#language with caesar

After several days of work, I have completed my map of the Romance languages in Europe. You can even examine it yourself in detail

Since it's made with Google Maps, it's got all the functionality of that built into it. You can view it on Google Earth if you're so inclined. SO there's that

For a little bit of nerdy information, read on. Just some of my thoughts about my work

This one is going to be a long post but hopefully it's still approachable even if you don't know about linguistics. I often make posts like this in my free time so let me know if you want me to post them to Tumblr more

Context: Other (Asian) Tonal Languages

One of the most well known features of Eastern and South-Eastern Asian languages is tone, the use of pitch to distinguish different words. In this map, white languages have no tones, pink have simple tones, and red have complex tones

Still, just in case you somehow don't know what tone is or just need a refresher, here are some examples from actual languages:

Mandarin Chinese 1. Flat 媽 mā ("mother") 2. Rising 麻 má ("numb") 3. Dipping 馬 mǎ ("horse") 4. Falling 罵 mà ("to scold") 5. Neutral 嗎 ma ("question marker")

Vietnamese 1. Flat ba ("three") 2. Low Falling bà ("grandmother") 3. Dipping bả ("bait") 4. Broken Rising bã ("residue") 5. Rising bá ("to embrace") 6. Mid Falling bạ ("to strengthen")

Japanese Even Japanese can be described as having tones. In English, stressed syllables are louder and longer than the surrounding syllables. In Japanese, stressed syllables have a higher pitch than other ones. "Pitch accent" can also be described as a simple tone system. While a controversial idea to some linguists, I think this makes perfect sense. In essence, Japanese only has a High and Low tone

Korean "Stop" Series

There's a class of consonants known as plosives or stops. They're called that because you completely stop airflow when you say them. Compare /s/ to /p/ (as in "sit" versus "pit"). When saying /p/, you build up air before releasing it

One more important thing to know, consonants can be said with an extra puff of air. We call these consonants aspirated. Hold your hand out flat, with your fingers together. Touch the tips of your fingers to your nose. If you say "spit" and "pit" back and forth you'll feel the difference. With "pit" there is a very strong puff of air that hits your palm. This is the aspirated sound [pʰ]. With "spit" it's a normal [p]. English doesn't distinguish these sounds, but Korean does

Korean has three sets of stops. Aspirated ㅍ /pʰ/, Plain ㅂ /p/, and Tense ㅃ /p͈/. This last one is fascinating. Natives I've asked have describe it as being pronounced "forcefully", calling it "narrow" or "strong". However, this is very different from reality. In truth the plain series is also aspirated, just less so. In speech, the series of sounds are actually Very Aspirated ㅍ [pʰʰ], Aspirated ㅂ [pʰ], and Plain ㅃ [p]

Gyeonggi Dialect

Around Seoul, there has been a merger of Aspirated and Plain stops. They are both said with the same amount of air. Words like "reward" 포상 /pʰosʰaŋ/ and "compensation" 보상 /posʰaŋ/ are now both pronounced [pʰo̞sʰaŋ]

However, a new contrast has emerged in this dialect. Historic Aspirates leave behind a high tone while historic Plain stops leave behind a mid or low tone. So they can still be distinguished by this feature. We have 포상 /pʰosʰaŋ/ [pʰo̞˥sʰaŋ] versus 보상 /posʰaŋ/ [pʰo̞˧sʰaŋ]

Conclusion