Unanswered Questions
53 questions with no upvoted or accepted answers
8
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0
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Historical pronunciation of Hindi यह and वह
The Hindi 3rd person singular proximal and distal pronouns यह and वह are commonly pronounced [jeː] and [ʋoː], in contrast to the [hyper-correct?] pronunciations [jəɦ(ə)] and [ʋəɦ(ə)] one might expect ...
- 3,132
7
votes
0
answers
204
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Northumbrian pronunciation of ge-/gi- prefix and -g suffix
I'm working on a musical setting of Cædmon's Hymn, and I'd like to have the primary setting be in the Northumbrian dialect of its earliest written example (the 737 "Moore" Bede manuscript). I'm ...
- 87
5
votes
0
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448
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Cellar door and Indo-European languages
Where I grew up (UK) there was a pub called The Drysalters. I always liked this name without having any idea what a drysalter was, or having any association or emotional connection to the pub itself.
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- 31.1k
4
votes
0
answers
107
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Historically, when was whitespace used versus interpuncts versus no-separation?
The Wikipedia article on whitespace claimed until recently that the use of whitespace as a word separator was rare until its promotion by Alcuin of York in the Carolingian Renaissance. But I've found ...
- 538
4
votes
0
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48
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Dataset for distribution of different systems for 'yes' and 'no' cross-linguistically?
The Wikipedia article for 'Yes and no' lists various distinct, common, systems for expressing the affirmative and the negative, ranging from no explicit terms (instead relying on echo responses) to ...
- 203
4
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0
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109
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Where can I find a list of English words that contain a rare combination of phonemes
I am looking for a wake up word for a digital product that would be easily detected with a voice recognition engine.
This calls for a word that has a rare combination of phonemes so the product is ...
- 6,601
3
votes
0
answers
126
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How did خشاب become the Persian word for magazine?
In Iran magazine (in a gun) is called خشاب (kheshab). I tried to find a relation to another language but I failed.
The only thing I found is that خشب (khashb) means wood in Arabic.
In Arabic magazine ...
- 455
3
votes
0
answers
123
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Can a trill be creaky?
Or in other words, is it possible to pronounce [ʙ̰], [r̰], [ʀ̰], or [ʢ̰]?
I tried to pronounce these phones by myself, and I always failed. It seems the airstream from the constricted glottis cannot ...
- 337
3
votes
0
answers
84
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Is there any IPA TTS software that also considers tone
I want to create audio files for a conlect of Chinese I am studying, and therefore tone is one aspect I have to consider. Many of the IPA to speech software I've seen so far don't consider tone (or ...
- 31
3
votes
0
answers
127
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The schwa in [meɪkəθ] for *maketh* in KJV English
This Wiki article seems to suggest that words like makes had lost their final syllable schwa in normal speech already by Chaucer's time (palmeres > palmers is the example they give). The rule, as ...
- 267
2
votes
0
answers
120
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How did Otto Jespersen figure out the Great Vowel Shift?
How did Otto Jespersen figure out the Great Vowel Shift?
Surely, there were no pronunciation audio recordings available.
How did he know how British people had pronounced vowels centuries ago?
Have ...
- 121
2
votes
0
answers
108
views
Does aspiration propagate to the following vowel?
My native language is Korean, which is notorious for its three-way distinction (plain vs. tense vs. aspirated) of (non-nasal) stops. As such, I tried to analyze my own pronunciation.
Then I found that ...
- 337
2
votes
0
answers
67
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How do we shape our language's lexicon?
Society always drops, creates and re-uses words. But how does that happen? When do we get to decide what word to use, dump, or create, and in what method does that occur? Does someone invent a new ...
- 538
2
votes
0
answers
85
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What is the origin of the pronunciation difference between 'replicate' (noun) and 'replicate' (verb)?
In English, the noun 'replicate' is pronounced with a schwa (ə) at the end while the verb is pronounced with the diphthong 'eɪ'. The same is true for the word 'duplicate'. Is there a more general ...
2
votes
0
answers
99
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What are the essential words?
Take a dictionary. Each word is defined using other words. Take all the words of the dictionary. The words that appear in their definitions is a subset of words of this dictionary (and not the whole ...
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