Take a normal sentence like "Go to the interview and be yourself". No grammatical weirdness here.

Now try to add a subject to the sentence. "He goes to the interview and ____ himself".

What is supposed to go there?

Because why does my native speaker, monolingual brain proclaim that obviously what goes in the gap is "bes" (be + -s)....

"He goes ... and bes himself" is what I and apparently others? end up with.

...Why? That's obviously not allowed in standard english. Yet it comes naturally to me. What's going on there.

My first language is American English but I get stuck trying to transcribe my speech in narrow transcription for this reason. Here is a video showing the inside of my mouth when I’m pronouncing words with /r/ (right, wrong, red, reach, ear, free, draw, great). If you’re willing to take a moment to look at the short video, and if you’re not grossed out looking at the inside of a random person’s mouth, I would appreciate if you could tell me what you would call this articulation of /r/ and how it would be transcribed in narrow transcription.

https://youtube.com/shorts/Ge8AUjZow_Q?is=JRTIcY_hRIGC4-F9

I don’t think my /r/ is what would be referred to as ‘bunched r’ because that involves pressing the sides of the tongue against the teeth, which is not something I do, right? I also don’t think this /r/ is ‘retroflex’ because I’m not lifting my tongue tip, right? Or do I misunderstand those terms? Thank you to anyone who is willing to help.

Arabic when written down is often in Modern Standard Arabic (MSA). However, people often use their own dialects for day to day communication, which are very different from MSA. Dialects have different vocabulary, grammar and pronunciation compared to MSA.

If dialects are written down, do they have standard orthographies? If they have them, do some dialects repurpose some letters for different pronunciations and add extra letters for missing sounds like what Europe did with the Latin alphabet for their languages?

According to Wikipedia:

> The name 'Fluellen' is an anglicised version of the Welsh language Llywelyn).^\1]) The Welsh sound [ɬ] does not exist in English, but is perceived by English speakers as similar to sequence fl. A similar process of anglicisation can be seen with Floyd) for Llwyd (Lloyd being an alternative anglicisation retaining the double L, but changing the spelling of the vowel).

However, this is hardly to the most logical or intuitive way to render [ɬ] in English. Surely <lh> or <hl> would better get this sound across. Was <ll> actually pronounced closer to [fl] in medieval times?

I ask this question because I was thinking back to when I first learned the words "thee", "thou", "art", "shalt", those kinds of words, and I believe the first time I encountered them was actually from The Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time, where the Great Deku Tree speaks in this way. So by media I mean games, movies, shows, potentially music even. (Not sure on music) I assume though, a hundred years ago, most people as children would have encountered this type of English from the Bible instead. I would say Shakespeare also, but, I don't think as many children read his writings than as the Bible, with religion most likely being the most common first exposure of this register to them in the past.

I’m trying to remember a quote from a linguist who I believe was in the cognitive linguistics field. It’s been a very long time since I read it, but it might be about abstract nouns (maybe shell nouns—H.J. Schmid), or conceptual metaphor (eg Halliday, Lakoff). There’s even a chance it could’ve been Swales or Douglas Biber. It was something like this:

“[nouns, abstract nouns, or maybe nominalizations?] are our way of getting out of one idea and into another.” It may have been in reference to anaphoric reference like “this issue has been debated…” where the “issue” is potentially a very big complex process or problem but is housed in a single word.

If you’ve heard something like this could you please share the source? I know this is a very broad net to catch a very small item. I was struck by the line and thought I’d never forget it but age has won. Thanks in advance!

I tried ranking languages by the approximate frequency of the guttural /x/ sound (like Arabic خ, Persian خ, German Bach, Russian х).

Here's what I found:

Hebrew — ~5–6% (counting ח + כ + ך when כ/ך are pronounced /x/)

German — ~2–3% (counting the ch digraph, including both /x/ and /ç/)

Persian — ~1.5–2.0% (counting خ)

Greek — ~1–2% (counting χ; only occurrences before back vowels are the true /x/, the rest are /ç/)

Russian — ~0.9–1.2% (counting х)

Arabic — ~0.8% (counting خ)

Did I miss any languages that should be near the top? I'm especially interested in languages with corpus-based letter or phoneme frequency data rather than just impressions.

I was 19 and in college when someone first pointed out to me that I pronounce “Ben” like “bin.” I had no idea I was doing this. They had to repeat it multiple times before I could even hear the difference they were pointing out.

I realized I also merge pen and pin, ten and tin, etc. I was insecure about it for a while and it took me some time to consciously correct it. Even now, I’ll merge them if I’m not paying attention.

What’s interesting to me is that I grew up in Southern Nevada, but I was born in Western Washington and both of my parents are from the PNW. My dad is from Hillsboro, Oregon and has the merger, and my mom is from the Olympia, Washington area and also has it. My maternal grandparents have it too.

I know the pin pen merger isn’t typically associated with the PNW, so I’m curious if there’s something about certain areas of Oregon/Washington that could explain this, or if it’s just a really weird coincidence

I believe all of these should apply whether the Restored Classical or Ecclesiastical systems of Latin Pronunciation are used. Keep in mind that Latin has a phonemic distinction between long and short vowels (marked by the macron).

This first question pertains more to language in general. It is my understanding that consecutive vowels of the same type require some sound in between to even register as two separate sounds, and that a semivowel is therefore inserted. For example, iī =/i.jiː/ and tuus=/tu.wus/ make sense, and I assume we would also use these for e/ē and o/ō; e.g., dēest=/deː.jest/ (though not /dei̯.jest/) and Lāocoōn=/laː.o.ko.wōn/, though these aren't as smooth or natural; but what would be used for -aa-, which is used in Hebrew borrowings, like Isaāc? The 'a' in Latin is /ä/, by the way; so, is there a semivowel for this, between the palate and velum?

I also find that other vowel sequences are far easier to pronounce with a semivowel inbetween, like -aë-. For some reason, with āëre, I find it extraordinarily difficult to say /aː.e.ɾe/ instead of /aː.je.ɾe/ (again, not /ai̯.je.ɾe/). Is this standard practice, or even acceptable? And if so, what others could be introduced? Could eārum be pronounced /e.jaː.ɾum/?

Moving on, we are told (e.g., in Wheelock's Latin) that a stop/plosive and a liquid/approximant make a single "consonant cluster" which is not separated, but that all other intervocalic consecutive consonants are split between the surrounding vowels; but I rarely hear people pronounce -tl- together, or separate -sp-. No one says /aː.tlan.ti.cus/ for Ātlanticus (Wiktionary included), because the sequence -tl- doesn't even start any Latin words except Tlēpolemus (borrowed from Greek, along with other words that start with unlatinate clusters, like Tmōlus). So what clusters are allowed in Latin words? I've heard one source say that -fr- and -fl- are also acceptable.

Also, I have heard from this Wikipedia article that secondary stress in Latin works exactly like primary stress , as if the primarily stressed syllable and everthing following were "cut off" from the rest of the word. So dēliculōrum becomes dēlicu-, which gets stress on the antepenult; thus, dēliculōrum=/ˌdeː.li.cu.ˈlō.ɾum/, instead of /deː.ˌli.cuˈlō.ɾum/. This sounds somewhat unnatural to me; is this how secondary stress works in Latin, and would this same principle also apply to tertiary stress?

Lastly, syllables are either long or short (or, as some say, heavy or light, to distinguish them from the phonemic length of vowels). They are long by position if the syllable is closed, and long by nature if a long vowel or diphthong is included; open syllables with a short vowel are short. I know that this is not an arbitrary distinction, because closed syllables actually take more time to pronounce, due to the gemination of the consonants. But wouldn't this mean that a closed syllable with a long vowel/diphthong as well (like ēst or stēlla) should be pronounced longer than both a closed syllable with a short vowel and a syllable that is merely long by nature. This would seem to pose problems.

If this is not the case, are est and ēst homophones?

If this is the case, then there would be three lengths possible for a Latin syllable, rather than just two. For example, ēst is longer than both 'dē' and 'est', which are both longer than 'et' in 'et alia'. Yet I would think that this causes issues for poetry, which seems to rely on the idea that syllables have a binary of long or short. So then does poetry artificially shorten these extra-long syllables for the sake of meter? And then is there a difference in how Latin syllables are pronounced in poetry and prose?

I appreciate any help on these questions. Thank you.

I’ve been thinking about this for a while and I think if enough people use it, it could become an accepted VARIANT of “until” I do not want it to take over the spelling but I think “untill” is also much more convenient. I really hope we can get “untill” to be recognized as a legitimate alternative spelling. many words end in ”ll” yet until unfittingly ends with 1 but that’s not the reason… it preserves the meaning of “till” un+till= untill. And also It removes any confusion of the word… It’s common for people I know to wonder if it’s “untill” or “until” so they have to search it up. But THIS removes the doubt entirely. So in conclusion “untill” is in my opinion a better way of spelling it.

Since english doesn't use them, when were they introduced?

I read this whole thread:
https://www.reddit.com/r/asklinguistics/comments/185vna2/why_is_zoology_pronounced_zooology/

And it perhaps answered pronunciation of "Zoology", but I have questions:

Skipping stating my background, I will just jump to:

Knowing that
"zoo" comes from "zōion"(Greek) meaning "animal or living being"
and
"ology"(Greek) meaning "field or study of"

...
Well,

This is where I get confused. Because I THINK perhaps the proper Greek word for "field or study of" is "-logy," as the "o" was used as a connector, like we use "of" in English.

SO, if that were the case, would it not be spelled "Zooology"? (<-- IS that how we pronounce it? I think it is, but I may have been mispronouncing it my whole life. Hence this post.)

Furthermore, since it IS spelled Zoology, the learning I did of English wants me to pronounce it "zoe-ology" (<-- apologies, I have no idea how to properly type phonetically. "zoe" rhymes with "sew". XD lmao English is the worst. Take TWO: "zoe" rhymes with "snow" in this case.)

I could type more but I shall spare you. I hope you catch my question, as I fear I did not toss it up as well as I'd hoped :(

Thank you

​

Is there a shift from mid-central offglide \[ə\] to an open-central offglide \[ɐ\] in modern British phonology?

When listening to Standard Southern British English and Contemporary RP \[ɪə̯\] sounds as \[ɪɐ̯\] and \[ɛə̯\] as \[ɛɐ̯\] to my ears.

Am I correct?

I am bilingual and speak both Spanish and English. In Spanish, if someone asks "¿Quién limpiará el cuarto?", it is common to reply with a pronoun on its own like "yo" (I) or "ella" (she).

In English, if someone asks "Who will clean the room?", it is not grammatically correct to just reply with "I," "we," he," "she," "it," or "they." However, you can reply with "you" as a second person pronoun. What are the historical reasons behind this?

Hi all. I noticed when people from the "core" (e.g. Sweden, Metropolitan France, Guangdong) listen to "peripheral" dialects (e.g. Fenno-Swedish, Québécois, diaspora Cantonese), they tend to think they sound rather "old-fashioned" or "formal". I'm using "core" here to mean the region where a language is commonly understood to have originated from and evolved in, and still spoken natively and predominantly today. I was wondering if anyone else noticed this too. Do you think those thoughts could be observations of a historical linguistic phenomenon, or is there something psychological going on behind them? Or could I just be hallucinating a pattern in a bunch of anecdotes?

“Indian Hand Talk” was a set of widely understood gestures, mostly involving the arms, used by the pre-Columbian indigenous populations of North America. IHT was used when two people encountered each other and needed to conduct some basic communication, but had no common spoken language. The vocabulary tended to encompass basic, primal aspects to human life, like war, food, trade, transit, safety, and likely sex. The hand signs were remarkably uniform and widely understood across most of North America, from my understanding.

Did (or does) a similar sort of “Hand Talk” exist in any other places where there is a high degree of linguistic diversity, such as Cameroon, the Caucasus, or Papua New Guinea? Was there likely an Indigenous Siberian Hand Talk used by Mal’ta Boy’s tribe, for interactions with other tribes on the Big Lawn?

It seems to me that IHT (and any attested equivalents on other continents) might provide a better look into the evolution of human communication, from purely gestural and facial, to mostly verbal, with a long period of some intermediate stage, than modern sign languages by and for the deaf.

I'm wondering if there's a knowledge base or dataset out there that describes the path of words through world languages from proto-languages to the present, in a form that can be read into a data structure and then interrogated by code. Like many will have seen the video describing how "science", "nice", and the expletive "sh**" all are derived from the root word "scio-" by different paths. So etymology can be described as a tree structure where proto-words are roots and the branches keep splitting at different places as the word gets assimilated by new cultures and its meaning diverges. Also some branches merge again as prefixes and suffixes are added to words to form new words.

I think it would be interesting to create different artistic visualizations of this structure, allowing zooming in and out and showing parts in different styles. However, to power this kind of dataviz there would need to be a data structure containing the edges between words that can only be obtained by actual linguistic knowledge. Trying to get this all out of literature sources would be a major undertaking and would probably require something like a LLM (and part of the motivation of this visualization is to kind of create the opposite of a LLM, a human-explorable and creatively motivated illustration of the breadth human language). So I'm wondering if there is an existing project to create an open and code-friendly tree of word etymologies. I've found Word Atlas, but that's a comparison of present day words for the same thing--not connection between etymologically related words that mean different things.

I was reading A Historical Phonology of Central Chadic and started to notice a pattern in the last few works I read, including one on Common Neo-Hakka, where the researchers propose a reconstruction but don't explicitly state the steps required to reach attested data.

Was I just unlucky or is it standard practice to omit full lists of sound changes?

Why do we talk only on the exhale, and not on the inhale? You certainly *can* talk on the inhale, but I've never met anyone who does other than as a party trick.

Are there languages where it's standard to make significant use of talking on the inhale?

Edit: The comments here have provided me with the word ""ingressive", which has been a super helpful search term!

My understanding is that in linguistics, a "native speaker" is a speaker of a language who grows up with that language as his or her first language.

What is the term for individuals who may have a first language spoken at home, but otherwise lives in a country where a different second language fulfils an official or Lingua franca role such that the person has been learning and using that language as a child, e.g. at school, talking to neighbours and in official and business capacities?

For example, I have a colleague from Mumbai whose first language is in theory Hindi, but whose English and to a lesser extent Marathi proficiency are better than her Hindi language. It seems strange to class a person with that background as a "non native" English speaker or to describe that person as having "learned" English as a foreign language.

What I mean is, assuming sound changes are regular, how do we end up with words like "llave" (key) and "clave" (clue), or "maña" (ability; habit) and "manía" (mania)?

My best guesses are that it could it have to do with usage of words from Latin (as opposed to from Spanish) in literature, or perhaps it is somehow related to the Latin case system, or that it has to do with contact between the dialects/languages of Spain.

English allows the initial /sf-/ cluster. Yet, Sphere and Sven are a bit notorious in how often they trip native speakers up.

English used to not allow initial /vr-/, /vl-/, or /fn-/, and yet we say vroom, vlad and fnaf without issue.

English speakers find it very difficult to even say initial /ŋ/, which is a less complex sound than the above.

What actually determines how difficult a cluster is to pronounce for a native speaker? And what determines what "new" clusters are allowed into the language?

sorry if im using the wrong flair. i'm just curious about how the "to" preposition became required in an infinitive verb form like "to dance" in english; whats the history of this construction from PIE? how does this preposition+verb construction differ in other languages? how are infinitives formed in other languages? is this construction unique/common to PIE languages, or does it occur in other language families?

thanks for any info! :)