Good day,

I have this project on teaching English pronunciation for L2 learners, which proposes that a knowledge or awareness of English phonological history plays a role in ameliorating and supplementing learning strategies and memorisation. Subsequently, it provides the learner with a linguistic awareness of the dynamic and reasonable, non-arbitrary nature of language and that of its pronunciation and the orthographic representation of the pronunciation. Any suggested reads on this topic and general ones on learning theory that supports the proposition that learning and memorisation is more efficient when the learner is provided with 'the causes behind the current system and its intricacies' will be very appreciated.

I'm already aware of Wikipedia's Phonological history of English, but that list isn't as exhaustive as I'd like. For example that list doesn't mention the Cork-Quark merger

I was wondering if anyone was aware of more extensive resources on the topic that they could point me toward.

I'm most interested in changes that took place from Middle English onward.

Well, guys, it happened again.

So last time I said that I wrote a big post about Angws morphology and its historical origin, but then realised that it would be too long of a post, so I split it up. This time, I wrote the history, and then, looking down over it, realised that nobody in their right mind would see the text cursor shrink into nothingness and still bother to read the post. So I pasted the last half the post into a draft which I'll post tomorrow or the day after that.

This post covers Proto-Anguÿa (along with a few notes on Pre-Anguÿa), conditioning of consonants, the origin of consonant weakening, and lastly the development of anticipatory vowel harmony. Tomorrow, I'll cover the merging of enclitics with their hosts, vowel reduction, consonant hardening, rhinoglottophilia and lastly the various issues I discovered while writing out these posts.

Links to previous post:

Introduction to Angw and its aspectual morphology:

https://www.reddit.com/r/conlangs/comments/dk6emh/an_introduction_to_the_angw_with_particular_focus/

Old and outdated post about the history of the language, in case you want to see how far the language has come since then:

https://www.reddit.com/r/conlangs/comments/aavd5b/sound_changes_from_protohayahaya_to_modern_angw/

Proto-Anguÿa

Vowels:

Phonotactical rules:

/ʡ/ becomes [ħ] intervocally and word finally

/ʔ/ is phonetically a glottal stop, but behaves like a glottalized pharyngeal approximant /ʕˀ/.

/t͡s/ and /s/ were retracted /t͡s̠ / and /s̠ /, somewhere between /t͡s/ and /s/ and /t͡ʃ/ and /ʃ/.

CV(C) structure, /h/ was permitted syllable-finally in certain context within word-borders, while

Hello all!

I'm from western Montana. While my accent generally goes uncommented upon in interstate settings, inevitably something peculiar comes up, and it becomes a topic of conversation. More obviously, I show some signs of so-called Canadian vowel raising, as well as what I'd call a "rounding out" of what would usually be realized as /oʊ/. I suppose it's less fronted than most. None of these are particularly notable, and are well-attested, at least in form. These attributes aren't universal to Montana, but they do appear in various strengths depending on location, and are certainly not uncommon.

A few aspects of my accent, however, I've never seen written about anywhere. Occasionally I'll see reference to something similar, but always with a few major differences. In many cases, the supposed dialectical feature mentioned seems to be the opposite of what I (and others around me) do, in terms of which sounds assimilate to what, or under what circumstances certain changes happen.

For example, when people from elsewhere hear me say, "vague" or "plague", they immediately pick up on the fact that I don't say /veɪg/. Instead, I pronounce the word with a monophthong. I've always been curious about this, because no one back home has ever commented on it, but it seems to be very easily noticed by others. In fact, after paying attention to those from my home-state, they pronounce that word (and similar words) just as I do, but in a way that's apparently distinct to people from more eastern areas. After digging, and finding lots of anecdotal remarks online, I finally found a paper published by the University of Washington that stated that some speakers in the Pacific Northwest (the scope of the study did not include my home state) were said to exhibit a merger of /eg/ and /eɪg/ with /ɛg/, in which /e/ lowered, /ɛ/ raised, and /eɪ/ monophthongized, meaning that words like "vague, egg", and "keg" rhyme, more along the lines of /ɛg/. I'm vastly simplifying for my point, here, and the paper goes into various other aspects such as distinction between age and gender, but the gist is this merger.

While the above is the closest description I have found to what I (and, anecdotally, others from my area) exhibit, and in fact how people from outside my home area describe what I exhibit ("You said 'vɛg'."), my pronunciation is very much *sepa

I've seen cases such as capillum > cheveu, where the /a/ developed into a schwa, but there are other cases such as palatium > palais where the first /a/ resists such a change. Is there some sort of pattern to this development or is it random? They're both unstressed and in open syllables, so does it have something to do with the surrounding phonemes? Plosive vs fricative, for example?

I'm currently looking through the Varieties of English series from De Gruyter and finding it really helpful in learning about the phonologies of different English dialects. I love how detailed the descriptions are, and that they cover specific regions and variations within larger dialects. These books seem to mostly focus on L1 varieties of English, though they also cover some L2 varieties in countries with many English speakers.

I'm looking for similar resources that describe the phonologies of L2 English varieties in this level of detail. In terms of books, I've only seen a few targeted at ESL teachers that don't go very much in depth. I do see the value of simply learning about another language's phonology and comparing that to English, and then guessing about the L1 interference that might occur in English, but I'd like to find something more concrete and research-based.

Any suggestions?

Hey so I have a question. Obviously there is an ongoing joke in the states about Chinese speakers switching l for r (ie herro, engrish etc). It is mean to make fun of someone for their accent. I'm not trying to do that, but I'm DYING to know what phonological motivations lead to this alteration?

I mean I looked up the phonology of Cantonese and.....there is no rhotic! Only the lateral! Mandarin has the retroflex rhotic, similar to english, but only in very specific environments, and only in certain parts of the country (notably, beijing).

So either this phonological process is mislabled to the chinese and actually belongs to speakers of a different asian language (in which case I feel like a total idiot and ignorant), or I'm missing something major here.

Can anyone shed light on to this? I mean obviously the rhotic and lateral release share a lot, and are often involved in the same phonological processes, which is what made me think about this phenomona to begin with.

Thanks for the help! Also I apologize if I said something incorrect; I'm only a first year in my first degree!

This may be more in the realm of history of linguistics than linguistics itself, but my motivation for asking this lies within the bounds of linguistics proper. There are a ton of theories of phonology out there, as well as broader "paradigms" into which those theories fall. As a linguistics student, I sometimes find it hard to keep straight not just the formal differences between the theories, but all the different underlying philosophical and methodological differences which motivate the existence of so many competing theories to begin with. I feel like the best way to fix this is to get a thorough grounding in the historical development of these ideas. Whether that be in the form of a literal historical account, or just a bibliography of the works that most strongly influenced the various large-scale schools of thought (let's say since 1900). If anyone knows of any resources that might fit this bill, or has any other reading recommendations that might be helpful, I would love to hear them!

I.e., are there any significant syntactic or morphological differences? Obviously dialects differ within the respective groupings as well so feel free to comment on that as well but I was wondering if there are general trends on either side of the pond.

Hi /r/conlangs! This is a snippet of the phonological history of a language family I'm working on. It's obviously heavily inspired by Slavic, as seen in the similar sound changes. However, I tried to still retain some uniqueness, especially in the vowels. Let me know what you think- criticism is welcome!

Proto-Volodnian Phonology

Vowels

Diphthongs

Consonants

1. Allophone of /n/ before velars

Sound Changes

Notation

! - Except

?? - Sporadic

// - Note

Short Forms

F = V[+front]

B = V[+back]

J = Any consonant affected by the Second Palatalization

Sound Change List

First Palatalization

• k g x ɣ → c ɟ ç ʝ / F ! _ɛ
• sj zj kj gj xj ɣj → ʃ ʒ t͡ʃ d͡ʒ ʃ j

Palatal Shift

• ʝ → j ??
• c ɟ ç ʝ → t͡ʃ d͡ʒ ʃ ʒ

First Vowel Fronting

• ɔ o oː uː → ɛ e eː iː / j_

Yod Absorption

• Cj → Cʲ

Vowel Shift

• oː → aː
• i u → ĭ ŭ

Diphthong Shift

At this point, Yod Absorption remains productive.

• ei ɛi ai → iː iː eː
• eu ɛu → juː joː
• {ou, ɔu, au} → oː
• {oi,ɔi} → ojə

Second Palatalization

• ɣʲ → ʝ → j ??
• k g x ɣ → t͡s d͡z sʲ zʲ / _F
• k g x ɣ → t͡s d͡ɕ sʲ zʲ / F_
• kʲ gʲ xʲ → t͡s d͡z sʲ ??

Second Vowel Fronting

• ɔ o oː uː → ɛ e eː iː / {j, J, Cʲ}_

Prothesis

In this case /a/ is counted as front, while /aː/ is back, suggesting different phonetic quality between the two.

• F → jF / #_
• B → wB / #_

Glide Shift

• w → v

A-reduction

• a → ə ! #j_

Low-Mid Vowel Shift

Yod Absorption is still productive.

• ɛ ɔ → je vo ! when this creates inadmissible clusters // *Many resulting clusters with /v/ undergo metathesis to fit pre-existing clusters- e.g. lɔzju → (lvožĭ) → vložĭ
• ɛ ɔ → e a

Palatal Assimilation

This spreads through clusters

• C → Cʲ / _Cʲ

Greater Volodnian Phonology

Vowels

Con

I feel that this question must have been answered before, but my search skills were not great enough to produce something. From what I've read, all instances of moraic consonants (spelled ん and っ) come from a loss of earlier /u/, i.e. a reduction of earlier /mu/ and /tu/. This makes me wonder how they came to be, since both む and つ still seem to exist in the same positions where ん and っ appear.

I am at the very beginning of learning Japanese, so please gloss examples. Thank you.

edit: The absence of a suitable flair makes me wonder whether this is the right subreddit for this question. Should there be a more fitting one, I apologise.

The conlang project I've just begun is a process of evolving English little by little, step by step, and seeing where it ends up. As a frame of reference, these languages take place in a post-apocalyptic America (classic, right?), so this dialect is spoken by illiterate foraging bands. Ideally, there will eventually be a conlang family with English as its proto-language, and this would grow to be one of its branches.

I'm still mulling over the first grammar changes I'll make, but I am ready to post my phonological changes! I'm using my own American accent for reference. I would love some imput on more changes I could make later on.

Phonemic Inventory

Monophthongs: /i/, /ɪ/, /ɛ/, /æ/, /ɑ/, /ʌ/, /ɔ/, /ʊ/, /ə/

Diphthongs: /i͡ʊ/, /ɪ͡ʊ/, /e͡ɪ/, /e/, /e͡ʊ/, /ɛ͡ə/, /ɛ͡ʊ/, /æ͡ʊ/, /a͡ɪ/, /ɑ͡ʊ/, /ʌ͡ɪ/, /ʌ͡ʊ/, /o͡ɪ/, /ʉ͡ʊ/

Vowel Changes

Will do full vowel shifts later on, but the main change of this step of phonological changes concerns approximants. In general, current allophonic vowel lengths fade away, shortening vowels across to board to resemble their length before fortis consonants /p, t, k, tʃ, f, θ, s, ʃ/.

e.g. /mɑˑb/ ("mob") > /mɑb/, whereas /mɑp/ ("mop") is unchanged.

However, vowels in open syllables are lengthened. This doesn't apply to /ɪ, ə, ʊ/, which stay short.

e.g. /ˈæ.gə.niː/ ("agony") > /ˈæː.gə.niː/ (first syllable is lengthened, other two are unchanged).

Now, these are the specific vowel changes (not many):

/a͡ʊ/ > /æ͡ʊ/, /o͡ʊ/ > /ʌ͡ʊ/, /uː/ > /ʉ͡ʊ/, and /ɔ͡ɪ/ > /o͡ɪ/.

e.g. /na͡ʊ/ ("now") > /næ͡ʊ/, /bo͡ʊn/ ("bone") > /bʌ͡ʊn/, /muːs/ > /mʉ͡ʊs/, /bɔ͡ɪ/ > /bo͡ɪ/.

R-colored vowels always lose their R-coloration, but the exact quality change depends syllable stress. When stressed, /ɚ/ becomes /ɔ/.

/ɚ/ > /ɔ/

e.g. /bɚn/ ("burn") > /bɔn/.

When unstressed, /ɚ/ becomes /ʊ/, unless it's following a diphthong that ends with /ʊ/, in which case it becomes /ɔ/

/ɚ/ > /ʊ/, /ɚ/ > /ɔ/ /ʊ_

e.g. /ˈmæˌɾɚ/ ("matter") > /ˈmæˌɾʊ/, /ˈfla͡ʊˌɚ/ ("flower") > /ˈflæ͡ʊˌɔː/

Approximants The biggest change is the loss of the phoneme /ɹ/, which usually assimilates with the p

#Introduction

South Gothic is an East Germanic language spoken in parts of Bulgaria, North Macedonia, and Greece. It is related to the Old Gothic language of Wulfila, although like Crimean Gothic, it is not directly descended from it. The most notable difference is that diphthongs had not yet smoothed, which results divergent pairs like gáits > dzět "goat", but gaírda > džěrda "purse".

Its two most distinctive features phonologically are an abnormally small vowel system compared to other Germanic languages, only having 7 distinct vowel phonemes (cf. Swedish having 16 or German having 14), and lacking several common Germanic sound changes such as umlaut and rhotacism. Compare, for example, English "seek" and Gothic "suče" or English "were" and Gothic "wezi".

#Terminology

Old Gothic is assumed to match Wulfila's Gothic, except for lack of smoothing of diphthongs. Common Gothic is an intermediary point, spoken around the same time as Old Church Slavonic, after most of the sound changes had applied. South Gothic is a modern language which this post is about. And North Gothic is a second descendant of Common Gothic spoken more toward the Baltic countries or West Slavic, which I may detail at some point in the future.

#Phonological History

Many sound changes which affected the Balto-Slavic languages also occurred in Common Gothic. For example, the first palatalization affected velar consonants, but not Gothic labiovelars, before front vowels and the palatal glide, creating palatal affricates. Then diphthongs smoothed, labiovelars lost their labialization, and more words were borrowed in with /k/ and /g/, creating a new set of velars before front vowels, but creating dental affricates in the second palatalization instead.

One notable change was an approximation of the Balto-Slavic law of open syllables. Nasal consonants were lost before other consonants and at the ends of words, producing nasalization on the preceding vowels. Velar fricatives- /x ʍ/- were lost in the same environment, leaving behind glottalization on preceding vowels. And stops were lost word finally or in word final clusters, with voiced stops also leaving behind glottalization. In both cases, this is analogous to (IIRC) the Slavic circumflex accent.

The phoneme /a/ and its variants /a:/ and /ã/ diverged, merging with /ɛ/ after palatal consonants or /ɔ/ elsewhere. And like in the Slavic languages, /j/ caused palatalization of labial consonants and created a new palatal series from

In fact, "Aunt" is the only relational descriptor that seems to follow this pattern. "Thank you, Uncle/Dad/Father/Mom/Mother/Granfather/Grandpa/Grandmother/Grandma/Cousin/Son/Daughter/Nephew/Niece" are all perfectly natural, but "Thank you, Aunt" is awkward as hell and I've never heard it used. It's always "Thank you, Auntie" or "Thank you, Aunt Alice."

Any thoughts?

Captain Jack made a new Smash website http://smash.captainjack.jp and is attempting a comeback to become the best Melee smasher. He is constantly updating his website and he already has an article about the Japanese Smash 64 scene here http://smash.captainjack.jp/entry/what-did-the-old-shcool-Japanese-Smash-64-community-look-like

He is currently a free agent and really wants a sponsor!

His ask.fm to anonymously ask questions is here. http://ask.fm/CaptainJackSmash

His Twitter is here https://twitter.com/CaptainJackSSB4?s=09

Phonological Differences:

• Changes in medial and final consonants (/th/ replaced with /f/ - toof for tooth, nofin for nothing)

• Changes in initial phonemes, syllables and consonant blends (unstressed initial syllables dropped "mato" for tomato, "cause" for because)

• Deletion of final consonants and clusters ("a" for and)

Syntactic and Morphological Differences:

Verb Marking

• Some forms are not obligatory (e.g., past tense, -ed is sometimes omitted)

• Some forms are inconsistent (e.g., irregular past tense is marked on some verbs and not on others e.g., see is not changed to saw)

• Future tense is often marked by gonna rather than will

• Use of double modals (e.g., we might could go)

Noun Inflections

• Plurals are not obligatory when quantifiers are present (e.g., two dollar)

Pronouns and Demonstratives

• Them substituted for these, those (them are his shoes)

• Reflexive pronoun forms are produced by adding self to possessive pronoun (e.g., his-hisself vs. himself)

Comparative and Superlative Markers

• -er and –est can be added to most adjectives (e.g., baddest, worser)

• More and most can be combined with superlative comparative markers (e.g., most stupidest)

Negation

• Double and triple negative markers may be used (e.g., nobody didn’t never write to me vs. nobody ever wrote to me) Ain’t is used as a negative marker

Pragmatic differences

• Eye contact – direct used in speaker’s role, indirect considered proper listening behavior in AAE

• Wit and sarcasm – involve ritualized insults and retorts as friendly and playful, perceived as hostile/rude in SAE

• Touching child’s hair insulting in AAVE, meant as a sign of affection in SAE

And I'm sure there's more. So the next time someone says they hate how blacks act/talk, show them this.

Great site: https://www.snusochtandsticksmuseum.se/

Anybody visited this place? Looks like they make (or at least package) their own snus, too.

Could the colony have been effectivly established?

Failing that could trade be effectively established between Europe and North America?

The black death would almost certainly have followed them there, what effect does it have on the native Americans?

With the black death ravaging the world and a less substantial technological advantage would Europe have been capable of colonizing North America?

Most questions I have seen on here lately seem pretty specific so I figure I would give one that is a bit more open ended with more room for guesswork.

My question is narrow in scope [topic] and broad in scope [language] but it is confined to one group, the Anglo-Saxons.

I was reading a history book online [PDF format] and it had this:

|| :| |Lloyd House, Lloyd Farm, in Penn, 4 m. S. of Wolverhampton. |The root is perhaps A. S. lead, leode, M. E. lude, which has a variety of meanings, e. g. men or people of the country, a prince or nobleman, sometimes ' a country, or district/ apart from its inhabitants. The difficulty here is in the application of any one of these meanings to a pi. n.

At first, I thought it was Welsh llwyd "gray", which often becomes Lloyd in some contexts, and Mercia being close to Wales.

At that time there would have been Anglo-Saxons like Wulfrun in existence, and Wigstan, who was a Mercian prince [I know there is a town called Wobaston, meaning "Wigstan's town", from the Old English personal name + tun "farm"].

The Old English dialect at the time was Mercian, which probably explains why Wall is from Mercian waella instead of Old English wella.

How does some of the Old English get corrupted and twisted so it gets confused with Celtic [at the time of the Anglo-Saxons there were probably a few Celts living there, am I correct?].

I'm trying to understand the Anglo-Saxons [Mercia region] for several reasons - historical research and creative works [worldbuilding/alternate history/videogame with historical settings, although those fall outside the purview of this subreddit].

The book is obviously a secondary source, but it uses place-names from historical rolls/Onomasticum [I believe that was a Latin book at the time] from 1100s/1200s, which are primary sources.

I've used Google Street View to try and understand the landscapes for topography, not sure if that helps or not for place-name meanings.

I'm doing some basic research into history/placenames, but other than these books, where are good places to start? I don't really want to get into paywalled educational resources, but I do know my local libraries don't have as many place-name books as in the early 2000's, so it's a bit harder to research there now.

Finding good websites to research is the harder bit, as I'm trying to treat them as a source that's being assessed too [wrong mindset?]

Obviously, I can't really gain access to the primary sources due to fragility of them, so the books as secondary sources are the next best thing.

I would appreciate any input from historians on interpreting and understand

Aside from maybe fish and chips.

Alright, continuing off from where we got to yesterday.

Aspectual Merger and other fun stuff, or: REMOVE CONSONANT!

So up until this point, the aspectual enclitics were just that; clitics. At this point in time, however, they fully merge with the verb stem. The process is... weird. But it works like this:

The results are not quite predictable, but all initial consonants are dropped, except for the ejectives which simplify to glottal stops /ʔ/. (With nouns, I imagine, initial consonants of the merged clitics remained)

1 =tiʔ -> (V)-i

2 =ˌal -> ˌɑl

3 =hujat͡s -> (V+, C-)-ɯjæt͡s

4 =suɰḁ -> (V+)-ɯɰ

5 =ˌhaj -> (C-)-ˌæj

6 =xis -> (V)-is

7 =k’un -> (V+)-ʔɯn

8 =ˌɬaq -> -ˌɑq

9 =q’iʕax -> -ʔiʁ̝ax

Note that following /h/, the ejectives consonants in 7 and 9 maintain their original pronounciation /kʷ'/ and /q'/, while /h/ drops out.

Note that the glottal stop is best treated as an neutralization allophone for /k'/, /kʷ'/, /q'/ and /qʷ'/ following other consonants in a stressed syllable (so /ˌkat-q'a/ -> /ˌkat-ʔa/.

This is part of a general tendency at this point in time towards clitics merging with their host. With the noun in particular becoming much more agglutinating than previously. I imagine that the merger happened sometime around the same time as the vowel reduction in the next chapter, and that together they helped push the language towards a more lenient syllable structure.

Vowel Reduction, or: REMV CNSNANT!

Alright, so now we have accounted for how most of the phoneme inventory came to be, as well as how most of the stem alterations got started: Consonant weakening came about as a mutation caused by a clitic-initial /h/. While the neutral vowel and vowel hardening processes came about as a result of ablaut obscuring the original root vowel. We're stilling missing two major elements: Vowel reduction (and the accompanying vowel weakening stem alteration) and consonant hardening, I'll get to the consonant hardening in a while, first, let's start with vowel reduction:

Historical vowel reduction in Angw is fairly straight-forward on paper, but becomes quite complicated when combined with agglutination and the anticipatory vowel ablaut:

First of all, this is the point where the modern Angw syllable structure fully emerges: (C)V(C), where V may be any vowel or syllabic sonorant.

Starting from the right of any word and going left, delete any unstressed vowel that does not result in an illegal syllable accord