għ-r-f

Je ne comprends que l’amour et la liberté. // I only understand love and liberty.

Rhoticity in varieties of English, features and issues of categorisation

First off, a few words on the concept of rhoticity, its distribution in the world and British English. The pronunciation of “r” in the English is one of the main features that serves to categorise English dialects: rhotic and non-rhotic ones. What we call rhotic and non-rhotic accents are accents where their speakers would pronounce or not the “r”s even if they are not followed by vowels. If you take the word “farther”, two different realisations are possible: [fɑ:ðə] if you are non-rhotic and [fɑɹðəɹ] if you aren’t. 

On the one hand, the r-ful American, Canadian, Irish, Scottish and south-eastern English, and on the other hand: most of England, Wales, South Africa, Australia and New Zealand. 

The issue here is that this division lacks in accuracy for it doesn’t take into account regional specificities. For example, British English being non-rhotic is a gross over-generalisation because Scotland is rhotic and is included in the phrase Great Britain. We should logically then say English English so as to be more precise but there again we have a problem; while Cornwall is indeed in England, it is inside the rhotic sprachbund. British English is often mistakenly used for the Received Pronunciation (RP) variety. 

Same thing for the United States. While the vast majority of American-English speakers sport rhotic accents, r-less varieties can be found on the east coast and in the southern states. American English is considered rhotic because most of its dialects are. Below are the places where the “white” American non-rhotic dialects can be found. This distinction of “white” American English is opposed to African-American Vernacular English (AAVE) which is relatively homogeneous throughout the country despite great geographical distance.  

So to clarify, I will use the phrase English English so as to be the most accurate possible even though in reality it doesn’t include certain regional accents like in the south-west or Lancashire. 

Below is the mapping of rhoticity in 1950s England from Professor Harold Orton’s Survey of English Dialects and in late 20th century in England according to Peter Trudgill’s The Dialects of England:

How and when did it come about?

As the maps above indicate, rhoticity is a recessive phonetic feature in England. Nowadays most local varieties are non-rhotic (Received Pronunciation, Brummie, Scouse, Cockney, Estuary). But how did the “r” come to be dropped while in dialects like General American realising every “r” is the norm?

The first traces of deletion of “r” were recorded in the early 15th century. The first instances of deletion mainly concerned the sequence /r/ + /s/. This resulted in “ass” instead of “arse” and “bass” instead of “bars” (fish). The phenomenon slowly continues developing in the following century but is restricted to private documents and especially those that were written by women. This is interesting because women are more often than not the spear-head of linguistic innovations. The disappearance of the rhotic consonant is more widely discussed from the 17th century as the phenomenon is spreading so much that it is estimated that by 1790, the London area has grown predominantly non-rhotic. This indicates that the loss of “r”s is a southern development. 

What is interesting is that the quality of the English R doesn’t seem to have a real impact on the loss of “r” when it not followed by a vowel. Peter Trudgill set up a chronology of the evolution of English: [r > ɾ > ɻ > ɹ > ʋ]. It started as a trill [r] as you can find in Spanish or Greek, then weakened to a flap [ɾ] as in American “t” in later. It morphed into a alveolar retroflex approximant [ɻ] as it exists in Hindi or Indian-accented English. It then became the alveolar approximant [ɹ] that is used today. The final evolution is the bilabial approximant [ʋ] that is emerging in certain areas in England. This is the sound that some speakers make for an [ɹ] when their native tongue doesn’t have a /w/ sound, like German or Hebrew. 

Why am I saying this evolution is unconnected? Well, because the rise of present-day “r” [ɹ] seems to date back to the mid-19th century while the loss of “r” precedes it. In the 16th century, at a time when “r” was rolled, it already started to fade away. The solution seems to lie in stressing and is twofold. For an “r” to be left unuttered, it is has to be within an unstressed syllable or be followed by another consonant. In 1740, in a manual destined to French learners of English, the pronunciation of “r” is thus described: 

“dans plusieurs mots, l’r devant une consonne est fort adouci, presque muet & rend un peu longue la voyale qui le precede.“ 

(”…in many words r before a consonant is greatly softened, almost mute, and slightly lengthens the preceding vowel.“)

The great softening of the consonant actually translated into a lengthening of the preceding vowel. This is why vowels are longer in non-rhotic English English than General American, compare “hard” RP [hɑ:d] vs GA [hɑɹd]. As time went on, in stressed syllables, it seems plausible that the span of action of the stress narrowed to only be effectual on the vowel rather than the vowel and the following “r”. As languages naturally favour economy, it is logical that speakers set aside a not-too-useful sound. Basically, the vowel sort of stole that of the following “r”’s and and became longer. 

This pronunciation became the norm because it started in the most influential place in England, London and its surroundings. It spread thanks to the top-down influence; a cultural practice is more likely to develop in the lower social classes by imitation of the upper-classes. As London was the economic and cultural centre of the country, everyone wanted to be “London-trendy”, if you will. 

Why does this “r”-dropping not concern the US? Because Empire. The US were a colony far before South Africa, Australia and New Zealand were. When the American colonies were founded, English in its entirety was rhotic. Even as time progressed and migrants came in, American English remained rhotic because many of them came from places that pronounced all “r”s (southern England, Ireland or Scotland) or different countries. These migrants would most likely pronounce all instances of “r”s after the fashion of their native tongue, for very few languages deletes its “r”s the way English does.

As for Australia, New Zealand and South Africa, they were colonised much later, when prestigious English was predominantly non-rhotic. Once the standard variety cemented in the colonies (after two or three generations of settlers), the influence of later immigrants would be null.

Do any other languages experience the same phenomenon?

Yes, English is not alone in this regard. The most obvious example is its cousin-language, German. If you take the word “sondern” (”but”, “instead”) could be pronounced [ˈzɔndɐn] instead of [’zɔndəʁ]. Here, the sequence of schwa /ə/ + /ʁ/  forces the vowel to become [ɐ]. French and Catalan have also the habit of not pronouncing some final “r”s. However, it is greatly debatable if this is a clear case of non-rhoticity of if it merely including in the greater trend of final-consonant deletion. For example, French and Catalan infinitives see the final “r” dropped as in parler [paʁle] and parlar  [pəɾˈɫə] / [pəɾˈɫa] / [paɾˈɫa]. Portuguese also seems to be affected by the partial loss of rhoticity.

The origins of these evolutions in Romance languages are still mysterious.

This is a really nice question! 

raċanċ - a lot of stuff that you don’t need but don’t know what to do with

qanzħa - a person who always find something to complain about, someone who doesn’t like anything

żanżan - to wear or use something for the first time

tellerita - a person who likes to talk way too much

baħbuħ - a person who is very friendly, and good natured 

qarqaċ - to dry something with fire or with sunlight, particularly clothes

inkiss - usually doubled “inkiss inkiss”, meaning very slowly, without a sound, sneaky

ċlampu - when the weather is grey, humid and dark. Also used to describe someone who is in a bad mood

fsied - a sort of “cuddling” attention given towards another

fessud/a - coming from “fsied”; a person who is spoiled, who is overly “cuddled” by family members, usually the youngest child

paniġierku - a long rant

santafjakka - describing someone who’s very calm and takes a lot of time to do anything 

makakk - describing someone who’s sly and intelligent

these are just some of them because we have quite a few! :-)

Hi! I hope you don’t mind if I take your ask as an opportunity to make a little post about history of the Norwegian language. 

Once upon a time, there was Norway. In 1397 was instituted the “Kalmar Union”, an union between Norway, Sweden and Denmark with a single monarch, Margaret I of Denmark. In 1535, Sweden got its independence but Norway remained under the Danish control until 1814, when it got in an union with Sweden under the king of Sweden. Only in 1905 Norway got its independence. Culture was heavily affected by that and of course, language too. Norway had its own language derived from Old Norse during Middle Age but with the Protestant Reformation (translation of the Bible from Latin and introduction of printed books), Danish was “officially” substituted as the main language of administration and culture for almost four centuries. For ex. while every other country got its own Bible translated in his own language, Norway didn’t get it. They used a Danish one with enormous consequences on the language. People in the villages still spoke their “original” Norwegian dialect, without Danish influences but in the cities, a mix of Norwegian and Danish was spoken.During 1800, the Romantic Nationalism movement brought this problem to the light. Ivar Aasen went through all Norway and did a huge study on Norwegian dialects with the idea to create a new language that would be in opposition to the Dano-Norwegian. He elaborated a standard grammar and a dictionary of this new language that was supposed to be the “authentic” language of the people and called it “landsmål”. It’s what today has evolved in the Norwegian variety called “nynorsk” (literally, new Norwegian). Knud Knudsen made another standard language, this one derived by the language spoken in the cities that had that big Danish influence and called it “riksmål”. This is what’s today is “bokmål” (lit., book language). There have been lots of linguistics reforms to adapt one variety to the other and many tries to create a common language (”samnorsk”) but it’s still a controversial topic in Norway.

Today, they’re both official languages of Norway even if bokmål is lot more used than nynorsk. One very important detail: they’re both written varieties! That means that no one speaks bokmål or nynorsk. Norwegians speak their own dialect, the one from where they’re born or grown up. Norwegian bokmål is the variety that is most taught abroad and the one with more resources but Norwegian nynorsk is very interesting because it uses lots of words that are more similar to Old Norse (and Icelandic). Basically, it’s up to you but I suggest you to start with Norwegian bokmål first, just for convenience.

So, depending on the level of interest people have in my way of doing things, I might create a more thorough guide in the future. However, in the interest of brevity I will create a very rough step by step guide for people because why not.

1. Pick a language - Pick one you like; don’t worry about it being “practical” or “useful.” If you don’t like the language you’re studying, it’s going to be a miserable experience and learning languages should be fun!

2. Learn IPA - Learning how to read IPA characters (International Phonetic Alphabet) is imperative to being a successful language learner. If you haven’t already, put some time into learning how to read IPA transcriptions because it will save you a lot of time and give you a much better accent when learning the sounds of your target language. Avoid “english-y” transcriptions (e.g. très = TRAY) like the plague. They’re bad and people who make them should feel bad.

3. Learn the alphabet/writing system - Usually it doesn’t take a super long time, and if you’re studying a language like Japanese or Chinese it’s best to get used to using the writing system from the very beginning. You’re gonna have to deal with it eventually so you may as well hop right in. Relying on latin character transcriptions will only put off the inevitable.

4. Learn the pronunciation of your target language - I advocate a pronunciation-first approach. This will be easier or harder depending on how many unfamiliar sounds there are in your TL, but it’s worth going over the phonology (sound system) of your language early and getting used to how its sounds interact. If you don’t learn proper pronunciation in the beginning, you’ll ingrain incorrect pronunciations into your brain which will be hard to undo later on. You don’t have to try to make your accent perfect, accent reduction can come later, but it’s worth spending some time on. This is especially true for language with odd sounds or features (tones, voicing distinctions, etc.)

5. Pick ONE course/book - A problem I see a lot, and one that I have fallen into many times myself, is hording language learning resources. In the beginning, and especially for beginner polyglots, it is better to pick ONE really good course or book to follow, and focus on mastering the material within. If you try to split your time between too many resources or books or websites, you’ll quickly become overwhelmed. Some books/courses/series I recommend that can commonly be found for all languages are: Teach Yourself, Assimil, Duolingo, Linguaphone, and Pimsleur among others. You can always use one of those while you keep searching for more resources, but resist the temptation to dig into multiple books at once.

6. Use an SRS to learn vocabulary/grammar - SRS’s (Spaced Repetition Systems) are my bread and butter when it comes to memorization. Put simply, they are tools for spending your studying time more efficiently, and they warrant an entire post by themselves. Rote memorization is for the birds, so use a spaced repetition system such as Anki, Supermemo, a Leitner Box, or Memrise to avoid wasting your time. (Use Anki. Just use Anki. You’ll thank me later.)

7. Don’t translate - I used to learn vocabulary and grammar using English translations, but you’ll soon find that it’s only useful to an extent as your vocabulary gets bigger and you start running out of unique ways to translate synonyms. A more robust approach to flash card creation can be found in the book “Fluent Forever” by Gabriel Wyner, which I would definitely recommend reading. The short version is: use pictures instead of English translations for picturable words, for more abstract words and grammar concepts, use example sentences with cloze deletion cards (easy to create using Anki. seriously, just use anki.)

8. Speak the language! - Probably the only thing I actually learned from He Who Shall Not Be Named (anyone who’s been in the polyglot community for longer than 30 seconds knows who I’m talking about.) It seems simple but you should really speak the language as much as you can straight from the beginning. “But how can I speak the language if I’m not fluent or if I’ve just started?” Simple, use what you know, and do whatever it takes to make yourself understood. It really doesn’t take much, maybe 100 words or so (a day’s worth of work if you’re dedicated) to start to be able to put sentences together. Learning phrases is even better for this. For this reason, a phrasebook (Lonely Planet is a popular choice) is a worthy investment.

9. Immerse yourself as much as possible! - Watch TV, read books, nespapers, and articles, and listen to music in your TL. Get yourself used to being around the language. Ideally, you’d be able to move to the country or region where the language is spoken and truly immerse yourself, but for many total immersion can be either unrealistic or overwhelming. It’s totally possible to give yourself enough contact with the language and even create a 100% immersion environment all from the comfort of your home. The important thing is to have contact with the language and get used to being around it. This is where you’ll pick up on the rhythms of the language, tonality, intonation, all that good stuff. More importantly, it will get you used to how FAST people talk.

10. Keep looking for things you don’t know. - This is probably the best advice I could give anyone. There are things out there that you don’t even know you don’t know, so the best thing to do is to keep surrounding yourself with new facts, new vocabulary, new grammar structures, etc. If you’re looking for a new course/book, look for one that seems like it has a lot to teach you. Don’t rehash things you already know, it’s a waste of time. This is the basic principle of SRS’s, don’t review until you forget. Going back over concepts you already know is pointless and it contributes to “plateau syndrome” (when it feels like you’re not making any progress in your TL). Review what you need to, when you need to, only so long as you need to. Learning one new concept is worth more than going back over two you’ve already mastered.

11. HAVE FUN - The road to fluency is long. Like super long, I can’t stress this enough. You may not be fluent in 3 months, a year, two years, maybe even 5 years. It all depends on how much time you are willing to spend on the language and to a VERY VERY SMALL DEGREE how talented you are. The important thing is to not rush it and enjoy the experience. If you’re not having fun, modify your goals and your approach until you are.

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Da-infinitive - I Infinitive - Infinitive

Olla – Olla - Be Alustada – Alkaa - Begin Katkestada - Katkaista – Break (ex. a stick in two pieces) Osta -  Ostaa - Buy Sulgeda – Sulkea - Close Tulla -  Tulla - Come Lõigata - Leikata - Cut Tantsida – Tanssia - Dance Juua - Juoda - Drink Süüa - Syödä - Eat Leida – Löytää - Find Lennata -  Lentää - Fly Unustada - Unohtaa - Forget Saada – Saada - Get Anda – Antaa - Give Kuulda - Kuulla - Hear Aidata - Auttaa - Help Hüpata – Hypätä  - Jump Suudelda – suudella / antaa suudelma – To kiss Naerda -  Nauraa - Laugh Õppida – Oppia - Learn Lebada- Levätä - Rest Valetada - Valehdella -  Lie (To lie to someone)

Kuulda - Kuulla - Listen Vaadata – Katsoa - Look Kaotada – Kadottaa -  Lose Kohtuda – Tavata,  Kohtuda (Tavata more used) - Meet Liikuda – Liikua - Move Avada - Avata - Open Maksta - Maksaa - Pay Panna - Panna  - Put Lugeda – Lukea -  Read Joosta – Juosta - Run Müüa - Myydä - Sell Laulda – Laulaa - Sing Istuda – Istua - Sit Ujuda – Uida -  Swim Oodata – Odottaa - Wait Kirjutada – Kirjoittaa – Write

Then the copy paste stopped working with the spacing :)

Here are verbs where Estonian and Finnish are not similar at all.

Hukkuda - Kuolla - Die (drown= Hukkua In Finnish)

Armastada - Rakkaus - Love (Armas is like beloved/dear in Finnish)

Meeldida – Pitää – Like

Vajada - Tarvita - Need

Mängida - Leikkiä - Play

Tõmmata - Vetää - Pull

Lükata – Työntää – Push ( Like a door)

Mäletada - Muistaa - Remember

Kasutada – Käyttää - Use

Öelda - Sanoa - Say

Võtta - Ottaa - Take

Rääkida - Puhua - Talk

Aru Saama – Ymmärtää - Understand

Kasutada– Käyttää - Use 

Joonistada - Piirtää – Draw

Loota - Toivoa - Hope

Järgneda – Seurata - Follow

Pakkuda – Tarjota - Offer

I’m conducting a survey of vital importance - I’m gonna give you a couple of sentences and it’d be great if you could tell me 1) which one you prefer/would use, and 2) if you would accept them all or if any are ungrammatical for you. (and 3) where you’re from would be helpful too!)

1) It’s not me who is always wrong. (or who’s) 2) It’s not I who is always wrong. (or who’s) 3) It’s not me who am always wrong. 4) It’s not I who am always wrong.