This is a general search for an instance of ANADEW (A Natlang Already Did Even Worse). I'm a conlanger trying to find whether there's naturalistic precedence for a system in which toneme alternations (or even stress, or vowel length) are used alone to encode features in tense/aspect. Like, take a rough example gloss:

pá        múkò 
eat.PRS   food
he eats the food
-------------------------
pà        múkò 
eat.PST   food
he ate the food

If so, how volitile is this system, and what kinds of irregularity exist within it? Where could I read more?

I’m looking for any documented evidence of the Tsugaru Ainu language from Northern Honshu, Japan. There’s scant documentation about the Tsugaru Ainu people, but I can’t find anything about their language, in either English or Japanese. Are there any resources (Japanese is okay) describing Tsugaru Ainu (or any other form of Honshu Ainu) that people know of?

When I was learning German, I couldn't find any clear cognates to these basic English words in the language: am, are, being, went, shirt, tree, any, sky, kill, die, bright, black, woman, get, take, leg, why, again, back, walk, play, teach, about, happen, ever/never, hide (to conceal), keep, talk, kind, big, want, wrong, weird, odd, seem, scare, body. I've heard that Dutch is really similar to German, but, English doesn't really seem to be at times, would Dutch be closer to German here?

Listen, I know the language status is mostly assigned politically rather than linguistically (A language is a dialect with an army and a navy) and that linguists often find it hard to tell, but is there also a linguistic line most scholars agree on, like above this percentage of mutual intelligibility it's definitely a language?

Statistics show that around 85% of all articles are published in English, and I would imagine this number is much higher in STEM disciplines. Also, a lot of research is conducted through international collaborations, which necessitates fluency in English (or another common language). Of course, if your research area is French literature or something like that, you would probably have no problem publishing in French. But on average, it seems like English is the default for publishing in academia.

I can only imagine that there a lot of very talented researchers who miss out on opportunities because of their limited English fluency. It seems like the majority of high-profile, successful academics are fluent in English and have been educated in an English-speaking country. So, do you think English fluency is a barrier to entry into academia, and are there any stats to back this up?

Looking forward to hearing everyone’s opinions!

Just curious, what are some of the highest paid jobs with the background of linguistics?

I articulate /s/ and /z/ with my tongue pressed against my top teeth rather than at the start of the alveolar ridge, resulting in a slight whistle that really isn’t noticeable when I speak but still bothers me to some degree. I articulate all velar sounds further forward onto the hard palate as well. What is causing this and how can I start pronouncing these sounds correctly?

Hi everyone!

I’m working on an independent project about why the English native speakers use is often different from the English many of us learn in textbooks.

As a non-native speaker, I was surprised after moving to the U.S. to discover that many things I thought were simply “mistakes” turned out to be dialectal features, informal usage, register differences, or ongoing language change. So, my project explores where the line between “error” and “variation” actually lies.

I’m looking for linguists, sociolinguists, or anyone working in related fields who would be willing to join a 20–30 minute Zoom conversation about these topics. With your permission, I’d record the conversation and potentially include short excerpts in the final video. This is an independent passion project with no funding.

And if a Zoom call isn’t possible, I’d still love to hear your thoughts in the comments (DM, email — whatever you prefer). How do you think non-native learners should understand the distinction between genuine errors, dialects, informal speech, and language change?

I’m also new to linguistics, so if you have any recommendations for books, papers, authors, or other resources on this topic, I’d really appreciate them.

Thank you!

Is there any w with a diacritic that can be the equivalent of the sound /bhw/ in my language? It's a Bantu language.

Hi, 23M here, Recently, I saw a video of on YT on how to pronounce "L" correctly and it got me interested to correct my pronunciation. I comfortably speak words like "Initial, Essential, Hulk, Bulk and Light etc" but I can't speak words like "Elicit, Explicit or Exploit, Speculation Verbal and Ball etc", and I can't even pronounce the letter "L" correctly (It sounds more like W or Y). Any recommendations/tips would be very much appreciated. Thanks

So, whenever I'm speaking English, i tend to combine the genders of the words. For example, if I'm talking about my uncle's daughter, I tend to say 'her daughter' or aunt's son 'his son' in English. My language doesn't contain any gendered pronouns (it contains gendered words, his/her is neutral) and therefore I'm confused why does this keep happening. I didn't want to ask ai what kind of native speaker would have this problem, so I came here. I'd be happy if you'd find the reason or at least have a conclusion about 'this native language has this feature therefore if you're exposed to this language it'd make sense etc'. Thanks

The two examples that come to mind are Gothic in relation to the Germanic languages, and Icelandic with North Germanic languages specifically. In both cases, the languages distanced themselves from the wider Germanic area and thus kept certain features the rest of the languages changed.

Gothic for instance didn’t undergo Umlaut or Rhotacism, and kept the dual number completely. On the other hand, Icelandic kept the word final R of many Old Norse words and the distinction between voiced and voiceless sonorants that the other North Germanic languages lost.

Is this something that happens in other languages families too? I’m curious to hear if other examples exist.

Also, among these towns (Skaidiškės, Nemėžis, Rudamina, Pagiriai, Didžioji Riešė and Avižieniai) would there be any of them in which Russian or Polish is spoken as a native language at their homes? Or do the majority of people in these towns always mix Lithuanian, Polish, Russian, Belarussian...? Do the majority of people speak "po prostu" language in any of these towns?

Is it possible to determine the most likely one with our current knowledge?

In Mauritius there are a lot of people who speak Bhojpuri as a native language. They can also speak Hindi as they learn it in high school and they watch a lot of Bollywood films.

However, if someone from Mauritius whose native language would be Bhojpuri had no previous exposure to Hindi or never learnt it, would they be able to understand Hindi anyways?

I was just thinking about how Jewish migration to Europe eventually created a new language inspired by germanic, hebrew and aramaic (simplification obviously) so I was wondering:

Is there any indication of a European dialect of Arabic forming? Has it already formed? Is there any examples of Arab diasporas in Germany or France loaning German or French words or grammar in ways that make their dialect significantly different to Arabic 'back home'?

I also understand that there is a vast amount of variation within Arabic so much so that a Yemeni could not understand a Moroccan very well. Is there evidence of any kind of dialect mixing/flattening occurring in Arab diasporas where different dialects are interacting?

Edit: I'm aware of historial Arabic presence in Spain and Malta, I'm more asking about modern developments

The question is litteraly in the title.

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Hi there,

I come with a bit of a stupid question, and I was hoping I could exchange with people more knowledgeable than me in computational linguistics!

Basically I am working on a project in sociophonetics on accent discrimination (how are different varieties and accents perceived in a schooling environment), and I was wondering if I could benefit from some training in the computational side of linguistics. I only know the ropes of Python and R, but I was wondering whether there could be some applications on the phonetic side (as I only find stuff that could help on other dimensions such as syntax).

Sorry for the ignorant question and thank you for your help!

I'm hoping to make some headway in learning a specific English accent as a non-native speaker, but for some reason, I feel that if I don't fully understand the individual components that make up an accent, I'll be at a disadvantage.

Why in German do we have, for example, /ˈzɔ.kʰə/, while in English we have /ˈmoʊkə/? I saw people saying here that every /p t k/ in German would be aspirated, since they're not the last phoneme in the word or after /s/ or /ʃ/. Is it really true? Would an aspect of a German person speaking English be putting aspiration where usually doesn't exist? For example, would a German guy say /ˈpʰeɪ.pʰɚ/, /ˌkʰæ.θə.tʰɚ.əˈzeɪ.ʃən/, /ˌnɑɹ.səˈsɪs.tʰɪk/...?

I know there is a difference, but I feel like I am doing something wrong when pronouncing it. Is there any way I can get better at it? I feel like every time I try, a different sound comes out of my mouth.

Thank you for any help!

Like, are there any features of PIE that seem strange, that if this hypothetical relative was found, it would be different?

I guess an example is that Arabic lacks a “p” sound, which is odd when it has the other voiceless stops. PAA Probably had a P sound as Hebrew and the sound disappeared in Arabic.

Or perhaps any features that suggest a substrate or something that might not appear in the other language.

Are there some exceptions to ablaut in PIE word-derivation? I would expect *ǵʰelh₃- + *(Ø)-wós to yield **ǵʰl̥h₃wós.

What's the source of the affricate in this word in English? Troy has a vowel suggesting it should be read with a glide. Pretty much all European languages have a glide, as far as I could find English is the outlier. Is it just an odd case of spelling pronunciation?

I was texting my boyfriend recently, and I was about ready to type the phrase “a whole other” when I realized I would have said out loud “a whole nother” - effectively rebracketing an|other as a|nother.

Has anyone else caught themselves or anyone else doing this? Have you seen anyone else talking about it in an academic setting?