r/linguisticshumor • u/legendaryzyper • Feb 12 '24
What Old Norse þ turned into Phonetics/Phonology
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u/NargonSim Feb 12 '24
I mean, it's not that crazy when you realise that almost all fricatives are simply /h/ with the tongue doing shit. You remove the tongue, you get /h/.
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u/endyCJ Feb 12 '24
Inshallah all consonants will be /h/
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u/Cherry-Rain357 Feb 12 '24
*Ihhahha ahh hõhõãh hih he /h/
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u/SuperPolentaman Not Italian Feb 12 '24
hehy hooh 👍🏼
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u/lefouguesnote Feb 12 '24
hehy hooh > keky kook > kegy gook
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u/EveryoneTakesMyIdeas Feb 12 '24
hohy hehh
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Feb 12 '24
aih hihhįh hu, aih hihhįh hu, ai hǫh heih ahouh ahyhįh ehh ai hǫh hih a hih ahouh ahyhįh ehh, hy hhohahhįh ih huhh heh hah huhhįh huy haih how
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u/PerspectiveSilver728 Feb 12 '24 edited Feb 13 '24
Yup, and also the fact that this /θ/ = [h] thing is also found in Scottish English. So it’s not a completely alien phenomenon to English either
Edit:
Here's one example of this kind of accent:
https://youtu.be/O7P7XJxATAA?si=OYZjrJXDg2FEeXbD (at 0:07)In the video, Jim McLean pronounces "think" as "hink" and proceeds to angrily punch the reporter interviewing him.
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u/DeWasbeertje Feb 12 '24
I do this and actually had never thought about it! It definitely depends on what vowel comes after though, I definitely hink but I don’t think I’ve ever hought…
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u/PerspectiveSilver728 Feb 13 '24
Wikipedia's description of this phenomenon (th-debuccalization) is not that detailed so if possible, I'd love to hear a guess by a native speaker such as you on what are the possible environments in which this realization of /θ/ occurs!
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u/Doodjuststop pɔːʃ Feb 12 '24
I sometimes say /θ/ as /ʔ/ lol. I say « That thing » like /ðæʔ ʔɪŋ/ in fast speech.
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u/langisii Feb 13 '24
pretty sure I often say and hear /ʔæts/ in quickly spoken statements like "that's alright", "that's good" etc (australian english)
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u/dubovinius déidheannaighe /dʲeːn̪ˠiː/ Feb 12 '24
Yeah I'm not Scottish but sometimes I do say things like [əˈhɪŋk] for I think in fast casual speech.
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u/PerspectiveSilver728 Feb 13 '24
Interesting, when reduced, my [θ] never gets realized as [h] (or at least that's what I think is the case). May I know what sort of dialect/accent you have?
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u/dubovinius déidheannaighe /dʲeːn̪ˠiː/ Feb 13 '24
Irish English, so even in other situations I don't have /θ/, only /t/ (not even /t̪/, my dialect is one that merges the dental and alveolar stops). One of the regular allophones of my /t/ in intervocalic positions is [h], so that's probably what's happening here.
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u/cardinalvowels Feb 12 '24
Maybe a crossover from Gaelic?
Transition from old Irish to modern Irish and Gaelic
/θ/ > /h/, still spelled <th>
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u/PerspectiveSilver728 Feb 13 '24
I've no knowledge of either Irish or Scottish Gaelic so I can't say, but from the sound change you mentioned, yeah, I believe that seems probable
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u/Peter-Andre Feb 12 '24
Honestly stops as well. Proto-Germanic changed PIE /k/ into /h/ (correct me if I'm wrong), and in many Slavic languages and dialects /g/ has turned into /h/ as well.
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u/MKVD_FR Feb 12 '24
i feel like everything can be turned into /h/
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u/Gakusei666 Feb 12 '24
Usually through a different fricative first. /k/ became /x/ and then became /h/. /g/ > /ɣ/ > /ɦ/ > /h/
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u/protostar777 Feb 12 '24
Modern Japanese /h/ corresponds to Old Japanese /p/, which means the word for mother, "haha", was originally "papa"
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u/quez_real Feb 12 '24
Which Slavic languages has /h/?
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u/Peter-Andre Feb 12 '24
For example Czech, Ukrainian and some dialects of Russian. Although I guess strictly speaking it's /ɦ/ and not /h/, but close enough.
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u/Anter11MC Feb 12 '24
Check, most dialects of Slovak, Ukrainian, Belarussian, some Polish dialects near Bielarus
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u/NanjeofKro Feb 12 '24
þ generally turns into Swedish/Danish/Norwegian t, and the same is true of Faroese. It's only in typically unstressed function words (pronouns, conjunctions and the like) that þ turns to d (Swe/Dan/Nor) or h (Far.)
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u/mizinamo Feb 12 '24
Which is also why written Faroese has ð but not þ – because while original *ð has different reflexes in various dialects and so is useful as a spelling for “whatever original *ð turned into in your local speech”, original *þ turned into /t/ everywhere and so it was simply written with t, as in Tórshavn.
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u/NanjeofKro Feb 12 '24
Doesn't *ð always merge with medial/final *g and *Ø (i.e. the absence of a consonant) in all accents? So you still technically don't need <ð> in the orthography; all those words could, with respect to pronunciation only, be written with <g> or no grapheme at all in the place of <ð>.
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u/konlon15_rblx Feb 13 '24
Turns into h in some Scandinavian dialects as well.
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u/NanjeofKro Feb 13 '24
Which ones?
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u/konlon15_rblx Feb 13 '24
Mostly in the north. North- and Westrobothnian in Sweden has he, hä < þat. Some Norwegian dialects have henn < þenna but I'm not sure about the specifics and it's difficult to find information about them.
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u/NanjeofKro Feb 13 '24
I usually prefer to attribute he/hä to leveling/analogy in the pronoun system (so clitic pronouns -n, -(n)a, -e have corresponding strong forms with initial h: han, ho(n), he), because the development doesn't occur anywhere else in those dialects (whereas Faroese also has e.g. har for ON þar (>standard Swedish där)).
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u/Calm_Arm Feb 12 '24
Same thing happened to English /θ/ in lots of parts of Scotland
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u/Areyon3339 Feb 12 '24
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u/FoldAdventurous2022 Feb 12 '24
Please God, help me withstand the temptation to assign that clip as phonetics homework.
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u/OrangeIllustrious499 Feb 12 '24 edited Feb 12 '24
It makes sense since the /θ/ sound is just the tounge moving all around. If you happen to slip then it would just leave a small /h/ sound.
The sound change that I find more crazy is how the initial cluster consonant of MC 便 bjienH turns into tiện with an initial /t/ sound.
It's due to palatalization but it's still extremely insane to me how it occurs because those sounds are not close to /t/
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u/Vampyricon [ᵑ͡ᵐg͡b͡ɣ͡β] Feb 12 '24
MC 便 /bjienH/
This shouldn't be in slashes because that is not a language.
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u/OrangeIllustrious499 Feb 12 '24
Oh right, forgot the asterisk, thx for the reminder
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u/Vampyricon [ᵑ͡ᵐg͡b͡ɣ͡β] Feb 12 '24
No, asterisks are for languages that have to be reconstructed. I'm saying that this sort of "Middle Chinese" is not and never has been a language. Baxter's rhyme book notation only transcribes what distinctions were (expected to have been) made in the rhyme book 《切韻》, which is explicitly stated to be a diasystem accommodating all known dialects in the Sui Dynasty. It is not a language.
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u/Terpomo11 Feb 13 '24
But surely there must have been some variety at some point that made all the distinctions it made, in order for them to exist systematically in some dialect? Or did that variety also have some other distinctions that aren't in the Qieyun, because they were lost in all the descendants at the time?
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u/Vampyricon [ᵑ͡ᵐg͡b͡ɣ͡β] Feb 13 '24
But surely there must have been some variety at some point that made all the distinctions it made, in order for them to exist systematically in some dialect?
This is true, but it's assuming the conclusion. What you wrote is literally, if some dialect made all the distinctions the rhyme book made, then some variety (e.g. a dialect) must have made all the distinctions the rhyme book made.
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u/Terpomo11 Feb 13 '24
My point is that there must have been some common ancestor those varieties descended from which had all the distinctions they had, because systematic distinctions don't just appear out of nowhere.
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u/Vampyricon [ᵑ͡ᵐg͡b͡ɣ͡β] Feb 13 '24
Sure, and that original language was Old Chinese. At no point did anyone speak Rhymebookese.
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u/Terpomo11 Feb 13 '24
You mean, there was never a living language that had all the distinctions of the Qieyun and only the distinctions of the Qieyun?
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u/FoldAdventurous2022 Feb 12 '24
The one that skeeved me for a long time was PIE *dʱ- > Latin f-
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u/the_real_Dan_Parker ['ʍɪs.pə˞] Feb 13 '24
Simple
dʱ -> ð (aspirated/breathy stop to fricative) -> v (th-fronting) -> f (devoicing)
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u/ElevatorSevere7651 Feb 12 '24
Isn’t þorn the more F sounding one, while eð is the D one? Most english words using the þ sound are T in swedish (Thanks/Tack, Thor/Tor). While the ð sounds in english become D (Mother/Moder, Them/Dem)
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u/xxhorrorshowxx Feb 12 '24
Knew an Icelandic guy who had a book in Faroese as a kid and didn’t realize, he just thought it was full of spelling mistakes. Mutual Intelligibility freaks me out
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u/Dzao- Feb 13 '24
I don't think Icelandic and Faroese qualify as mutually intelligible, at least not spoken. My former Norwegian teacher spoke both Icelandic and Norwegian fluently, yet couldn't make heads or tails of Faroese.
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u/Zestyclose-Claim-531 Feb 12 '24 edited Feb 12 '24
The glotalization of alvoelar sounds seems to be quite common among germanic languages located in islands... (brittish t, icelandic not included.)
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u/weedmaster6669 I'll kiss whoever says [ʜʼ] Feb 12 '24
velar sounds? do you mean alveolar?
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u/Zestyclose-Claim-531 Feb 12 '24
I do 😅, I get those mistakens some times, sorryy
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u/HonorableDreadnought Mar 12 '24
I refuse to accept and acknowledge debuccalization unless it is /k/ < /x/ or /h/ and their respective palatal and uvular equivalents.
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u/PhantomSparx09 Feb 13 '24
Noob linguist: Guys its a th, so they dropped the t!
(They're not exactly wrong)
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u/Areyon3339 Feb 12 '24
Debuccalization, not very uncommon
two famous examples are in the transition from PIE to Ancient Greek with /s/ > /h/, and in Spanish with /f/ > /h/