Anything is possible

General discussion about learning languages
Bluepaint
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Anything is possible

Postby Bluepaint » Tue Sep 26, 2017 12:08 pm

If you can pronounce this seamlessly then you can pronounce anything:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=dCGkqUr1k ... e=youtu.be

Extra nerd points to anyone who succeeds :lol:
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Josquin
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Re: Anything is possible

Postby Josquin » Tue Sep 26, 2017 3:09 pm

Oh, Welsh is easy! You just need to listen to this song a few times! ;)



What's really giving me a headache is Nuxalk, a Native American language spoken in Canada. Nuxalk has words without vowels and challenges the linguistic concept of the syllable with its consonant clusters. Here's a sample.

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Oró, sé do bheatha abhaile! Anois ar theacht an tsamhraidh.

gsbod
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Re: Anything is possible

Postby gsbod » Tue Sep 26, 2017 5:24 pm

Once you can handle place names like Caerdydd and Llanelli, you are good to go in Welsh!
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vonPeterhof
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Re: Anything is possible

Postby vonPeterhof » Tue Sep 26, 2017 10:00 pm

Josquin wrote:What's really giving me a headache is Nuxalk, a Native American language spoken in Canada. Nuxalk has words without vowels and challenges the linguistic concept of the syllable with its consonant clusters.
Yeah, same. Or how about !Xóõ, which has more click consonant phonemes than most languages have of phonemes in total?

I'd also recommend anyone who knows their way around IPA to check out the transcriptions of some Marshallese words. Just for the heck of it :D

As for languages that I've actually tried learning, Avar probably takes the cake in terms of challenging pronunciation. One would expect Abkhaz to be scarier, with its greater number of consonant phonemes, but once you've learned to pronounce ejective consonants it's not all that terrible (though being familiar with palatalization and consonants from Arabic or a Turkic language gives one a huge advantage). Avar also gives you the ejective affricate version of the Welsh ll, four consonants that just sound like х/(k)h to a Russian ear, and.. well... this except geminated. Here's a song in Avar:
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Tillumadoguenirurm
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Re: Anything is possible

Postby Tillumadoguenirurm » Tue Sep 26, 2017 10:19 pm

Can I ask where one speaks Avar and how you became interested in it?
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Jar-Ptitsa
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Re: Anything is possible

Postby Jar-Ptitsa » Wed Sep 27, 2017 12:34 am

!Xóõ is incredible! I would need a billion years to learn the pronuniciation.
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vonPeterhof
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Re: Anything is possible

Postby vonPeterhof » Wed Sep 27, 2017 5:11 am

Tillumadoguenirurm wrote:Can I ask where one speaks Avar and how you became interested in it?

It's spoken in a region of the North Caucasus called Dagestan, which is Russia's most linguistically diverse region - the Avars are its largest ethnolinguistic group, but they represent less than a third of its population. I've long been interested in the languages of the region, but what made me interested specifically in Avar was Alisa Ganieva's book Праздничная гора (Holiday Mountain, or The Mountain And The Wall), which I've written a little about in my log. While the book was written in Russian, the protagonist's (and the author's) native language is Avar and there's a lot of interesting details about the linguistic situation in the region. Then, a couple of weeks after finishing the book, I came across a beginners' Avar textbook in a bookstore, so I thought "why not?"
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Vedun
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Re: Anything is possible

Postby Vedun » Wed Sep 27, 2017 11:52 am

vonPeterhof wrote:I'd also recommend anyone who knows their way around IPA to check out the transcriptions of some Marshallese words. Just for the heck of it :D

Marshallese is the living example that ANADEW. And Rotokas has synchronic metathesis that's not even that transparent.
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Tillumadoguenirurm
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Re: Anything is possible

Postby Tillumadoguenirurm » Wed Sep 27, 2017 1:26 pm

vonPeterhof wrote:
Tillumadoguenirurm wrote:Can I ask where one speaks Avar and how you became interested in it?

It's spoken in a region of the North Caucasus called Dagestan, which is Russia's most linguistically diverse region - the Avars are its largest ethnolinguistic group, but they represent less than a third of its population. I've long been interested in the languages of the region, but what made me interested specifically in Avar was Alisa Ganieva's book Праздничная гора (Holiday Mountain, or The Mountain And The Wall), which I've written a little about in my log. While the book was written in Russian, the protagonist's (and the author's) native language is Avar and there's a lot of interesting details about the linguistic situation in the region. Then, a couple of weeks after finishing the book, I came across a beginners' Avar textbook in a bookstore, so I thought "why not?"



Cool. You don't usually hear all that much about this area of the world, thank you for the reply.
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mick33
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Re: Anything is possible

Postby mick33 » Wed Sep 27, 2017 8:56 pm

Josquin wrote:What's really giving me a headache is Nuxalk, a Native American language spoken in Canada. Nuxalk has words without vowels and challenges the linguistic concept of the syllable with its consonant clusters.
Yeah, the languages of the Pacific Northwest region of North America are amazing, here's a few more examples:

Lushootseed is spoken in western Washington State. If you want see how this language is written click on the closed captions. https://vimeo.com/channels/893519

Squamish: Spoken in British Columbia


Tlingit: Spoken in parts of Alaska and British Columbia (also has subtitles available)


Colville-Okanagan Salish: Spoken in northern Washington and Southern British Columbia
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