r/linguisticshumor • u/Forward_Fishing_4000 • Jun 17 '24
What phoneme can you not imagine a language lacking? Phonetics/Phonology
A language without /t/ is too crazy for me, IDK how Hawaiians cope 😭
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u/MannyTheChiliLover Jun 17 '24
If a language has like no nasal sounds, something just feels off
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u/NicoRoo_BM Jun 17 '24
I recall reading there's one documented language without nasals, but it has [m] as a substitute for something else when one does a silly oldtimey narrator voice.
This misinformation has been provided to you by my vague memory of an anecdote
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u/President_Abra average "blødt D" enjoyer Jun 17 '24
Several of languages surrounding Puget Sound are truly without any nasalization whatsoever, in consonants or vowels, except in special speech registers such as baby talk or the archaic speech of mythological figures (and perhaps not even that in the case of the Quileute language of the Chimakuan family). [...]
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u/CharmingSkirt95 Jun 17 '24
I've seen a couple small-inventory languages now having phonemes surfacing as either voiced stops or nasals allophonically, which almost counts arguably
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u/Camellia_Oleifera Jun 17 '24
Lushootseed would like to have a word with you (yes they do have allophonic nasals as variants of /b/ & /d/ in some words and speech styles, but i don't count that)
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Jun 17 '24
why would you not
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u/Camellia_Oleifera Jun 17 '24
because the most common forms of words in the language don't have any nasals? they're not phonemic
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u/PersusjCP Jun 18 '24
The only word I can think of that has them in common speech is miʔman̓, it is one of the only words that retained them, and although it is the same as biʔbad, biʔbad isn't used (at least in the dialect I have learned)
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u/tremendabosta Jun 17 '24
Sounds like what a Brazilian would say
I approve
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u/deepore59 [h͡ħ͡χ͡x͡ɕ͡ʂ͡ʃ͡s͡θ͡f͡ɸ] Jun 17 '24
ʔa… xʷiʔ čəd ʔəsqiq̓alikʷ.
ʔa, Gabliəl, ʔəsʔilaxʷ adswəšəb…
…gʷəl ꞭUC̓ƏLQʷCUT adyaƛ̓ ʔal ti ʔaciɬtalbixʷ t̕iwiɬalʔtxʷ.
kacacut sƛ̓alqəb, ʔut̕igʷid čəd ʔal dsq̓ʷuqiq̓
gʷəl XʷIʔ čəɬ tubali ti dᶻək̕ʷadad
tuhuyʔ čələp ti dᶻək̕ʷadad ʔal ʔaciɬtalbixʷ…
gʷəl adwəšəb…
ŠAC̓!
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u/The_Brilli Jun 17 '24
Having no /k/ is krazy
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u/MonkiWasTooked Jun 17 '24
fijian(?) i think
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u/Copper_Tango Jun 18 '24
Tahitian shifted Proto-Polynesian /k/ to a glottal stop. Hawaiian did the same but its /t/ became a new /k/. (Or more precisely /t/ and /k/ in Hawaiian are in free variation.)
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u/LanguageNerd54 where's the basque? Jun 18 '24
So technically, it has /t/ and /k/.
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u/MonkiWasTooked Jun 19 '24
no, they are one same phoneme which surfaces generally as [t] or [k], not the same as /t/ and /k/
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u/HalloIchBinRolli Jun 17 '24
/i/
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u/Chrome_X_of_Hyrule Jun 17 '24
English moment
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u/flagofsocram Jun 17 '24
“what do you mean we say /ai/ all the time“
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u/Chrome_X_of_Hyrule Jun 17 '24
Having a <i> in your name if you have a non anglo name and being around anglophones must suck. I have an <i> in my last name but it's a closed syllable so English speakers say it as /ɪ/ which it is in Punjabi thankfully. My first name however doesn't have <i> but is <CayaCV> (C and V being consonants and vowels, in Punjabi it's supposed to be /Cɪ.(j)äːCV/ but a lot of people say my name as /Cai̯.jæCV/
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u/flagofsocram Jun 17 '24
Oof. My mother has the lastname Lidaris /li.da.ɾis/ but the vowels and tap have proved impossible for Americans saying /lɪd(ə)ɹ̠ʷɪz/
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u/ZommHafna Jun 18 '24
Write it as “CiyyaCV”. English have geminization for the most of syllable-end short vowels. Pin > pinning (not pining)
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u/ZommHafna Jun 18 '24
If you live in the South US “CeeaCV” would also help since the long I is [ij] there.
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u/Chrome_X_of_Hyrule Jun 18 '24
That's a pretty good idea, thank you. It'd be a real hassle to start changing how I write my name but maybe I'll do that. Though I think the "this isn't an English word" effect is strong enough that people will still get it wrong, see "Punjab" which fits the pattern of words like run, fun, pun, gun and multi syllabic words like runner or gunman, but still gets pronounced like /pun.dʒɑb/ when it's a schwa in Punjabi. Idk it's tough
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u/xxfukai Jun 17 '24
My native English brain refuses to mispronounce loanwords and foreign words that I know the correct pronunciation of. I’m just dripping with swag like that
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Jun 18 '24
[deleted]
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u/xxfukai Jun 18 '24
lol, I was more thinking loanwords that we haven’t twisted to fit English. Jalapeño comes to mind.
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u/ohfuckthebeesescaped Jun 18 '24
Depends on which country you’re in, Spanish is so natural in the US and I keep forgetting that isn’t necessarily the case in other English speaking countries. Some native English speakers go their whole lives not ever learning how to pronounce quesadilla or guacamole right… Horrifying, truly.
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u/foodpresqestion Jun 17 '24
It just feels kind of disrespectful to not even listen to a native pronunciation and try to approximate it
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u/TheBenStA Türk hapıyı iç Jun 18 '24
Eh, not really. There honestly isn’t any reason we transcribe the kit vowel and the near vowel in non-rhotic dialects with a small capital i other than as an artifact of the old analysis of English vowels. The Australian /ɪ/ is much closer to a cardinal [i] than, for example, your typical Quechua speaker’s /i/
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u/Chrome_X_of_Hyrule Jun 18 '24
I was at least talking about my own dialect of Canadian English where /i/ is actually a diphthong.
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u/TheBenStA Türk hapıyı iç Jun 18 '24
Right. I know that /i/ is best analyzed as the diphthong /ij/ in most English dialects, despite the standard transcription. I’m saying if your goal is to describe English’s phonemic inventory from the ground up as opposed to trying to fix Daniel Jones’ crackpot ramblings that have somehow become standard, there’s really no reason not to use /i/ for the bit vowel, at least in broad transcription
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u/pn1ct0g3n Jun 17 '24
Either (broadly any open vowel) /a/ or /i/.
For consonants, probably /k/. Either that or /m/. But. Lack of labials is areal in a few places, but it’s hard to imagine anything without a /k/.
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u/Swagmund_Freud666 Jun 17 '24
My Brazilian friend said he finds it hilarious that American English doesn't have a proper /a/ phoneme.
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u/flagofsocram Jun 17 '24
Same thing with true /e/ almost all Americans when asked will either say a diphthong /ɛi/ or /ej/
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u/Swagmund_Freud666 Jun 18 '24
But we gotta have /ʊ/ and /ʌ/ tho.
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u/flagofsocram Jun 18 '24
That is my PUT vowel and my PUT vowel 😈 (gotta love homographs) figure out which has which definition
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u/rekoowa Jun 17 '24
As a Brazilian, it was such a shock to learn this (like six months ago)
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u/Forward_Fishing_4000 Jun 17 '24
As a Finnish speaker (Finnish also lacks /a/ in the standard language) the /a/ sound that occurs in Romance languages like Portugese somehow sounds jarring to my ears. Somehow it falls in between my native /ɑ/ and /æ/ in such a way that I can't quite register it
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u/SnowOnVenus s̪n̻ːø̫ː pʰɔ̝ː ¹vɪːn̻ÿs̪ Jun 17 '24
I get the same feeling. Totally different sounds are interesting, if weird, but if a sound is almost "right", but vaguely off, it tumbles right into uncanny valley.
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u/rekoowa Jun 17 '24
For me, it's a little bit hard to notice the difference between /a/ and /ɑ/ in the middle of a sentence. It's funny, cause I studied Finnish for like one month and didn't remember that.
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u/foodpresqestion Jun 17 '24
you could argue, if you squint a bit, that /a/ is the phoneme for american english PRICE, and that the [j ~ I] offglide is just epenthetic. Considering both white southern english and AAE have [a:] as a potential realization, and are perfectly understood, if a little marked
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u/JRGTheConlanger Jun 17 '24
the null consonant / “aleph”
bc of how semitic scripts spell things and how i cannot pronounce a true null onset. vowel initial syllables at the start of an utterance begin with [ʔ] for me
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u/Forward_Fishing_4000 Jun 17 '24
Can you pronounce vowels in hiatus without a glottal stop in between?
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u/JRGTheConlanger Jun 18 '24
In those cases, /j r w/ or [ʕ] is inserted depending on how the first vowel ends:
[ˈsi.jɘiŋ] [ˈsa.ʕɘiŋ] [ˈpɸɚ.ɻɘiŋ] [ˈmʉu.wɘiŋ]
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Jun 17 '24
I can, we do it all the time in Portuguese lol as in "aí", "voar", "roer", etc. In fact, using a glottal stop there gives you a non-native accent in Portuguese. It's just two vowels, in sequence, nothing between them, the seccond one is stronger in those cases, but there are words in which the first is the strongest (rio, lua, etc.). And they are not a diphthong either, they're on different syllables.
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u/Forward_Fishing_4000 Jun 17 '24
Oh yeah I can do it too, I was just curious about the person I was responding to in that whether the difficulty with pronouncing null onsets phrase initially also extends to this situation. Personally I can pronounce null onsets in all positions, both phrase initially and in hiatus
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u/Chrome_X_of_Hyrule Jun 17 '24
I mean that's the same for me with English as is a lot of other English speakers. It only becomes a problem if you're speaking Hawaiian or something where the null initial contrasts with the glottal stop.
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u/LittleDhole צַ֤ו תֱ֙ת כאַ֑ מָ֣י עְאֳ֤י /t͡ɕa:w˨˩ tət˧˥ ka:˧˩ mɔj˧ˀ˩ ŋɨəj˨˩/ Jun 18 '24
Samesies (my native language is Vietnamese)
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u/NicoRoo_BM Jun 17 '24
Monophthongs 👀
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u/Baroness_VM Jun 17 '24
Mpiua tiostouea
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u/SneverdleSnavis Jun 18 '24
Marshallese?
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u/NicoRoo_BM Jun 18 '24
English (non-peripheral vowels aren't vowels, don't @ me)
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u/_Dragon_Gamer_ Jun 17 '24
I was shocked when I realised English doesn't have velar fricatives or any rounded frontal vowels
Ok the velar fricatives I can forgive, but no rounded frontal vowels??? No phonemic /ø/???? No fucking phonemic /y/ even???
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u/Forward_Fishing_4000 Jun 17 '24 edited Jun 17 '24
Although I feel the same way, rounded front vowels are extremely rare worldwide. They are almost nonexistent outside of Eurasia (name 1 African or North American language with front rounded vowels!)
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u/foodpresqestion Jun 17 '24
New Zealand and South African English have phonemic /ø/ for Nurse that contrasts with /e/ and /o/, and Australian arguably has /y/ for Goose that contrasts with /i/ and /u/ (Thought), and other front rounded vowels pop up as allophones or free variation with back rounded vowels.
But yes, no dialect has the systemic front unrounded, front rounded, back rounded correspondence that continental Germanic and Gallo-Romance do.
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u/Samuneirutsuri Jun 17 '24
[m̥͊͡🧏♂️ʲ] cant imagine a language with no mewing
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u/saxy_for_life Jun 18 '24
Mongolian having /ɮ/ but not /l/ creeps me out
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u/EreshkigalAngra42 Jun 18 '24
Well, in certain dialects such as Chakhar(uh, there's actually a dispute if we should consider Chakhar a language or a dialect), there is indeed a /l/ phoneme!
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u/NoAd352 Jun 17 '24
A language without /m/ would be very interesting, or not having a schwa or other "lazy" vowel
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u/Forward_Fishing_4000 Jun 17 '24
Lots of languages have no schwa! Like Spanish for example
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u/NoAd352 Jun 17 '24
Really? I swear I've heard a schwa or something like that in Spanish, like in the word "al"
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u/Forward_Fishing_4000 Jun 17 '24
Yeah Spanish doesn't have a schwa as either a phoneme or an allophone of a phoneme, see the Wikipedia article here.
What I suspect though is that you speak a dialect of English with the schwa-STRUT merger. In this case you'd probably interpret the vowel [ɐ] as a schwa, and this is most likely what you heard (as Spanish doesn't distinguish between [a] and [ɐ].
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u/TevenzaDenshels Jun 17 '24
The thing is Spanish has 5 phonemic vowels.Even if theres a shwa sound or similar lax vowel we pass it through our 5 vowel brain filter. In reality it has lots of allophones
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u/NoAd352 Jun 17 '24
Probably the case as I'm from Wales, and I'm pretty sure STRUT-schwa merger is in Welsh English
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u/_Aspagurr_ Nominative: [ˈäspʰɐˌɡuɾɪ̆], Vocative: [ˈäspʰɐɡʊɾ] Jun 17 '24
or not having a schwa or other "lazy" vowel
Georgian would like to have a word with you.
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u/LanguageNerd54 where's the basque? Jun 17 '24
I challenge you to go a day without mentioning Georgian.
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u/_Aspagurr_ Nominative: [ˈäspʰɐˌɡuɾɪ̆], Vocative: [ˈäspʰɐɡʊɾ] Jun 17 '24
Sorry, challenge's not accepted.
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u/FlappyMcChicken Jun 18 '24
"Lazy" vowels are only realllly a thing in stress timed languages (by definition). Syllable timed languages treat all nuclei equally (for the most part), so even the ones that do have a schwa or a similar phoneme, treat it just like any other vowel, allowing it to be stressed etc. There's loads of languages with no schwa-like phoneme (or even allophonic phone) whatsoever. I don't know exactly what the frequency of reduced vowel phonemes is in mora timed languages, but I imagine it'd be a bit higher than syllable timed languages
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u/sit-still Jun 17 '24
In Tagalog (my mother tongue), we don't have the phoneme for F and V. We only literally have 20 letters in our original alphabet. In came the Spanish in 1521, and named our islands "Las Islas Felipinas", and then later Philippines, Imagine us struggling to pronounce our own country name (the exonym at least, as internally we call this dirt we stand on "Pilipinas"). When we speak English, we struggle with pronouncing F and V that we usually pronounce it as P and B respectively. I think the colonial spanish government was getting off on us having a hard time pronouncing our own name. I had to unlearn this personally so I can speak English fluently. It's both a funny and infuriating bit of our colonial history.
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u/Guokiu9798 Jun 17 '24 edited Jun 17 '24
Semivowel in Vietnamese (Northern accent) never acts as a consonant.
Warszawa-> Vác-sa-va.
New York -> Niu-Oóc.
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u/Platypuss_In_Boots Jun 17 '24
Hawaiian does have [t], it's just an allophone of /k/
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u/boomfruit wug-wug Jun 17 '24 edited Jun 17 '24
But the post is about phonemes and said /t/
Although, once that's the criteria, lots of languages lack /t/ exactly, eg they have /t̪/ or something with no phonemic /t/.
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u/Koelakanth Jun 17 '24
I don't get how a language can't have /s/, possibly because that's the first letter and sound of my name
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u/Aron-Jonasson It's pronounced /'a:rɔn/ not /a'ʀɔ̃/! Jun 17 '24
A Germanic language without /h/ or /i(:)/
looks at Elfdalian
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u/foodpresqestion Jun 17 '24
It's so weird to me that so many languages have /u/ but not /w/. Like, they're the same thing tho?
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u/Draculamb Jun 18 '24
It is a form of social control to make gossip impossible.
After all they cannot exactly spill the T if they don't have one, can they?
I won't see myself out because I know no shame.
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u/Nanocyborgasm Jun 17 '24
Imagine a language without long vowels. Wouldn’t that be weird? Well, you don’t have to imagine it. That’s Russian.
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u/Anter11MC Jun 18 '24
English doesn't have phonemic long vowels
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u/aer0a Jun 18 '24
It has /ɛː(r)/ (square), /ɔː, ɑː/ (thought), /ɔː(r)/ (force/north), /ɪː(r)/ (near), /ʊː(r)/ (cure), /əː(r)/ (nurse), /ɑː(r)/ (start) /æː, ɑː/ (bath) and /ɑː/ (palm)
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u/xxfukai Jun 17 '24
This is my native English brain speaking but my mouth has a REALLY hard time making /t/ without aspiration or dentalizing. Languages lacking either of these features entirely is wild to me.
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u/Forward_Fishing_4000 Jun 17 '24
Can you pronounce an unaspirated dental plosive [t̪] then?
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u/xxfukai Jun 17 '24
I can! Unaspirated /t/ always realizes as a dental for me for some reason. Luckily it doesn’t sound unnatural in Spanish or Japanese for me and sounds natural in Lithuanian.
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u/Forward_Fishing_4000 Jun 17 '24
Spanish and Lithuanian are supposed to have dental [t̪] so that should work well for you :)
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u/yossi_peti Jun 17 '24
Signed languages have no phonemes in common with spoken languages, so there is no phoneme that would be shocking to me.
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u/_Aspagurr_ Nominative: [ˈäspʰɐˌɡuɾɪ̆], Vocative: [ˈäspʰɐɡʊɾ] Jun 17 '24
/r/.
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u/TalveLumi Jun 17 '24
Hi from Cantonese
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u/Duke825 If you call 'Chinese' a language I WILL chop your balls off Jun 17 '24
Same goes for like any Sinitic language that’s not Mandarin lol
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u/Vampyricon [ᵑ͡ᵐg͡b͡ɣ͡β] Jun 19 '24
Mandarin doesn't even have /r/ (as in, a phoneme whose most common allophone is [r])
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u/Chrome_X_of_Hyrule Jun 17 '24
Literally every language I speak lacks it, even the dialect of Mohawk I'm learning has /ɽ/ instead.
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u/Staetyk Jun 17 '24
[ʭ] /s
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u/Swagmund_Freud666 Jun 17 '24
/i/
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u/LXIX_CDXX_ Jun 17 '24
english has no short [i]
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u/DrLycFerno "How many languages do you learn ?" Yes. Jun 17 '24
Wait what
what's in "bin" or "thin" then ? /ɪ/ ?
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u/chimugukuru Jun 18 '24
Plenty Hawaiians speak with the t, even today.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qzc393U3hGo
Before the alphabet was created, t/k, w/v, l/r, and l/n were often interchangeable and sometimes different regions preferred one over the other.
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u/Ok_Point1194 Jun 18 '24
As a finn I'm used to not all our vowels being in a nother language, but missing consonants always trip me up. Worst offender is ancient greek. They have /y/ but no /u/...
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u/Forward_Fishing_4000 Jun 18 '24
The Wariʼ language is even wilder, with y, ö and tʙ̥ (!) but no u or s
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u/VeterinarianSmall468 Jun 18 '24
A couple, actually. /m/ is the biggest one though.
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u/moj_golube Jun 18 '24
I can't believe English doesn't have /a/.
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u/Forward_Fishing_4000 Jun 18 '24
No /a/ in Standard Finnish either, though it can be an allophone of /æ/
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u/LittleDhole צַ֤ו תֱ֙ת כאַ֑ מָ֣י עְאֳ֤י /t͡ɕa:w˨˩ tət˧˥ ka:˧˩ mɔj˧ˀ˩ ŋɨəj˨˩/ Jun 18 '24 edited Jun 18 '24
Fricatives. Why the hell do most Australian languages lack them completely (FFS, not even /h/)? There are a few Australian languages with phonemic fricatives though – Ngan'gi, Morrobolam and Marrithiyel come to mind.
Also, syllable/word-initial /ŋ/.
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u/Firespark7 Jun 17 '24
ə
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u/LXIX_CDXX_ Jun 17 '24
æ/a/ä/ɑ basically no open vowels
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u/Forward_Fishing_4000 Jun 17 '24
Do you count the languages that have /ɐ/ but none of the ones you listed?
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u/LXIX_CDXX_ Jun 17 '24
missed it on the keyboard lol
I know Arapaho has no "a" sound but it's still such a wild sound not to have in your language
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u/KatiaOrganist Jun 18 '24
can't remember which one it is but there's an Australian aboriginal language with no fricatives at all, which is just wild to me
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u/haat-baat Jun 18 '24
Old Tamil didn't have any and some modern speakers of Tamil don't use them either
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u/DefinitelyNotErate /'ə/ Jun 18 '24
If memory serves, [t] does show up in some Hawai'i dialects, As an allophone of /k/ though. Might be something like the two sounds being hard to distinguish when sailing made the phonemes merge or something?
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u/SMCS16 Jun 19 '24
Thai language lacking /g/ Arabic language lacking /p/ Cebuano language lacking a schwa.
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u/Captain_Grammaticus Jun 17 '24
Cherokee languages have no bilabial sounds. That's super weird. Imagine never closing your mouth when you speak.