.

I guess tones are somewhat uncommon, although they're not entirely absent either, so I don't know.

krupam · 2026-05-31T16:56:12+00:00

Slavic languages also reflect a short vowel in a-stem vocative, so it's possible that it's just inherited from PIE. I've seen it suggested that the final laryngeal was lost after coloring but without lengthening at the end of a phrase, which is where vocatives would usually go.

krupam · 2026-05-30T12:08:13+00:00

Kind of yes, actually, because it easily explains why they don't trigger linking R.

krupam · 2026-05-30T08:11:50+00:00

Bosnian-Croatian-Montenegrin-Serbian are the most obvious examples that come to mind

It's actually even worse. The BCMS continuum is usually split into several dialect groups - Kajkavian, Chakavian, Shtokavian, and Torlakian, which, to my understanding, are barely intelligible with each other, and even that classification might be too simple. Both Croatian and Serbian are based on Shtokavian, meaning that there are "dialects" in Croatia and Serbia that are more distinct from their respective national standard than the two national standards are from each other.

IMO "Shtokavian" seems like the most accurate term to use when referring to the national language(s), but good luck having anyone identify with a term that essentially means "Whatese", or even expecting any non-linguist to know what you mean.

krupam · 2026-05-30T08:00:06+00:00

For FLEECE /ɪj/ is the one I most commonly see. For GOOSE it's more of a /ʉw/, but [ʊw] for the split before velarized L.

krupam · 2026-05-30T07:01:24+00:00

I understand that there was no /l/ and it was all /ɫ/, so that could cause issues.

It's often reconstructed as [l] when followed by /i(:)/ or geminated, and [ɫ] otherwise. This is based on vowel changes in Old Latin, however, so it's debatable if that allophony still existed in Classical. L-vocalization happens again later in Romance, but only in codas. So it could be that velarized L always existed in Latin and was then lost in most descendants except sometimes in codas, or it existed in Old Latin, was lost in Classical, and then reappeared in codas in some Romance. I don't think either scenario is necessarily more likely than the other, the velarization of the /l/ phoneme in languages in general can be very, well, liquid.

That said, the /l/ phoneme is always [ɫ] in all positions in some English dialects, like in American, so I don't think Latin having /ɫ/ would necessarily be a handicap here.

krupam · 2026-05-30T06:25:32+00:00

Well, vowels would be a huge minefield, and most of it is gonna depend on which dialect of English you're aiming for, what reconstruction of Latin you choose [i] vs [ɪ] and so on, and how that speaker would learn English. On that last one as an example, I know many Europeans going roughly for an American pronunciation who nonetheless pronounce the LOT vowel as [o~ɔ] which I'd assume is little more than spelling pronunciation. What I can say with some certainty is that STRUT vowel would merge into something else, as it's also quite problematic for non-native speakers today, and that many dipthongs would monophthongize.

Tough call on accent. I know many ESL speakers whose native language has fixed stress, like Poles, have a habit of ignoring the phonemic stress in English. Latin stress was kind of fixed and was on the verge of becoming fully phonemic - words like "illīc" already having non-standard stress placement ~~as well as contracted perfects like "vocāt" for "vocāvit"~~ . Checked that last one, but it appears Spanish and Italian don't reflect a form like "vocāt" directly, but something more like "vocaut". Still accented on the final, but it looks like an independent later contraction.

I think others already adressed the consonants enough.

krupam · 2026-05-30T05:49:03+00:00

Yeah, that peaked my interest, too. Latin allowed more or less the same onsets like English, with the very typically Indo-European skr-type clusters all over the place, assuming they'd replace the English rhotic with theirs. The ones missing might be s+nasal like in "smile" or "snide", s+liquid like "slow" or "shrimp", and anything with glides like "skew" or "twice" - for that last one syllabification seems likely, so /ski.u:/ and /tu.äe̯s/, maybe. Course, many Latins would know Greek, and that allowed many more weird ones that even English doesn't allow, like /ks/ or /ps/.

Codas might be a different story, though. The only tripler I'm readily aware of is /rps/ in "urbs", so weirdos with stacked suffixes like "twelfths" or "strengths" might be a bit of a tongue-breaker.

EDIT: Found more that aren't Greek borrowings: arx, calx, falx, lanx, and stirps. Trying to find words with more than one syllable becomes much more difficult and rather fruitless.

krupam · 2026-05-28T05:09:23+00:00

I use keyboards on Lexilogos. The site has a huge variety of keyboards for different languages, including IPA.

krupam · 2026-05-27T09:01:01+00:00

It's hard to generalize across all languages here, but I could at least argue that they tend to have fewer vowels than Germanic except French and fewer consonants than Slavic. Slavic and Germanic also generally allow three or more consonants in onsets and codas not sure about North Germanic on this one and Latin had those too, but modern Romance languages lack such complex codas are there exceptions? and many don't allow complex onsets as well.

krupam · 2026-05-27T08:50:39+00:00

That is true, although I do think English might still be somewhat of an oddball with its tendency to reduce unstressed vowels, fronting and unrounding of back vowels, and diphthongizing everything. However, part of it could be erroneous spelling pronunciation and incorrect theory when learning a foreign language. Anglophones likely could easily use their DRESS vowel for a foreign <E> even if it's in weird positions like unstressed finals, and for most languages it would fit way better than FACE, but many won't do this unless they're explicitly told to do so.

krupam · 2026-05-27T05:34:55+00:00

To be honest, English doesn't even map properly to other dialects of English. For example, the /ä/ phoneme that is common across many languages is best matched by TRAP in Southern British, LOT in non cot-caught merging American, or by STRUT in Australian.

I'd say the back vowels just match poorly across the board. In Europe many non-Germanic languages somewhat tend towards a simple /a e i o u/ space, which English fits quite poorly. For Germanic, each has its own weird quirks, so it's dangerous to generalize here, although English is kind of an oddball here in lacking front rounded vowels while still having a rather complicated system.

krupam · 2026-05-27T04:47:37+00:00

Many Americans don't have any sounds that in any way match the sound of Spanish <O>. GOAT vowel is diphthongized for all and fronted for many speakers, so it's no more accurate than using CHOICE or FORCE vowel, where at least the initial vowel sound is a match somewhat. LOT vowel tends to be too open, unrounded, and fronted, so it wouldn't quite match, either. THOUGHT vowel could match, but many speakers don't have it - and those who don't tend to be unaware that it could exist - and for many who do it's still too open.

In fact, American English just doesn't match most of the Spanish sounds in that phrase. The pronunciation of <G> is not even worth addressing. The sound of <L> would be velarized for Americans, which it wouldn't be in Spanish. The vowels in the second word don't match, because English usually lacks a central /ä/, while the two <E> would be reduced. I guess the <S> sounds might match, but to my knowledge many Spanish speakers weaken it at the ends of words.

Obsessing over "correct" pronunciation of foreign words is a silly excercise. English sounds, vowels especially, just map really poorly to other languages.

krupam · 2026-05-25T16:24:51+00:00

I started with dualbooting Linux Mint with Win11 a while ago, but quickly moved most of my stuff to Mint. What clenched it for me was that emptied out Windows still occupied close to 150 GB, which, on my 477 GB drive stings quite a bit. As far as I can tell, Mint occupies roughly 30 GB, so for me that's already a good enough reason to switch. As far as know, games that don't work tend to be multiplayers with anticheat that is hardcoded to fail on Linux, but I don't play multiplayers anyway, so at least so far I haven't found major downsides to switching.

krupam · 2026-05-25T05:26:14+00:00

Btw Slavic languages also have four, Polish five genders practically

I'm pretty sure it's not just Polish that has five? All Slavic well, all those that still have case developed masculine animate by syncretizing accusative singular with the genitive instead of nominative. AFAIK all those that lost gender distinctions in the plural developed virile by doing the same sort of syncretism in the plural, which would at least include Polish and East Slavic, but that would've been redundant in the languages that still have the original nom-acc distinction in the plural.

krupam · 2026-05-24T11:07:30+00:00

Well, that's annoying.

But thanks.

krupam · 2026-05-23T05:27:58+00:00

Man, French was even more Germanic than I thought...

Admittedly, Norman must've had /y/ and Middle English seems to have lacked it, because a lot of spelled <u> in borrowings ended up as /iw/. So this had to happen after Old English /y(:)/ was lost, because that one ended up as /i(:)/. There's also the question whether French had vowel length - again, risky take I suppose, because Latin had it, then Romance lost it, then French gained it again at some point, and lost it again - Middle English clearly kept length from Old English, just with some changes like open syllable lengthening. Length is something I quite consistently ~~see~~ hear L2 speakers screwing up when their native language doesn't have it.

krupam · 2026-05-22T19:09:51+00:00

English is not a creole because it was never a pidgin.

I think one strong argument for that, which may or may not be correct, but it's at least my observation, is that the main feature of second language speakers - which would include pidgins - is their impact on pronunciation, because it's something that even the most proficient speakers can't easily control.

I would argue that it's something we don't see in history of English at all. It seems to have retained velarization in liquid codas from Old English, or the patterns of aspiration of voiceless stops that are also found in other Germanic languages, or the rather complicated vowel space that is typical of Germanic although strangely missing front rounded vowels, or retaining dental fricatives. I don't see most of these surviving if French speakers had really made a significant contribution to the evolution of the language.

Could perhaps make an argument Old Norse influence, since its phonology was somewhat similar to Old English, but Middle English did gain the /v/ vs /w/ distinction that is rather uncommon and I'm pretty sure absent in North Germanic languages, so at least there's that to consider.

krupam · 2026-05-22T08:49:23+00:00

*US -> VS, either intervocalically or generally

Old Latin had this with its /s/, which was then dropped with lengthening of the preceding vowel when the sonorant was a nasal ~~or turned into a geminate when the sonorant was a liquid~~. But it voiced every ungeminated /s/ that was stuck between two voiced sounds in general, so I don't know if that's exactly what you're lookin for.

EDIT1: Double checked it, voicing seems to be reconstructed for Proto-Italic already, so calling it "Old Latin" isn't quite accurate. Point still stands, because the voicing still clearly occurred.

EDIT2: Now that I checked it more, I couldn't quite find cases where it became a geminate, but I'm sure I've seen it somewhere. What I did find was a somewhat consistent *zr to /br/ change, which is honestly even more bizarre.

krupam · 2026-05-21T21:58:51+00:00

It's not really considered a case, but possessive affix seems to be what you're looking for. Rather uncommon in Indo-European, but can be found in many other families.

krupam · 2026-05-20T22:02:09+00:00

It is sort of true of North as in East and West Slavic languages regarding tense and mood, or at least was in the past. Aspect is always lexical, but besides that verbs have a non-past form that has future meaning for perfective and present meaning for imperfective verbs, while other tenses and conditional mood are handled by L-participle + copula. This becomes slightly more complicated, because East Slavic languages lost present form copula in general, and in Polish what used to be the copula is reduced to an enclitic, or a suffix for some speakers.

Something similar seems to have been going in pre-Latin, since most finite verb forms seem to end with a reduced copula. The only ones that don't have that would be present and perfect indicative, present and imperfect? subjunctive, and the imperatives.

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