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1500 questions
36
votes
13 answers
Are there languages with other spatial deixis besides "here", "there" and "over there"?
When it comes to spatial deixis most languages seem to have either two or three distinctions:
2 | 3
English | Spanish Japanese
--------------------------------
here | aquí / acá koko
there | ahí soko
(yonder) | allá /…
hippietrail
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36
votes
2 answers
Why is “ß” not used in Swiss German?
What are some of the historical reasons why the orthographic symbol ß is not used in Swiss Standard German and “ss” is used instead?
alecxe
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35
votes
7 answers
How do I format an interlinear gloss for HTML?
I'm trying to use interlinear glossing to show the structure of a sentence to an audience without requiring them to learn the language in question.
Are there any tools for quickly creating an interlinear gloss and getting the corresponding HTML (or…
MatthewMartin
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35
votes
3 answers
Why the prevalence of "ph" in transliteration?
Why is "ph" used so often (as opposed to "f") to transliterate the Hebrew "fei" sound into English?
Examples:
Alef - 17.5 million Google hits (MGh)
Aleph - 13.8 MGh
Seraf - 0.9 MGh
Seraph - 23.4 MGh
Isaac Moses
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34
votes
4 answers
Why are certain there-sentences infelicitous in English?
The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language states that the first three of the following four excerpts are semantically or pragmatically anomalous (to give that term some context, it cites We frightened the cheese as an example of an…
Vitaly
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34
votes
10 answers
Is pronouncing loanwords according to their "native" pronunciation stigmatised across most cultures and languages?
This old CollegeHumor sketch highlights an interesting phenomenon: it's often frowned upon or disapproved of, at least in the US and England, to pronounce a loanword according to the phonetics of the language it was borrowed from. For example,…
Lou
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34
votes
3 answers
Why isn’t the letter “G” immediately after “C” in the alphabet?
I have absolutely no formal linguistics background, but I enjoy learning about it a lot. I’ve seen multiple times before how the alphabet mutated from Roman times to our own:
The letter “J” was a creation based on the letter “I”, when it sounded…
Gauss
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34
votes
10 answers
Is the connection between 'right' in the sense of direction and concepts like 'correct' limited to Indo-European languages?
I'm now familiar with enough Indo-European languages to know in almost all of them there's an etymological connection or outright homonymy between the word(s) for 'right' in the sense of direction and words for correct, true (right), good…
user3482545
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34
votes
6 answers
Is it hard for software speech synthesisers to handle IPA? If so, why?
Yesterday on ELU, the IPA sequence ˌoʊkeɪˈhiːɹjəˌgoʊ was posted in a comment. I'm not very familiar with IPA, so I thought the easiest way to "decode" that would be through a software speech synthesiser.
I already use text-to-speech (TTS) in my own…
FumbleFingers
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33
votes
6 answers
What are the fundamental differences between Natural Language Processing and Computational Linguistics?
I have a vague knowledge regarding those two fields, but I admit there are some fundamental concepts that I lack.
So, if we had to write down the actual differences between these two fields, what would they be?
I'll suggest some points that I think…
Alenanno
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33
votes
5 answers
What languages lack personal pronouns, and why?
The Japanese language lacks personal pronouns in the IE sense. Japanese is very pro-drop, and often sentences will be constructed so personal pronouns do not appear, and the agents which the pronouns would have referred to are implicit from the…
dainichi
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32
votes
5 answers
What is the term for this derivation: "Cheeseburger comes from Hamburger" but... the word hamburger didn't refer to ham
So the title says it all really. The term hamburger doesn't refer to ham but instead the origin of the food Hamburg, but when the presence of cheese was added the new invention is referred to as a cheeseburger.
What is this type of derivation…
Kallum Panditharatna
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32
votes
2 answers
Can you rhyme words in sign language?
In spoken language, patterns of vowels, consonants, and stress are used to feel the similarity of form between two words and create rhymes.
Can you do the same in sign language?
Also, is there sign language poetry that I could see using the patterns…
honestSalami
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32
votes
6 answers
Is there any evidence to support the claim that English grammar is unusually straightforward?
The renowned linguist Eddie Izzard devoted at least one of his standup comedy routines to the proposition that English grammar is unusually straightforward, at least in comparison (if I recall correctly) to Latin and French. It's a sentiment that…
Tom Hosker
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32
votes
8 answers
Why do Japanese people have difficulties in pronouncing English?
When I watch Anime, I notice that Japanese English pronunciation is really bad, they twist all the sounds, and they can't pronounce sounds like "L". I think English is the easiest language when it comes to pronunciation, and I don’t think it has…
Ichigo Kurosaki
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