Quiz!

OK, tell me this: can you translate the following conversation, in a language that you almost certainly speak?

Jon do?
A dee nah. 

Answer after the fold.

Handy IPA tool

While writing yesterday's post, I needed some IPA symbols, as I frequently do (far more often than I should, not being a phonologist). I stumbled across this handy website which allows you to type your text in a text box and then copy and paste into whatever you're writing. You can toggle between this simplified keyboard which gives you what you need for English, and a full IPA one with loads of symbols. There are also keyboards for other languages, such as an Italian one with accented vowels (not IPA) and an Icelandic one which gives you thorn and so on.

Odd abbreviation reveals spelling over phonetics?

It was my friend's birthday the other day so we met in a pub for lunch, which is the accepted correct way to celebrate a birthday. Another friend hadn't been to the pub before and an interesting misunderstanding ensued.

We were going to a place called LYH. It's a nice pub, though you wouldn't know it to look at it from the outside. It does good grub and nice beer. This particular friend not only hadn't been there before but hadn't even heard of it before. However, we have been several times to another pub, called Mr Lynch. (Also a nice pub, though different - less about the beer, more about the partying, but still good grub.) This friend thought that in my text message 'LYH' was an abbreviation for 'Lynch'. Don't panic folks, she realised in time and made it to the correct venue. But the question is, how did this misunderstanding occur?

I wouldn't have abbreviated that word anyway, as it happens, but if I did, I think it'd be to 'Lch' or something similar. It would have included the important sounds of the word, the initial and final consonants in this case. The particularly odd thing about abbreviating it to 'Lyh' would be that the last letter, the 'h', doesn't even represent a sound of the word 'Lynch'. In broad phonological transcription, the word is [lɪntʃ]. That last sound, the 't' and the long 's', together make the sound we write as 'ch'. At no point in saying the word 'Lynch' do you make the sound [h], which is the sound you make if you say 'huh'. This is evident if you try to say 'Lyh' as a word - doesn't sound good, does it? 


So it would have been a strange choice for me to abbreviate to if I was going off the sounds in the word. But this highlights the fact that in written communication we can dissociate ourselves from the sounds of words and refer only to the spelling. Some people do this more than others, I think, though I don't know what makes the difference. Perhaps those who read more do it more. You know sometimes on 'Come dine with me', the participants read an unfamiliar item on the menu, say it's 'taramasalata', and instead of reading out what's there, they instead guess a word they know, like 'tiramisu'? I think it's the opposite of that. 

Setting exam questions

My job for today is to set exam questions for my portion of a first-year module. I'm in charge of the phonology bit (lord knows why) so I need ten reasonably easy exam questions on phonological transcription, stress, intonation, assimilation, etc. It's hard to know what they will find far too easy or far too hard, so I'm trying to vary the difficulty a bit. They're made easy by virtue of the fact that it's an online exam, so they're all either multiple choice or short answer. I won't put them on here, for obvious reasons (I don't think any of my students read my blog, but you never know, and that might cause a rather sticky situation...).

Silver IPA symbol necklace

Here my linguistics and jewellery interests meet in the centre of the Venn diagram of my brain. This Etsy seller will make a necklace of an IPA symbol (your initial, or just the one you like best). Shame my IPA initials are the same as my orthographic initials.

How do you revive a lost language?

There's an interesting article today about the language of the Tunica tribe, who come from Louisiana. This language hasn't been spoken since the 1930s, and a woman called Brenda Lintinger decided to revive it. The question is though, how do you revive a dead language? There are no speakers left, and from the sounds of the article, not much documentation either. There is a 'short grammar' and stories and so on written in the IPA, which would go a long way to understanding it, but surely not enough to learn to speak the language? If you've ever tried learning a language just from a basic grammar, it's pretty tricky. I wonder if there's more available that the article mentions, or if they're only able to get quite basic competence. Still, an admirable effort.