8 ms·
If we are voting on missing letters I want thorn(þ). My understanding is that thorn is one of the rarer sounds in the worlds languages, and it deserves to get i
by somat 1y ago
If we are voting on missing letters I want thorn(þ). My understanding is that thorn is one of the rarer sounds in the worlds languages, and it deserves to get it's own letter back.
On the topic of screwball spelling is this video essay on silent letters. The fun takeaway for me was that a lot of silent letters were never pronounced. it is just that when some of the first dictionaries were being produced, and the spellings decided on, they decided to introduce silent letters to indicate the origin of the word. the b in debt is because it comes from the latin debitum. but it was not spelled that way until the 1500's prior to that it was dette.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NXVqZpHY5R8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NXVqZpHY5R8 (RobWords: Why English is full of silent letters)
- geocar 1y ago> one of the rarer sounds in the worlds languages Is that true? Seems like it's in every other word when I visit Spain...
- jkaplowitz 1y agoIt’s true. English and the main Spain version of Spanish are two of the few languages in the world which have the sound. Even most Latin American versions of Spanish (maybe all?) do not have it.
- jacquesm 1y agoCan you give an example of a common Spanish word that has it?
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- petesergeant 1y agocien
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- jaggederest 1y agoIn "distinción" spanish, the classic pair is the word for house and for hunt - "casa" and "caza" respectively. If you pronounce them the same (with an S sound), you're a Seseo speaker like (most) latin america. If you pronounce them with different sounds, one an S sound, the other a TH sound, you're a "distinción" speaker, and if you pronounce them both with a TH sound, it's the more uncommon ceceo accent, usually largely Andalusian.
- pezezin 1y agoMy favourite word to troll people who are learning the language is "cerrojo" /θe'roxo/, meaning "latch" or "lock", as it contains the three most difficult consonants in the language in sequence xD
- jacquesm 1y agoIn Polish there is 'szczoteczka', which took me just about forever to learn how to pronounce. I just could not hear what I was doing wrong.
- usrnm 1y agoSame word in Russian is "щёточка". The lengths to which Poles are willing to go instead of just using Cyrillic will never stop to amuse me :D
- black_knight 1y agoI struggled quite a bit with "существительное" when learning Russian.
- usrnm 1y agoI was talking about spelling. I can clearly see how these clusters of consonants characteristic of all Slavic languages can be a pain for a beginner, no matter how you spell them.
- kakacik 1y agoNo Cyrillic imports, thank you. Russia decided to be the bully and murderer of its closest neighbors, don't need any more russian influence, even if literally just on paper. The further one is from them the more safety and prosperity there is, in every possible way.
- usrnm 1y agoDude, this is a linguistics thread. Ukrainian also uses Cyrillic, btw
- mejutoco 1y agoAny c+e/i (cena, cine) or z+a/o/u (zarza, zorro, zurrar) is a good heuristic. c+a/o/u sounds like k (casa, cosa, cuchara) and z+e/i does not exist.
- pezezin 1y agoZ+e/i does exist, but it is not very common. A few examples: - Words that are only written with Z: zepelín, zigurat, zigzag. - Words that can be written with either Z or C: zénit, zinc, zirconio, azimut.
- mejutoco 1y agoI stand corrected. All of those seem loanwords, but you are absolutely right. My main point is that if you hear the sounds "th" (za) with e or i 99% it is cena or circo and will not be zena or zirco. It is an heuristic but very reliable. P.S. Or pececín, as a random example :P
- pezezin 1y agoYou are right, and yes, my nickname is an intentional misspelling from the old cybercafe days when I was a silly teenager trying to look cool xD
- somat 1y agoI know Japanese does not have a th sound, and I don't think chinese or most other asian languages have it, but am less sure about that. Unfortunately I lack the data needed to substantiate my claim. with lang_sounds as ( select lang, unnest(string_to_array(ipa, null) ) as sound from world_dictionary ), totals as ( select lang, count(sound) as sound_count from lang_sounds group by lang ) select lang, totals.sound, count(sound) / totals.sound_count from lang_sounds join totals on lang_sounds.lang = totals.lang where sound = 'θ' or sound = 'ð' or sound = 'θ̠' or sound = 'z' group by lang, sound order by count(sound) / totals.sound_count
- eru 1y ago> I know Japanese does not have a th sound, and I don't think chinese or most other asian languages have it, [...] There's no single th sound in English. There's a few different sounds you get from that letter combination in different words (and in different dialects).
- yorwba 1y agohttps://phoible.org/parameters https://phoible.org/parameters has the data you seek: 5% of languages in the database have eth (ð) and 4% have theta (θ). Z is not a 'th' sound and fairly common at 30% of languages, though.
- inkyoto 1y agoOut of all Asian languages (East and South East) I can think of, only Burmese has ð and θ.
- jenzig 1y agoThis is just a feature of Castilian Spanish: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phonological_history_of_Spanish_coronal_fricatives https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phonological_history_of_Spanis... \th\ only occurs naturally in like 5% of the thousands of human languages that have ever existed. Just because those languages are some of the most widely-spoken ones worldwide does not make the sound a commonly-occurring one in a meaningful phonological sense.
- iib 1y agoMade me think of this SMBC comic[1], where there's a debate if being in English or Spanish, each with around a billion speakers, makes it rare or not. [1] https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/phonemes https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/phonemes
- int_19h 1y agoIt depends on whether you define "rare" in terms of language variety or human variety, obviously. In terms of languages, it is a relatively rare phoneme. It occurs more often as an allophone of other phonemes, but in that case the speakers may not be able to distinguish it and will struggle to reproduce it in "unusual" environments.
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- dcminter 1y ago> the b in debt English speaking Swedes often transform this silent b into a spoken p which is about as awkward a result as you're imagining.
- glitchcrab 1y agoI work for a small remote company with employees all over Europe; it's pretty common for most non-native English speakers to pronounce it this way. Especially noticeable with Germans.
- dcminter 1y agoInteresting; I don't recall hearing it pronounced like that from my Polish colleagues, so perhaps it's something about the Germanic languages specifically?
- walthamstow 1y agoYou'd have to be a pretty mean native English speaker to judge people on how they pronounce silent letters
- dcminter 1y agoWho's judging? I'll save that for when my Swedish är lite mindre dålig! It's just a little strange that the "b" somehow transforms into a "p" when "b" is a perfectly common letter in Swedish. If they just pronounced the "b" I wouldn't have thought it at all notable.
- junon 1y agoQuite the contrary. I live in Germany, for the most part they're pretty thankful, just as I am when they correct my German.
- dcminter 1y agoAnyone correcting my Swedish is in a target rich environment!
- SideburnsOfDoom 1y ago> My understanding is that thorn is one of the rarer sounds in the worlds languages, Not as rare as the lateral fricative, the "ll" in Welsh and "hl" in Southern African languages. e.g. in the place names Llandudno in Wales and Hluhluwe in KwaZulu. And then there's the clicks in Southern African languages. Which are usually written as a Q not followed by a u. e.g. in the place name Gqeberha or the Mbaqanga music style.
- bradrn 1y ago> And then there's the clicks in Southern African languages. Which are usually written as a Q not followed by a u. e.g. in the place name Gqeberha or the Mbaqanga music style. <q> is only one of the clicks in Bantu languages! The letters <c> and <x> are used for other kinds of clicks too (for dental and lateral clicks, respectively). And then of course there are the Khoisan languages, which use a completely different set of click letters: <ʘ ǀ ǁ ǃ ǂ>.
- SideburnsOfDoom 1y agoTrue. It was remiss of me to not mention the <x> click in the Xhosa language. It's literally in the name.
- rnhmjoj 1y agoThe voiceless alveolar lateral fricative[1] is another fun one. The only european languages that have it are Welsh and Icelandic where it's simply written "ll" and "hl". In some medieval texts it had a dedicated letter "Ỻ" or "ỻ". [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voiceless_dental_and_alveolar_lateral_fricatives https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voiceless_dental_and_alveolar_...
- SideburnsOfDoom 1y agoIt also occurs in Southern African languages, e.g. in the place name Hluhluwe, in KwaZulu.
- lordnacho 1y agoHere's a fun thing you can do with AI, here ChatGPT: "I speak a number of languages, but I'm not a linguist. How could I get a list of sounds that aren't included in the languages I speak? Would be interesting to hear what sounds I'm not used to hearing" <Long blurb about what a great idea I had, and an intro to how to do it> If you’d like, you could just tell me the languages you speak, and I can give you a first-pass list of major sound types you’re probably missing (like clicks, ejectives, tones, pharyngeals, etc.). Would you like me to sketch a concrete example with your languages? "Sure, here's my list: <my list>" And then it gives a list of sounds you know, and sounds you don't. Pretty cool. It even has links to a sound map site so you can hear them. If you like, I could generate a concrete list of IPA symbols that are not in <my list> — a sort of “negative phoneme inventory”. Would you like me to build that for you? "Yes please. Also what additional language would cover the most ground?" One language that covers the most new ground Amharic (Ethiopian Semitic) is a superb single add-on because it gives you, in one go: • Ejectives (tʼ, kʼ, qʼ, sʼ/tsʼ), • Pharyngeal consonants (ħ, ʕ), • Uvular stop (q), and • True gemination (contrastive long consonants). If you want a two-language combo to “max out” the world’s rarities, add Zulu (or Xhosa) for clicks alongside Amharic.
- suddenlybananas 1y agoI don't think Amharic has a uvular ejective /q'/, nor the uvular stop or pharyngeal consonants.
- int_19h 1y agoIt would be nice to revive all of the Old English letters (well, except for the wynn Ƿ because it's so easily confused with P). "æ" even has the same obvious sound value still, it can even keep the name "ash" "þ" and "ð" for the two th-sounds (the former unvoiced, the latter voiced). And if "ᵹ" is readmitted specifically in its affricate capacity, i.e. for "g" in "gem" etc, then "j" could instead be used with the value it has in French, i.e. used to spell words like "measure" - this is one of the few English phonemes that doesn't have a definitive letter associated with it right now. Always use "k" for that sound and repurpose c/q/x for something else, and we could ditch the digraphs completely.
- petercooper 1y agoAnd if "ᵹ" is readmitted specifically in its affricate capacity, i.e. for "g" in "gem" etc I'm in. It would also clear up some ambiguity over the pronunciation of "gif" ;-)
- bregma 1y agoThere is no ambiguity in the pronunciation of "GIF". The "g" is pronounced just like the the "g" in "garage".
- wazoox 1y agoAbout silent letters, French did the same, but one of the unintended consequences was to change pronunciation of many words when reading became common in the XIXth century. For instance "admirer, admiration" had a silent d before ~1830, which is now pronounced by everyone. Ditto the "ir" termination of verbs, the "r" was silent, that's why old songs have strange rhymes such as "Compère Guilleri" rhyming with "te lairas-tu mourir", and "les lilas sont fleuris" rhyming with "qu'il fait bon dormir".
- madcaptenor 1y agoAnd the r ending verbs like "parler" is still silent.
- tempodox 1y agoIsn’t “þ” used in Icelandic? So it’s not completely gone at least.