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Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2023 September 8

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September 8

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A few questions

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  1. Is there any language with an open front unrounded vowel and none other open vowels?
  2. Are there any dialects of Catalan where soft c / ç is a dental fricative /θ/ like in Spanish?
  3. Can palatalized consonants occur at the end of word in Lithuanian?
  4. Why does English not use article a/an in plural?
  5. Can click consonants be geminated?
  6. Can consonants be geminated after long vowels in Hungarian?
  7. Is there any language with phonemic voiceless vowels?

--40bus (talk) 15:27, 8 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Item 4: Because it doesn't. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 16:12, 8 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Item 4: because "an" comes from the Old English word "an", literally "one". BbBrock (talk) 16:59, 8 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
And was possibly reinforced by preceding Brythonic, surviving in almost-extinct dialectical counting systems as in "Yan tan tethera". {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 51.194.81.165 (talk) 08:17, 9 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Also, many European languages use similar terms for the indefinite article, and ALSO don't use the indefinite article for plurals; French for example uses "un/une" for the indefinite article (literally the same word that French uses for "one") and uses "les" for plurals always. --Jayron32 17:52, 8 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Actually, the plural of "un" or "une" in French is "des" in both cases, as in "un homme, des hommes" or "une femme, des femmes". Xuxl (talk) 18:44, 8 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
However Spanish has unos, unas and probably other Iberian Romances do the same. Even Basque has bat and batzuk. I wonder if it is a Sprachbund thing. What does Llanito do? --Error (talk) 18:20, 8 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I was just writing same about unos, unas. And Portuguese has ums, umas. --40bus (talk) 18:52, 8 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
"The ones" would be an English equivalent, although "those" is more commonly used. Xuxl (talk) 13:27, 10 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
The Spanish indefinite plural article is usually translated to English as some, certain, a couple of..., etc. The ones certainly is not indefinite. Pallida  Mors 22:20, 11 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Um - there is no Portuguese word ums. It declines like algum, alguns, "some". 2A02:C7B:301:3D00:5CEE:C4AA:A518:B49B (talk) 13:54, 10 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
wikt:uns has Catalan, Galician, Old French and Portuguese meanings. --Error (talk) 23:07, 10 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Are there any dialects of Catalan where soft c / ç is a dental fricative /θ/ like in Spanish?

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ca:Fricativa dental sorda:
El català estàndard no té aquest fonema, si bé es pot sentir en alguns manlleus del castellà o en una pronúncia a la castellana de la lletra Z. En canvi, és tradicional a part del Baix Aragó i del ribagorçà.[1]
Ribagorçan dialect:
Occasional interdental fricative as reflex of Latin /k/ before front vowels; e.g., cinc [ˈθiŋk] ('five'). This feature gets more general moving westward (cf. Eastern Ribagorçan and Catalan cinc [ˈsiŋk]).

--Error (talk) 17:57, 8 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

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