Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2023 January 1

Welcome to the Wikipedia Language Reference Desk Archives
The page you are currently viewing is a transcluded archive page. While you can leave answers for any questions shown below, please ask new questions on one of the current reference desk pages.

January 1

What is the the amount of vowel phones needed to fit those rules and what are those phones?

What is the the amount of vowel phones needed to fit those rules and what are those phones?

Is there any list of vowel phone that fit those rules. Is such list possible?

Rule 1-To each natural language, at least one phone presented at this list is at this natural language.

Rule 2-At some natural language, no phone at this list can be an allophone of some other phone at this list.

Rule 3-If possible to find I want the list with smallest amount of phones that fit those rules. 177.207.98.160 (talk) 21:19, 1 January 2023 (UTC)

Your question is not very comprehensible to those with knowledge of linguistics. What are these "rules" which you speak of? Is it an homework question? AnonMoos (talk) 23:15, 1 January 2023 (UTC)

They are specified in the question as Rule 1–3. The question is, however, problematic for various reasons. Linguists rarely agree on anything, and the things they don't agree on include questions such as whether, in a given language, two phones occurring in two different words are the same phone, or allophones of the same phoneme, or different phonemes. They may also disagree on whether a given phone corresponds to a vowel. Phonic space is a multidimensional continuum, like colour space but much worse. Partitioning it into phonemes is a tricky business that is done on a language-by-language basis, partially informed by tradition, so a point in that space identified in Language A as phoneme X may become phoneme Y in language B, even though language B also has phoneme X. The X blobs in phonic space for these languages do not coincide, and the Y blob for B intersects with the X blob for A.  --Lambiam 02:09, 2 January 2023 (UTC)

Well, I've read Zellig Harris' classic systematization Methods in Structural Linguistics, and I have great difficulty making any sense of the OP's comment... AnonMoos (talk) 01:33, 3 January 2023 (UTC)

The OP wants the smallest possible list of vowels (Rule 3) where every language is represented with at least one phoneme (Rule 1) and no phoneme of any language occurs with multiple allophones (Rule 2).

That Rule 2 is dangerous, because with a small phonemic inventory the phonemes can afford to have a great deal of allophonic variation: check out e.g. the vowels of Abkhaz.

With all that being said, I'd think that just [a] may do the job, as I'd presume virtually all natural languages have or can have something like it, even if just as a non-default or non-mainstream variant of something else. --Theurgist (talk) 21:23, 3 January 2023 (UTC)

The idea behind this question, is that some silly (or not) idea that came into my mind. Imagine some conlang that has one vowel group only. A vowel group has multiple phones inside it and you have at least one phone presented at each natural language inside this vowel group. Each person (excluding language teachers and speech related doctors that will need to know how to speak all phones from a vowel group) will speak only one phone from this list (the one he is 100% sure he can speak it). The idea is that imagine you have the word bobo, when saying the vowel O (that is the vowel group 1), the person will say his selected phone from vowel list and so he will with 100% certainty be able to speak this phone. You need to have at least one vowel phone presented at each natural language at this vowel group because I am assuming each person is only able to speak the phones of his natural language. Rule 2 is needed if its decided to have more than one vowel group, so you dont have someone speaking a phone from vowel group 2 and someone mistaking it as a vowel from vowel group 1. But thinking about it, with vowels rule 2 is not needed, because as far as I researched, its impossible to fit rule 1 and 2 with more than vowel group (with more than one vowel group, no phone will be at multiple vowel groups). With consonants rule 2 would be needed because as far as I know it would be possible to have 2 consonant groups (but not 3). Syllabes would be only CV because I heard someone saying this is the only thing you can be sure everyone is able to speak.2804:1B3:9702:961:2511:A5D1:D610:5741 (talk) 00:49, 4 January 2023 (UTC)

I heard someone commenting on Klingon's consonant inventory that it felt highly unnatural and overall didn't make much logical sense. (The occurrence of aspiration vis-a-vis retroflexion seems to be more or less completely random, most notably.) This sounds somewhat similar, but for vowels.
Another point is that various languages' vowel systems vary wildly in complexity, from about two to fifteen or more different vowels (although that could depend on how they're counted). 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 02:59, 4 January 2023 (UTC)

As for Klingon, it had intentionally been designed that way, as our own article states: Klingon has been developed with a phonology that, while based on human natural languages, is intended to sound alien to human ears. When initially developed, Paramount Pictures (owners of the Star Trek franchise) wanted the Klingon language to be guttural and harsh and Okrand wanted it to be unusual, so he selected sounds that combined in ways not generally found in other languages. The effect is mainly achieved by the use of a number of retroflex and uvular consonants in the language's inventory. Crash48 (talk) 08:37, 4 January 2023 (UTC)

If length is not distinguishing (in some languages it isn't) and we disregard diphthongs (some languages don't have any), the wiggle room for the conlang designer is rather limited. Quoting section Vowel § Systems, "Nearly all languages have at least three phonemic vowels, usually /i/, /a/, /u/ as in Classical Arabic and Inuktitut, though Adyghe and many Sepik languages have a vertical vowel system of /ɨ/, /ə/, /a/. Very few languages have fewer, though some Arrernte, Circassian, and Ndu languages have been argued to have just two, /ə/ and /a/, with [ɨ] being epenthetic." Disregarding the argued biphonemic system {/ə/, /a/}, which, because of the allophony of /ə/ and /a/ in some languages, would force a monophonemic vowel system, the designer needs to settle on a subset of {/i/, /a/, /u/}. In Russian /a/ and /o/ are allophones, while in Arabic /o/ and /u/ are allophones, so a Russian speaker saying "biba" may be heard by an Arabic speakers as enunciating "bibu". It seems the designer's choice is limited to {/i/, /a/}.  --Lambiam 10:26, 4 January 2023 (UTC)

Silbo Gomero#Vowels is said to have two vowels corresponding to five in Canarian Spanish. Maybe other whistled languages have minimal vowel systems. --Error (talk) 01:47, 5 January 2023 (UTC)

Whistled languages are so different to vocal languages that a direct comparison is problematic, though. (If I would have heard Silbo Gomero at a distance, I'd likely have mistaken it for a bird song of some kind. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 02:47, 5 January 2023 (UTC)

"So a Russian speaker saying "biba" may be heard by an Arabic speakers as enunciating "bibu". It seems the designer's choice is limited to {/i/, /a/}.", nope because the language would have just one vowel group (I already did some sort of reasearch to see only one vowel group would be possibe, when talking about consonant groups the max possible amount is 2 if I remember right), and so just one written speech letter used for a vowel exist, not 3 like your case (I A and U). With just one vowel group, rule 2 is not needed when you have just one vowel group. Its ok if someone listen to a phone X and think its phone Y because at this language they are considered 100% the same thing. Also another ide behind this shitty idea, is that everyone will be able to 100% sure speak everything and distinguish what need to be distinguished and those situations that can cause language change will not cause language change here.2804:1B3:9702:961:F0D8:11:69FE:DFE1 (talk) 02:14, 6 January 2023 (UTC)

Please transcribe this (I think Hebrew) traditional song

Song transcriptions needed: 10:38-12:56, 27:51-29:48 (More may be added as the film transcribing continues)

It's from the film The Jazz Singer (1927), which is now in the public domain. The song appears at 10:38-12:56, and appears to be the lyrics of Kol Nidre according to online sources, but as I don't speak Hebrew, I can't understand what's being said or transliterate any of it.

Could someone please insert below a transcription of exactly the words being said in this song in the film, so that I can add it to the Wikisource transcription? Thanks very much. PseudoSkull (talk) 21:39, 1 January 2023 (UTC)

As you say, it is the Kol Nidre (Aramaic, rather than Hebrew), in the traditional setting used by Max Bruch for his cello piece. The article gives both the Aramaic text and the translation: what exactly are you asking for? An IPA transcription? A transcription in English eye-dialect? ColinFine (talk) 12:07, 2 January 2023 (UTC)

The text sung in the film by the khazn diverges at some point from that in our article, starting around the word נַפְשָׁתָנָא‎. This should sound something like nafshatana, but that is not what I hear. The sung text is also much shorter.  --Lambiam 12:53, 2 January 2023 (UTC)

@Lambiam and ColinFine: Ok, then what I'm looking for is an exact Aramaic transcription of what is sung in the film (in the Aramaic script and language), regardless of its divergence from any original lyrics. It would need to be written as it was sung in the film. For Wikisource I think that would be what is needed. PseudoSkull (talk) 19:33, 2 January 2023 (UTC)

There is also a second song I wanted to see transcribed, at 27:51-29:48. Hopefully that's the last foreign song in the film as I don't want to take up too much of someone's time. PseudoSkull (talk) 20:15, 2 January 2023 (UTC)

I don't think I can help, PseudoSkull. I could follow the text if I had a transcript, but not transcribe it (Lambiam is right that it diverges).

The second song is in Yiddish, but at 28:40 I hear the first two words of the Kaddish, and following that the Yiddish word yortsayt "anniversary of a death". ColinFine (talk) 23:10, 2 January 2023 (UTC)

Unfortunately, it is unlikely that any editors active here are speakers of Judeo-Aramaic. Your best bet may be to contact Wiktionary editors in wikt:Category:User arc, some of whom have been recently active and can contribute in one or more Aramaic languages at an intermediate level. I think the song at 27:51 may be in Yiddish, for which it may be easier to find speakers.  --Lambiam 23:18, 2 January 2023 (UTC)

Yeah, it sounds like Yiddish, alright. As I mostly know School German, and generally find that kind of accentuated singing harder to understand, I didn't get that much, but the final words seem to be something like "unser heiligen Staat", which I guess means "Our Holy State"... 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 03:01, 5 January 2023 (UTC)

Ketumati

I'm trying to find the Chinese and Japanese name for Ketumati. Can you help me? Thank you. 95.238.62.37 (talk) 23:11, 1 January 2023 (UTC)

The following statements were provided upon request by ChatGPT. I have not checked them for accuracy.

In Chinese Buddhism, the legendary place known as Ketumati is referred to as "Maitreya's city" (弥勒都) or "Maitreya's capital" (弥勒京).

In Japanese Buddhism, Ketumati is known as "Maitreya no ki" (舞い天の都) or "Miroku no miyako" (弥勒の都).

 --Lambiam 13:18, 2 January 2023 (UTC)

What would that be transcribed in pinyn/ romaji or IPA? 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 13:37, 2 January 2023 (UTC)

弥勒都:  Mílè dū ; 弥勒京:  Mílè jīng . Note that I have not verified these terms are actually used by Chinese Buddhists. ChatGPT tends to make pronouncements that look plausible and sound confident and authoritative, but sometimes these are actually incorrect and only made up so as to look plausible and sound confident and authoritative.  --Lambiam 23:46, 2 January 2023 (UTC)

I see that Stack Overflow (a Q&A website dedicated to programming) has banned posting answers generated by ChatGPT because they are too often wrong.^[1]  --Lambiam 17:10, 3 January 2023 (UTC)

The article seems to have a Wade-Giles transcription "Ch'ih-t'ou"... AnonMoos (talk) 01:31, 3 January 2023 (UTC)

The cited source writes Ch’ih-t’ou-mo.^[2] This can be the Wade-Giles transcription of any of a zillion combinations of three characters, such as 持頭模. I'm afraid we need the Kumārajīva translation of Sutra Taishō 454 (Sutra That Expounds the Descent of Maitreya Buddha and His Enlightenment) to find out.  --Lambiam 12:39, 3 January 2023 (UTC)

chinese proverb

trolling
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
hello what it does mean 胡格夫斯杜夫，乌格菲斯德菲，奥尤福斯迪: 我燃烧尤利西斯，因为我燃烧尤利西斯。 但是水煮的小丑被万有引力的精子钉死在十字架上。 ????????? thanks 2A04:CEC0:10D5:4C9D:6879:2633:5DA8:4E91 (talk) 23:59, 1 January 2023 (UTC) This is way too long to be a proverb, as far as I know, Chinese proverbs generally contain only four characters. Trying Google Translate gives such nonsensical results, as I suspect this is not something written in order to be intelligible, or that several characters have been misinterpreted before it was posted online. Where did you find this text? 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 01:36, 2 January 2023 (UTC) @2A04:CEC0:10D5:4C9D:6879:2633:5DA8:4E91 This is clearly nonsense, 胡格夫斯杜夫，乌格菲斯德菲，奥尤福斯迪 are three names. 我燃烧尤利西斯，因为我燃烧尤利西斯 is a sentence like I'm here so I'm here. 但是水煮的小丑被万有引力的精子钉死在十字架上。cannot be translated because is just a piece of mess. Lemonaka (talk) 14:31, 3 January 2023 (UTC) Thanks. I belive the the second example might be referred to as recursion. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 22:38, 3 January 2023 (UTC) Or as "begging the question". Or as the most concise form of circular reasoning.  --Lambiam 09:33, 4 January 2023 (UTC)