Unanswered Questions
190 questions with no upvoted or accepted answers
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Punic name of Pantelleria island
The ancient name of Pantelleria island (Sicilia, Italy) is usually written in latin characters as YRNM.
I relied on a table to convert these characters in punic characters and (considering punics ...
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What free objective tools can be used for assessing pronunciation?
I'm also interested in fluency and intonation.
Any insights will be wonderful.
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How to check if the first /r/ or /j/ sound is elided in "February"?
I've just learnt that there is more than one way to pronounce the word "February":
/ˈfebyuˌweri/
/ˈfebuˌweri/
/ˈfebruˌweri/
And some other variations with /u/ being reduced to schwa.
...
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History of words for a thing - the opposite of etymology?
What is a term that describes which words were used to describe a thing in the world?
Answering the question "How did people refer to ...?"
Is this a sub-discipline of linguistics?
Is it ...
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Is Old Church Slavonic съпрѧтьнъ (sŭprętĭnŭ) descending from PIE *sprend-, *sprendʰ- *sper- (“to flinch; jump”)?
It has always intrigued me that the rather popular Romanian word sprinten (swift, fast, lively) seems very close semantically to English sprint.
The etymology of the English word is rather detailed on ...
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Any old noun class system without chaotic formal/ semantic assignment
When noun class/gender system gets old, the semantic/formal assignment rules of the noun class become more opaque/unreliable because of loanwords and erosion of (derivational) suffixes and etc.
eg. in ...
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Different degrees of diachronic stability for different phonological properties?
Has any research sought to identify which types of phonemes or phonological features tend to be more or less resistant to change over time relative to others? I'd love to know of any relevant research ...
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Empirical basis for the limit of the comparative method?
I've heard lots of different numbers thrown around in the literature to the 'upper bound' of how far back in time the comparative method can go. The most pessimistic numbers hover around 7,000 years ...
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Origin of a special Sinhala letterform
In Sinhala, the usual form of the short U diacritic is that of a hook on the bottom of a letter:
a) ක + ු -> කු, කූ
b) ම + ු -> මු, මූ
This takes an exceptional form for the letter R, like ...
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What is the current consensus on Fortunatov's law of Indo-European linguistics?
As I understand it, the law explains some Sanskrit retroflexes as derived from non-retroflex consonant clusters in PIE. T. Burrow’s A Reconsideration of Fortunatov's Law (Bulletin of the School of ...
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1
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Need help refuting a claim in greek and arabic
I would like your help in refuting a Christian claim as this has been bugging me for a while now
Is the epsilon truly more fitting of the first letter of the word "Allah" (as pronounced in ...
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1
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What are examples of English words containing a Near-close near-front unrounded vowel
What are examples of English words containing a near-close near-front unrounded vowel, when American pronunciation is used.
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How similar are the French and Spanish R sounds, linguistically speaking?
To preface, I'm not particularly knowledgeable about linguistics, but I did take several semesters of French and Spanish in college several years ago. I remember putting a lot of effort into learning ...
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What is difference between Sanskrit used in Mahabharata, The Sanskrit used in Ramayana, The Sanskrit Used in Bhagvad Geeta and Panini Sanskrit?
I have been exploring the variations in Sanskrit used across different historical texts and would appreciate some detailed insights. Specifically, I'm interested in understanding the linguistic ...
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What words used throughout the world have a similar sound to "capture" and does the word have a similar meaning?
I was reading with reference to alcázar and I was wondering and searching for a word in English that sounds like al cázar or al capture or al caesar.
Note that al-caesar means something like "to ...
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