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.

English Pronunciation: Beware of Greek Bearing Words

The English language's weak relationship between spelling and pronunciation is fairly well known. In fact, English is highly non-phonemic, which means that graphemes (letters) don't tend to have a direct link to pronunciation (phonemes).

There are multitude of reasons why this relationship is so poor. English vocabulary comes from a multitude of sources. While over half of the language's vocabulary is from Latin and French and around a quarter is from Germanic languages, there's a part of the English lexicon that can cause plenty of problems (especially for non-native speakers) when it comes to pronunciation: the words from Greek.

While Greek words account for only 6% of English vocabulary, the Greek language is the 4th largest contributor to the English language. While there aren't enough Greek terms to make speaking English seem impossible, there are enough to ensure that you can trip up over their pronunciation from time to time.

Unsurprisingly, Greek words, much like the Greek language, are written using the Greek alphabet. When these words made their way into English, the Greek letters had to go and the Latin alphabet ended up being used. When this happened, the Latin letters used didn't always line up directly with the pronunciation you would expect.

A fine example is the Greek letter Χ (chi). This letter tends to make a sound we often associate with the Latin letters C and K. However, in many words of Greek origin, this is written as ch. Words like this include architecture, chaos, chemistry, character, mechanic, and monarch.

The letter Φ (phi) gave us plenty of words that use ph when you would think that the letter F would suffice. This led to words like alphabet, blaspheme, dolphin, emphasis, orphan, philosophy, photo, and physics.

Then there's Ψ (psi), which gives us those words that use ps with a silent P and sound just like S. Examples include the Greek word for spirit and soul (ψυχή - psych), which is found in psychedelic, psychology, and plenty of other psycho words.

Of course, we love the interesting diversity the Greek language brought to English. You just have to be careful about their seemingly weird spelling, at least in comparison to words with more common roots. Just make sure to be careful when you pronounce them!

Why English Can Feel Like a Lawless Language

While we love all languages, English tends to get more of the spotlight at The Lingua File than other languages since it's our mother tongue. As our mother tongue, we didn't learn it in the same way as we did our second languages, so we have a vastly different understanding of it.

The first major difference we tend to find between English and our other languages is that, despite using English more fluently and with greater ease, we tend to understand significantly less about why we say certain things the way we do, having never studied them in the same depth as the rules we had to learn during foreign language tuition.

An American cowboy in Dakota Territory in the 1880s.

This means that when we speak English with non-native speakers, we are often asked questions about the language that we have never really considered or thought about. Proper grammar is drilled into us at a young age, so the weird nuances of English just become second nature to us.

Take time prepositions for example. We say in the morning, in the afternoon, and in the evening. However, we say at night. Sure, in the night exists, but we would rarely say it. We just know that "night" is used differently. I'm sure these exceptions are incredibly frustrating for those who are learning the language.

When you consider prepositions in general, the same type of exceptions that irk learners concerning time prepositions also occur with other prepositions, and can result in a lot of frustration when learners have to tackle them.

And what about pronunciation? For users of languages with a phonemic orthography (a language whose written symbols correspond directly to a given sound), English must be incredibly annoying. Why does the "u" sound different in unite and untie? They look almost identical to one another...

Don't forget phrasal verbs, too! They are so annoying for those learning English as a second language that we even dedicated an entire post to it!

Why You Should Make Mistakes in a Foreign Language

Learning a foreign language is rarely a simple thing. You have to learn tonnes of new vocabulary and words that may hardly resemble anything you've ever seen before. Then there are false friends, the words that look or sound exactly like words in your own language, but have a completely different meaning.

Even then, when you learn a few words, the syntax may be completely different to the syntax in your own language. In this case, you have to train your brain to recognise this in order to make yourself understood and to understand what you read and hear.

Then there's the grammar. Some people can learn grammar with little effort. Then there are people like me, who even struggle with grammar of their mother tongue.

In addition to almost completely changing the way you think, you also have to learn how to pronounce all the phonemes in a language. Learning to use an authentic accent in a foreign language can be difficult if your mother tongue doesn't share many of its phonemes with those of your new language.

It's unlikely that you will gain all this knowledge and all of these skills overnight. Just like learning a musical instrument, there are going to be a few wrong notes here and there. That's not a problem.

Making mistakes and learning from them can be one of the most useful tools in your language learning arsenal. The worst thing you can do is not talk or practice your new language just because you're scared of making a mistake.

Sometimes mistakes can be embarrassing, but in my experience, most people that I've met have always been very understanding to those learning a language. In fact, some of the errors I've made in the past have been amusing, such as telling an older lady that I was horny when I meant to say that I was warm, and telling a friend that I had diarrhoea when I wanted to say a cold. I've never made either of these mistakes since.

So if you're learning a language, don't worry! Make mistakes and learn from them. The improvements you'll make will far outweigh any embarrassment you may suffer from making mistakes.

What's the worst mistake you've made in a foreign language? Tell us about your experiences in the comments below.

Intonation: Music in Language

After looking at speech tempo on Wednesday, I got distracted reading about intonation and thought I'd share a bit of information on this wonderful linguistic phenomenon that occurs in spoken language.

Pitch varies with frequency, much like these waves that represent
visible light.

Since spoken language is transmitted by sound, every word you utter has pitch. Intonation is how your speech changes pitch, which is one of the things that makes language so amazingly nuanced. Intonation serves a number of functions in speech, all by doing little more than increasing or decreasing its pitch.

Intonation helps us to determine whether a statement is interrogative or affirmative (a question or an answer) by noting if intonation rises in pitch or falls. In English, a rising pitch indicates a question and a falling pitch indicates an answer. However, you may notice that if you doubt your own answer to a question, your speech tends to rise regardless.

San Fernando Valley, California

A number of English dialects around the world have a feature known as the high rising terminal (HRT) in which pitch rises at the end of the sentence. This is common mainly in a number of Australian and American dialects. This feature of speech has been popularised thanks to the valleyspeak sociolect spoken in southern California's San Fernando Valley, where everyone sounds like they're asking questions constantly.

It can also be used to place emphasis on certain words or clauses in a sentence. In written language, this is often indicated by the use of italics (in the case of words) and parentheses in the case of clauses.

Intonation also helps you to remember things. Next time you find yourself repeating your shopping list back to yourself in the aisles, listen to your rising intonation as you name each item. Apparently, this is because the items are easier to remember that way. It's also a useful thing to know if you're studying for an exam!

My favourite function of intonation is undoubtedly the way that it can give your speech emotion. Those listening to you talk can often guess how you're feeling due to the variations in your pitch.

It is worth noting that intonation does not refer to tone, which is the change in pitch utilised in tonal languages to distinguish between words. I'll have to have a look at that one another day!

Why I Love German, Germans, and Germany

After recently visiting the Netherlands and becoming rather fond of the country, its people, and its language as part of an ongoing railway trek around Europe, I made my way to Germany. 

My first destination in Germany was Hamburg, which I got to with relative ease despite an absence of national rail services that day due to a strike. As a Brit this amused me greatly since we're always complaining about the lacklustre rail service in our country.

I've only been fortunate enough to visit Germany once before during a previous Europe-wide expedition over half a decade ago when I visited Berlin for two nights. Despite being turned away from a club without any given reason, I enjoyed my time there. Armed with nothing but a phrasebook, I did my utmost to remember the year of German I took when I was 14 years old.

German is not one of my spoken languages and the amount I learnt in school accounts for little more than simple greetings, numbers, and how to ask for directions. Despite this, using the same outdated phrasebook and the internet, I managed to find the missing vocabulary I needed in most situations.

Much like in the Netherlands, I was lucky enough to enjoy some local hospitality. After making my way to Münster via Bremen, I sampled some fantastic German baked goods and beers, of course. From there it was a long but pleasant train journey to Munich, where I was told to prepare for a very different (in a good way) variety of German.

While making the mistake of overindulging in one of Munich's most popular pursuits, drinking, I was treated very kindly by everyone I met, who were more than willing to humour me as I attempted to speak their language, patiently listening as I horrendously butchered it.

I'll admit that I don't learn languages very well from reading verb tables, and as a result find myself eavesdropping on anyone and everyone in public spaces. Thanks to this seemingly rude practice, I'd like to debunk the myth that German is an aggressive and harsh-sounding language. While admittedly not as melodic as Italian, perhaps, I found the phonemes to be rather soothing.

I was also fascinated by the prevalence of compound nouns in German. While I had also noticed this in Dutch, in German it seemed so much more mind-boggling, perhaps due to the diacritic marks used, and therefore more interesting.

Now I'm not sure whether to learn Dutch or German upon my return home. Have you learnt or do you speak either of these languages? If so, make your case for which one I should focus on in the comments below.

Why I Love Dutch, the Dutch, and the Netherlands

Until recently, I was never a huge fan of Amsterdam and hadn't really visited anywhere else in the Netherlands (with the exception of the Efteling theme park), so I'd never really had an experience to write home about.

I'd visited Amsterdam with my parents when I was at an age when I still thought girls were disgusting. This meant that during an accidental trip into the red-light district (which is right by a beautiful church I was visiting), the view of scantily-clad prostitutes in the window made me cry.

On a later trip around Europe I ended up partaking in a small amount of Amsterdam's other popular pursuit, cannabis, and the ensuing paranoia coupled with again accidentally finding the red-light district led to a wholly unpleasant time.

As they say, the third time's the charm, and upon my arrival in Amsterdam, the first destination in a trip around Europe, I was adamant that I was going to enjoy myself and change my poor opinion of the city and, by extension, the country. I made sure to find the beautiful parts of the city and subsequently the beautiful people of the Netherlands.

Even though I was hoping to learn some Dutch and had quickly consulted a couple of web pages on the matter, when I stumbled with the longer words and seemingly endless number of vocalic phonemes, the locals were all very friendly while they put me to shame with their flawless mastery of my mother tongue.

From Amsterdam, I headed eastwards to the city of Zwolle to meet a good friend and exceptional English teacher. In Zwolle I was treated to the sights, sounds, smells, and tastes of the city, as well as travelling on a typically-Dutch bicycle that was kindly provided for me.

The Netherlands, and Zwolle in particular, is a wonderful place for cyclists and while it seemed odd to me that nobody wears a helmet when cycling, it became abundantly clear that with all the cycle paths, cyclist-friendly road layouts, and drivers that are very familiar with being surrounded by bikes, there was little danger of ever encountering any trouble.

I was lucky enough to be able to sit in on a couple of English lessons at the school where my friend taught and was left completely astounded by the level of English on display. The older children were discussing Jewish-American Literature and not only providing exceptional insight into the passages they had read, but doing so in impeccable English.

So it might be pretty clear that I think the Netherlands is a wonderful place, since the people were friendly and happy to converse with us in English without being upset that my Dutch is abysmal. While I don't speak Dutch and the words I know could be written on a postage stamp, I love the look, feel, and sound of the language.

One particular highlight was sitting in on a lesson on English accents. As a special guest, I was allowed to provide a sample of my finest Geordie. The children then had to ascertain, given my accent, where I came from. Sadly, they were more familiar with the accents of those on the reality tv show Geordie Shore (which I was shocked to find the Netherlands is also subjected to) than a typical Geordie accent, and struggled to pinpoint my city of origin. Nevertheless, it was an incredibly fun and eye-opening experience, putting my foreign language education in the United Kingdom to shame.

The Dutch Language

Since large portions of my time in the Netherlands were spent speaking English, I did my best to learn as much as I could about the language from native speakers while trying to pick up as much vocabulary as possible from every example of the written language.

While the phonetic differences between Dutch and English are vast, the language is similar enough to English to make my ears hone in on speech. This left me confused as my brain clearly felt it could understand the language but never quite managed.

While other languages have left their mark on the Dutch language, you can certainly tell that English and Dutch are cousins as many words have shared roots that become apparent when you hear or read them.

Despite struggling with the pronunciation of countless phonemes, I would certainly recommend learning Dutch. While you could argue that it may not vastly increase your career prospects, I found the language both beautiful and fascinating, and am very keen to learn more.

My only criticism of the whole experience is that any English speaker may find it hard to have an entire conversation in Dutch with the natives. I got the impression from the Dutch people I met that they are not only masters of English, but also very keen to use their foreign language skills. I'm sure once I reach the level of basic communication I will enjoy many wonderful conversations in Dutch, if I could just get a chance to practice!

Hatsune Miku: Virtual Vocals and Synthetic Singing

During a recent Facebook scrolling session, an odd link popped up on my news feed. It was this video of a musical performance on the Late Show with David Letterman.

You don't need to be the most observant person in the world to realise that the performer, Hatsune Miku, or 初音ミク, as her name is written in Japanese, is not a real person. Hatsune Miku is not the first virtual performer; other popular virtual acts include Alvin and the Chipmunks, The Archies, and Gorillaz. However, Hatsune Miku can do something that other acts can't do: sing.

You may think that her high-pitched singing is not as good as the sped-up singing of Alvin, Simon, and Theodore, and you may be right. However, the Chipmunks, much like other virtual acts, had their music and their vocals pre-recorded. Hatsune Miku's vocals are synthesised using Yamaha's VOCALOID2 and VOCALOID3 vocal synthesisers.

If you're familiar with Japanese, you may recognise the components of Hatsune Miku's name. In fact, the name translates as "the first sound from the future", with Hatsu (初) meaning "first", Ne (音) meaning "sound", and Miku (ミク) meaning "future".

Sapporo, Japan, the hometown of Hatsune Miku.

While 16 year-old Hatsune Miku could be said to be from Sapporo, the technology that allows her to sing was conceived of in Spain as part of a research project at Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona.

Hatsune Miku's voice isn't purely synthesised and is in fact generated from phonemes prerecorded by Japanese voice actress Saki Fujita. Initially, only Japanese phonemes were recorded, before learning English (from Saki Fujita's recordings) for a later release. This allows her to sing in both languages, albeit with a Japanese accent when she sings in English.

The process that allows for the manipulation of the phonemes into song is known as concatenative synthesis. Using this process, sound samples (known as units) can be manipulated. This allows the user to modify a range of qualities, including the unit's length, pitch, and timbre.

Since anyone who owns the software can synthesise speech and vocals, Hatsune Miku is "technically" the performer of thousands of songs. She's not alone, though. There are also other virtual performers available with different language combinations such as Spanish and Chinese. Other languages can also be approximated using preexisting phonemes, with differing levels of success.

Canada Day: Celebrating Canadian English

Yesterday was Canada Day, when Canadians the world over celebrate their motherland. Canada Day officially marks the date when the British North America Act of 1867 united three colonies into the Dominion of Canada.

Nowadays, the British North America Act of 1867 is known as the Constitution Act in Canada, though it retains its original name in the UK. It's known as the Constitution Act is due to the fact that a decent portion of Canada's constitution was formed by the act.

While the celebrations certainly looked like a lot of fun, the thing we're really interested in is the main language spoken in Canada. Last year we looked at the languages of Canada, while this year we will examine only one, the English language.

The variety of English spoken in Canada, Canadian English, is often overlooked and ignored. For years this variation of the English language was considered to be nothing more than either a variety or dialect of American English.

Much like American English, Canadian English has been shaped by immigration patterns. Canadian English was initially shaped by immigration from the United States following the War of Independence. Those who had supported the British Empire fled to the areas in the north that were still under British control.

A huge number of people moved to Canada from the British Isles after the Napoleonic Wars right up until the Constitution Act of 1867. While over a million people made their way to Canada from England, Scotland, Wales, and Ireland, scholars still believe those who entered Canada from the US left a more lasting impression on Canadian English, at least in terms of accents, explaining why Canadians sound more like those from the US than those from the UK, Australia, or New Zealand.

Canadian English is particularly interesting in the way it spells words. While American English was quick to remove the letter "u" from any word that barely pronounced it, Canadian English stayed true to the same rules as British English and still technically spells "colour" and "favour" the same way as the Brits. That said, the influence of American media has muddied the waters of Canadian English and some Canadians almost seem uncertain of whether or not they should use the letter "u" in the same way as the Brits.

Even though the Canadians share the British opinion concerning the letter "u", Canadian English, just like American English, prefers the -ize suffix over the -ise suffix which is popular in British spelling. Though -ize is the popular choice in Canada, they technically don't spell it the same, at least not if you ask them, as Canadians refer to the last letter of the alphabet as zed, and not as zee, like Americans do.

All that said, our favourite thing about Canadian English has to be the audible question mark, which is pronounced by some as "eh". Even if you didn't celebrate Canada Day, you can still celebrate Canadian English, which is definitely different to all the other varieties of English.

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!

Hepburn Romanization: Transcribing Japanese for the West

As tomorrow is the birthday of James Curtis Hepburn, we thought we'd take a look at perhaps his biggest contribution to languages, Hepburn Romanization. However, first we'll tell you about the man himself.

Born in 1815 in Milton, Pennsylvania, Hepburn studied at Princeton, then earned his M.D. at the University of Pennsylvania before returning to Princeton to earn his Master's degree. He initially went to China as a medical missionary in 1840 and from 1843 to 1845 he worked on Amoy Island, again as a medical missionary until his wife's poor health forced his return to the US.

It wasn't until 1859 that Hepburn and his wife went to Kanagawa, Japan, where he would start studying the Japanese language. His research led to his focus on creating a Japanese-English dictionary, which he would complete in 1887.

The Japanese language is written using a variety of writing systems. Kanji is a system of logographic characters borrowed from the Chinese writing system, while the Hiragana and Katakana writing systems are syllabic.

Hepburn's most widely recognised work is his system for representing the Japanese language using the Latin alphabet. As you may know, despite many languages using the Latin alphabet, not every character in every language is pronounced the same. In fact, in many languages, not every character in the Latin alphabet has a single used phoneme. As Hepburn was American, it is understandable that Hepburn Romanization is based on English phonology.

While Hepburn Romanization helps English speakers pronounce words in the Japanese language, a competing system, Nihon-Shiki Romanization, was devised by Japanese physicist Aikitu Tanakadate. It was created with the goal of completely replacing the traditional Japanese writing systems and allowing Japan to compete with the West. If you have learned any Japanese recently, you will be aware that this did not happen.

Nihon-Shiki Romanization would be developed into Kunrei-Shiki Romanization and adopted by the Japanese government in 1937. However, Hepburn's original system is still commonly used today for a variety of applications and its use is permitted alongside Kunrei-Shiki Romanization by several Japanese governmental bodies. Many students learning Japanese as a foreign language still learn a modern variant of Hepburn's original system.

Are you learning Japanese? Have you used Hepburn Romanization in your studies or elsewhere? If so, tell us about your experiences in the comments below.

Ido: Reforming Esperanto

A few days ago, we covered the constructed language of Esperanto. As a result, it got us thinking about constructed languages and international auxiliary languages. As we said, Esperanto is the world's most popular constructed language. Ido, however, is not.

The flag of Ido

Ido was created in the early 20th century following complaints about Esperanto. The language was designed to address the flaws in Esperanto and to correct them. The Ido movement never really garnered much support, and it wasn't until the age of the internet that Ido actually gained any momentum. Even now, it only has a couple hundred speakers and still lacks support.

The first of Ido's changes to Esperanto was removing all diacritics from the alphabet. Ido's alphabet is identical to the Latin alphabet as used in the English language. The 26 letters represent 26 individual sounds. There are also three digraphs, ch, qu, and sh, which are used.

The phonology of Esperanto always used a stress on the penultimate syllable. Ido, however, does not always follow this rule, instead opting to change the stress for verb infinitives to the last syllable. In terms of vocabulary, Ido prefers to retain nouns as gender-neutral rather than defining words such as occupations as gender-specific.

Even though constructed languages are man-made inventions, one could say that they are still subject to evolution and even revolution.

Esperanto: The World's Most Popular Constructed Language, Part 3

Over the past two days we've looked at the creation and history, and then the application and usage of Esperanto. Now that we've set the scene, we'll be having a look at how Esperanto is put together.

As a conlang, Esperanto can't really be classified as belonging to any other language families. Instead, Esperanto is classified as an International Auxiliary Language. Though the language was heavily influenced by Indo-European languages, taking on the phonemic properties of Slavic languages and the lexicon of Romance and Germanic languages, Esperanto has drawn heavy criticism for being too Eurocentric.

La Espero, a poem known as the
"hymn of Esperanto".

When speaking Esperanto, the stress is usually on the penultimate syllable, much like Italian and in poetry. The phonology is particularly interesting as the relationship between letters and phonemes is direct, meaning that every letter used in Esperanto has only one phoneme that it could represent. This was particularly important to Esperanto's creator, L. L. Zamenhof, who declared the rule as "one letter, one sound".

The phonology is also very similar to Polish and Belarusian, which is wholly unsurprising given that Zamenhof himself was born in Bialystok, where most of the population spoke Yiddish and were either Poles or Belarusians.

The relation between letters and phonemes is as closely related to the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) as possible. The language currently features 23 consonants, 5 vowels, 2 semi-vowels, and 6 diphthongs. This is reasonably low given that, depending on the dialect, English speakers can have up to 20 vowel sounds.

Having covered the phonology of Esperanto, tomorrow we'll be continuing our evaluation of Esperanto by looking at the Esperanto grammar and lexicon.

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4

The Complexity Of French Homophones

If you've ever studied or learned French, then you should be aware that pronunciation, especially with the often silent final letters, can be awkward and frequently very similar. This can be very difficult for those learning the language and, at times, difficult for those who speak it as their first language.

Today's post is brought to you by the letter A.

Some homophones are spelled almost identically except for a diacritic mark. A prime example is the word a, which is the third person singular conjugation of the verb avoir meaning "to have", and à which is a preposition meaning "to", "at", or "in".

It should also be noted that ai, the first person singular of the verb avoir, is almost exclusively found contracted with the word je, ("I"), in the form j'ai, and is pronounced the same as the verb's singular subjunctive forms as well as third person plural (j'aie, tu aies, il/elle/on ait, ils/elles aient respectively). Not to mention being a homophone of the second and third person singular of être, meaning "to be".

As if the verbs for "to have" and "to be" having multiple conjugations that are homophones wasn't awkward enough, the words for "or" and "where" are also homophones, and very nearly homonyms, as they are ou and où respectively.

This is by no means an exhaustive list of French homophones but merely a few examples of those that we find to be the most poignant. Despite this frequent annoyance, if you are hoping to learn French, you shouldn't let it put you off. These awkward intricacies are what makes this Romance language so elusive, beautiful, and interesting.

If you have any good examples of French homophones, tell us about them in the comments below.

Debunking Language Stereotypes: German

Having covered the language stereotypes of English, French and Italian, today we are turning our attention to German.

Brandenburg Gate in Berlin, Germany.

Much like French and Italian, German does not feature our beloved /θ/ (as in think and thing). As a result, English words that feature this phoneme are usually approximated by less-experienced native German speakers when they attempt to speak English. The sounds of the letters "z" and "s" are often used as their approximates.

Another stumbling block for speakers of the language is the letter "w". In German, this is pronounced much like the letter "v" in English, much to the ridicule of German speakers the world over.

It's also incredibly natural for Germans to needlessly capitalise words when writing in English. However, most English speakers seem to have a blatant disregard for correct capitalisation, at least on the internet, so this can often go relatively unnoticed. This seemingly random capitalisation is actually due to the fact that every noun in the German language is capitalised. Obviously it's a very hard habit to break when learning another language!

Debunking Language Stereotypes: French

Having unravelled the nonsense behind stereotypes in the English language, we now direct our attention to other languages across Europe. Having so many cultures and languages in such close proximity always leads to stereotypes, and occasionally even tension. Europe does have a rich history in conflict, after all.

We've done "E" (referring to English, not the drug) in EFIGS, so we thought it would make sense to continue with the next letter in the series, "F".

We thought we'd be understated for once
and just show some French baguettes
instead of a mustachioed man in a beret and
striped shirt holding them whilst smoking.

We all know the stereotypes when it comes to the French people. What interests us are the stereotypes connected to the French language. In our experience, the most noticeable and the most frequently impersonated is "ze" as a replacement for "the". This is a common stereotype and, unfortunately for native French speakers, bears true. French does not have the phonemes /θ/ or /ð/, which represent the sound of the letters "th" in words such as mathematics and weather respectively. As a result, French speakers tend to approximate the sound with the phoneme /z/, which in English is used for the letter "z" in words such as zoo.

The French language also does not feature the phoneme /r/ which in is used for the letter "r" in American English. Due to the non-rhotic nature of many accents in British English, it isn't always used for "r" in the UK. The French use the phoneme /ʁ/ for the letter "r" and as a result are unfamiliar with the letter's English pronunciation.

It should also be noted that the use of the definite article (le, la, les) in French is far more common than use of the is in English. As a result, French speakers may occasionally unnecessarily add the to sentences, in the same way that native English speakers will tend to omit the definite article when they speak French. Nobody's perfect, after all.

Debunking Language Stereotypes: English

If you've ever heard an impression of a "foreign" language, you must be aware that some of these are stereotyping. We're not easily offended and enjoy the occasional homage to the way we speak (as a native Geordie I'm often subject to this), but if you're going to make a joke then you should really make sure you have the facts straight.

We'll be going through a few "typical" accents and evaluating how much truth is in them, starting with accents in the English language.

They don't all dress like this either! Dandyism in
the Romantic period a ballroom in 1834.

British

There are far too many accents across Britain to debunk them on a regional level, so we'll start with the British accent as seen from abroad. Most accents in the UK are non-rhotic, meaning that the letter r when preceded by a vowel is not pronounced as a consonant. We touched upon the subject of rhotic and non-rhotic accents ages ago when it was International Talk Like A Pirate Day.

Unfortunately, the BBC accent isn't spoken by that many people and the differences between it and regional accents are too distinct to really have this as a go-to accent. If you want to mock the Brits and their accents, we'd advise going for a regional accent as most people will take exception to a generic "British" accent. Also, given how expensive living in the UK can be, don't be surprised that most of them aren't posh! Avoid "charmed", "toodle-pip" and "tally-ho" when possible.

American

Sure, the accents across the states aren't as varied as those in the UK, but they still have some distinct accents. To Brits they sound like they're talking out their noses, but make sure you don't overemphasise this. Just because the accent sounds fairly nasal and like they're chewing gum doesn't mean you should overdo it.

If you feel compelled to impersonate an American, make it understated rather than overstated.

Canadian

We like Canada's accent, though the whole aboot thing really annoys us. We've heard Canadians talk and they rarely pronounce it thus. If we had to try it we'd say it's more akin to "a boat" than "a boot". If you do believe South Park got it right, then you should probably look up a list of Canadian actors and see how many of them you've always mistaken for Americans.

We'd like to add that while "eh?" is used more frequently amongst Canadians than some other groups, it's usually only used with asserting statements when seeking the approval of the listener. Other English speakers prefer to use words such as "right" and "you know", the latter often being pronounced like "y'know".

Shrimp... barbie... geddit?

Australian

Though Australia certainly has the weather for it, not every Australian spends all day drinking lager and having barbecues. We're not certain about their shrimp consumption either, but we believe this to be wildly exaggerated too.

Even if Australians did host as many barbecues and consume as much shrimp as stereotypes would have us believe, would they really need to ask someone to put another shrimp on the barbie? We think their expertise would mean that they'd know fine well whether more shrimp was required or not.

For those outside of Australia, it should be noted that the lager Fosters isn't that popular Down Under, and Australia consumes less alcohol per capita than France, Spain and the United Kingdom.

South Africa

You should know that the South African accent does not sound like an Australian accent and should definitely not be based on Leonardo DiCaprio's rendition of it in Blood Diamond, or "Blid Dahmunt", as he liked to call it. Also, Nelson Mandela's accent is not typical of South Africa either, so don't think all South Africans sound like him.

Are you sick of your accent being impersonated or do you find it endearing? Tell us below in the comments.

How Correct Pronunciation Can Make You Sound Pretentious

For those who speak more than one language or are monolingual but culturally aware, saying foreign words can sometimes lead to tricky situations. What do you do when you know the word is foreign? Do you pronounce it with full authenticity and seem pretentious, or do you pronounce it like the locals and die a little inside? Today we're hoping to come up with a solution.

Le Grand Foyer at Palas Garnier, used by the Paris Opera.

Authentic Pronunciation

For polyglots, this should always be the only option. You'll never get good at a language if you don't pronounce the words correctly and if you do, this will probably spill over into your mother tongue. That said, should you pronounce Paris as if it's an English word and say the last letter, or do you go all-out with a legitimate paree complete with guttural r sounds? We believe that you should consider Paris, as pronounced by the English, as the exonym for the French Paris and stick with the common usage.

Local Pronunciation

There are many words that have existed in the language for so long that we should consider them as English even though they were originally taken from another language. You wouldn't say station like the French do, would you? You'd sound ridiculous.

When it comes to brand names, this shouldn't be a problem. You should always just go with however it's said on the advertisements. It's a quick and easy solution. Except when it comes to Hyundai, which is "hun-day" in the US and "hi-un-die" in the UK, though the marketing in both countries reflects these nuances. 
 

You probably don't want to pop
an entire one of these into your mouth!

The Solution

We think the real solution is to work proactively. You can't change the way people speak because you'll look like a dick if you do. If you know a new term is a loanword, then make sure you get it right before it becomes commonplace and has been butchered beyond all recognition. It's probably too late however, for jalapeños. Perhaps the best we can do is pronounce each word slightly more authentically until people forget the old, and definitely wrong, way to say it.