Vietnamese and Khmer (Cambodian) are both members of the Austro-asiatic family of languages. The ways they construct words for cardinal numbers show some interesting similarities and differences. The smallest numbers I’ll start with zero, and the numbers 1-5 (table 1). VietnameseKhmer0khôngsoon1mộtmuɘy2haipii3babɘy4bốnbuɘn5nămpramTable 1. Zero to 6 in Vietnamese and Khmer. This comparison suggests that both languages…… Continue reading Numbers in Vietnamese and Khmer
Month: November 2024
Chinese characters in the Japanese writing system
People often say that Japanese is the language with the most complex writing system. This is partly because 4 different sets of characters are used in writing the language: logographic characters (representing words or morphemes) imported (with some subsequent changes) from Chinese many centuries ago (known as kanji ‘Chinese characters) a syllabary used to spell…… Continue reading Chinese characters in the Japanese writing system
What is a word?
Ordinary people and linguist talk about words all the time, but it is surprisingly difficult to define what a word is. In a recent open access paper in the journal Word, the linguist Martin Haspelmath has had a go. The paper is Defining the word, Martin Haspelmath (2023), WORD, 69(3), 283–297. https://doi.org/10.1080/00437956.2023.2237272 Proposed definition of word…… Continue reading What is a word?
Talking at three and a half
Spending a few days recently with our grandsons, I got a good chance to see how their language is coming on. 3-year-old The youngest one (3 years 7 months) speaks very clearly now. The only pronunciation feature I noticed was in words beginning with the sequence /fl-/. He doesn’t quite pronounce the initial /f-/ fully.…… Continue reading Talking at three and a half
Borrowing verb forms from another verb
Sometimes, an inflected form of a verb was originally an inflected form of another verb. For example, went, the past tense form of the English verb go was originally the past tense of the now obsolescent verb wend. This phenomenon is called suppletion. One striking example of suppletion occurs in the verb meaning ‘go’ in…… Continue reading Borrowing verb forms from another verb
Language families: trees or waves?
Two types of model, developed originally in the mid 19th century, are often used to explain how languages develop and diverge: tree models and wave models. Tree models Tree models: treat all languages in a family as descending from a single ultimate ancestral language, via intermediate ancestors. treat each language as a single entity…… Continue reading Language families: trees or waves?
Danube Swabians
Parts of Hungary were repopulated by Swabians after the Ottomans left. That’s why the town of Pilisvörosvár (northwest of Budapest) has street names in three languages. Picture taken in 2014 in Pilisvörösvár The white plate shows the Hungarian version of the name (Fö utca, ‘Main Street’). The blue plate gives the equivalents in both standard…… Continue reading Danube Swabians