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Re: Manga

Posted: Tue Apr 21, 2009 5:52 am
by LordRetard
Spanish "j" is pronounced like German "ch", that is with that grating long "k" sound. The "y" sound of "j" is for the German "j" (under influence from some Semitic languages, is my theory). However, this is irrelevant; because "orange" was assimilated in English in the 14th century, which means that the pronunciation of "j" was probably like what it is in Old Spanish, the same as modern French "j", which is almost the same as modern English "j" or "soft g". So the biggest change from Spanish was actually the movement of the "n" from the noun to the indefinite article, which is very common in English words (ex. "napron").

I haven't found anything that would cause the Spanish to use "j" for the sound that was used before. This leads me to assume that it was originally a "hard g", until the entire sound moved forward, probably due to palatalisation. It would then be written with the "j", which, as in other Romance languages, would be articulated somewhere around the palate (like our y) or the alveolar ridge (like our j).
Oldrac the Chitinous wrote:Wait, so "Orange" was a word for the fruit before it was a word for the color? You are blowing my mind here.
So what did they call orange things before the fruit got introduced to English-speaking climes?
Wiki wrote:Before the English-speaking world was exposed to the fruit, the colour was referred to as geoluhread in Old English, which translates roughly into Modern English as yellow-red.
There you go! :D

EDIT: In retrospect, that was all very unnecessary... But the more you know! :D

Re: Manga

Posted: Tue Apr 21, 2009 7:22 am
by Lethal Interjection
While I can't really participate in the conversations about linguistics, I do find them rather enlightening. Not sarcasm. Etymology interests me somewhat.

Re: Manga

Posted: Tue Apr 21, 2009 7:24 am
by LordRetard
That's good to hear, sometimes I feel rude prattling off on something that only I study.

Re: Manga

Posted: Tue Apr 21, 2009 7:27 am
by Lethal Interjection
LordRetard wrote:That's good to hear, sometimes I feel rude prattling off on something that only I study.
It can sometimes be difficult to follow with all the phonetic characters (which fly clear over my head, as I only really know the few french accents) and whatnot, but for the most part it is interesting me.

Re: Manga

Posted: Tue Apr 21, 2009 8:18 am
by LordRetard
I have trouble explaining things without IPA (the International Phonetic Alphabet, one of the most used alphabets for transcription and the only one that I know), which I've committed a great deal to memory and which I find very useful when comparing languages. Otherwise I try to compare the letters that make sounds in other languages, but this confuses me a lot, too.

http://web.uvic.ca/ling/resources/ipa/c ... IPAlab.htm
This is the most useful resource I've found for IPA, with audio samples of most characters. Extremely convenient, and I still have to use it from time to time, because I have a lot of trouble with vowels, which all sound very similar to me, for some reason.

Re: Manga

Posted: Tue Apr 21, 2009 2:50 pm
by Cirtur
LordRetard wrote:Extremely convenient, and I still have to use it from time to time, because I have a lot of trouble with blacks, which all look very similar to me, for some reason.
Fix'd

Re: Manga

Posted: Tue Apr 21, 2009 4:00 pm
by LordRetard
KKK wrote:Bringing a Message of Hope and Deliverance to White Christian America! A Message of Love NOT Hate!
... What is this bullshit? That ain't the Ku Klux Klan that I remember from my day. The times they are a'changing. The world of my childhood is gone.

Re: Manga

Posted: Tue Apr 21, 2009 6:26 pm
by smiley_cow
LordRetard wrote:That's good to hear, sometimes I feel rude prattling off on something that only I study.
I agree with Lethal, I'm finding the etymology stuff interesting. If I can't respond it's only because I don't really know enough about it to do so.

Re: Manga

Posted: Tue Apr 21, 2009 10:22 pm
by Oldrac the Chitinous
The voiced labial-palatal approximant is the bane of my existence.
It is important to know your enemies.

Re: Manga

Posted: Tue Apr 21, 2009 10:32 pm
by Cirtur
You do well for a crab.

Also I appreciate that LR uses comparisons rather than the phonetic alphabet. It makes it easier to read and I am interested. Similarly I don't really have enough to add to it so I don't respond. Also I can't respond every time with "That's very interesting. Please do say more"

Re: Manga

Posted: Tue Apr 21, 2009 10:48 pm
by mountainmage
Oldrac the Chitinous wrote:The voiced labial-palatal approximant is the bane of my existence.
It is important to know your enemies.
Heh. Labia.

Re: Manga

Posted: Wed Apr 22, 2009 2:15 am
by LordRetard
Oldrac the Chitinous wrote:The voiced labial-palatal approximant is the bane of my existence.
It is important to know your enemies.
Approximants are much harder to learn than, say, stops or fricatives, because there's nothing that actually touches; the articulators of the mouth are just getting closer. This actually makes it a bitch* for people to learn English, because we have an approximate "R" instead of the tapped or rolled Rs of Spanish or the uvular Rs of French or German. Castillian Spanish has a palatal lateral approximant (laterals are articulated with air going around the sides of the tongue, rather than over it; an example is the letter "L"). Notably, English has no palatal sounds except for its own palatal approximant "y". I had enough trouble with the "ñ" sound but I can't even figure out what I'm supposed to do for this approximant. Maybe someone will tell me one day.

Altogether, though, it's never that much of a problem, because if you can't learn the right sounds there's usually something else that sounds almost the same. It's an instant tip-off that you're a foreigner ("un forastero! Avisemos a los otros!") but if you can be understood then it's cool.

*Technical term.

Re: Manga

Posted: Wed Apr 22, 2009 2:19 am
by Edminster
LordRetard wrote:It's an instant tip-off that you're a foreigner ("un forastero! Avisemos a los otros!") but if you can be understood then it's cool.
This is why it's incredibly handy to have a tiny Mexican grandmother to mercilessly correct your pronunciation.

Re: Manga

Posted: Wed Apr 22, 2009 2:31 am
by LordRetard
Bah, I have an oma who speaks some bizarre combination of English and German, neither of which are her native language (Belarusian or something? I don't know). Most of us can't understand her that well, and I can't understand her at all when she speaks German, and she can't understand my German. Oh well.

Re: Manga

Posted: Sat Apr 25, 2009 10:26 pm
by LordRetard
Today I was at the library and I picked up a book titled "Why is an orange called an orange?" To my total surprise, it was NOT a book on etymology. I guess that wouldn't belong in the juvenile section anyway (although I think kids should be more interested in linguistics; they could cover some basics in school as early as Social Studies class). Yeah, it was just a picture book.

I should've taken a photo, like all of the other weird books I find, like that David Suzuki book where some kid drew on David Suzuki's moustache, like how kids do with newspapers and they give everyone facial hair. It confused me because Suzuki has a moustache.