Vietnamese (tiếng Việt) is in the Vietic subgroup of the Austroasiatic language family. Vietnamese is spoken as a first language by around 85 million people, mainly in Vietnam, where it is the official language. It has several times as many native speakers as all other Austroasiatic languages combined. This post covers: syllable structure word structure consonants vowels reduplication…… Continue reading Sounds of Vietnamese
Tag: Syllable
Importing a foreign consonant into Finnish
I found an interesting little example about foreign loan words in Finnish in New Perspectives in Historical Linguistics, Paul Kiparsky, in The Routledge Handbook of Historical Linguistics, edited by Claire Bowern and Bethwyn Evans (2014). The example is on foreign words containing /f/. I summarise below what Kiparsky says about 2 strategies for dealing with…… Continue reading Importing a foreign consonant into Finnish
English has all the syllables it needs
In this post, I consider whether English has enough distinct syllables to create all the words it needs. Actual, possible and impossible syllables If we look at the sound system of a language, we can identify 3 types of syllable: syllables in words that exist in that language. An English example is brick /brik/. syllables…… Continue reading English has all the syllables it needs
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
How many nouns are there in Finnish?
How many nouns are there in Finnish? A paper by Fred Karlsson investigates that question. The paper also considers their sound structure. Karlsson used a machine-readable version of the Reverse Dictionary of Modern Standard Finnish (RDF, Suomen kielen käänteissanakirja). This lists 72,785 entries. Of those, 34,673 (47.6 %) have the code ‘S’, short for noun…… Continue reading How many nouns are there in Finnish?
Take me to the Hotel War Wick
I once stayed in Manhattan in the Hotel Warwick. The cab-driver who took me there didn’t understand where I said I wanted to go. When I showed him my confirmation, he said ‘Oh, the hotel War Wick’. And at the hotel, the staff also called it the ‘War Wick’, though of course the name was…… Continue reading Take me to the Hotel War Wick
Language sketch: Maori (1)—sounds
Maori is the language of the Māori people of New Zealand. It is known in Maori as te reo Māori (‘the language Maori’) or simply te reo (‘the language’) for short. Te reo Māori was made an official language in New Zealand in 1987, along with New Zealand Sign Language. There is a useful short…… Continue reading Language sketch: Maori (1)—sounds
Hangul Day
Today (9 October) is Hangul Day. Hangul is the name used in South Korea and most of the world for the writing system used in writing Korean. Origin of Hangul Before the 15th century, most written documents in Korea were in Chinese. When Korean was written, people used Chinese characters, known in Korean as…… Continue reading Hangul Day
How many syllables are there in a Haiku?
Some of us learnt in school English lessons about a Japanese verse form called the haiku. We learnt then that a haiku contains a fixed number of syllables (17), divided into 3 lines: 5, then 7, then 5. Our English teachers encouraged us to experiment using that form in writing short, pithy verses in English.…… Continue reading How many syllables are there in a Haiku?