User talk:Mr KEBAB/Archive 5

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Artificial conlangs

Hi, just popping by again. What are some of the constructed languages you like? Mine include Esperanto, Toki Pona, Klingon, Lojban, aUI, Solresol and don't forget Wenedyk! — AWESOME meeos ！ * ([ˈjæb.ə ət məɪ])) 12:22, 5 August 2017 (UTC)

@Awesomemeeos: Esperanto, but I can't speak it and I've never really researched into conlangs anyway. The only languages I like/know anything about are Germanic and, to a lesser extent, Slavic and Romance. Learning a conlang or a dead language (including Latin, the dead status of which is controversial) is very low on my list of priorities, if that was a part of your question. Mr KEBAB (talk) 12:50, 5 August 2017 (UTC)

But Wenedyk looks trippy. I wonder how much weed van Steenbergen smoked during the process of creating it. Mr KEBAB (talk) 12:56, 5 August 2017 (UTC)

haha, lol about your second paragraph 😂😂 — AWESOME meeos ！ * ([ˈjæb.ə ət məɪ])) 22:01, 5 August 2017 (UTC)

Re: Greetings

I'm curious; how would you recommend Cuch be pronounced in English? Rovingrobert (talk) 09:05, 14 August 2017 (UTC)

@Rovingrobert: Seeing that most of native speakers are notoriously bad with word-initial /ts/ (see tsunami) and /x/, I think the only options are /sʊk/ (not a good idea in Northern England) and /suːk/. /suː/ would also do I guess, since */suːh/ and */sʊh/ are an impossibility (unless you live in Ireland). Mr KEBAB (talk) 09:57, 14 August 2017 (UTC)

Hahaha :) Yeah, /suː/ is not a bad idea either, since /x/ is often treated as such in names like Buccleuch and van Gogh. I believe a similar transformation happened to English words with gh, such as night. Technically one could also go /zʊk/, /zuːk/, or /zuː/ on the pattern of tsar. Rovingrobert (talk) 10:45, 15 August 2017 (UTC)

@Rovingrobert: Night is similar, yes. In the Scots dialect/language, it's pronounced /nɪxt/, with a short /ɪ/, and that was the original pronunciation in English as well. The fact that it's pronounced /naɪt/ today is an outcome of the dropping of /x/ and the subsequent lengthening and tensing of /ɪ/ (assuming /ɪ/ was originally [ɪ] and not [i], which is just my theory) to /iː/, which was then diphthongized to /əɪ/ (or /ɛɪ/ — again, we don't know) and then /aɪ/ in the Great Vowel Shift.

I assume that you live in the US? If so, if you actually want to ask people to pronounce your surname in a certain way, I think /suːk, suː, zuːk, zuː/ are the best options. According to Geoff Lindsey, /iː, uː, eɪ, oʊ, ɑː/ form a natural class of tense vowels in American English, and loanwords are far more likely to get these vowels in stressed syllables than the lax /ɪ, ʊ, ɛ, ɔː, æ/ (that's why IMO it's way better to write /i, u, e, o, ɑ/ and /ɪ, ʊ, ɛ, ɔ, æ/ in phonemic transcription). Plus, assuming that my guess Cuch being a (Low) German loanword is correct, the High German form Zug actually also has /uː/ and it's pronounced /tsuːk/. It's only Northern accents (and perhaps some other accents as well) that do the /uː/ -> /ʊ/ thing in certain words (interestingly, this change also happens in Stockholm Swedish, to a great (initial) confusion of some learners). The /k/ -> /x/ thing is a northern feature as well. If I had to pick one pronunciation, it'd definitely be /suːk/. Mr KEBAB (talk) 13:08, 15 August 2017 (UTC)

Actually, I live in Australia. I don't know why I've waited so long to put that in writing :)

It's also interesting to think about how people might assume my name is pronounced based on the spelling. Some are quite particular about how others pronounce their name, while some are ambivalent. Then there are people who slightly alter the spelling of their name to make enunciation easier for English speakers. The world of language is large and crazy, but interesting. Rovingrobert (talk) 05:50, 17 August 2017 (UTC)

@Rovingrobert: Oh, it's Australia. I guess /kʌtʃ/ or something similar is the main variant you hear from strangers? ⟨C⟩ as /s/ before a back vowel (/ʊ, uː, ʌ/ are phonologically back even in Australia) is counter-intuitive for natives. Mr KEBAB (talk) 12:39, 17 August 2017 (UTC)

Yes, exactly right. My family pronounce it /kuːtʃ/; I assume upon arrival in Australia, how others said it became the standard. Not knowing much at all about Polish until recently, I thought that was the Polish pronunciation. There are the Polish surnames Kucz and Kuć (the latter also being a word, as I just found out). Rovingrobert (talk) 06:51, 18 August 2017 (UTC)

@Rovingrobert: I assume upon arrival in Australia, how others said it became the standard. That's how it usually works. I must admit that I've never heard of anyone with these surnames, I only know of Marcin Kuś (kuś is also a conjugated verb form). Mr KEBAB (talk) 12:37, 20 August 2017 (UTC)

True; immigrants rarely know enough about the new language to make an informed decision. I personally know of a few cases where the original pronunciation has carried over into English, but I imagine that would be the exception when it comes to 'difficult' orthography from an English speaker's perspective. Rovingrobert (talk) 13:04, 20 August 2017 (UTC)