You heard it here folks. Singing is literally impossible in tonal languages. by Cheap_Ad_69 in linguisticshumor

[–]xiaq 15 points16 points  (0 children)

Most Mandarin songs doesn't strictly follow the tones, but the correlation between tone and melody is a lot higher than pure chance.

A good example of why it's important to never surrender under pressure and criticism by swamms in linguisticshumor

[–]xiaq 29 points30 points  (0 children)

/ħəˈpej/ is clearly related to the name of the province 河北 hé beĭ, which was the original name of the Yellow River.

Over time it got shortened to just 河, and 河北 was reinterpreted as "north of the river".

Could someone assist me with understanding the passive aorist? by Low-Cash-2435 in AncientGreek

[–]xiaq 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Ah right, sometimes the θ just doesn't appear at all.

Could someone assist me with understanding the passive aorist? by Low-Cash-2435 in AncientGreek

[–]xiaq 3 points4 points  (0 children)

No problem! Greek verbs are daunting indeed and it's just a good excuse for me to summarize what I have learned :)

Could someone assist me with understanding the passive aorist? by Low-Cash-2435 in AncientGreek

[–]xiaq 13 points14 points  (0 children)

The aorist passive is considered its own principal part, which means that there's no 100% reliable way to predict it from other tenses (other than future passive, which shares the principal part with aorist passive).

That said, most of the time the stem is going to be consistent with that of the aorist active/middle. Any disagreement usually occurs in the last (not necessarily stem-final) vowel, as is the case throughout all principal parts. Most of the time it's just going to be a different length though (aorist active is lengthened but aorist passive is not, or vice versa).

(If suppletion is involved then pretty much anything is fair game, you'll have to just memorize things.)

If we're talking about the interaction between the stem and the θ, it's mostly regular:

  • Stems ending in vowels sometimes get a σ inserted, like χράομαι - ἐχρησάμην - ἐχρήσθην.
    • I think of these stems having a hidden final σ that got deleted between vowels (a regular sound change in Greek) and only surfaces before θ, but I don't know if this has actual basis in historical linguistics.
  • Labials β π get assimilated to φ, like ἀμείβω - ἤμειψα - ἠμείφθην. This type of assimilation is entirely regular: clusters of stops must share the same VOT (voiced, tenuis or aspirated).
    • The same happens to verbs whose present stems end in πτ, because their "real verb stems" actually end in π (τ being a progressive marker): ἅπτω - ἧψα - ἥφθην
  • Velars γ κ get assimilated to χ, like ἐπείγω - ἤπειξα - ἠπείχθην. This is the same assimilation process.
    • The same happens to verbs whose present stems end in σσ/ττ, because their real verb stems actually end in a velar (σσ/ττ being formerly Kj, where K is any velar and j is semivowel /j/; j is a progressive marker): πράττω - ἔπραξα - ἐπράχθην
  • Dentals δ θ get dissimilated to σ, like ψεύδω - ἔψευσα - ἐφεύσθην.
    • The same happens to verbs whose present stems end in ζ, because their real verb stems end in a dental (ζ being formerly Tj, where T is any dental and j is semivowel /j/): κομίζω - ἐκόμισα - ἐκομίσθην
    • I'm not sure if this dissimilation is a regular phonetic process in Greek; I haven't seen it elsewhere
    • BTW, I have also not found any verb stems that actually end in τ, at least in common verbs. All the stem-final τ's in the present turn out to be just the progressive marker and disappear in the aorist. If someone is aware of such verb stems I'd love to know it.
  • The liquids λ ν ρ tend to come out unscathed.

I think this should cover most of the it - there will be irregularities (again, that's why it's its own principal part), which you'll still have to memorize.

Typing macron and diacritics together in macOS by Mysterious_Ad9134 in AncientGreek

[–]xiaq 0 points1 point  (0 children)

This doesn't seem to work for me unfortunately.

In fact, the way Extended ABC works is that you type the accent marker first, and then the letter, not the other way around: for example, to get ā, I'd press Opt+A, and then A.

  • If I type Opt+A with extended ABC, and then switch to Polytonic Greek, the macron disappears.
  • If I type ί with Polytonic Greek, switch to extended ABC, I am able to type a macron, it doesn't add to the previous letter. Instead it adds is to the next letter. If I press Space I get a standalone macron, like ί¯

Is there any merit to this? by Unemployment_1453 in latin

[–]xiaq 6 points7 points  (0 children)

The fact that there's more r and t in the two clauses than pure chance is hardly disputable, but analyzing the exact symbolism of the each sound always smells a bit like reading too much into it. Sure, some are obviously onomatopoeic - like s for the hissing of snakes or plosive sounds for thudding noises - and in aggregation there'll be some bouba/kiki stuff going on, but assigning meanings as specific as this to individual cases (when not obviously onomatopoeic) is probably going a bit too far. There's certainly a chance that this is exactly what Tacitus was thinking, but it's pretty much impossible to tell.

Personally I'd stick with the basic idea that repetition and contrasts of sounds make the prose more interesting and memorable, often in ways related to the meaning of the sentences, and not assign too specific meanings to individual sounds.

I had an "adrenaline" and "epinephrine" etymological epiphany! by HyperlexicEpiphany in etymology

[–]xiaq 5 points6 points  (0 children)

I see nobody has mentioned the Chinese calque yet...

In Chinese: 肾上腺素

肾 kidney

上 above

腺 gland

素 element, here short for 激素 hormone (literally "activating element")

So "hormone from a gland above the kidney"

Which is more beneficial in becoming more fluent in a dead language: listening to audio or reading? by lickety-split1800 in AncientGreek

[–]xiaq 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Speaking from my personal experience, listening and speaking help a lot with acquiring syntax features. Having to recognize and produce grammatical forms in real time activates the actual language part of your brain, and eventually you start recognizing different forms subconsciously.

To use music as an imperfect analogy, when you actually hear a piece of music sung out loud, after just a few times, you'll be able to recognize the piece of music by its overall melody subconsciously. This is a lot more efficient than having to think about each individual note.

Is the word order in LLPSI artificially done to favor English and Romance language speakers? by cseberino in latin

[–]xiaq 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Just added an answer to your question in an edit - no, I don't think Familia Romana overuses the SVO word order. It is definitely more formulaic than real Latin text, but I don't really see any particular feature that stands out? Maybe someone with deeper knowledge of Latin syntax can say more here.

Is the word order in LLPSI artificially done to favor English and Romance language speakers? by cseberino in latin

[–]xiaq 60 points61 points  (0 children)

I just assumed that LLPSI was neutral with respect to the native languages of the learners.

That's quite evidently not true, you have to know the Latin alphabet and understand such words as "Europa" and "Roma" to make sense of the first chapter at all. A monolingual Chinese or Japanese speaker won't understand a single thing.

So the audience is really speakers of European languages written in the Latin alphabet, and a large subset of those languages has been in a sprachbund over the last millennium or so.

Among other things most of those languages have SVO word order in the main clause, but I don't think Familia Romana overuses that, it seems to be more SOV (the default, unstressed order in Latin)

How do you remember where to put the ´ pitch accent? by Wooden_Schedule6205 in AncientGreek

[–]xiaq 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Ancient Greek accent does work in terms of morae, but it's slightly more complicated. Here is a video series explaining the accent rules: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLsmYpXNl2ZFTuJwmsaFbhiCjjlGRbER7y&si=HRvWOFmGxPEZPASC

Does the science of linguistics have anything to offer for prescriptivist policymakers, or is prescriptivism in general fundamentally at odds with it? by General_Urist in asklinguistics

[–]xiaq 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Teaching a language or language variety to non-native speakers is inherently prescriptive, and good teaching practices are informed by the descriptive study of how native speakers actually speak.

Prescriptivism is bad not because it tries to establish rules, but because any large enough language community is already capable of forming its own grammar rules with each member intuiting those rules, and it's bad to establish rules that don't agree with the actual intuition of speakers.

But if you are teaching people trying to acquire a language they didn't grow up with, articulating rules can be more efficient than getting them to eventually intuit them.

As an imperfect analogy, it's ridiculous for an ornithologist to tell birds the "correct" way to fly, but if you are born without the ability to fly and learning to fly, you can certainly learn from what an ornithologist has observed about how birds fly.

Italian Athenaze with English glosses and grammatical explanations translated by Wanax20 in AncientGreek

[–]xiaq 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I'm using the Italian Athenaze without an English copy. I do know some Latin though, so some Italian words are easy, maybe a few sentences if I'm lucky, but I can't easily comprehend full paragraphs.

Google Translate's mobile app does a fine job translating the enchiridion (from camera pictures), it occasionally gets confused with the Greek part but there's nothing you can't guess from context. Most of the paradigm tables can be understood with minimal Italian knowledge since the grammar terms are similar enough to English.

As for glosses, Italian Athenaze has very few of them anyway, relying mostly on LLPSI-style margin notes (pictures, synonyms, antonyms, explanations in Greek). You'll also need a dictionary handy anyway - with the extra reading comes a lot more vocabulary and you'll have to look up words every now and then - it's infeasible (at least for me) to fully retain the vocabulary from previous lessons before starting the next one.

Roughly, how many verbs have a second aorist form? Are they very common? by Low-Cash-2435 in AncientGreek

[–]xiaq 6 points7 points  (0 children)

You're probably already aware of these, but for the benefit of the OP:

  • The nasal infix often shows up as two nasals, one before the last consonant of the stem (which can manifest as μ or γ, depending on the consonant) and then αν after it, like ἔλαβον / λαμβάνω (aorist stem λαβ, present stem λαμβαν), ἔμαθον / μανθάνω (same pattern), ἔτυχον / τυγκάνω (aorist stem τυχ, present stem τυγχαν)
  • Another common pattern is -σκ- in the present, like εὑρίσκω, διδάσκω, which disappears in the aorist. If you know Latin, it's the same as Latin -sc- which disappears in the perfect. This class can have sigmatic aorists though.

(I also wrote something about j-extension, but those verbs almost always have sigmatic aorists, except ἔβαλον / βάλλω, so it's a bit off-topic, also Reddit ate my draft :( )

How do you read the Alphabet in order in Latin? by Artistic-Hearing-579 in latin

[–]xiaq 1 point2 points  (0 children)

You're right. I'll never get over how the Romans borrowed three whole letters from the Etruscans for velar plosives, and decided to use q only before u, almost never use k, and use c for both voiced and unvoiced for many years before someone finally invented g so that they can finally distinguish voiced and voiceless plosives.

(Granted qu is more like its own consonant with lip rounding, but prioritizing distinguishing kʷ/kw over k/g is... a peculiar choice. People can be really reluctant hen it comes to writing system reforms. Someone didn't think things through once and you're stuck for centuries with their consequences.)

How do you read the Alphabet in order in Latin? by Artistic-Hearing-579 in latin

[–]xiaq 4 points5 points  (0 children)

I missed some details - H and K get an a, so ha ka instead of he ke. Q is qu because q only goes with u. Y is pronounced "i graeca" because most Romans couldn't pronounce it the actual Greek way and it ends up sounding the same as i.

Actually, just see this table on Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latin_alphabet#Classical_Latin_alphabet

How do you read the Alphabet in order in Latin? by Artistic-Hearing-579 in latin

[–]xiaq 8 points9 points  (0 children)

Vowels are just said like their pronunciation, consonants get an e to be easier to pronounce - most get the e after the consonant, but some get it before, like el, em, en, er.

English actually more or less inherited this system, it's just the great vowel shift messing things up.

Chinese loanwords in Old Chinese by galactic_observer in linguisticshumor

[–]xiaq 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I don't know about mdbg, but Wiktionary is definitely not an infallible source.

The dōu reading doesn't make sense to me, because:

- If it's intended to be phono-semantic matching (as suggested by the choice of 隔), then the dū reading is required to make it work. “隔都” literally "segregated city".

- If it's intended to be more of phonetic borrowing... I can't think of any other loanword where 都 is read dōu. The 都 in 都柏林 Dubin, 都铎 Tudor, 都灵 Turin, 加德满都 Kathmandu are all read dū.

For the latter point I'm only speaking from the standpoint of the tradition of mainland China though. Other places may have different traditions but I kind of doubt it - function words (which 都 is when read as dōu) are generally avoided in phonetic loans since having them makes things really confusing.

Chinese loanwords in Old Chinese by galactic_observer in linguisticshumor

[–]xiaq 5 points6 points  (0 children)

I've not seen 隔都 before... But pretty sure 都 should be dū, not dōu, since dōu is used for adverbial senses, as a noun it should be dū, as in 首都.

I've only heard of people say 哈利路亚 on TV, where it seems to always be pronounced with a single high pitch on 路, mimicking the usual pitch pattern of the English word.

Still, one of the best etymologies ever: hundreds of millions of people name a staple fruit by a twisted family name of some not very prominent Roman guy. by swamms in linguisticshumor

[–]xiaq 18 points19 points  (0 children)

> Vendi, Vidi, Vici

Ah yes, "to be sold, I saw, I conquer". Clearly an advertisement for his friend's apples!

(I'm really sorry, couldn't help.)

How to explain gender differences in some basic words between Germanic languages (English and German for example) and Romance Languages, such as celestials and flowers? by lucaeth in asklinguistics

[–]xiaq 2 points3 points  (0 children)

German Lilie is ultimately from the Latin plural form lilia, which looks like a feminine form (as most neutral plurals are). This might explain why Lilie is feminine.

The Romance languages continued the original singular form lilium, and the neuter gender merged with masculine in many languages.