tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-377103124456226005.post7276804192518531962..comments2024-03-17T09:14:13.950+00:00Comments on John Wells’s phonetic blog: KyivJohn Wellshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13684304410735867148noreply@blogger.comBlogger37125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-377103124456226005.post-6260223134964288422012-04-04T13:45:40.781+01:002012-04-04T13:45:40.781+01:00@David Crosbie: Thanks for clarifying.@David Crosbie: Thanks for clarifying.Petehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13722482936100504510noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-377103124456226005.post-14962309471333222372012-04-04T13:17:20.400+01:002012-04-04T13:17:20.400+01:00I think the westernmost part of Great Britain is p...I think the westernmost part of Great Britain is pronunced something like <b>ˌardnəˈmʌrxən</b><br /><br />(sorry, couldn't resist)Alanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10627322349797202893noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-377103124456226005.post-88253552457326366772012-04-03T21:11:30.411+01:002012-04-03T21:11:30.411+01:00ad David,
your wife, accompanying us all along in...ad David,<br /><br />your wife, accompanying us all along in these discussions since times immemorial, a St. Dunstan of Howard Pyle's 'Robin Hood' deserves a great 'spasi Bog' from all of us.Podpora społeczeństwahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08339088245843399386noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-377103124456226005.post-4461197944188225702012-04-03T20:41:59.411+01:002012-04-03T20:41:59.411+01:00'studzieniec' comes from 'studzić'...'studzieniec' comes from 'studzić', to cool something down. A month that cools us down. In jelly technology: you have to cool the thing down in order for it to become jelly-like.<br /><br />But it seems to me that to most Slavs, in whose languages such names are used, their etymologies are no longer transparent. No more that it is transparent to Tom, Dick and Harry that 'Wednesday' is Wodan's, and 'Thursday' Thor's day, let alone Friday Frigga's day or whatever this goddess was called by the Anglo-Saxons.Podpora społeczeństwahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08339088245843399386noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-377103124456226005.post-40846696625795608682012-04-03T18:35:55.143+01:002012-04-03T18:35:55.143+01:00Yes, I missed styczeń.
As far as I can tell, Bel...Yes, I missed <b>styczeń</b>. <br /><br />As far as I can tell, Belarusian 'January' and Russian 'calf's foot jelly' are not just cognate but identical. The Russian word is familiar to me because it's the ultimate dish to serve at parties — probably because it takes for ever to prepare, which signals how much you value your guests.David Crosbiehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01858358459416955921noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-377103124456226005.post-37003427410072651682012-04-03T17:58:43.595+01:002012-04-03T17:58:43.595+01:00It's 'studzieniec' or something of thi...It's 'studzieniec' or something of this sort, flesh jelly in Polish too. Anyway, Polish uses Slavic names too, has never used the Latin names.Podpora społeczeństwahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08339088245843399386noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-377103124456226005.post-62483321324782292152012-04-03T17:03:05.422+01:002012-04-03T17:03:05.422+01:00According to The Slavic languages, Croatian uses b...According to <i>The Slavic languages</i>, Croatian uses both Slavic and Julian month names. The remaining language to use Slavic names is Czech — but Slovak doesn't.<br /><br />The Croatian November/Belarusian January is disconcertingly similar to the Russian word for 'calf's foot jelly'.David Crosbiehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01858358459416955921noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-377103124456226005.post-30085362535426499172012-04-03T15:24:13.563+01:002012-04-03T15:24:13.563+01:00Names of months... not always identical
This brin...<i>Names of months... not always identical</i><br /><br />This brings back a funny off-topic memory: I once almost booked a flight on a Croatian airline in the wrong month. I thought, "This is easy, I can do it in Croatian". Luckily, at some point I noticed that <i>listopad</i> 'the month of falling leaves' was the third from the end of the list. Polish <i>listopad</i> is November, while Croatian <i>listopad</i> is October. Doesn't make sense when you think of the climate. And now upon double-checking this on Wikipedia, I see that seemingly Sebrian has <i>Октобар</i>. So much for Serbo-Croat.wjarekhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07871668374161722713noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-377103124456226005.post-54888558689058772322012-04-03T14:20:07.663+01:002012-04-03T14:20:07.663+01:00There is no doubt a great deal of common Slavic le...There is no doubt a great deal of common Slavic lexis but again there are striking differences, the situation here resembling to an extent that between German and Dutch (which separated about the same time as the Slavic dialects). Like: Dutch 'mens', German 'Mensch' for 'human being' but Dutch 'maatschappij' and German 'Gesellschaft' for 'society. Polish: 'społeczeństwo', Russian 'obshchestvo'. (The suffix is the same, though). <br /><br />There are 'sexier' examples of Ukr/Bel being closer to Proto-Eastern-Slavonic than Russian than those you quote --- but I can't, helaas, remember them for the moment.<br /><br />Re names of months, I think Russian is in the minority here, most Slavic languages have preserved the Slavic names, though they not always be identical (modulo diffferent phonetics/spellings) (misleadingly, sometimes).<br /><br />Again, I am being impressionistic here, but I'd say that at least Ukrainian is marginallly closer to Polish than it is Russian, lexically. Most of the Polonisms are calques rather than direct loanwords, though sometimes it's difficult to decide which and sometimes it's fifty-fifty.Podpora społeczeństwahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08339088245843399386noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-377103124456226005.post-37616693024297373572012-04-03T13:49:37.023+01:002012-04-03T13:49:37.023+01:00Wojciech
There's a shortsection on pan-Slavic...Wojciech<br /><br />There's a shortsection on pan-Slavic lexis in <a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Slavic-Languages-Cambridge-Language-Surveys/dp/0521294487/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1333416259&sr=8-1" rel="nofollow">The Slavonic languages</a>.<br /><br />Examples of Russian incorporating Southern forms, usually through Church Slavonic, where Ukrainian and Belarusian do not are of the type<br />• Ukr/Bel <i>Volodýmyr </i>vs Rus <i>Vladímir</i> <br />• Particples in Russian but rarely the other languages formed with -ʃtʃ- : e.g. Rus кипящий vs Ukr киплячий 'boiling' <br /><br />They concentrate on these two differences because they enrich Russian with words of a more abstract or literary register — highfalutin' град alongside homely город, for example. This looks like the way our ancestors enriched English through borrowings from French or — for a higher register still — from Latin.<br /><br />Similarly, but from a non-Slavic source, Russian (and some ether languages) replaced all the Slavic month names with Latin equivalents while Ukrainian, Belarusian and Polish (and some others) for the most part stayed Slavic.<br /><br />There's an interesting section on measures of lexical similarity between languages. <br />• By glossometric analysis (which I don't pretend to understand) the <br />closest pairs include Belarusian/Ukrainian, Russian/Ukrainian, and Polish/Ukrainian.<br />• By comparing lexical retention vs substitution, the pairings among these languages are more numerous and partly different: Belarusian/Ukrainian, Russian/Belarusian, Polish/Belarusian, Russian/Ukrainian.David Crosbiehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01858358459416955921noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-377103124456226005.post-26606536017066473192012-04-03T13:47:50.310+01:002012-04-03T13:47:50.310+01:00And, I, myself, ask who else would prefer a more v...And, I, myself, ask who else would prefer a more visibly comprehensible, a more visually obvious spelling for the last name Wells? I see an unusual association of letters. The last name itself is associated with an easy going, regular kinda guy. It seems that the point is missing. Thanks.Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17602475665842927310noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-377103124456226005.post-838650642901922092012-04-03T06:57:15.712+01:002012-04-03T06:57:15.712+01:00For what it's worth, in Serbian John's sur...For what it's worth, in Serbian John's surname and the westernmost part of Great Britain are homophones: both are Vels (Велс).Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-377103124456226005.post-75121954564689013972012-04-03T04:14:32.616+01:002012-04-03T04:14:32.616+01:00I was of course referring to the country of Wales,...I was of course referring to the country of Wales, but I now see that the town of Wales, Alaska is Уэйлс according to Wikipedia - http://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Уэйлс_(Аляска) - even with an explicit footnote saying that Уэльс shown on a map is wrong. Unless someone can persuade me that the difference in transliterations captures some essential difference between BrE and AmE that I'm unaware of, I'll assume it's basically random...Alanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10627322349797202893noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-377103124456226005.post-90680243160025352842012-04-03T03:56:32.306+01:002012-04-03T03:56:32.306+01:00I am wondering about Уэлз, and in particular how i...I am wondering about Уэлз, and in particular how it compares with the standard Russian word for <i>Wales</i>, Уэльс, clearly originally a transliteration from English. (I doubt many would pronounce it in English with <b>s</b> rather than <b>z</b>, but that distinction is unimportant in Russian, which has devoicing of word-final consonants, so I suppose the transliteration may as well reflect the spelling instead.)<br /><br />I am not a phonetician, but to my ear the realisation of /l/ sounds the same in <i>Wells</i> and <i>Wales</i> (I myself would occasionally vocalise it, but feel I am equally likely to do so in both words), and the difference between those two words in English seems to be purely in the vowel phonemes. So then, my naive transliteration of (RP) <i>Wales</i> would then be Уэйлз, with an explicit diphthong and an unpalatalised <b>l</b>, but this is clearly not the actual accepted word. It's interesting that palatalisation so affects the preceding vowel sound that Уэльс is a reasonable transliteration to capture the diphthong.Alanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10627322349797202893noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-377103124456226005.post-68837489584856220152012-04-03T01:39:22.942+01:002012-04-03T01:39:22.942+01:00Pete
There are different histories to distinguish...Pete<br /><br />There are different histories to distinguish.<br /><br />1. The history of letter Г is exceptionally simple<br />• It was adapted from the Phoenician alphabet to represent what we would now call the Greek <b>/g/</b> phoneme.<br />• It was copied from the Greek alphabet to represent what we would now call the Slavonic <b>/g/</b> phoneme.<br /><br />2. The histories of the <b>/g/</b> phoneme are similar but distinct<br />• In Greek it developed into two sounds according to position: fricative before a front vowel, stop elsewhere. (The nasal variant is not relevant here.)<br />• In Slavonic it developed into two sounds — also a stop and a fricative —but basically with one sound in any single dialect.<br />• Standard Ukrainian developed exclusively from dialects with fricative <b>ɦ</b><br />• Standard Russian speech for a long time copied the <b>ɦ</b> dialects, but then switched to copying the <b>g</b> dialects.<br />• The Standard Russian amendment of Church Slavonic continues to use <b>ɦ</b> and secular Standard Russian retains the pronunciation in expression of religious origin.<br /><br />All these sound changes happened in an age of literacy, so both Greek and the Slavonic languages retained the Г spelling, whatever the sound.<br /><br />3. The history of spelling loanwords in Russian followed (with a time lag) the changing ascendancy of dialects in Standard Russian pronunciation.<br />• When the <b>/g/</b> phoneme was realized as a fricative, the foreign words spelled with H were heard as similar to /g/ — i.e. sounding like <b>ɦ</b> — and were spelled with Г.<br />• When Standard Russian pronunciation shifted to a <b>g</b> pronunciation, the transliteration of H as Г continued —through inertia— until late in the twentieth century. Spellings such as Гитлер gave rise to pronunciations that were glaringly different from the German pronunciation of Hitler, but this was tolerated.<br />• Finally, the mismatch was no longer acceptable. Russian spelling transliterated the H of new loanwords as Х a letter pronounced with the nearest sound in the Russian inventory—a voiceless fricative.David Crosbiehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01858358459416955921noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-377103124456226005.post-18183430874465480172012-04-02T21:01:12.876+01:002012-04-02T21:01:12.876+01:00In Russian orthography, for certain pairs of '...In Russian orthography, for certain pairs of 'hard' (non-palatalised) and 'soft' (palatalized) consonant phonemes, the same consonant letter is used for both. The immediately following vowel letter is used to disambiguate. Thus:<br /><br />• и the letter for the forward allophone of <b>/i/</b> signals that the preceding consonant sound is a palatalised ('soft') phoneme <br />• ы the letter for the back allophone of <b>/i/</b> signals that the preceding consonant sound is a non-palatalised ('hard') phoneme<br /><br />When stressed, these allophones sound to our ears as <b>i</b> and <b>y</b> repectively.<br /><br />In Ukrainian phonology the two vowel allophones grew so close to each other that a single letter was used in Ukrainian orthography. The choice was и — letter ы was dropped. <br /><br />So Ukrainian и, unlike Russian и <br /> <br />• can represent the sound <b>y</b> <br />• can be used in writing immediately after a consonant letter when the consonant sound is 'hard'.<br /><br />However, a new <b>i</b> sound developed in Ukrainian as a distinct phoneme. It's largely found in words where the Russian cognate has the <b>/e/</b> phoneme (stressed and unstressed allophones) spelled by letter <b>е</b>. Hence the Ukrainian spelling Киів where Russian has letter е representing an unstressed sound.<br /><br />Since the Ukrainian <b>i</b> phoneme is forward of the <b>y</b> phoneme, it's not surprising that letter i took on the function of Russian letter и in signalling a palatalised consonant — leaving Ukrainian letter и to fulfill the signalling function of Russian ы.<br /><br />The equation with Russian е may explain під corresponding to Russian под. Historically, e and o sounds alternated and to this day stressed <b>ˈjo</b> is represented by letter e — often modified to ё.<br /><br />I read in Paul Cubberley's chapter on <i>Alphabts and Transliteration</i> in <a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=comrie+slavic&x=0&y=0" rel="nofollow">The Slavonic Languages</a> that Belarusian orthography also dropped one of the Russian letters. However, they kept ы and dropped и — using і in its place.David Crosbiehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01858358459416955921noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-377103124456226005.post-32697714018733021122012-04-02T20:32:59.808+01:002012-04-02T20:32:59.808+01:00'мову ˈmovu' -- language in Ukrainian, say...'мову ˈmovu' -- language in Ukrainian, says John.<br /><br />I don't want to be a Zoil or (still less) a Beckmesser, but for aught I understand 'language' is 'moвa' (mova) in Ukrainian, the former quoted by John being of another (than nominative) case, probably of the accusative. <br /><br />Likely, a Polonism that one too: we say 'mowa' (with a 'w', ['mɔva]), though this be a somewhat stylistically marked variant of 'język'.Podpora społeczeństwahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08339088245843399386noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-377103124456226005.post-30122817479910428212012-04-02T20:15:59.814+01:002012-04-02T20:15:59.814+01:00'Although the two languages share much of thei...'Although the two languages share much of their vocabulary'<br /><br />Ukrainian seems to literally teem with lexical Polonisms, such as 'dyakuyu' for 'thank you', or 'radyanski' for 'sovetskiy' (Councils', like the Soviet, i.e. Councils', Union) as does also Byelorussian, little wonder given the centuries of political community with the double Polish-Lithuanian commonwealth. But, pundits say, Ukrainian and Byelorussian have also preserved a few old East-Slavic words, lost, or substituted-for with loanwords from Old Church Slavonic, in Russian. Unfortunately, I can't give examples off the top of my head.<br /><br />Concerning the relative sound of both languages, RU and UKR, some say the latter sounds 'lighter' (less dark), less 'throaty', somewhat Southern-Slavic-like, than the former. That's impressionism but you lingusts do better not to shrug it off. May be due to the lack of vowel reductions in Ukrainian (John's observation above).Podpora społeczeństwahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08339088245843399386noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-377103124456226005.post-15721192258602089182012-04-02T19:30:49.810+01:002012-04-02T19:30:49.810+01:00Well, I'm afraid I mean that I misunderstood y...Well, I'm afraid I mean that I misunderstood you on my first reading ;) For some reason, I thought you were saying that x etc. turned into g in <i>all</i> Slavic languages... So no elaboration is needed any more. Sorry for any confusion.wjarekhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07871668374161722713noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-377103124456226005.post-19672919581674816192012-04-02T18:23:25.719+01:002012-04-02T18:23:25.719+01:00Yes, I would class Бог c тобой as an idiom, and I ...Yes, I would class Бог c тобой as an idiom, and I use the fricative pronunciation too (although it does not feel unnatural to have the stop). On the other hand, I tend to perceive the fricative when actually talking about God as old-fashioned and/or affected. Maybe that's just me, of course.Pavel Iosadhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10254013844162804729noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-377103124456226005.post-6566682823102490422012-04-02T17:52:12.182+01:002012-04-02T17:52:12.182+01:00Pavel
My wife, who is not a younger speaker, uses...Pavel<br /><br />My wife, who is not a <b>younger </b>speaker, uses Бог pronounced <b>box</b> in <i>Бог с тобой/ Бог с вами</i> (literally 'God with you') as an introduction to a gentle disagreement or objection.David Crosbiehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01858358459416955921noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-377103124456226005.post-67123777426314174952012-04-02T17:46:04.507+01:002012-04-02T17:46:04.507+01:00MKR
My wife assures me that Господи помилуй (Κύρι...MKR<br /><br />My wife assures me that Господи помилуй (Κύριε ἐλέησον Kyrie elision, Lord have mercy) — a phrase which a congregant may repeat a hundred times or more in a single service — is pronounced with <b>ɦ</b>.<br /><br />The church use probably explains the secular pronunciations described by Pavel.David Crosbiehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01858358459416955921noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-377103124456226005.post-79290056845434318402012-04-02T17:21:34.953+01:002012-04-02T17:21:34.953+01:00There was no sound change, just a change in the pr...There was no sound change, just a change in the prestige pronunciation. Гидро- et al. are essentially spelling pronunciations.Pavel Iosadhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10254013844162804729noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-377103124456226005.post-44285746365230806462012-04-02T17:19:38.414+01:002012-04-02T17:19:38.414+01:00Actually, [box] is fairly rare among younger speak...Actually, [box] is fairly rare among younger speakers (such as myself). On the other hand, idioms/interjections with Бог (e.g. слава Богу 'whew', ради Бога 'for the love of God') do tend to preserve the fricative.Pavel Iosadhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10254013844162804729noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-377103124456226005.post-85812132791719112802012-04-02T16:55:35.393+01:002012-04-02T16:55:35.393+01:00Please don't take that for a cheap tit-for-tat...Please don't take that for a cheap tit-for-tat, but what do you mean?Phillip Mindenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16801818752833289089noreply@blogger.com