#vowel nasality

[mapsontheweb]

Map of Scandinavian regions with vowel nasality.

by u/Coedwig

Vowel nasality existed in Old Norse, both with adjacent nasal consonants, but also with nasal consonants that were lost, but present in Proto-Norse or Proto-Germanic, (such as gás < PGmc *gans ’goose’). This map shows the regions of Scandinavia that are traditionally described as having nasal vowels.

The orange areas have secondary vowel nasality, i.e. where a nasal consonant existed in Old Norse (e.g. Selbu hõ (<ON hon ’she’). The red areas also have secondary vowel nasality, but have also inherited the Old Norse vowel nasality, such as Elfdalian gą̊s.

Some important villages are marked on the map: Vikvarvet, which has preserved the nasal vowels the most in Selbu; Skattungbyn, which has primary vowel nasality as well as a wider range of nasal vowels; as well as Venjan in Mora which is the only village in its municipality to have nasal vowels.

Today, nasal vowels have disappeared in Venjan and probably in Orsa, but is preserved in Älvdalen and perhaps among older people in Selbu.

Sources:

Boëthius, Johannes (1918). Orsamålet. 1, Ljudlära. Diss. Uppsala : univ.

Haugen, Einar (ed.) (1950). ”First grammatical treatise: The earliest Germanic phonology” Language, Vol. 26, No. 4, Language Monograph No. 25.

Noreen, Adolf (1886). ”De nordiska språkens nasalerade vokaler”. Arkiv för nordisk filologi. III, pp. 1–41.

Røset, Ingulv (2011). Selbumålet. Novus.

Steensland, Lars (2011). ”Parasitisk (oetymologisk) nasalisering i älvdalskan” Oðer råðstemną um övdalskų. pp. 116–126

Åkerberg, Bengt (2012). Älvdalsk grammatik, Mora: Ulum dalska

[official-linguistics-post]

Any tips for learning languages? How many do you know if you don’t mind sharing

constant practice with real people who are better than you. the best i ever got at spanish was staying in a tourist-light city for 6 weeks where i was expected to make the effort. (i barely practice now so my competence has fallen off IMMENSELY, despite the scolding of mis amigues hispanohablantes.)

i'm only fluent in english, but i have basic competence in spanish, a smattering in french, and some knowledge in 3-4 languages related to the ancient variety i study.

[labitchette]

France: Did you know that Scots is a language because they decided it so. A bit like Portuguese is a language instead of Spanish. Portugal: Excuse YOU! Portuguese is completely different than spanish. Spain: a little bit. but I think France got a point. Portugal: *grabs Spain by the collar* Say ã, Antonio. Spain: 😰 Portugal: SAY IT. SAY Ã France: *laying seductively* an Portugal: *throws Spain at France* Shut the fuck up. I hate both of you.

[tragedykery]

english is so correct for the word “moon” that’s exactly the right word for it. double o for visualising the roundness (x2)! u/ʉ vowel similar to the sound of a wolf howling! & I can’t explain it but a word for moon simply Needs to have a nasal consonant in there, and the english one has not just one, but two of those thangs. my sincerest apologies to other languages but english really wins this one

[coquelicoq]

i'm now looking at my list of least favorite french words to pronounce and going "too many r's" for about 40% of them and "skill issue" for most of the rest. some of these are actually very fun to pronounce i just couldn't wrap my tongue around them a year or so ago, but now i can i guess??? so that's very exciting. makes me hope that someday i'll be able to pronounce the rest of them. this is a bit pie in the sky because i really don't see myself ever getting there with procureur du roi but you never know. and luckily the french abolished the monarchy so it's not like i'll ever have to use that phrase in modern conversation.

anyway here are the words i actually love pronouncing now: décaféiné diététicien filleul pneumonie

i now feel normal/neutral about these words that used to be hard for me: automne, condamner douloureux électricité, énergie inférieur, supérieur, etc. itinéraire lourdeur salmonellose sclérose subodorer succincte

words that are definitely within the realm of my current capability but i haven't practiced them enough: bugle hiérarchisation méditerranéen phtisie

words that are still the bane of my existence but i live in hope: [yʁ] plus at least one other r or [y] sound: chirurgie, fourrure, marbrure, moirure, nourriture, ordures, peinturlurer, procureur du roi, prurit, purpurin, sculpture, serrurerie, structure, sulfureux, tournure all words beginning with ur-, hur-, or sur- other difficult sequence of r's and vowels: construire and other -truire verbs; lueur and sueur; utérus too many r's: marbre, martre, meurtre, opprobre, proroger, réfrigérateur, rétrograde, rorqual difficult sequence of vowels and/or semivowels: coopérant, extraordinaire, hémorroïdal, kyrie eleison, météorologique, micro-ordinateur, micro-organisme, mouillure, quatuor, vanillier not pronounced the way i would expect from the spelling: indemne, penta-, punk just hard for some reason: humour

[greenconverses]

How do mid western people say bag ? (<- has no intention of making fun just is not usamerican)

It's more of a Minnesota-regional accent, but we say it like "bayg" instead of the usual -ag sound. This video has a good example of it.

It's real fun to move outside the bubble and have people constantly double take when they hear you say "bag." I've tried to cull it from my accent but I just can't get it right!

[velaraffricate]

sketching out some ideas for how a second daughterlang could develop and i'm quite pleased with it so far. *qinsu goes to hɨsto in one descendant and gẽs in the other this is so much fun

[annikathewitch]

Let's Make A Conlang Poll #3!

In order to make a phonemic inventory, we need to decide whether our language will have any nasal vowels. Nasal vowels are typically found immediately before a nasal consonant (or a place where a nasal consonant used to be).

French is probably the language most well known for its nasal vowels, typically used whenever a vowel is followed by an n. Personally I find them fun to say but not everyone does. Nasal vowels said in such a way that air flows through both the nose and mouth at the same time. Non-nasal vowels are called oral vowels.

An example of what nasal vowels sound like can be found here.

Please note than, while many languages include nasal vowels, because French is particularly well-known for them, including them could make this language "sound French," depending on how they are implemented.

NOTE: If nasal vowels are included, then at least on nasal consonant (m, n or ŋ (the ng sound at the end of words in english) will be as well. Nasal vowels not being included does not mean there won't be any nasal consonants, just that we will have to decide whether or not they are included at a later date.

This poll is to create a phonemic inventory for a constructed language made (as much as possible) entirely with tumblr polls! More information on this project can be found here!

Please reblog for larger sample size! Poll #1 can be found here and Poll #2 can be found here. Poll #4 should go up in 48 hours!

Taglist: @writing-with-olive

[undercat-overdog]

👑 and 🔮 please!

For this ask game, and thank you for the questions!

👑To which High King of the Noldor do you owe your allegiance? Why would you offer them your fealty?

Hmm, Gil-galad probably. Either him or Finarfin. I do have problems with his (Gil's) Numenorean policies (I understand the political realities after the War of the Elves and Sauron, but do not approve before that), but I'm also biased towards Middle-earth and Gil is Daddy. I'd probably follow Galadriel and Celeborn to Eregion though.

Interesting: Fingolfin ruled for longer than Finwe depending on how you count the Years of the Trees.

🔮You can reach into the Beyond and ask the Professor to settle one (1) debate for you. He won't even waffle on the answer, honest. What do you ask him?

I HAVE A QUESTION ABOUT PE17! No, not Mairon (actually I'd like to have a discussion with Jirt about that too), but THIS:

with nasality of preceding vowel subsequently lost

Jirt, what the hell is this I have never seen you mention nasal vowels anywhere else, phonemic or allophonic, nor in influencing changes. (Like, a stage with nasal or nasalized vowels wouldn't surprise me in the slightest, very natural thing, but to the best of my knowledge, this is the one place mention of them shows up in the Elven languages.) (If I'm wrong and there are other sources with mention, please let me know!)

Another conlang question is the status of /θ/ in Telerin, which I'd like to know more about. Tolkien says it exists in the language (in Quendi and Eldar, iirc), but the one place we know Telerin would originally have had /θ/ there's an /f/ instead (the name the Teleri used for Thingol, which is Findo, which would have come from *thindô, not *thindikolnô). Anyways, /θ/ could exist in different environments, or have been lost and then reintroduced, but I rather like the change; it fits with Telerin's feel.

[quatregats]

I love how when you get over orthographical differences in sibling languages you can sometimes see one of them moving phonologically in the direction of another like hell yeah follow those evolutions that your relatives have traced before you

[elibeeline]

Well now im looking at oxford's courses and,,, i... no one told me they have an entire library dedicated to linguistics. A whole department dedicated to the study of the history of languages. A laboratory specifically for phonetics.

[kiragecko]

So, want to know why Voodoo is sometimes called Vodun these days?

It's because of Nasal Vowels!

But first - technically, Voodoo and Vodun (and Vodou and Vudú) are different things. Vodun is a West African religion, while Voodoo is a Louisiana descendant (with a lot of other influences, from West Africa, the Americas, and Europe). The other descendant religions throughout North and South America have slight variations in spelling, pronunciation, and differences of belief.

Now that we've got that out of the way, back to spelling!

Nasal vowels are a really common thing in languages. French has them. Sanskrit had them. A lot of West African languages have them. A lot of languages of the Americas have them. Basically, you say a word like you're going to say an 'n' after the vowel, and then ... don't. Your nose lets air move through it, and the vowel sounds different than a non-nasal vowel.

They're a pretty simple thing. But the Latin alphabet SUCKS at showing them.

So it's an 'every language for itself' situation. Every language has a different way of showing you if a vowel is nasal.

Turtle Island (North American Indigenous) languages often use an ogonek (ą, ę, į, ǫ, ų). Sanskrit and its descendants tend to use an anusvara (अं) or candrabindu (अँ), both usually written in Latin as 'ṃ.' The IPA and some languages use a tilde (ã, ẽ, ĩ, õ, ũ). French and West African languages tend to use an 'n.'

You can distinguish this 'n' from the normal 'n' that's a consonant because it doesn't have a vowel after it (but does have one in front of it). It's either word ending, or followed by a consonant.

'Vodun' is pronounced 'voh-dõõ' ('vo-dṹ,' with a high tone on the 'dũ' that we aren't dealing with here).

English speakers have no way to indicate a nasal vowel at all. Usually they're ignored when we're absorbing other people's words. So 'vodun' was spelled 'vodoo' or 'vodou' and the variant form 'vudun' was spelled 'voudou' or 'voodoo.'

-

You can also remember about nasal vowels when reading about Orisha (Òrìṣà) - Yoruba dieties that show up on Tumblr reasonably often.

'Ọlọrun' is pronounced 'aw-law-rõõ' (ɔ‧lɔ‧rũ)

'Ọ̀rúnmìlà' is pronounced 'aw-rõõ-mee-lah' (ɔ̀‧rṹ‧mì‧là)

'Ṣàngó' is pronounced 'shãh-goh' (ʃã̀‧gó)

etc.

-

I am sharing this because nasal vowels are cool, and because I remember being confused when I first saw the word 'Vodun.'

"How badly did we mangle that word to get 'Voodoo'?" I thought.

But in this case we didn't! English just doesn't have a way to show nasal vowels, and we aren't likely to guess that an 'n' is part of a vowel sound.

[noisesfrombeyondtheuniverse]

*adds incredibly specific rule to my phonology because I grew really attached to this word before realizing it shouldn't exist*

[thirrith]

don't lie to me oldenglishonline

[diablerieholic]

I made an abugida while bored at work

[daxwormzz]

Eya!