Metathesis: Mixing Up Sounds

Not just an overpriced pizza chain.

Some words just always seem to get mixed up. I've always struggled to say "dominoes"; it always comes out as "donimoes", with the "m" and "n" getting swapped about. When this happens, it is known as metathesis (which is hardly the easiest word to say, anyway) and refers to when the sounds (phonemes) or syllables in a word are swapped about, in particular in speech.

There are various types of metathesis, depending on the proximity of the swap. When sounds are side-by-side, this is known as adjacent metathesis; when they're not, it's nonadjacent metathesis. Certain words in English are actually a result of metathesis.

Ever wonder why we say "three" but then "thirteen" and not "threeteen"? This is because of metathesis. The same is true as for why the cardinal number is "three" but the ordinal number is "third". Imagine if it was "threed"!

If you're familiar with Scrabble's 2-letter word list, you've probably seen "ax". This word is both an alternate spelling of "axe" and the pre-metathesis version of the word "ask". Originally, the word was always "ax", but due to metathesis, it became "ask".

You might have also heard "ax" in vernacular versions of English. This is because in those dialects, the sounds never really changed. Certain sounds are more likely to produce metathesis, such as nasal sounds (like in my "dominoes" example).

As you may have guessed, metathesis is not an English word, nor is it unique to English. Metathesis affects pretty much every language. If you're learning French, you might be familiar with verlan, the common slang that reverses the syllables in words. In fact, the word verlan comes from a metathesis of the French for "the inverse" (l'envers); literally the inverse of inverse!

Why Life's A Beach: Minimal Pairs in the English Language

When two words are written differently, have different meanings, but are pronounced the same, we call them homophones. When words have different meanings, but are pronounced almost the same with the exception of one phoneme, we call them minimal pairs.

Differentiating ship from sheep can be as
difficult as telling sheep apart.

Some of the most complicated minimal pairs for non-native speakers are those with similar-sounding (but not identical) vowels. While it is quite easy to differentiate between bat and cat, hearing the difference between feet and fit is much more difficult.

It's not just vowels that can be problematic. When consonants sound quite similar, like the letters b and p in English, you can often mishear or mispronounce them, like in the words tap and tab. The letters t and d can also be difficult to distinguish when speaking and listening to English, as in the words bat and bad, for example.

Making mistakes with minimal pairs is to be expected and it often doesn't get in the way of communication, which I believe to be the most important thing when learning a language. However, I can also imagine how it might be embarrassing if one of the words in the minimal pair is a curse word. The difference between beach and bitch and sheet and shit is a nightmare. Of course, there's also can't, which can unfortunately sound like a word I wouldn't dare to type.

Minimal pairs can also be very problematic if the differentiating phoneme doesn't exist in your language. This usually means that you will find it difficult to either hear the difference or to pronounce the difference when you're speaking.

Sadly, I don't think there's a quick fix to getting minimal pairs right other than practice. However, there are a number of useful resources and websites to help you along the way, such as www.shiporsheep.com, which is one of my personal favourites.

"Do the Dew" and Yod-Coalescence

Dew, one of the most common subjects for macro lenses.

I was watching television the other day when I spotted an advert for Mountain Dew, a beverage that I tend to avoid like the plague as I have no interest in carbonated beverages except when using them as mixers with strong spirits. However, this post isn't about my intense dislike for adding gases to liquids, it's about the advertising slogan that Mountain Dew was using.

American readers will undoubtedly be familiar with Mountain Dew and their "Do the Dew" slogan. However, the one thing they seemingly overlooked was how British people pronounce "dew". The words "do" and "dew" are both pronounced /duː/ across the United States, while many accents across the British Isles differentiate between the two words, pronouncing "do" as /duː/ and "dew" as /dʒuː/.

This pronunciation of "dew" in various accents of British English makes it a homophone with the words "due" and "Jew", which rendered their "do the dew" slogan as a homophone for Semitic fornication when I first heard it. While I don't find this suggestion offensive, I certainly wasn't thinking of Mountain Dew when reading the tagline.

Lawn over dew.

While this is just an unfortunate coincidence of the differences between British and American English, linguists have obviously looked into this phenomenon, which goes by the name yod-coalescence.

Yod-coalescence is the term given when a particular set of sounds undergoes a process of sound change known as palatalisation, whereby a palatal or palatalised consonant occurs. This can happen when the pronunciation of two words together sounds different to when they are pronounced in isolation, while yod-coalescence refers to when the sounds [dj], [tj], [sj] and [zj] end up becoming [dʒ], [tʃ], [ʃ], and [ʒ]. This makes the British pronunciation of "Tuesday" sound like "chews day" to Americans, while it sounds like Americans say "twos day" to British ears.

More on the Voice

On Wednesday, we celebrated World Voice Day. As a result of this obscure holiday, we looked at the vocal cords, which are found within the larynx and are arguably the most important part of the body when it comes to making the human voice.

That said, the vocal cords are fairly useless without the assistance of the lungs, which push air through the vocal cords, thereby vibrating them and making a sound. Of course, not every sound we make requires the lungs, at least not the variety of clicking sounds that are common in a large number of African languages.

Once air passes through our vocal cords and causes them to vibrate (or not in the case of unvoiced phonemes), it then passes into our mouths where our mouths and tongues act as filter. This filter changes how well certain frequencies of sound are omitted from the mouth.

Various mouth positions for vowel sounds.

Whilst the vocal cords dictate whether or not the phoneme is voiced or unvoiced, the mouth is mostly responsible for vowels, particularly in the English language. The tongue also plays a part in the formation of vowels, whilst the lips and teeth play a more important role in the production of consonants.

Unsurprisingly, for sounds like th in both "think" and "though" in which the tongue sits against the teeth, the phonemes are known as dental. For sounds like the letters f and v in English, they are known as labiodental as both the teeth and lips play a role in making the sounds.

When phonemes are made by placing the tongue on the alveolar ridge, the point in the mouth behind your upper incisors, the sounds are known as alveolar phonemes. When you use your voice to make a sound by pressing your tongue just behind this point, it's known as post-alveolar.

Palatal phonemes are made pressing the tongue against the palate, and velar phonemes are when the tongue is against the soft palate. Right at the back of the mouth pharyngeal phonemes are made against the pharynx and epiglottal phonemes against the epiglottis, but neither of these are present in the English language.

In addition to the vocal cords, mouth, tongue, lips, and teeth, the nose and nasal cavities can also play a part in the production of sounds. The sounds for the letters m and n are both produced nasally, which is why they are really difficult to say when you have a cold or blocked nose.

Although the vocal cords are pretty neat, the entire system that makes up our voices is incredible. We'll see you on Monday for our weekly language profile.

April 16: World Voice Day

As we love celebrations here at The Lingua File, today we're celebrating one of the more important obscure holidays for language lovers, World Voice Day.

World Voice Day is an international holiday organised as part of an effort by both European and American otolaryngologists, more commonly known as ear, nose, and throat (ENT) specialists. The goal of World Voice Day is to celebrate the huge importance of the human voice. In this vein, we thought we'd do our part and aim to establish what the human voice actually is.

A diagram including the vocal cords, because
an actual photo makes them look disgusting.

Most people have a vague understanding of the human voice. We all know that the voice is made using our vocal cords, which can be found in our throats. If you have ever seen Police Academy, and we're sorry if you have, then you will know that these vocal cords are capable of some amazing things.

The cords themselves are incredibly impressive. They differ in size between men and women, with men's vocal cords being longer than women's, which is why men generally have lower voices than women. Though the size difference accounts for the tonal range of men and women, the cords can alter the pitch within those ranges.

The muscles that operate the folds in the vocal cords are amongst the fastest in the body, allowing the vocal cords to change the quality of sound rapidly. It is this rapid movement that helps us to speak in our respective languages.

When the vocal cords get together with our lungs, mouths, and tongues, we can make an incredible range of noises. The difference between certain phonemes, such as voiced and unvoiced phonemes, is due to a phenomenon in the vocal cords known as abduction.

Abduction is when the vocal cords separate, rather than adduction, when they come together. If the act of abduction is sufficient enough to stop the vocal cords vibrating, the result is a voiceless phoneme, like the sound of the letter s in English, at least in most words. When the vocal cords are allowed to vibrate, the result is a voiced sound, like the letter z in English.

When the effect of adduction is strong enough to almost fully stop the vibrations, the result is a glottal stop. If you remember our post on the IPA, the system used to identify almost every phoneme used in human language, then you'll remember that the human voice is much more capable than reproducing all the sounds of just your language.

So we know the vocal cords are important, but what about the "voice"? We'll get to that on Friday. See you then!

More Of The Worst Use Of Foreign Languages In Songs

A while ago we found five songs that deserved to be in the hall of shame for their atrocious use of a foreign language. We picked five songs that we felt merited the title of "The Worst Use of Foreign Languages in Songs" and felt we'd wrapped things up nicely.

Since then, we have had the misfortune of hearing even more horrendous examples and have had to extend our list to include a few more that get a big F grade for their use of foreign languages.

Samson and Delilah by Anthony Van Dyck

Muse - I Belong To You (Mon cœur s'ouvre à ta voix)

More attempts from the British rock trio to climb inside their own behinds with this one. If the French subtitle didn't do it for you, mon cœur s'ouvre à ta voix, taken from the opera Samson and Delilah, features an over-Anglicised pronunciation of "réponds". Clearly, the singer didn't study how the acute accent over the letter e, (é) should be pronounced in French. He should just keep his falsetto in English.

Styx - Mr. Roboto

Though only featuring one line of Japanese, Mr. Roboto uses it just enough to get really annoying. The words dōmo arigatō misutā Robotto, meaning "thank you very much Mr. Roboto", almost kill the Japanese language and managed to spawn horrendous catchphrases. Styx should study their hiragana, katagana and kanji writing systems before they attempt to speak more Japanese.

Lady Gaga - Bad Romance

Though je veux ton amour et je veux ta revanche is used only briefly in the song, it's just to make Lady Gaga a tiny bit more pretentious, if that was even possible. The outspoken and often controversial singer adds this to a long list of things she shouldn't ever have done. Meat dress, anyone? Also, her song "Alejandro" has a few bits of Spanish and code-switching, but we felt nothing says unnecessary pretentious and cringe-worthy language usage like the French language.

A nice champagne...
now all we need is salmon.

Franz Ferdinand - Darts of Pleasure

The Scottish indie band Franz Ferdinand get a special mention for their use of German in this song. The lyrics in question, which go "Ich heiße Superphantastisch! Ich trinke Schampus mit Lachsfisch! Ich heiße Su-per-phan-tas-tisch", roughly mean "My name is Super-Fantastic! I drink Champagne with salmon! My name is Super-Fantastic!". Need we say more? Despite their German (technically Austrian) band name, they score a big 0 for their ability in the language.

Even now the list isn't exhaustive. If you have any more examples, tell us about them in the comments below.

Portmanteaux: Get It Together

Sometimes a compound noun will work just fine. If this isn't the case, then a portmanteau may be the best option. When elements or parts of two or more words are combined into one word, the resulting word is a portmanteau. Coming from the French word for a type of suitcase, the portmanteau often features two compartments, just like its linguistic namesake.

Ironically, the word portmanteau in French is not used to refer to the linguistic melding of words to form new ones. Its current incarnation, porte-manteau, refers simply to a coat stand or coat hook.

If you're really adventurous you can always try out a sporf.

The spork is a portmanteau of spoon and fork. If you are lucky enough to have the time for it, brunch (breakfast plus lunch) is a great way to enjoy more food in the morning, but if you really want pancakes and cereal after six then brinner may be what you need. All these examples take the start of one word and combine it with the end of another.

The word moped, however, takes the start of its component words, motor and pedal, while motel combines motor and hotel, which blend around their shared /oʊt/ sounds.

If you are familiar with French or Spanish, then you will know the origins of au and al. In French, when à should be followed by le it instead changes to au, while in Spanish when a should be followed by el it changes to al. However, these words are different from our other examples since they are compulsory contractions due to the grammar rules of the two languages.

Recently we've heard some pretty good portmanteaux for male cosmetic products such as guyliner (eyeliner for guys) and manscara (mascara for men). With traditional gender roles clearly swapping over, perhaps it will soon be the woman who will be expected to be carrying her femidom (condom for females).

Know any other interesting portmanteaux? Let us know in the comments.

Conlangs: Making Your Own Language

If you're as nerdy about languages as us, you've probably thought about or even tried to make your own language. If you're as useless at it as we were, you have undoubtedly failed. We spoke briefly about Elvish and Simlish in previous posts, but now we're getting down to the nitty-gritty of making your own language.

But does it sound right?

Creating a language is not an easy task to undertake. The vocabulary of the average speaker of the English language is estimated to be between 35,000 and 75,000 words. Do you really want to single-handedly undertake the task of creating that many words for your new language?

Even if you have the time to create the lexicon for your new language, in order to make your conlang accessible you will have to ensure a certain degree of neutrality. If you want speakers of other languages to adopt your conlang you can't make all your words sound too much like English, for example.

After you've completed the arduous task of creating the lexicon, even with a simple nomenclature that would enable you to create a few roots and let other words be created from them, you'll still have to work on the grammar. If you're looking for clarity and making your language easy to learn, you should try to avoid irregular structures, which are pretty unavoidable in naturally-occurring languages. Take a long, hard look at your syntax. What may be simple for a native speaker of French, Spanish or Italian may not be so simple for a native speaker of Mandarin, Japanese or Korean.

You could even make "shorthand" your writing system.

If you have managed to tackle the lexicon and grammar, you still have the phonetics to think about. How will the language sound? You'll need to make sure that the phonemes in your language occur in almost every other language in the world, or at least as many as possible.

If you were to cross-reference every sound produced in every language, you'd probably find very few, if any, that were found in even 90% of modern-day languages.

What about the look of your language? All the world's languages don't share the same writing system, and some don't even have one. Do you want to use an alphabet, abjad, or abugida? A syllabary or logographic writing system? You'll have to create the simplest writing system to ensure that the written form of your language is easy to adopt.

If you've made it this far, we salute you. We gave up by the first step and decided that the pub was always the better option.

The Worst Use of Foreign Languages in Songs

Though the charts across the world tend to be dominated by songs in English, every so often an English-speaking artist decides that their mother tongue is not good enough for a hit. We've got a list of a few of the most horrendous abominations to foreign languages we can think of...

ABBA - Voulez-Vous

We find it difficult to fault ABBA when it comes to music. The '70s are long gone and, thankfully, so is the attire. Though Swedish, ABBA's mastery of the English language is well-documented throughout their discography. Their mastery of French, however, is not. Don't get us started on Chiquitita...

Probably a stone's throw from the real Lady Marmalade's home.
The French Quarter, New Orleans.

Labelle - Lady Marmalade

"Voulez-vous coucher avec moi (ce soir)?" is the "only" French expression most English speakers seem to know when they're trying to be funny. Not only is the phrase horrendously pronounced throughout the song, but it has also led to many others thinking it's an accurate representation of the French language.

The Beatles - Michelle

The world's most famous band are under fire for their French ability. They certainly did some other horrendous things, linguistically speaking. We're not going to mention the stuff they did entirely in German... 

Manic Street Preachers - La Tristesse Durera

"That's not how it's pronounced!"

No strangers to being pretentious, the Manics have made a career from political controversy and making sure everyone knows that they're smarter than them when it comes to politics. When it comes to screaming Vincent van Gogh's last words, lead singer James Dean Bradfield gets a 0 out of 10.

U2 - Vertigo

The UK and Ireland have the lowest levels of bilingualism in Europe, with the UK having a worse record when it comes to foreign languages, except in this case. If Bono's flying the flag for a multilingual Ireland he's failing miserably. "Uno, dos, tres, catorce" is a horrendous error that U2 fans will defend as being intentional. Nice try! Bono should have studied harder in Spanish class.

This list is by no means exhaustive, so if you have any more to add or disagree with us, tell us in the comments below.

We've added a few more examples of the worst use of foreign languages in songs.

Debunking Language Stereotypes: Spanish

In the last of our series on debunking the language stereotypes of EFIGS languages, we're covering Spanish.

A while ago we explained why Spaniards lisp, but there's more to Spanish than just that. Just like the stereotypes behind Italian and French, the Spanish language does not feature the phoneme for the letter "i" as in English. This means native Spanish speakers often struggle with the pronunciation of words such as bit, fit, hit and the rude one that rhymes with those words.

The Spanish countryside near Medellín, Extremadura.

Spanish, much like French and Italian, features a silent "h". The language does, however, feature an approximate sound which is used for the letter "j", /x/. It sounds a lot more like clearing your throat, which will often come across when native Spanish speakers attempt to say English words beginning with "h".

In certain dialects of Spanish, the sound for the letter "y" can also pose problems. There is no perfect approximation since the phoneme for the letter "y" as in the English word "yes" is /j/. Spanish has both /ʝ/, which sounds more like a blend between a "y" and a "j" sound, as well as /ʎ/, which sounds more more like an English letter "y".

There are also only five vowel sounds in Spanish. English, depending on how you count vowels and whether you speak American English or British English, can feature nearly twenty vowel phonemes. Imagine how difficult it would be to have to learn almost 15 new vowel sounds in order to speak a new language!

Debunking Language Stereotypes: Italian

On our mission to clear up some misconceptions when it comes to languages, we've already debunked the myths behind English and French. We're progressing nicely through all the languages which are considered the "important" European languages, EFIGS, and have now reached Italian.

Italians are probably sick to death of "it's a me, Mario!", and who can blame them? In English, the letter "i" is often /ɪ / (as in sit) whereas in Italian, the letter is pronounced /i/, (as in seat). This issue is not exclusive to Italian as the /ɪ / sound is not often found in Romance languages.

Pizza al taglio, a Roman specialty meaning "pizza by the slice".

Italian does not feature the same sound for the letter "r" either. In Italian the letter is often trilled or rolled, and thus does not resemble English pronunciation. This problem with the English letter "r" also occurred when debunking French language stereotypes.

Another shared problem with French is the "th" sound, as in think. This can cause problems for native speakers of Italian due to an absence of the phoneme in their mother tongue.

An advert for Dolmio in the UK featured a stereotypical Italian accent, complete with puppets and the tag line "When'sa your Dolmio day". This "sa" that is often put on the end of words when impersonating Italian is due to the stress patterns of the language. In English, stress often occurs towards the beginning of words, either the first or second syllable. In Italian, stress tends to occur on the penultimate syllable, giving Italian its melodic and almost musical delivery.

Next time you're thinking of impersonating the Italian accent, remember why it's the way it is!

Sounds Good To Me: The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA)

A standardised representation of oral languages? Get out of town!

How do you write down a word so that everyone in the world knows how to pronounce it? Using the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA), of course. If you spend a lot of your time in bars, you may know that IPA also stands for India Pale Ale. We're not talking about those today, unfortunately.

Sorry to get your hopes up...
we're referring to the other IPA. 

We're talking about the use of symbols and characters to represent any given sound that you can make with your throat, tongue, teeth, mouths or lips. Burps excluded... grow up!

The function of the IPA is to represent every possible phoneme. This is referred to as a featural alphabet. Sounds great! How does it work?

In terms of appearance, think of the Latin alphabet... what happens if you start using some Greek symbols too? Well, you'd be almost there... just add some punctuation and turn everything upside-down and inside-out. Voilà!

In the 19th century, some bloke called Henry Sweet proposed the Romic Alphabet be the phonetic alphabet to rule them all. It was eventually developed into the International Phonetic Alphabet we know and love today.

There is a certain issue with the IPA. It maps sounds, not words... so what if you say something differently because of your accent? It can't account for that, so you'd need to write the word out for each accent... some people do, but there are so many accents and variants of every language that it takes ages to do.

IPA transcriptions of the word "international" for two dialects
of English: Received Pronunciation and General American.

Usually words are referred to by their standard pronunciation, which is probably the vaguest description you could give. It's definitely a good starting block though.

There's even a symbol for the "I-don't-care-about-pronouncing-this-vowel-vowel", which they call the schwa. We prefer our name for it. Check out the schwa in all its glory as the second to last symbol in both transcriptions of the word "international" above.